Rupert Winchester, a British national, has been working as a journalist in Cambodia since 2011. Since he's gotten to the country, he's often cross-posted more long-form versions of his journalistic articles on his personal blog. One of his blog posts has now made him the target of a thorny defamation ruling – one that is raising questions about the landscape for online free expression in the country. 

Google Play has removed a number of games concerning the conflict in Gaza. Many of these games, critics claim, are in extremely bad taste, making light of a war that's claimed a distressing number of lives. Google has opaquely refused to disclose the particular reasons why these games were removed. Should corporate powers like Google be the arbiters of what's morally acceptable in the public domain? 

In this week's #IMWeekly: Malaysia mulls a Facebook ban, Ukraine’s legislature advances a bill that would curb media and Internet freedom, and Thailand’s junta bans a video game that strikes a little too close to home.

Since political unrest erupted in Eastern Ukraine, Crimea has found itself in the middle of an "information war" between Ukraine and Russia. It's a battle that has seen both countries tighten laws surrounding Internet access, use, and expression under the guise of quelling extremist sentiment. In late July, tension heightened when plans for an undersea fiber optic cable stretching from Russia to the newly-annexed Crimea were realized.

The majority of non-US users accessing websites and accounts operated by American tech companies may lack the rights – notably of privacy and freedom of expression – afforded to American users. Indeed, a 2013 US District Court ruling suggests that most foreign nationals do not even have legal standing to challenge the seizure of their data in the United States, highlighting the dangers of an area where experts say that the law has been slow to catch up to tech.

Internet.org, a partnership between Facebook and six mobile phone companies around the world, recently launched its first initiatives in Zambia. The project aims to give Internet access to those living in remote, underserved areas of the globe. That said, its launch has attracted heavy criticism – is this seemingly selfless move towards facilitating wider Internet access as idyllic as it sounds?

In this week’s #IMWeekly: a dissident Cuban blogger “disappears” from his jail cell under fishy circumstances, a former Malaysian Prime Minister backtracks on his calls for no Internet censorship, and the owner of an independent news site in Somaliland is arrested.

Baidu, China's largest search engine, has just expanded in Brazil. Some netizens have noticed, however, that Baidu's censorship tactics in mainland China have crossed the ocean to its Brazilian counterpart. 

Israel’s internal security service has suggested that recent DDoS attacks, many of which originated in Arab states, were aimed at overloading the Israeli Internet as a whole.

Guest post by Berkman research affiliate Helmi Noman

While trying to access MIT Center for Civic Media director Ethan Zuckerman’s blog today via the United Arab Emirates national ISP du, I encountered du’s standard blockpage.