ECUADOR AFTER POLICE STRIKE

ECUADOR AFTER POLICE STRIKE

Bloggers in Ecuador are looking back at last Thursdays police strikes in protest against President Rafael Correa who described the uprising as an “attempted coup”. This revolt led to violence in which ten or so people lost their lives.

In a country where there is strong feeling of insecurity, many web users claim to no longer trust the security forces, who were protesting against the reduction in their benefits.

As this amateur video filmed on Thursday demonstrates, the absence of police meant that looting broke out and banks, shopping centers and petrol stations in several cities across the country were robbed.

And as thousands of Ecuadorians took to the streets in support of their president, web users signed on to Twitter to denounce the police revolt as an attempt to destabilize the country.

Carlos Vera, a bitter enemy of president Correa expresses a similar sentiment. In this video he says a coup d’état is not going to solve the country’s problems because it would have put the police in power, an institution he believes to be riddled with corruption.

But are we really talking about a putsch? This is what this blogger is contemplating. He thinks that these events could have been orchestrated by the government in an attempt to strengthen its popularity before dissolving the national Assembly as president Correa had planned to do before these troubles.

FRENCH WEB AGAINST HADOPI ANTI-PIRACY LAW

The Hadopi anti-piracy law came into force last week in France. A web site was launched on Friday aimed at providing information for web users, and in in particular those who had received a warning message from the High Authority for Copyright protection.

The High Authority has posted online an example of these messages that are being sent to web users whose IP addresses are marked on pirating networks. But web users are protesting and are planning their counter attack.

A web site called SOS-Hadopi has been set up for legal assistance. It aims to help web users defend themselves in this calibrated fight against piracy. The site offers expert advice from a lawyer for an average of 18 euros per year.

The information site Numerama has launched Hadopi-Data.fr. A site that gathers accounts from French web users who have received the warning email. The aim is to carry out a statistical study to highlight any potential discrepancies between web users notably by geographical zone.

And mocking remarks are flying around on the web. The French web users rights organization ‘La Quadrature du net’ has continuously campaigned against the Hadopi law, and has launched a competition for ” the first web user to receive an email from HADOPI” the slogan “Hadopi, not even scared’.

And numerous YouTube videos making fun of this web police are now available to view online videos like this one where we see a young web user being chased by the big bad Hadopi.

SPOTIFY POETRY

Here’s a rather original web site that catalogues poems written by web users who are only allowed to use the song titles available on free music sharing site Spotify for their creations. This interesting initiative means that music fans can share their poetical talents with the entire blogosphere.

MY MOM LOVES CHANEL

The blog ‘My Mom Loves Chanel’ collects the not so good school and family photos. The site has hundreds of funny pictures of children dressed up by their parents. It’s an offbeat way for the creator of this blog to warn other web users about the dodgy fashion sense of certain parents when dressing their kids.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Bottle is the story of a long distance conversation between a sandman and snowman that get to know each other and become closer as time goes by through messages they send to each other in a bottle. This poetic short film made in stop motion is the work of American artist Kirsten Lepore.