MetaFilter posts tagged with censorship

"You never know what will happen next."

seemoreglass — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:34:25 -0800

As the plane descended into Rangoon's international airport, I noticed a slight change in my heartbeat. I felt calm, but also excited, knowing that I was about to return to Burma for the first time in 24 years. Former student dissident and exiled journalist Aung Zaw spends Five Days in Burma. Printable version of Five Days in Burma Recent articles by or citing Aung Zaw in the New York Times: Keep Myanmar on Track Are Myanmar’s Hopes Fading? Burmese Laureate Heckled Over Backing Copper Mine Segments featuring Aung Zaw from Al Jazeera English: Myanmar political exiles return home Myanmar abolishes direct press censorship law Miscellany: Wikipedia article on the so-called 8888 Uprising Should it be Burma or Myanmar? (BBC) Obama's visit to Myanmar marks 'new chapter' in US-Myanmar relations (CSMonitor)

No longer sci-fi: world's first 3D printed (almost) all-plastic firearm.

MoTLD — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:13:10 -0800

Defense Distributed, creators of the controversial printable AR-15 receiver, have now released CAD files and video of the first firing of the Liberator, a real plastic pistol capable of firing between one and 10 .380 calibre rounds before exploding. Andy Greenberg of Forbes was apparently invited to witness the historic moment. The device is named after the FP-45 Liberator experiment of World War II. Interestingly, to comply with the Undetectable Weapons Act, the creators inserted a non-functional steel cube into the frame because the only metal part, a hardware store nail used as a firing pin, wasn't enough to set off the average metal detector.

“It seems absurd to me that the clip is censored.”

jeffen — Sun, 05 May 2013 07:49:56 -0800

Quebec director Xavier Dolan's music video for "College Boy" (NSFW) by French band Indochine has stirred up some controversy for its gruesome portrayal of bullying.

How Censorship in China Silences Collective Action

MisantropicPainforest — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:38:48 -0800

How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression Researchers at Harvard University (Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts) have conducted the first large scale analysis of internet censorship in China. Their findings? Criticism of the state is not censored. What is censored, however, are any comments that support collective action or social mobilization. The abstract: We offer the ﬁrst large scale, multiple source analysis of the outcome of what may be the most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented. To do this, we have devised a system to locate, download, and analyze the content of millions of social media posts originating from nearly 1,400 different social media services all over China before the Chinese government is able to ﬁnd, evaluate, and censor (i.e., remove from the Internet) the subset they deem objectionable. Using modern computer-assisted text analytic methods that we adapt to and validate in the Chinese language, we compare the substantive content of posts censored to those not censored over time in each of 85 topic areas. Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward attempting To forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future—and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent.

Free Speech on the Internet

homunculus — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:48:25 -0800

The Delete Squad: Google, Twitter, Facebook and the new global battle over the future of free speech.

Using the F-word in PG-13/12A movies

reenum — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:05:08 -0800

Den of Geek looks at the MPAA rule that a PG-13 movie can contain only one utterance of the word "fuck".

On Chicago Public Schools Censoring Persepolis's Images of Torture

Artw — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:25:25 -0800

Suffice it to say, Persepolis is quite a work. It’s a testament to the power of the graphic novel. The art’s simple linework helps the story feel unpretentious and direct. Persepolis was adapted as a 2007 French animated film, written and directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Among other honors, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Why would someone want to ban such a book?

Watching the watchmen

Pre-Taped Call In Show — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:25:53 -0800

Weibo, China's most popular microblogging website, is manually censored for "impropriety" and political content. By observing the time taken for censored posts to disappear, researchers have exposed some of the the working patterns and methods of the censors. Original paper: arXiv:1303.0597. Weibo censorship previously on MetaFilter.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

Fizz — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:53:33 -0800

The Turn Against Nabokov [newyorker.com]

"The author, whose novels thrum with ironic recurrences, might have been perversely pleased with this: thirty-six years after his death and twenty-two years after the fall of the Soviet Union with all its khudsovets, Vladimir Nabokov is, once again, controversial."

Prisoner X didn't exist until two years after his death.

adamvasco — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:19:42 -0800

In June 2010 a news story briefly appeared on the Yediot website about Prisoner X in solitary confinement in an Israeli jail. His jailers did not know who he was, did not share a word with him, no one came to visit him. No one seemed to know he was there. They didn’t even know what crime he had committed or how he came to be in the prison. His prison cell was completely isolated from other prisoners and he couldn’t communicate in any way with them. ABC News Australia has broken the News that Prisoner X was an Australian citizen suspected of Mossad links and who commited suicide two years ago in an Israeli jail. The prime minister’s office and prison service declined on Tuesday to comment. “I can’t tell you anything; I’m not dealing with this,” said the prison spokeswoman, Sivan Weizman. “I can’t answer any question about it. Sorry. “There are some episodes in the history of Israel that are still kept under the strongest secrecy thick veil possible,” said Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist. “Some of them are 40 years old, 50 years old, and are still under thick, thick secrecy, and anyone violating this secrecy would be thrown into jail himself.”
An article about the Australian report which appeared in Haaretz on Tuesday was later removed.

The Bowdlerization of bande dessinée

themadthinker — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 11:15:28 -0800

Europe has a long-standing comic tradition, at least equal to that of America. Beyond Tintin and Asterix, there are hundreds of fantastic titles with astonishing art, most of which never see the shores of the USA. However, when a lucky title does get the nod, something bizarre happens when European sensibilities face American censors. Despite the constant reassurances by media in the USA that comics aren't just for kids anymore, there still seems to be a prevailing belief that graphic novels should be at least vaguely kid friendly. In Europe that was never particularly an issue, and combined with that continent's generally more relaxed take on nudity, titles coming to the United States have often had to deal with some rather bizarre scrutiny. (warning, links varying degrees of NSFW) The excellent space adventure serious Sillage (known as Wake in English) chronicled a sole human who was discovered by an immense body of different aliens, who tries to track down others of her species. The first seven volumes were published by NBM who appear to have no desire to complete the series, or re-issue those already translated. The first volume concerns our heroine Navee, a semi-feral girl who inhabits a jungle planet. She's also topless. To pass American censorship requirements, NBM drew over her nipples with a felt marker. Example 1, example 2. One of the more egregious examples is Jodorowsky's Incal series. The main volume with his seminal collaboration with Moebius (previously), and the prequel Avant L'Incal both were recolored at one point in a hideous update which removed much of the nudity. I don't have any examples from Incal proper, but other people have noted it, and the recolor was just generally unpleasant. The censorship from the prequel is more widely observed, and much of the incidental nudity was clipped. Thankfully, Humanoids recently re-issued Incal with the original coloring and no edits in a single volume hardcover, now available in its second print. Humanoids also produced two versions of some of one of Jodorowsky's other comics projects The Metabarons, with some editing. In recent years, Marvel comics took a brief swing at translating eurocomics under the Soleil imprint. While generally speaking, they've been pretty good about keeping content, they have been more than happy to remove a stray nipple or two. Sky Doll's cover got changed. This is hardly a problem unique to European comics. Similar fates have been suffered by certain manga and anime in their transition to the United States, famously the Pokemon manga (which was kinda racey), the popular shonen manga Tenjo Tenge under DC's shortlived CMX imprint, and pretty much any anime seen during after school hours. Censorship isn't the only unpleasantness that these volumes can face during localization. Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese is arguably one of the most influential European comics of the mid-to-late-20th century. As a character, he's been popular enough to be the face of Dior and have his own short-lived clothing line. However, a recent print of the Ballad of the Salt Sea massively edited the book to get it to fit on a smaller page size, ruining a great deal of the book's particular flow and style. Since official translations of many European titles are rare and often don't get reprinted, a small fan translation/scanslation scene has popped up. It's nowhere near the size of the one associated with manga, but for tracking down unedited versions, or books that never got translated, it's often the only option. The largest of these groups uses the Sobriquet Dragonz, and there scans pop up in the usual dens of comic book piracy.

"Governments should be afraid of their people."

strangely stunted trees — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:11:32 -0800

Television viewers in China were shocked last Friday when state broadcaster CCTV aired V for Vendetta unedited in prime time. Previously, Chinese search engines would not even return results for the anti-totalitarian 2006 film; CCTV-6 did at least harmonize the title by translating it as "V Special Forces", rather than the more common translation given in pirated DVD editions, "V the Revenge Killing Squad". Some Chinese netizens speculated that the broadcast meant that censorship was beginning to loosen under newly-installed General Secretary Xi Jinping, with one Weibo user asking: "For the first time CCTV-6 aired 'V for Vendetta,' what to think, is the reform being deepened?" CCTV played down the significance of the broadcast, with a spokesperson stating: "It is already broadcast. It is no big deal [...] We also didn't anticipate such a big reaction."

A Quiet Opening - North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment

DiesIrae — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:02:19 -0800

As this research report will show, North Koreans today are learning more about the outside world than at any time since the founding of the country. North Korea is consistently ranked by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders as the country with the least free media in the world. This ranking reflects the country's complete lack of an independent domestic media, its legal restrictions against accessing foreign media and the harsh punishments it metes out against citizens who violate those restrictions. Yet, since the late 1990s the information environment in North Korea has undergone significant changes. Although the media environment remains extremely restricted by international standards, North Koreans' access to outside media has grown considerably over the past two decades. Many inside the country continue to develop new ways to access information while avoiding the ever-present risk of detection and punishment.

THR & The Blacklist

Artw — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:36:14 -0800

After 65 Years The Hollywood Reporter addresses its role in the hollywood blacklist, including an apology from W.R. Wilkerson III, son of THR founder Billy Wilkerson whose "A Vote For Joe Stalin" editorial named writers such as Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Howard Koch and John Howard Lawson as communist sympathisers.

Menace(s) to Society

zarq — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:27:26 -0800

During the Golden Age of Hollywood and until 1967, mainstream movie studios were banned by the Production Code from depicting taboo topics like drug addiction, explicit murder and venereal disease, or even showing explicit nudity. But in the 1930's and 1940's, films marketed as "educational" could and did fly under the radar, and three of the best known 'educational' propaganda exploitation films are: Sex Madness (1935), Reefer Madness (1936) and The Cocaine Fiends (1938). Each is a morality tale: Sex Madness warns teens of the dangers of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. Among the forms of "madness" it warns against: wild parties, lesbianism, and premarital sex. Directed by Dwain Esper, whose other exploitation movies include: Narcotic (1933), Maniac (1934), Marihuana: The Devil's Weed! (alt link) (1936) and How to Undress in Front of your Husband (1938). (Some of these may be NSFW.) Reefer Madness dramatizes the dangers of marijuana use, depicting it leading to car accidents, manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, etc. (Wikipedia) Directed by Louis J. Gasnier, who also directed non-exploitation films such as The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Gold Racket (1937), The Sunset Murder Case (1938) and Stolen Paradise (1940). The Cocaine Fiends has the grandest headache medicine in the world, which will also destroy your life and soul. Like most of the exploitation movies of that era The Cocaine Fiends sheds interesting light on the anxieties engendered by the modern world. Modern life is seen as threatening and dangerous. And like most such films it faces the fascinating contradiction of condemning the very things on which it relies for its chance of commercial success, which for such movies depended entirely on the thrill of the forbidden and the illicit.
* Reviews of all three movies, Joe Bob Briggs-style. * NPR: Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 years on: A year after Some Like It Hot was released, the head of the MPA began suggesting that some sort of classification system might work better than a censorship system that no one was paying attention to. In 1968, his organization finally shifted from restricting filmmakers to alerting audiences, using the film-ratings system we know today.

This will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure.

the man of twists and turns — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 02:44:37 -0800

Tomorrow is the end of Banned Books Week. It's been 30 years. The American Library Association has a list of frequently challenged books. Hundreds of books have been either removed or challenged in schools and libraries in the United States every year. Here's the top ten. And from 2011, with multimedia resources. Banned books that shaped America. Mapping censorship. And resources, for artists, teachers, students, children, et al. There's even a Youtube channel for the Virtual Read-Out. 20 Banned Books That May Surprise You. Authors have a lot to say about book bans: Famous Authors Respond To Having Their Books Banned. SciFi/Fantasy Authors Sound Off About Banned Books and Censorship. Alice Walker: Writing What's Right. Lucy McKeon:Sixty Million and More: Toni Morrison's Beloved. Katherine Paterson: The Risks of Great Literature. John Barnes: Censorship, Bullying and Community - Can't Have One Without The Other.

A New Kinda Satellite State

Chipmazing — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:41:46 -0800

The satellite man is typically young, with an entrepreneur’s zeal and a sense of adventure, often from the mercantile district of South Tehran, trained by colleagues in the black-market niche of satellite TV installation...

One way to deal with hostile media...

jaduncan — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 20:40:40 -0800

US calls Assange 'enemy of state'. The US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States - the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency. Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

Male nipples are OK, female nipple bulges are not

asnider — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:43:10 -0800

Nipplegate: Why the New Yorker Cartoon Department is About to be Banned from Facebook In addition to banning photos of actual breasts, Facebook has taken a hard stance against the New Yorker's depiction of nipples in a cartoon about Adam and Eve. As a result, the New Yorker Cartoon Department's Facebook page was temporarily banned.

Indian cartoonist jailed on sedition charges

KokuRyu — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:45:57 -0800

Indian cartoonist jailed on sedition charges An Indian cartoonist detained on sedition charges for his satirical drawings highlighting widespread corruption among India’s political elite has been jailed for two weeks, rekindling a fierce debate on freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy. In India the Enemies of Free Speech Find a "Symbolic" Means to Attack Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi. Latest updates: NCP defends arrest of Aseem Trivedi Police give up custody, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi sticks to guns Some background: Aseem Trivedi, 25, turned himself in to police in the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai on the weekend. His arrest followed the publication of a series of cartoons, including one drawing that depicts the parliament building as a lavatory buzzing with flies. The Virginia-based Cartoonists Rights Network International has announced that Ali Ferzat and Aseem Trivedi are the 2012 recipients of the group’s Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award. The honor is presented to a “cartoonist in great danger or who has demonstrated exceptional courage in the exercise of free-speech rights. Despite its status as the world’s largest democracy, the extent of India’s freedom of expression remains a controversial topic, be it through stalling films for allegedly advocating “social unrest,” ransacking M.F. Husain’s exhibitions for allegedly provoking “religious militants,” or attempting to force Google, Facebook and others to prescreen postings for offensive material.

Only in Israel

Silky Slim — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 04:24:27 -0800

The Dealers is a new Israeli crime comedy, released here this weekend. The poster features the film's central players sitting around a table loaded with booze, weed, bongs, joints and other drug paraphernalia. For the stricter populace of Jerusalem, a modified version of the poster was prepared, one which removes all trace of... You guessed it: Women. The pot and booze? Untouched. In recent years, with the increased orthodox presence in Jerusalem, billboards featuring women have been systematically vandalized by orthodox Jews. To placate them, billboard companies have begun excising women completely from ads displayed in Jerusalem. For instance, The Jerusalem International Film Festival, held earlier this month, had its posters defaced all around the city after choosing a woman on a bicycle as its symbol. Many in Israel's secular majority, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, have reacted indignantly. In this Haaretz (English) piece from November, a PR person is quoted as saying: "It is not surprising that the middle class and young secular people are abandoning Jerusalem. What remains of this charming city that should have been a magnificent city is injustice and dreariness and the repression of women". Examples of this are everywhere. The poster for Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" was modified for conservative audiences. 13-year-old Kara Hayward wasn't cut out of it entirely, but someone saw fit to lengthen her skirt. A particularly stupid instance of vandalism occurred last year, when Jerusalem vandals decided to "improve" the posters for the Adam Sandler vehicle, "Jack & Jill"; Apparently fooled, they blacked out Sandler's bewigged, lipsticked visage while leaving his male-identified face intact.

Transparency is a core value at Google.

KokuRyu — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:15:59 -0800

Government requests to censor content ‘alarming,’ Google says Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011. In its twice-yearly Transparency Report, the world’s largest web search engine said the requests were aimed at having some 12,000 items overall removed, about a quarter more than during the first half of last year. [previously]

La République Islaïque de Tunisie

elgilito — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:54:03 -0800

This week's riots (WaPo) in Tunisia started last Saturday, when a mob of hardline Salafists, after trying to disrupt an art exhibition deemed offensive to Islam, were booed off ("dégage!") by the crowd. They came back a few hours later to destroy the works: here are the artworks, before and after the attack at the Abdellia Palace in La Marsa, Tunis.

HTTP 112 – Emergency. Censorship in action.

jeffburdges — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 03:50:20 -0800

Does HTTP need a status code for censorship? Perhaps In essence, they argue that web servers should never knowingly falsify the reason an HTTP request is denied, citing the W3C specification's statement that "The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred." Background : ISPs are being ordered to censor thepiratebay.se in the Netherlands and U.K. These DNS blocks are easy to circumvent using tools that bypass nation level censorship, like MAFIAAFire, OpenNIC, OpenDNS, VPNReactor, commercial VPNs, Tor, etc. The blocks have raised awareness of the U.K. and Dutch Pirate Parties, who ran proxies (recently). The Dutch Pirate Party's proxy was shutdown by the Dutch judge, who "[previously ran] a commercial anti-piracy outfit together with the [plaintiff]" (TF).

"Everybody that I've taught anything other than Tor to is in jail."

jeffburdges — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 02:16:30 -0800

An anti-censorship software package Simurgh, aimed towards aiding dissidents in Iran and Syria, has been circulated with a backdoor that reports keystroke logs back to a server hosted in the U.S. but registered with a Saudi Arabian ISP. All versions distributed by the the developer's site simurghesabz.net were clean, but versions repackaged with the backdoor were distributed via secondary sites. As an aside, there was an excellent talk by Roger Dingledine and Jacob Appelbaum at 28C3 that discusses Tor development and circumventing censorship in places like Iran.