my name is mwd

Last night Laura and I headed over to Wolfson (with whom I’m tenuously associated, a fact I really should make more of beyond just lunching there occasionally) for their Press Fellows’ Seminar, organised by John. The speakers were Bill Thompson, UK IT and online journalist, and Michael Anti, a Chinese journalist whose blog was shut down by Microsoft at the Chinese Government’s request (as I understand it), and the topic for debate was about where the boundaries are and should be with respect to online publishing. I say speakers, but John organised it so both speakers gave an introductory ten minutes each, then it was over an hour of discussion between the panel and the audience.

It was all quite interesting, and certainly I came away from it knowing a lot more about Chinese society than I knew before. In particular that there are some good sides to the infux of IT in to China than all the negatives we get presented regularly here, but that’s not to put aside the negatives, which are definitely there. It seemed the biggest problem was the lack of clear boundaries in China as to where you were safe to say something or not. All in all, very interesting. Bill’s main point was that we need to discuss the current rules in the Western world about what we can and can’t publish, as digital media changes the game so much existing rules struggle to apply. Whilst I admire his optimism that such a review could be achieved, I’m a bit doubtful as to whether either the UK or US governments would bother to do a clean slate re-evaluation in the current climate. But then perhaps the DMCA or such will lead to such absurd rulings about whether you can publish random numbers or not that people will take notice. But I suspect for the most part it’s not reached the point where the general public care enough.

Anyway, a good evening, and well done to John for organising and running the event (and slipping off quietly before anyone could express such gratitude ;)