Free Speech and the Internet. The main concern is about oppressive regimes trying to squash political dissent — like China, which jails bloggers, blocks Web sites and filters the Internet to eradicate words, including “democracy,” from the conversation. The report also warned against overzealous attempts by democratic states to control or censor online communications. Stopping infringement of intellectual property or the distribution of child pornography is legitimate. But governments must protect citizens’ rights to speak freely — anonymously when necessary. In Italy, a court convicted Google executives because a user uploaded a video on YouTube depicting cruelty to a disabled teenager, even though Google quickly removed the offending content. The French and British parliaments have passed draconian laws that would ban users from the Internet for illegally downloading copyrighted material.
With few exceptions, governments should not adopt Internet registries that require users to reveal their identities. Free Speech is Only As Strong As the Weakest Link. Online speech must travel through several "upstream" providers before reaching its audience. Each of these links in the chain may itself rely on its own upstream providers -- for example, smaller ISPs may simply connect users to larger ISPs, or hosting platforms may host their services on servers leased from a commercial datacenter. When at first they don’t succeed, censors try again upstream. The Internet’s strength lies partially in the fact that no single entity provides all the services necessary for the network to operate. The downside of this decentralization is that there are multiple intermediary points between any two users at which a third party may attempt to cut off speech. The further away from the user a service provider is located on the chain, the less incentive that provider has to push back against censorship of the user’s speech.
Users whose speech is stifled by one upstream provider can sometimes switch to a different service after being censored. You Can’t Say That on the Internet. And fighting obscenity can be good for business. Impermium, a Silicon Valley company that helps Web sites deal with unwanted reader comments, has begun marketing technology that identifies “all kinds of harmful content — such as violence, racism, flagrant profanity, and hate speech — and allows site owners to act on it in real-time, before it reaches readers.” Impermium will police the readers — but who will police Impermium? Apple, too, has strayed from its iconoclastic roots. When Naomi Wolf’s latest book, “Vagina: A New Biography,” went on sale in its iBooks store, Apple turned “Vagina” into “V****a.”
After numerous complaints, Apple restored the title, but who knows how many other books are still affected? True, these books are still on sale. The proliferation of the Autocomplete function on popular Web sites is a case in point. How so? More transparency into government requests. About two years ago, we launched our interactive Transparency Report. We started by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we’ve been steadily adding new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries.
And just a couple weeks ago, we launched a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results. The traffic and copyright sections of the Transparency Report are refreshed in near-real-time, but government request data is updated in six-month increments because it’s a people-driven, manual process. Today we’re releasing data showing government requests to remove blog posts or videos or hand over user information made from July to December 2011. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments | Technology. There has been an alarming rise in the number of times governments attempted to censor the internet in last six months, according to a report from Google. Since the search engine last published its bi-annual transparency report, it said it had seen a troubling increase in requests to remove political content.
Many of these requests came from western democracies not typically associated with censorship. It said Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles critical of public figures. It did not comply. Google was asked by Canadian officials to remove a YouTube video of a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. Thai authorities asked Google to remove 149 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the monarchy, a violation of Thailand's lèse-majesté law. Pakistan asked Google to remove six YouTube videos that satirised its army and senior politicians.
"This is the fifth data set that we've released. The Rise of Europe's Private Internet Police. In 2005, Peter Mahnke, a resident of the English town of St. Margaret's, Middlesex, set up a community website. For the past seven years, he and a handful of local volunteers have been publishing regular updates about local events, parks, new businesses, weather, and train schedules. All G-rated and uncontroversial. Yet in early March, for reasons that remain unclear, the St. The accidental censorship of the St. European governments may not have intended to create a "privatized police state," but that is what digital rights activists in Europe warn is happening, due to growing government pressure on companies to police themselves.
The St. This type of problem is serious enough, in enough countries, to have made its way to the U.N. La Rue also expressed concern about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), signed by the United States and several dozen trading partners, which seeks to tackle the global problem of counterfeiting, both online and off. Blocking internet pornography ... that's censorship, isn't it? I don't much care for pornography, but it might be surprising for fair-minded types to note that most Britons don't see it quite that way. Which ought to make politicians think twice about trying to regulate adult pornography, because if being grown up counts for anything, then it must involve some kind of interest in the serious business of sex.
But never mind... Ed Vaizey is talking tough on the subject, suggesting that adult pornography should be blocked by internet providers unless hapless consumers "opt in" to see filth on their screens. We like pornography so much that Enders Research reckons that half of all online video watching is for this sort of entertainment. So rather more people than Vaizey thinks might be caught up in opt-in net.
Then there's the question of defining "adult pornography". Next, it is worth remembering that plenty of pornography is already legal, although you have to go the the trouble of reaching for the top shelf to opt-in. Why a Great British Firewall will be useless. Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, said yesterday that he wants UK internet service providers to filter sexually explicit content. By default, your internet connection would be restricted to only allow appropriate sites – unless you call your ISP and ask them to turn the filter off.
There are many reasons why this is a bad idea. First, how do you define "explicit content"? Private web filtering companies have been struggling with that problem for years. Then there's the issue of free speech – sooner or later, someone will try to use this filter to block politically sensitive sites. And let's not forget just how bad the public sector tends to be at managing IT projects, or how poor their digital security can be.
Those are all great reasons not to waste untold millions of pounds either creating a government "great firewall", or requiring ISPs to do the same. An effective filter would have to censor Flickr, which has a large amount of adult imagery. Wikipedia Shuts Down Italian Site In Response To Berlusconi's New Wiretap Act. Due to the prospect of a new law in Italy that would give those writing on the internet just 48 hours to remove a post or face a €12,000 fine, the Italian homepage for Wikipedia is now redirecting to a statement specifically opposing the proposed legislation. The proposed law is known as the "DDL intercettazioni" (Wiretapping Act), and critics see it as an attempt by Berlusconi's government to censor bloggers. The Wikipedia statement, signed "The users of Wikipedia", threatens to shut down the Italian site as the rule will contradict Wikipedia's mission: With this announcement, we want to warn our readers against the risks arising from leaving to the arbitrary will of any party to enforce the alleged protection of its image and its reputation.
Under such provisions, web users would be most probably led to cease dealing with certain topics or people, just to "avoid troubles". UPDATE: The Wikimedia Foundation has announced their support for the protest. Blackout in Italy: “The first time Wikipedia worldwide has done anything of this kind” Finnish Police Respond To The Norwegian Tragedy By Increasing Internet Surveillance. In response to the tragedy in Norway, Finland law enforcement has decided to increase its internet surveillance in hopes of picking up "weak signals" that could possibly indicate a terrorist threat. As Cato's Jim Harper points out, this sort of thing just doesn't work: ...random violence (terrorist or otherwise) is not predictable and not "findable" in advance -- not if a free society is to remain free, anyway. The problem with attacks like the shooting/bombing in Norway is that they are isolated instances. The shock and horror of the event tends to overwhelm the common sense of politicians, law enforcement and the press itself, leading to unfortunate efforts like these, often combined with commentary from ad hoc armchair quarterbacks whose hindsight is endless but whose foresight is severely restricted.
The civil rights of citizens are trampled underfoot by politicians and law enforcement officials wishing to appear to be doing "something" to make their homelands safer. Internet giants remove content after India court warning. Free Expression in Danger as Bloggers and Activists Go On Trial in Vietnam. UPDATE 1/10/13: After a two-day trial, a court in the city of Vinh convicted all 14 of the defendants that appeared in court. Thirteen of the activists and bloggers were sentenced to serve prison terms ranging individually from 3 to 13 years. One [Nguyen Dang Vinh Phuc] was given a three-year conditionally suspended sentence, making him easily vulnerable to re-arrest.
EFF condemns these harsh sentences and calls for the immediate release of the imprisoned activists. In Vietnam, 17 bloggers and activists will stand trial tomorrow. This trial will be the largest of its kind in Vietnam--14 of the defendants will appear at once. They have been charged under Article 79 (“activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government”) of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 2012 was a year of crackdowns on free expression in Vietnam, including the introduction of new censorship laws.
EFF will be keeping a close eye on the upcoming trial.
Paypal vs Erotic Litterature. Facebook censorship. Web in Russia.