Mini project on Virtual Revolution background

For my mini project I have chosen the second episode of virtual revolution, 'Enemy of the state?'. The episode and my project focus on the powers various governments and organisations have over the internet and how they possibly use that power to hide specific content or what users can do over their internet connection whilst being watched by government officials.

Outside the episode I have already found more evidence of governments attempting to throttle users' internet experience, especially on the P2P front. For example, I have found many news posts such as this one showing that France attempted to implement a three strike policy towards P2P users and I intend to investigate this and see how it affected internet users in France.

Very recently in the UK the Digital Economy Bill was passed through the House Of Lords to impose tougher sanctions on file sharers in the UK and with the bill expected to be passed before the general election, will this affect the way people use the internet in the UK? Will they be more careful in what they download or will they attempt to take a stance and fight for their right for the free and open internet that was masterminded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.

The episode I have chosen primarily focuses on the goings on in Iran during the Presidential elections in 2009 and focuses on the amounts of people that were posting tweets on Twitter and videos on YouTube even through the Iranian Governments tight proxies. I will talk about this but would also like to consider both sides of the story, as I noticed on the news only one side of the story was largely reported at the time.

I will be creating a mini wiki over the next few weeks and posting my findings on this blog and the mini wiki. I shall post a link to the mini wiki very soon.