Citizen Lab staff and partners will host a workshop at the 2016 Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) in Taipei, Taiwan from July 27-29. The APrIGF is a multi-stakeholder conference that serves as a platform for discussion and collaboration on pressing cyberspace issues in the Asia Pacific. The 2016 conference will be held at the NTUH Convention Centre.
The workshop, “Threats to Free Expression and Challenges for Reform in Asia,” will be hosted by Citizen Lab Researcher and Communications Officer Irene Poetranto in tandem with OpenNet Korea. The rapid growth of digital technology and media in Asia has facilitated citizens’ engagement and civil society groups’ mobilization. A number of governments in the region, however, have responded to this development by implementing legislation and carrying out actions that threaten online freedom of speech. The Philippines and Thailand, for instance, enacted the Cyber Crime Prevention Act of 2012 and Computer Crimes Act of 2007 respectively, which have been criticized for their draconian nature. Meanwhile, in South Korea, criminal insult/defamation prosecutions reached 13,000 cases each year including “defamation by truth” cases, roughly ⅓ of which concern online postings, and the Korean Communication Standards Commission (KCSC) regularly issues take down notices of various online content, sometimes to entire services such as Twitter. This workshop will feature panelists from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea.
Further details on conference programming and workshop timing will be updated on this draft. Read more about APrIGF and schedule information.