Protesters against a planned anti-homosexuality bill in front of the Ugandan Mission to the U.N. in New York on November 19

As a gay man in Uganda, Frank Mugisha is used to the taunts, the slurs and the daily harassment of neighbors and friends.

But if a new bill proposed in the east African country becomes law, Mugisha could be put away for life, or worse, put to death for having sex with another man.

“Right now, you can’t go to places that are crowded, because the mob can attack us or even burn us. We can’t walk alone. We are ostracized by relatives. But if this bill passes, it will become impossible for me to live here at all. And that part hurts the most,” Mugisha said.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill features several provisions that human rights groups say would spur a witch hunt of homosexuals in the country:

• Gays and lesbians convicted of having gay sex would be sentenced, at minimum, to life in prison

• People who test positive for HIV may be executed

• Homosexuals who have sex with a minor, or engage in homosexual sex more than once, may also receive the death penalty

• The bill forbids the “promotion of homosexuality,” which in effect bans organizations working in HIV and AIDS prevention

• Anyone who knows of homosexual activity taking place but does not report it would risk up to three years in prison

“Who will go to HIV testing if he knows that he will suffer the death sentence?” Elizabeth Mataka, the U.N. Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa, told reporters last week. “The law will drive them away from seeking counseling and testing services.”

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda under colonial-era laws. But the bill, introduced in October, is intended to put more teeth into prosecuting violators.

It applies even to Ugandans participating in same-sex acts in countries where such behavior is legal.

“They are supposed to be brought back to Uganda and convicted here. The government is putting homosexuality on the level of treason,” Mugisha said.

Lawmakers have indicated that they will pass the bill before year’s end.

It has the blessing of many religious leaders — Muslim and Christian — in a country where a July poll found 95 percent opposed to legalizing homosexuality.

The Rev. Esau Omara, a senior church leader, said over the weekend that any lawmaker opposing the bill will pay for it during the next election, according to local newspaper reports.

And a leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje, has called for gays to be rounded up and banished to an island until they die.

Several media outlets also have inflamed sentiments in recent months by publicly pointing out gays and lesbians.

In April, the Observer newspaper published tips to help readers spot homosexuals. And over the summer, the Red Pepper tabloid outed 45 gays and lesbians.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has not publicly stated his position on the bill, but last month blamed foreign influence in promoting and funding homosexuality.

“It is true that, if the president has said that, he must have information that European nations are promoting (homosexuality) and recruiting homosexuals,” government spokesman Fred Opolot said. “You must note that the president or the legislators are responding to the concern of the citizenry of the country.”

At the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago late last month, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he pulled aside Museveni to deplore the bill.

“We find them inconsistent with, frankly, I think any reasonable understanding of human rights, and I was very clear on that with the president of Uganda,” Harper told reporters.

In the United States, a coalition of Christian leaders released a statement Monday denouncing the bill.

“Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, in our churches, communities and families, we seek to embrace our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as God’s children, worthy of respect and love,” the statement read.

Human rights groups have called on Western nations to withhold aid from Uganda if the measure passes. About 40 percent of the country’s budget comes from international aid.

“This draft bill is clearly an attempt to divide and weaken civil society by striking at one of its most marginalized groups,” said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “The government may be starting here, but who will be next?”

Opolot, the government spokesman, said consideration of the bill in parliament is merely “democracy at work.”

“We as a country are engaging and debating a pertinent issue,” he said. “So if a foreign country chooses to cut aid simply because Uganda is debating its destiny, then it is quite outrageous and quite wrong.”

Mugisha, who now heads the group Sexual Minority of Uganda, said he is working with lawyers and other activists to change minds and defeat the measure.

“I have put a lot of effort in this struggle. I just want to live freely every day,” he said. “I want to be happy knowing that if I’m going to meet someone, I’m not going to be taken to jail forever.”

Link to article: Why is Uganda attacking homosexuality?

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and will not make anyone safer.

The filter will do almost nothing to prevent the people who are willfully making, trading, and accessing child sexual abuse material. This type of material is not distributed in the open and we need to fund police to continue to infiltrate and prosecute the groups of people responsible for creating and distributing such material.

The filter will not prevent children from accessing inappropriate material. The proposed category of censored sites will not be wide enough to provide assurances to parents. Parents will be much better served by installing one of the many voluntary filters that are currently available and ensuring that their children are adequately supervised and aware of risks they may face online.

The list of material to be banned includes much more than child sexual abuse material. The category of material that has been ‘refused classification’ includes websites about euthanasia, controversial movies such as ‘Ken Park’ and ‘Baise-moi’, and many games that are designed for people over 16 years of age.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

Find out more here: http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html

Link to article: No Clean Feed

The Rapidshare Christmas logo. How utterly Christmassy of them.

[via arstechnica.com]

The popular Germany-based file hosting service RapidShare has allegedly begun handing over user information to record labels looking to pursue illegal file-sharers. The labels appear to be making use of paragraph 101 of German copyright law, which allows content owners to seek a court order to force ISPs to identify users behind specific IP addresses. Though RapidShare does not make IP information public, the company appears to have given the information to at least one label, which took it to an ISP to have the user identified.

The issue came to light after a user claimed that his house was raided by law enforcement thanks to RapidShare, as reported by German-language news outlet Gulli (hat tip). This user had uploaded a copy of Metallica’s new album “Death Magnetic” to his RapidShare account a day before its worldwide release, causing Metallica’s label to work itself into a tizzy and request the user’s personal details (if there’s anything record labels hate, it’s leaks of prerelease albums). It then supposedly asked RapidShare for the user’s IP address, and then asked Deutsche Telekom to identify the user behind the IP before sending law enforcement his way.

Ars asked RapidShare for comment and confirmation of the situation, but did not receive a response as of publication time. Gulli, on the other hand, offers a scanned copy of the court decision and also claims it was privy to a confirmation e-mail from RapidShare that it had handed over the information.

RapidShare has had a more than a few tussles in the German courts as of late. In January of 2008, RapidShare found itself pitted against GEMA (the German version of the RIAA) arguing that it was not responsible for the content that users uploaded to the site. The Düsseldorf Regional Court didn’t buy it, ruling against RapidShare, saying that the company is responsible for those files and would have to check every file for copyrighted material. In October, the court spelled out its expectations a little more clearly, saying that RapidShare must remove infringing content proactively, despite RapidShare’s insistence that it had already hired on six staffers whose sole job was to go through uploaded material and respond to complaints about infringement.

Critics fear that that the latest series of events is evidence that the floodgates have been opened for a more “creative” interpretation of paragraph 101. After all, if they are able to obtain IP information, record labels may begin using it to go after users on BitTorrent and other P2P networks. This is the same fear that fueled borderline levels of panic when rumors circulated about Last.fm handing over user data to the RIAA earlier this year, though both Last.fm and the RIAA vehemently denied the accusations. Last.fm later said that it takes the privacy of its users very seriously and that it would never hand over personally identifiable data like e-mails or IP addresses.

There are, however, many differences between Last.fm and RapidShare. For one, if Last.fm were to find itself in the position RapidShare is in with GEMA, it would be able to argue that the Safe Harbor provision in the DMCA protects it from liability as long as it removes infringing content after being presented with a takedown notice. In Germany (and many other countries), there is no equivalent, meaning that RapidShare has little choice but to comply with the rulings. RapidShare’s incredible popularity—Germany-based deep packet inspection (DPI) provider Ipoque recently put out a report saying that RapidShare is responsible for half of all direct download traffic—has only made the issue more sensitive for the record labels and service providers alike.

Whatever the outcome, both situations highlight the precarious level of trust that users have with service providers. If more of them cooperate with the requests of the record industry—court ordered or not—then users will start fleeing user-supported services like rats on a sinking ship.

Link to article: RapidShare hands over user info in Germany