Understanding freedom of expression online and offline

Ritu Srivastava, from Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) India, participated in the workshop Freedom of Expression Online: Gaps in Policy and Practice at the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil. She writes:

We are no longer living in an offline society. We are living more and more in an online world, connecting with people from different countries, sharing our thoughts and experiences, protesting online and seeking the same rights that we seek in our daily lives. The question is, do we follow the same rules in the online world as we follow offline?

There is a quest to understand how we are practising freedom of expression in online spaces and whether developing countries have the same set of rules defined by former Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue in his groundbreaking report on freedom of expression online. In pursuit of understanding this aspect, Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Bytes for All, Pakistan, and Derechos Digitales organised a workshop at the 2005 IGF in Brazil, Freedom of Expression Online: Gaps in Policy and Practice .

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