Myanmar Bans Email

YANGON, Myanmar: Myanmar, where the government bars public access to the Internet, has ordered a stop to unauthorized e-mail and telephone services...The communication minister told telecommunications officials...that outsiders using sophisticated equipment are illegally engaged in international telephone and e-mail services...People with unauthorized ownership of a fax modem or computer network risk up to 15 years imprisonment and a fine. Last year, five companies running e-mail services, including two managed by foreigners, were ordered to shut down. Executives and technicians were taken in for questioning, and authorities confiscated their equipment. The military regime is sensitive to the large volume of Web sites and news groups posted overseas by exiled dissidents and supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

This report helps put vapid, pointless and highly-commerical uses of the Web in a different light. Compared to struggles for liberation, e-commerce seems rather pointless. (Now all we need is someone to pop up to "remind" me that e-commerce is liberation!)