Is Web2.0 a wash for free speech in China? "Lately I've given a few talks around town titled 'Will the Chinese Communist Party Survive the Internet?' My answer - for the short and medium term at least - is 'yes.'"
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

In the same spirit as the Open Net Initiative and Committee to Protect Bloggers that both track global internet filtering, Sami ben Gharbia's Access Denied Map tries to track the blocking of sites like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and others by governments, as well as efforts by activists to keep them accessible or to challenge their blockage.
posted on Nov 19, 2007 - View this thread

Cryptome Shutdown by Verio/NTT. Who Killed Cryptome.org?
posted on May 1, 2007 - View this thread

The Great Firewall of China connects to a server within China, and lets you know if your site is blocked or not, per the government's internet censorship.
posted on Feb 28, 2007 - View this thread

Sheep and Ostriches Closed brothels. Banned books. Closed minds. Internet censorship. Australia, the land of the free.
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread

Irrepressible.info is a new campaign by Amnesty International and The Observer to fight internet censorship. One way to help is by publishing censored material from other websites onto your own.
posted on May 28, 2006 - View this thread

Save the Internet is a coalition trying to preserve net neutrality and stop Congress from ruining the internet by giving it to the telecommunications industry this Wednesday. (More links, previous discussion, via.)
posted on Apr 24, 2006 - View this thread

New Jersey Assemblyman Peter Biondi didn't like that he and his friends are getting flamed on the news portal NJ.com by people named, inter alia, "frenchtoast2." So he introduced a bill, and that bill would require "operators of interactive computer services" to make members' real names available upon demand, and allow content providers to be sued for contributory defamation. And he saw that this was good. And that was the first day.
posted on Mar 7, 2006 - View this thread

Shock and gore. The people behind "the world's goriest website", why they do it, and what it says about us.
posted on Jan 14, 2006 - View this thread

Google Blocks Abu Ghraib Images
I went to Google Images to search for it. "Abu Ghraib" brought up only photos of the outside of the prison. Not a single photo from the scandal. Next I searched for "Lynndie England", not a single picture. Next I decided to look for "Charles Graner" her boyfriend who was also prominently features in the pictures, nothing.
See for yourself.
posted on Nov 6, 2004 - View this thread

Iran systematically filters political websites: In contrast with what the Iranaian President had said in the UN summit on Information Technology last year, the OpenNet Initiative, in its latest bulletin, concludes that "Iran is indeed engaged in extensive Internet content filtering beyond just pornography, including many political, religious, social, and blogging websites.
"Most of these censored websites are Iran-specific; very little non-pornographic, "global" content is filtered from Iranian users. "
posted on Aug 19, 2004 - View this thread

Net censorship in Iran: myth or reality? Over hundred Iranians have the answer on the DailySummit.net, official blog of the World Summit on the Information Society. Would this be enough to embarass the big Iranian delegate in Geneva in front of the world--and the press?
posted on Dec 9, 2003 - View this thread

China's crackdown on online dissent continues. It's been a year since the arrest of Chinese internet dissident Liu Di. Many of her supporters have signed petitions calling for her release, but last week one of their organizers, essayist Du Daobin, was himself arrested.
posted on Nov 7, 2003 - View this thread

Bush orders guidelines for cyber-war Is it my old age that makes me wonder what else might be in this secret directive as regards computers and the Net? "First set of rules for attacking enemy computers studied." Perhaps you support the president or you are the enemy (recall: you are with us or against us)....
posted on Feb 7, 2003 - View this thread

Internet Filtering in China, a report from the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. There's been "a documentable leap in filtering sophistication since September 2002".
posted on Dec 4, 2002 - View this thread

It is not a crime to look at bomb-making websites... or so says Lieutenant Jason Ciaschini, police spokesman in Punta Gorda, where a Briton who was using a computer to look at bomb-making websites is now being held at Charlotte County Jail on immigration violations.
Florida police had evacuated the library and arrested him after he looked at bomb-making websites, and found suspicious liquids in his backpack.
"Looking up stuff on the Internet - everybody has freedom to do that," he also said.
posted on Jul 30, 2002 - View this thread

Fire at Internet Cafe 'forces' Chinese government to close all 2400 Beijing cafes. This one has to rank up there with the line from the Good Old Days in which missing Soviet leaders were often described as 'having a cold.' I can't wait for the 2008 Happy Fun Olympics.
posted on Jun 17, 2002 - View this thread

Iran Online. Can the opening of a countires 'cyber-borders' contribute to the liberalisation (small 'l') of the society? Iran has a rapidly increasing population, as well as a rapidly increasing online percentage, they have sports sites (they seem to like soccer), portals and the 'IranMania' search engine. Can un-censored access to the internet help build tolerance?
posted on Feb 22, 2002 - View this thread

Corporate censorship in China (via slashdot). I guess censorship and collusion in the repression of people is okay if you're making profits for your shareholders. An eye-opening look into the way that corporations are helping to facilitate censorship on the Internet in China. AOL and Yahoo's attitudes to what I thought were universal human rights is nothing short of sickening.
posted on Feb 18, 2002 - View this thread

John Ashcroft on web porn: "I am concerned about obscenity and I'm concerned about obscenity as it relates to our children". I'm curious what those of you who are more on the conservative/libertarian side of things think about this. Are there special exemptions to the concept of free speech when it comes to this type of content? [more]
posted on Jun 11, 2001 - View this thread

Most of us are familiar with stories about government suppression of the free flow of information on the Internet - e.g. China's crackdown on internet dissidents; France's tussle with Yahoo over online sales of Nazi memorabilia; and, fresh from yesterday's news, Iran's closure of 400 internet cafes. But did you know there are no web servers to speak of in North Korea? That you need government permission to own a fax machine or modem in Burma? That Somalia has only one ISP? If you can forgive some of its design peculiarities, this Enemies of the Internet report (by Reporters Without Borders) gives a pretty comprehensive rundown of the international state of online freedoms.
posted on May 14, 2001 - View this thread

SinoFilter.com Can I resume drinking from the made in China Metafilter coffee mug yet?
posted on Apr 12, 2001 - View this thread

Why in hell is the National Acadamy of Science involved in looking for ways to censor the Internet?

Here's an interesting commentary on the fact that all censorship ultimately fails. A great quote: "It amazes me to see parents who support 'family values' demanding government censorship on the Net. In other words, their family values have failed, and they can't control their children, so they expect the government to control the situation for them." (Via GeekPress.)
posted on Jan 8, 2001 - View this thread

Sometimes there is a strange kind of justice in the universe. A candidate in Oregon, who had promised to require that all schools and libraries be forced to use censorware on their computers, changed his position when he found that his own campaign site was being censored by one of the most popular of the censorware packages.

Ah, schadenfreude. Hoist by his own petard, in't he?
posted on Nov 9, 2000 - View this thread

Another day, another piece of unconstitutional net-censorship legislation in Congress. And this time it's authored by your pal and mine, John "Watch Out for Charlies!" McCain. Perhaps we should start a deadpool for all these bills, giving out some cash to whoever guesses the dates on which the courts throw them out?
posted on Jun 27, 2000 - View this thread

Third Circuit panel upholds injunction against Child Online Protective Act, says that "community standards" approach doesn't work in 'cyberspace'. Is sanity breaking out in the federal judiciary?
posted on Jun 23, 2000 - View this thread

speed limit -- A bill banning Internet sites which publish or even link to drug-making information looks set to sail through Congress
posted on Apr 26, 2000 - View this thread

Potential Employment: Here is a chance to show what you are made of. Quit your high paying job you have now, for one that will give you the opportunity to "help the children."
posted on Feb 12, 2000 - View this thread