On the theme of the revolutionary ways that the interactive web is changing the world, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador has opened his own YouTube Channel. Correa is part of the group of progressive Latin America leaders who are changing the political landscape of the region. Thus, he’s already been one of the most vocal supporters of migrating to open source software. And Correa has taken to YouTube to promote his policies in support of free software.

We’ve been mentioned in a post on ONLamp about email deliverability for social network start-ups. This topic came up in a discussion I was having with Andy Oram and he was fascinated by all of it — I realize more and more that while deliverability is core to the success of social applications, a lot of people haven’t given it much consideration. When we work with start-ups on their mail tier, frequently its because we’re working with them on something else and discover that their deliverability is spotty, they aren’t keeping any relevant data about it, have little insight into it and their overall strategy ignores it altogether. What should especially make investors and start-up management pay attention are the regulations around sending commercial e-mail — if your internet company relies on sending invitations to users’ friends and you’ve never held a meeting about CAN-SPAM compliance, you’re generating an unacceptable amount of risk for your organization. Unfortunately, I have seen this type of situation before. On the other hand, there are a lot of people keenly aware of email deliverability challenges and all the very complex issues surrounding it. A niche industry has developed to fill the void and there is hope for everyone in that given an investment of time and effort, any company can manage all of this and control their own mail destiny.

In addition to advocacy for free software, northxsouth contributes to efforts to improve digital rights. In particular, we believe community ISP’s are important and we support our local community ISP, the San Francisco Community Colocation Project. One of the reasons we support these kinds of efforts is illustrated in some news that is breaking around the internet today — Verio has shut down the famous encryption/privacy news site, Cryptome.org. Verio had hosted Cryptome for almost 10 years and there had been no lack of controversy for Cryptome in the past. And what’s even stranger is that Cryptome received no notice, no explanation — just an email explaining they were being cut off for Acceptable Use Policy violations. Those of us familiar with how these things work are speculating that Verio received a complaint as well as a gag order preventing them to discuss the complaint, a tactic used by law enforcement before.

The Minister of Communications of Ghana, Mike Oquaye, opened the Free Software/Open Source Media Training Week with a speech that showed his government’s full support for free software. Mr Oquaye tied software freedom to larger issues in society:

In some way this decision to invest in building our knowledge of Open Source solutions shares similarities with our decision to become independent those 50 years ago. Again we see the central issue of ownership and control. We want to own the technology we use. We want to have some degree of control over our technology options.

On these pages, we are going to mirror some of the most important documents in the free software movement.