CyberHumanRightsLaw

You Too Can Try Hitler in Play Written By Lawyer

There is no tech to this post but I could not resist.  In this week's Forward Newspaper there is a story about a lawyer who has written a play where you get to judge Hitler's guilt:

The Shmooze Hitler Goes on Trial in Boca By hindi diamond February 17, 2006 "The False Witness," a Chabad-sponsored play that puts Adolf Hitler on trial for crimes against humanity, enjoyed a two-day run in Boca Raton, Fla., this past weekend. Part courtroom drama and part history lesson, the interactive performance — in which the audience is sworn in as the jury — brings a virtual who's who of antisemitic history to the stand in an effort to ascertain just who bears final responsibility for the Holocaust. According to the play's co-authors, Robert Krakow and Ilan Lewinger, the piece breaks fresh ground in its approach to the question of where ultimate responsibility for the Holocaust lies. Playwright Krakow, a onetime trial lawyer who has been at work on the piece for 17 years, also has a bit part in the production. At the play's end, he appears in the guise of jury foreman and polls the audience for a verdict.

Buy Tee Shirts to show your support for Cyber Human Rights

BoingBoing.net a popular tech blog has a story and link to a company making tee shirts parodying the companies doing net business in China who testified before Congress:

Show your solidarity with the global movement to stop Google facilitation of Chinese censorship. All profits are donated directly by Cafe Press to Human Rights in China, an international, Chinese, non-governmental organization with a mission to promote universally recognized human rights and advance the institutional protection of these rights in the Peoples Republic of China. HRIC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Some of the Parody Logos:

The 3 blind mice....???

I could not help but notice how in a picture in the New York Times of the joint hearings in Congress on Internet companies in China, three of the four company representatives were all lined up wearing red  "power ties". (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)




Could they be the three blind mice??  I wonder if they knew testimony like this would be part of their job when they signed on to be general councils/corporate sookesmen for these companies.  The picture was for the article "Web Firms Are Grilled On Dealings in China."

The Congress marches into the fray

Wow!  Ain't politics grand.  Tracking down suspicious online behavior in the US may be OK but not in China.  According to the House human rights hearing Committee chair, a Mr. Smith, we can look to the Holocaust to understand how big a problem corporate policy on the Internet is in China.  He recommended everyone read a book on IBM's actions in Germany during WWII called IBM and the Holocaust.  According to its web site the book:

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s....

Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?

IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.

Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

You can read more about it here.

And the counter responses are rolling in...

The New York times reported today on the continuing human rights fracas:

The recent absorption of Yahoo's Chinese operations into Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company in which Yahoo now holds a 40 percent stake, also worries some critics. They fear that the move allows Yahoo to reap the benefits of China's booming market while escaping responsibility for what happens there.

This raises the question: how to keep the pressure up so this escape valve does not lead to any new bad behavior.

If we are lucky perhaps China will change...

Using Tech to Increase Darfur Awareness

This is not about cyber law but I think it is still important and MMO games have attracted legal attention:

All Things Africa
February 08, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Console & PC Games, Educational Games, Political Games

A few bits of Africa-related videogame news to report.

First, you can now play and vote for the four finalists in the MTV crisis in Darfur student game design contest, which we mentioned last year. The contest asked student teams to design a videogame to build awareness about genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The network is offering a $50,000 prize to develop the game, although the students don't get to develop it, but rather a professional agency. The students will be invited to New York to advise and participate. Anyway, you can play the finalist games and vote at www.darfurisdying.com. The games are a bit rough, more like prototypes, which is fine for the purposes of the contest. The games come from two USC teams, one Carnegie Mellon team, and one Digipen team. The design challenge of a game about genocide in a historically complex region is not a simple one, and despite MTV's best intentions, I don't know that it's yet possible to make a game "to end the killing." Not in just a few weeks anyway.

Second, a studio called Rapid Reality (based here in Atlanta, no less) is apparently developing an MMO about Africa. According to this MTV article, the developers hope the game will increase awareness and interest in the much-ignored subcontinent. The project is a substantial one, promising ecological evolution and management, African languages (invented or real?), and even system requirements low enough to support most African cybercafes. The game is to be set in the 13th century, and the gameplay will revolve around African myth and

Unfortunately the game websites published in the article, Africa-MMO.com and africammo.com are reported "suspended" or "unauthorized," possibly from traffic clobbering due to Monday's /.ing. Clickable Culture points out that the game is in early stages, and the developer's intention to complete it in one year may be irrational. We'll have to wait for more details.

This is from a web site: http://www.watercoolergames.com/

Cyber Human Rights in China Make the News

Today the New York Times Technology section had TWO articles about cyber human rights.  One about Yahoo dealing with online rights, the other about Google.  Some serious decisions have to be made/are being made about how to deal with this problem.  You can read about Yahoo here and Google here.

What I Hope This Blog Will Be About

Can tech law help improve human rights in the world?  I believe the answer to this question is yes.  The purpose of this blog is to explore how to make this happen.  Hopefully you will share this view and in your own way work to make this happen.  Let the blogging begin!