Whether the rationale behind it is moral, political, religious (or anything else) censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication by a controlling body. Recently even the most “developed” countries have practiced censorship in order to further their own agenda, which goes against the concept of the inherent human right to voice one’s opinion without fear of punishment. See our news archive of 265 articles for a commentary and archival information about this topic from around the world. CLICK HERE
Gulf News – Occupied Jerusalem: The right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has banned a high school civics textbook as “unbalanced,” a move critics say is part of a broader bid to shift Israel’s values in a direction that is more nationalistic and less democratic. Officials cited factual errors in the book as the main factor in the decision. But liberal educators say the errors could easily be corrected and that the larger issue is a national struggle to define Israel’s identity. Read Article
KTBS – It is the second time this year a Romanian government has crashed. This time it fell less than three months after Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu took office. The censure motion passed with 235 votes, four more than the minimum required by the Romanian Constitution. There are 460 legislators. The motion was filed by the opposition Social Democrats and Liberals, who accused the Cabinet of lack of transparency in the selling of natural resources and in approving money transfers to local authorities belonging to the ruling parties. Read article
Telegraph – Sergey Brin, who co-founded the search engine giant, said the openness of the web which has fuelled the information revolution is vanishing because of censuring by countries such as China and companies creating monopolies. He said the principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet three decades ago are under greater threat than ever. Read Article
MSNBC – The state of Arizona could find itself in the company of countries like China and Syria for censoring the Internet if the state’s governor signs a bill recently passed by the legislature. Arizona House Bill 2549, which is now on Gov. Jan Brewer’s desk for signature, was created to counter bullying and stalking. Read Article
Times of Swaziland – The Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Chief Mgwagwa Gamedze says the law will take its course on those who besmirch the image of the country and King Mswati III on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are social media internet chat networks that have millions of subscribers internationally and have gained a lot of popularity locally. Read Article
Daily Mail – Google should be forced to stop people flouting privacy injunctions online by censoring its search results, an influential report said today. So far the search engine has refused requests to filter out results that breach court orders like the one obtained by footballer Ryan Giggs. But a cross-party committee of MPs and peers blasted the internet giant for its ‘totally unconvincing’ objection to weeding out illegal information. Read Article
BusinessInsider – A few days ago we reported on how word of a Chinese coup attempt had soured the markets, following a report from the Epoch Times. Rumor had it that tanks were in the streets, and gunshots were being fired near the Forbidden City. While the news is supposed to be false, the BBC says they actually have no idea what’s going on and The Daily Mail reports China has scrubbed its Internet of all reports, rumors, and speculation of what’s happening on the ground. Read article
The Blaze – The Los Angeles City Council has passed a resolution condemning speech on radio that some may find “intolerable.” According to the local CBS station in L.A., Councilmember Jan Perry “introduced legislation this week that would call upon media companies to ensure ‘on-air hosts do not use and promote racist and sexist slurs’ on radio and other broadcasts.” Read Article
Guardian – Twitter closed down a string of accounts purporting to be authored by the Syrian president and the first lady, emails reveal. A senior aide to Asma al-Assad, Fares Kallas, took issue with the site over 11 accounts. Half of the accounts using the first lady’s name and all but one of those using the president’s name were closed down. Read Article
Oakland Tribune – Minutes after reading a late-night news story online about him that he perceived to be inaccurate, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan ordered a sergeant to a reporter’s home insisting on changes, a move First Amendment experts said reeked of intimidation and attempted censorship. Meehans’s actions were “despicable, totally despicable,” said Jim Ewert, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association. “It’s the most intimidating type of (censorship) possible because the person trying to exercise it carries a gun.” Read Article
BBC – Chinese censors are actively targeting social media to quash discussion of banned topics, suggests research. The US study gives the most in-depth look at the extent of China’s policing of discussions on microblogging sites. Analysis of almost 60 million messages from China’s equivalent of Twitter suggested which topics were banned. Read Article
Whether the rationale behind it is moral, political, religious (or anything else) censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication by a controlling body. Recently even the most “developed” countries have practiced censorship in order to further their own agenda, which goes against the concept of the inherent human right to voice one’s opinion without fear of punishment. See our news archive of 252 articles for a commentary and archival information about this topic from around the world. CLICK HERE
AFP – The Tajikistan government ordered Internet providers on Saturday to block Facebook, along with several independent media sites, a spokeswoman for the country’s web-provider association told AFP. “Internet providers received a spoken order from government agents to block the sites,” said Parvina Ibodova, president of the association. “We are minions. We get our licences from the authorities and that’s why, as though we were circuit breakers, we are obedient and cut access to the sites.” Read Article
AP – An inquiry into Australian media prompted by last year’s News Corp. scandal recommended on Friday better oversight of the industry and called for the establishment of a government-funded council to set and enforce journalistic standards. The investigation was launched after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. closed its top-selling British tabloid, News of the World, last year over illegal phone hacking allegations. News Corp. owns 70 percent of Australia’s newspapers through its subsidiary, News Ltd. There have been no allegations made in Australia of the type of phone hacking that led to the News of the World scandal in Britain. But many government lawmakers argue that News Ltd.’s newspaper holdings are too large and are biased against the ruling center-left Labor Party. Read Article
Physorg – Iran has further restricted access to the Internet and blocked popular email services for the past few days, in a move a top lawmaker said could “cost the regime dearly,” media reports said on Sunday. Millions of Iranians have been unable to log onto their accounts on popular email websites such as Google’s Gmail, Yahoo’s Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail since Thursday without any official explanation, the Arman newspaper reported. Read Article
BBC – US prosecutors have said that data belonging to Megaupload users and stored by third parties could be deleted as soon as Thursday. Users have been unable to access data since the file-sharing service was raided. The warning was made in a letter filed by the US Attorney’s Office. Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken told the Associated Press that at least 50 million users had data which could be deleted. Read Article
BBC – Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis. In its blog, Twitter said it could “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”. But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Google received 65 requests from the Government to remove web pages from its database in the first half of last year, the Leveson Inquiry has heard. National security was “the single biggest category” among the reasons cited for wanting pages removed from Google search results, the company’s legal director said. Daphne Keller, who flew in from the US to give evidence to the inquiry into media standards, said that Google had complied with the requests in 82 per cent of cases. Having heard evidence from newspaper editors and journalists over the last month, Lord Justice Leveson turned his attention to online news providers to help him address the issue of how best to achieve a level playing field between print and online media when it comes to regulation Read Article
Business Insider – Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has voiced his frustrations about SOPA, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Speaking at IBM’s annual Lotusphere conference, Berners-Lee said, “If you’re in America then you should go and call somebody or send an email to protest against these (censorship) bills because they have not been put together to respect human rights as is appropriate in a democratic country.” Read Article
New York Times – Online protests on Wednesday quickly cut into Congressional support for online antipiracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington. A freshman senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back antipiracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress to take more time to study the measure, which had been set for a test vote next week. By Wednesday afternoon, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and one of the Senate bill’s original co-sponsors, called it “simply not ready for prime time” and withdrew his support. Read Article
Whether the rationale behind it is moral, political, religious (or anything else) censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication by a controlling body. Recently even the most “developed” countries have practiced censorship in order to further their own agenda, which goes against the concept of the inherent human right to voice one’s opinion without fear of punishment. See our news archive of 242 articles for a commentary and archival information about this topic from around the world. CLICK HERE
Guardian – Iran is clamping down heavily on web users before parliamentary elections in March with draconian rules on cybercafes and preparations to launch a national internet. Tests for a countrywide network aimed at substituting services run through the world wide web have been carried out by Iran’s ministry of information and communication technology, according to a newspaper report. Read Article
Politico – The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes. “If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group. Read Article
