The Internet which seems to be absolutely free and without borders might appear under restraint at any moment, if such a desire is expressed by the structures which have an impact on organizations managing this sector.

“Actually, freedom of communication means is not absolute: authorities instruct, ‘turn it off’, and the providers do it”, says Grigor Saghyan, the vice-chairman of the “Internet Society” NGO and the technical director of the ‘Arminco’ company.

According to him, providers, obtaining relevant license, accept the rules of the game. In the license, he says, “it is clearly reported in what cases one should do what s/he is told by the state, otherwise s/he can lose the right of functioning. Moreover, there are no clear statements, “Since nobody knows how much and further the Internet will develop”, says Grigor Saghyan.

For the first time, in Armenia, mass blocking of freedom of disseminating and getting information through the Internet took place after the March events followed by the RA presidential elections in 2008, when the then incumbent president Robert Kocharyan declared a 20-day state of emergency in the country.

Read More »Free “Restricted” Zone: Repetition of March Restrictions on the Internet Not Excluded in Armenia

January 29 will not be marked in black on Armenian cyber calendar, but what happened this year on that day will be remembered for a long time by the experts as a day of mass attack of hackers on Armenian sites.

That day hackers damaged about 300 websites registered on the Armenian domain which were served by the Armenian ‘Smart Systems’ company. According to the company survey, first their server had been damaged and then the sites using the company hosting broken.

Then different state bodies hurried to report that there was no any governmental site among those on the list and added that the state web-sites are out of danger for they are fully protected. And the damaged sites belonged mainly to individuals or private companies.

The experts, directly related to the issue, reported that the attackers as well as the sinners were outsiders.

The head manager of the ‘Smart Systems’ company Gor Isaverdyan says that the American company dealing with the server security had told them that they had accidentally deleted the security codes of the server of ‘Smart Systems’. Isaverdyan told JNews that the cyber attack resulted in breaking the contract with the American company and trusting the server security to another, Canadian this time, company.

Read More »Cyber Attack: Information Security of Armenia On the Internet

The Armenian content on the Internet was significantly increased during the last year, and quite a lot of work done in that regard.

The chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises Karen Vardanyan says that there was almost nothing in the Armenian language in Internet one year ago. And today, there are many different Armenian sites and blogs on deferent themes. 

“In Armenia, the number of computer owners and Internet users increases daily. So, as a result, the market and the demand of Armenian content increase too. Actually, the increase of the Armenian content is conditioned by the increase of Internet users and Armenian auditorium,” says Vardanyan.

Experts emphasize that this increase is mostly implemented only by the initiative of individuals and enthusiasts. And such an approach cannot make basic changes in the field.

For instance, in the Armenian version of the Wikipedia free encyclopedia the number of Armenian articles increases and there are more than 13,000 articles in there, but the number of volunteers submitting them decreases.

According to one of the administrators of the Armenian Wikipedia Aleksey Chalabyan, this decrease of the volunteers cannot help affecting the increase of articles.

Read More »Followers of Mashtots on the Internet: Armenian e-Content Increasing Thanks To Enthusiasts

Freedom of information dissemination on the internet has become a topic of discussion throughout the world, including Armenia, especially after social networks started to be used for raising protest waves.

Head of political developments research center, political scientist Vahan Dilanyan considers the Internet and the social networks to be “necessary, but not sufficient” tools to result in the Egyptian «domino effect» in Armenia.

The speciaist has formed such an opinion after drawing parallels between the Facebook users’ number in Armenia and in Egypt. It turned out that Armenian figures (4,5 percent) do  not so much differ from the Egyptian indices (6,8 percent). In both countries the majority of Facebook users are young people – between 18 and 33-year-old.

“These facts can become a challenge towards Armenian authorities for the history and the present situation show that exactly the youth becomes the gear of changes,” says the political scientist.

“It’s not the same situation in Armenia. We have no problem of blocking or unblocking the internet. If something is blocked, the negative energy gathers and explodes. I’m not a supporter of blocking, I support the proper use of Internet,” says Eduard Sharmazanov, a deputy for the ruling Republican party.

Read More »From Virtual to Real: Social Networks Impact on Inter-political Climate of Armenia

Still in 2009 penetration of the Internet in Armenia was estimated less than 15 percent, but today, according to various estimates, this figure approaches 80 percent.

According to recent reports of the Commission on Regulation of Public Services of Armenia in October 2010, the Internet is accessed by nearly half of the citizens of Armenia (47, 1 percent). At the same time, some Armenian experts consider these data to be overestimated.

Obviously, this figure has been reached due to the increase of Internet users via mobile phones. According to the commission, only 160,000 people in Armenia use broadband access – high speed Internet connection. Igor Mkrtumyan, president of the ‘Internet Community’ NGO, considers that an independent survey should be conducted to reveal the number of Internet users in Armenia.

In turn, chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises Karen Vardanyan noted that there is no a common approved calculation method of internet users. “If considering users through smart and mobile phones, then the statistics of 1, 5 million users – is true. However, we must take into consideration the actual users of the Internet through DSL, optical communication channels,” says Karen Vardanyan. 

Read More »e-Users’ Map: Cable Internet Used By More Than One Third of Armenia’s Population

In a statement Tuesday, February 22 the Voice of America says the attack redirected traffic from numerous websites – including the international broadcaster’s main site: voanews.com. Instead of seeing VOA’s website, visitors saw a page with an anti-U.S. message addressing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and an Iranian flag along with an AK-47 assault weapon.

Large bolder letters read: “We have proven that we can.”

Cyber security expert Jeffrey Carr says the Iranian Cyber Army should be taken seriously. “There are a few hacker crews operating out of Iran that do have allegiances or ties with the Iranian government. The Iranian Cyber Army is one of them. They have a good skills set. These are not script kiddies [inexperienced hackers],” he said.

Read More »Iranian Hackers Attack VOA Internet Sites

In the course of the February 16 round table Azerbaijani journalists and human rights defenders protested the closing of BBC Azerbaijani service.

The event participants signed a statement in a protest against the radio’s closing and submitted it to the UK embassy in Azerbaijan, Azeri Press Agency (APA) reports.

Yadigar Mammadli, Chairman of Democratic Journalists League (DJL) said the decision of stopping the radio’s broadcasting is “a blow not only on journalism, but the whole society”.

In January 2011 BBC World Service management made a decision on closing five services worldwide, including BBC Azerbaijani, and cutting 560 jobs. Currently Azerbaijani service broadcasts its programs via internet.

The human rights defenders say the Azerbaijani citizens living in the regions have poor internet access and radio broadcasting is of high importance to them. 

Source: http://www.media.ge/en/node/40303

Read More »Baku Demands Resumption of BBC Broadcasts

Two German journalists who were detained in Iran in October for interviewing the son of a woman sentenced to death by stoning have returned home after being released from an Iranian prison, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said Sunday. 

According to the spokesman, the two journalists arrived in Germany from Iran on Sunday morning along with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who had traveled to Tehran on Saturday to bring them home.

Though Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch, both from Germany’s Bild newspaper, were initially sentenced to 20 months in prison on charges of committing acts against Iran’s national security, an Iranian court later commuted their jail term to a fine of $50,000 each. They were released after the fines were paid.

The two German journalists were arrested in mid-October for interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery and abetting the murder of her husband.

Source: http://www.rttnews.com

Read More »German Journalists Released By Iran Return Home

A Turkish court on Friday jailed three journalists on charges of links to what the Islamic-rooted government calls a network plotting its overthrow, in a case that critics say is part of an assault on press freedom in the country.

The homes of Soner Yalcin, the owner of dissident website Oda TV, and two colleagues were raided by police earlier this week after posting a video criticizing a police investigation into the alleged coup plot.

The EU and the Committee of Protect Journalists have accused Turkey of suppressing critical news and commentary on the alleged anti-government conspiracy. About 400 people, including journalists, politicians, academics and retired military officers are on trial accused of being part of the so-called Ergenekon network in a conspiracy to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Source: The Washington Post

Read More »Turkey jails 3 journalists on coup allegation

On February 21, founder of ‘A1+’ TV Company ‘Meltex’ LLC will apply to the administrative court to require invalidation of the decision reached on December 16, 2010 by the National Television and Radio Commission (NTRC), according to which ‘A1+’ was deprived of the opportunity to return TV air for the 13th time.

“We will ask the court to recognize the violated right of ‘Meltex’ LLC and to rescind NTRC’s Decision 96-A that was reached by the interference of the commission members under biased and non-objective conditions,” says ‘Meltex’ LLC lawyer Tigran Ter-Yesayan.

According to NTRC’s Decision 96-A, during the competition of digital TV broadcasting the broadcasting license was given to ‘Armnews’ CJSC, which was the only competitor of ‘Meltex’ LLC applied for the same channel.

Tender of ‘A1+’ has been assessed by only 2 points, because 7 of the 8 members of the Commission have simply graded zero points.

After the publication of the results, during a press conference, the NTRC President Grigor Amalyan has announced that ‘Meltex’ LLC package was assessed low, “because there were false documents found there.” It referred to the certificate on the investment of 280,000 Euros, where the Commission had revealed a discrepancy.

Read More »Again To The Court: ‘A1+’ Not Tolerating the Bias