Week in Review: December 17, 2015

China: 2nd World Internet Conference Evokes Criticism from Free Speech Advocates 

The 2nd World Internet Conference, organized by the Chinese government, began on December 16, 2015; CEOs of Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu; executives of Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Huawei; and a number of other stakeholders in Internet governance are in attendance. Chinese President Xi Jinping was one of the first to speak at the conference. He told conference attendees that that they should "respect the right of individual countries to choose their own path to cyber development, model of cyber regulation and participate on the same footing." A number of netizens have criticized the conference's theme, “An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All: Building a Community of Common Future in Cyberspace.” Meanwhile, Chinese media outlets have reported that eight heads of state and political officials are expected to attend, and they include the prime ministers of Russia, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan. However, no complete guest list has been released as of yet. Chinese officials have barred a team of New York Times journalists from reporting at the conference.

England: Transport for London Parody Website Taken Down, New One Created

On December 10, 2015, Tim Waters, the creator of a parody website that generated London Tube signs, received a letter from a lawyer representing the Transport for London (TfL), the City of London’s public transport authority; the letter threatened legal action if Waters refused to take the parody generator down. Over the years, the website had gained a number of fans, as it allowed them to make their own customized London Tube signs. One user generated a London Tube sign that contained the following message: "Donald Trump is not welcome on our trains." Waters subsequently took his website down and posted an explanatory note on his personal blog. His parody received extensive international coverage from both American and British news outlets. It is still possible to see what the site looked like by using the Internet Archive, and on December 16, 2015, someone unaffiliated with Waters launched a new parody website.

Germany: Facebook, Google, and Twitter Agree to Revise Approach to Hate Speech 

After negotiating an agreement with the German government, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have agreed to remove hate speech from their platforms in the country 24 hours after it is first reported. "When the limits of free speech are trespassed, when it is about criminal expressions, sedition, incitement to carry out criminal offences that threaten people, such content has to be deleted from the net. And we agree that as a