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I refer to the bill amending the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 tabled by the government in the Dewan Rakyat today. The amendments are minimal, superficial and will maintain the government's oppressive control of the mass media.

Under the new section 3(3), the power of the minister to grant and revoke or suspend newspaper licences is left untouched. Proper and functioning democracies do not impose licence requirements for the mass media. If the Prime Minister and the BN government are genuine about lifting restrictions on the press, why impose the licence requirement?

The only possible object of a media licence requirement is to enable the government to control the media. The licence requirement in section 3(3) is in clear breach of the lettter and spirit of Article 10(1)(a) of the Federal Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

Minister can revoke anytime

To make things worse, section 3(3) allows the minister to revoke or suspend a newspaper licence at any time. This is the equivalent of a permanent threat hanging over the heads of newspaper owners and editors to toe the government line. There is thus no significant difference between the provisions of the old PPPA 1984 and the amended version.

Allowing judicial review is of little comfort to newspaper owners as it imposes upon them the onerous burden of taking the matter to court. This impedes the establishment and functioning of free media organizations. Further, the judiciary has consistently failed in defending or affirming fundamental rights such as press freedom.

Section 8A

We are also shocked and disappointed that the Prime Minister and the government have chosen not to remove the draconian section 8A of the PPPA which punishes the publication of false news. Section 8A is like a sword hanging over the head of printers, publishers, editors and writers, and has a chilling effect on press freedom.

The PPPA Amendment Bill 2012 is intended to maintain the government's harsh grip on newspapers, whilst pretending that Prime Minister Najib Razak is making good his promises of reform. We call upon the PM and his government to withdraw this amending bill, and instead repeal the PPPA 1984 in its entirety.

N SURENDRAN IS THE VICE PRESIDENT OF PARTI KEADILAN RAKYAT

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PPPA amendments cosmetic: BN retains its oppressive control of the media - Surendran

New Delhi, April 16:

Seeking the Centre's immediate attention for controlling social networking sites, the Rajasthan Chief Minister, Mr Ashok Gehlot, said on Monday that these companies should be asked to set up their servers in India.

Mr Gehlot drew the attention of those present at the Chief Ministers' Conference here, which included the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, that communal elements had posted some comments on Facebook which resulted in communal tension in a region of his State.

Effective action was taken immediately against the miscreants, he said, and added that while his government complied with the idea of freedom of expression, it should not be misused by communal elements and needs to be dealt with all severity.

I would appreciate if these sites could develop a system which by itself prevents posting of material with communal and anti-national overtones, he said.

As the servers of these social networking sites are located outside the country, it becomes an arduous task to obtain any information related to such incidents.

I would suggest that the Government of India develop a system which can help in obtaining the information from these servers on real-time basis, or as an alternative making it mandatory for these companies to set up their servers in India, Mr Gehlot said.

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Social networking sites should set up servers in India: Gehlot

Former Facebook senior executive Dave Morin is co-founder of Path. (Joi Ito / April 16, 2012)

April 16, 2012, 4:49 p.m.

Social networking mobile app maker Path said Monday that it raised about $30 million from venture capital firms such as Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures and individual investors such as Virgin Groups Richard Branson and DST Globals Yuri Milner.

The investment values the San Francisco company at $250 million.

Path, which had previously raised $11.2 million, is the brainchild of former senior Facebook executive Dave Morin and Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning. Its riding the new wave of tech companies that are building for mobile, not the Web. Path has been compared to Instagram, which Facebook said last week it would buy for $1 billion. Instagram had more than 30 million users but no revenue.

Path, which has nearly 3 million users, is looking to connect people in more intimate ways than Facebook. It limits its users to 150 connections. The average user connects with 40.

The company, which is not profitable, will use the extra dough to double its staff, expand internationally and do more marketing. It plans to sell a premium version of its app.

Path has gotten into a few scrapes. In February it was discovered that Path stored users address books without their permission. The company apologized and changed its software.

Morin rejected a $125-million buyout offer from Google shortly after he launched Path.

"Our 'Path' has only just begun," Morin said.

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Mobile social networking app Path raises $30 million

Recruiters are increasingly turning to social networking sites to find the right job applicants and LinkedIn is leading the way over Twitter and Facebook.

LinkedIn, which is known as the 'professional network', leads the way, but Twitter and Facebook are underused and are expected to make up ground over 2012, says United States-based recruitment-platform provider Bullhorn Reach.

Bullhorn said LinkedIn was adopted much earlier for recruiting, which is why recruiters have smaller networks on Facebook and Twitter.

Bullhorn Reach provides specialist recruiting software that enables agency and corporate recruiters to better use social networking sites to find candidates for jobs.

Bullhorn said that recruiters were likely to increase their activity on social networking sites in 2012 as the world becomes even more connected through the big three social networks.

'Based on current data trends, recruiters could quadruple the size of their Twitter networks by the end of 2012 and potentially add approximately 1,000 connections to their LinkedIn networks,' Bullhorn said in its 2012 Social Recruiting Activity Report, which was published on Wednesday.

'Currently, Facebook has the least amount of network activity among agency and corporate recruiters.

'One would anticipate them to alter their strategies, going forward, to leverage the power of the largest social network - for example, employee referral programs.'

Bullhorn said it also expected that other social networks such as Google Plus would boost their efforts to grab a share of the recruiting space or develop strategies that attract certain segments of the professional population.

The Bullhorn report found that recruiters were connected to all three big social networks but were using LinkedIn and Twitter more than Facebook.

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Recruiters boosting social network use

MAHWAH, New Jersey, April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR - News), a leading provider of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers, today announced recent agreements with two U.S.-based social networking companies to deploy Radware's award winning Attack Mitigation System (AMS) security solution to address expanding network security needs including improved protection against a range of sophisticated, new-generation cyber threats. The combined agreements represent a multi-million dollar investment in network security.

Radware's AMS is helping these firms put network infrastructure protections in place as they pursue programs to upgrade security policies and to insure network uptime for their users. Social networking companies have been targets of frequent cyber attacks and believe their tightened IT security policies and rapid growth globally will inspire 'hacktivists' to launch more attempts to bring down their networks.

Before purchasing Radware's solution, the companies compared AMS with a variety of security solutions from other vendors. They chose AMS based on performance, attack detection within SSL sessions, and its mitigation capabilities that far exceeded other product offerings. In addition one of the key factors was the proven expertise of Radware's Emergency Response Team (EMS) to help manage a cyber attack in real time with global 24 x 7 availability.

"Data center and network security managers must maneuver through an increasingly difficult and always changing threat landscape; and only Radware's Attack Mitigation System has the proven ability to defend against the new generation of sophisticated, multi-level cyber attacks,"said Carl Herberger, vice president, Security, Radware. "What's more, the combination of Radware's AMS technology and the expertise of Radware's ERT consultants provide probably the most effective cyber security services available today. This level of support while under attack is unique in the industry."

According to a new report by Radware's ERT, cyber attacks have evolved in sophistication with attackers using as many as five different attack vectors in a single "attack campaign." Moreover, denial of service (DoS) and distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks have become more complex to defend against as hackers can probe enterprises for weaknesses and launch multiple types of attacks, according to Radware's "2011 Global Application and Network Security Report."

For example, hackers can bombard networks with data packets to consume a target server's bandwidth, overwhelm networks with remote connections and requests for application transactions, or tie up resources slowly by having a number of attackers target specific system vulnerabilities or design flaws. Radware's AMS solution can detect and mitigate these types of DDoS attacks in seconds with the highest mitigation performance.

About Radware's Attack Mitigation System (AMS)

Radware's AMS is a real-time network and application attack mitigation solution that protects the application infrastructure against network and application downtime, application vulnerability exploitation, malware spread, information theft, Web service attacks and Web defacement. It is built on Radware's award-winning DefensePro network security appliance, AppWall Web application firewall and APSolute Vision application and network security management dashboard.

Radware supplements these capabilities by adding the human factor - the professional security consultants of its ERT who are available around the clock. As literal "first responders" to cyber attacks, Radware's ERT members gained their extensive experience by successfully dealing with some of the industry's most notable hacking episodes, providing the knowledge and expertise to mitigate the kind of attack a business's security team may never have handled.

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Multiple Social Networking Companies Select Radware to Defend Against Cyber Attacks