Chinese-American billionaire blogger held on 'sex charges'

BEIJING - China has arrested Chinese-American billionaire blogger Charles Xue, who has attracted 12 million followers with his reform-minded comments, for suspected involvement in prostitution, police said Sunday, as Beijing steps up controls on web users.

Venture capitalist Xue, one of the country's most popular bloggers, was detained by Beijing police Friday evening.

His arrest comes as authorities have been stepping up controls on the country's freewheeling web users in recent weeks.

Billionaire Xue is an avid blogger who posted his last message on China's hugely popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog site at 5:41pm (0941 GMT) Friday, hours before he was detained.

He has previously backed a campaign to release transparent details on pollution in China, and also highlighted the problem of child trafficking.

His detention dominated weibo discussion, with his Chinese name Xue Manzi the most searched phrase on Sunday.

Beijing police said on their verified weibo account they had arrested a 60-year-old man surnamed Xue and a 22-year-old female.

"The two of them candidly confessed about the fact of the prostitution. They are currently under administrative detention," the statement said, adding that the arrest followed a tip-off from local residents.

It also emerged Sunday that a journalist had been detained for "fabricating rumors" after he made online accusations of wrongdoing against a former senior official in Chongqing, the megacity once headed by fallen politician Bo Xilai.

Police in Beijing said the journalist with the News Express tabloid, whom they identified only by his surname Liu, "has been put under criminal detention according to the law for fabricating and spreading rumours".

New Express journalist Liu Hu was handcuffed and taken away by police on Friday from his home in Chongqing, earlier Chinese media reports cited his wife as saying.

On his own weibo account, Liu last month accused Ma Zhengqi, a former Chongqing vice mayor, of dereliction of duty in the restructuring of a state-owned company in the city, leading to losses of dozens of millions of yuan (millions of dollars), the reports said.

"I call on the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and other authorities to immediately suspend Ma Qizheng's public office and start an investigation," he said, referring to the Communist Party's anti-corruption department.

Ma is now a deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

His action followed corruption allegations posted online by Wang Wenzhi, a journalist with the official Xinhua news agency, against the head of state-owned conglomerate China Resources.

Separately, the former deputy director of China's top economic planning agency Liu Tienan has been put under criminal investigation after a journalist at an influential business magazine accused him of improper business dealings late last year.

The arrests come after authorities told Internet celebrities with millions of online followers to "promote virtues" and "uphold law" online.

source: interaksyon.com

Ethics complaint filed vs Sotto over plagiarized speeches

MANILA, Philippines - Thirty seven individuals, mostly academics and bloggers, on Tuesday filed an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III over plagiarized speeches on the Reproductive Health bill.

The  22-page complaint was filed before the Senate Ethics and Privileges Committee chaired by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano. The complainants were led by Dr. Sylvia Estrada-Claudio of the University of the Philippines' Center for Women, Antonio Contreras of the De La Salle University College of Liberal Arts, and Ateneo de Manila Political Science Department director Lisandro Claudio.

The complaint said that Sotto violated the Intellectual Property Code of Philippines, or RA 8293, and the Senate's own ethics rules.

The group formally accused Sotto of copying from blogs and writings of American blogger Sarah Pope, Marlon C. Ramirez, and Peter Engelman. He was also accused of lifting from the late US Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1966 "Day of Affirmation" speech.

The complaint said that "to this date, respondent Sotto has not owned up to the nine (9) instances of copying without attributions included in the three parts of his en contra speech delivered on August 13 and 15, and September 5, 2012.

"Neither has he, since then, given proper attribution to any of these authors from whom these works were copied,” the complaint added.

The complaint also took Sotto to task for his insistence that plagiarism is not a crime in the Philippines. It quoted then Associate Justice, now Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, in her dissenting opinion in an earlier charge of plagiarism against Associate Justice Mariano C. Del Mundo.

"The infringement of copyright necessitates a framework for characterizing the expression of ideas as property. It thus turns on a question of whether there exists resultant harm in a form which is economically quantifiable. Plagiarism, on the other hand, covers a much wider range of acts. In defining copy right infringement, Laurie Stearns points out how ‘it is an offense independent from plagiarism, so that an action for violation of copyright – which may take on either a criminal and civil aspect, or even both – does not sufficiently remedy the broader injury inherent in plagiarism," Sereno said in her opinion as cited by the complainants. "Plagiarism, with its lack of attribution, severs the connection between the original author’s name and work. A plagiarist, by falsely claiming authorship of someone else’s material, directly assault the author’s interest in receiving credits."

Sotto has been under fire since August, when he first made the anti-RH speech in question, not only for having lifted passages from the American authors, but, more gravely, for allegedly having twisted the contexts of what they wrote, to suit his anti-RH stance.

He was then later revealed to have translated portions of a speech from the late Robert Kennedy without permission or attribution, a fact that Sotto has acknowledged but that he insists warrants no apology.

Earlier this week, the daughter of the former US senator, Kerry Kennedy, released a letter chastising Sotto for copying from her father's speech. Ms. Kennedy said she was particularly appalled that Sotto had used her father's words to support an anti-reproductive health stance, suggesting that this would have run counter to Sen. Kennedy's life and convictions.

Sotto insists that everything he has said on the Senate floor is privileged. Moreover, he has maintained that he sees nothing wrong with how he had borrowed thoughts, words, and findings from other people without attribution. He says he is ready to face his detractors and the ethics complaint lodged against him.

source: interaksyon.com

Malaysians mount Web ‘blackout’ to protest law

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian NGOs, well-known bloggers and opposition politicians on Tuesday staged a one-day “Internet blackout” to protest a legal amendment that they say threatens free expression on the Web.

Participants replaced their home pages with black screens featuring messages attacking the new section of the Evidence Act, which went into effect in April despite widespread opposition.

Critics say under the amendment any web host, provider of a wi-fi network, or ordinary user of a computer or mobile device can be found liable for any defamatory or harmful Web content sent via its systems.

Activists have called it an attempt by the ruling coalition government, which has been in power for more than five decades, to clamp down on the Internet.

Prime Minister Najib Razak must call elections by next year against a formidable opposition that gets most of its message out via the Internet due to a government stranglehold on traditional media.

The government promised in the 1990s not to censor the Internet in a bid to draw in foreign high-tech investment, although authorities are accused of blocking some sites.

The effort has been spearheaded by Malaysia’s Centre for Independent Journalism, which calls the amendment “a bad law passed in haste and does not take into account public interest and participation.”

The CIJ and other critics — which also have included some figures in the ruling coalition — have called for it to be scrapped or revised.

The 24-hour blackout was to last until midnight.

Users attempting to access Paultan.org, a highly popular automotive-themed blog, were greeted with a black pop-up screen that said: “This is what the web could look like” under the legal change.

Malaysia has long been known for its authoritarian rule but Najib, who came to power in 2009, has launched a campaign to repeal some repressive laws to gain voter support.

However, the opposition and rights groups have dismissed the drive as a sham, saying that various laws introduced to replace the previous legislation have been little better than the old statutes.

source: interaksyon.com