Internet censorship

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Iran Cracks Down Ahead of Rally

Internet access slows, foreign media warned on eve of annual event

(Newser) - An annual rally is shaping up as another battle between Iran's government and citizens, with Internet access in Tehran restricted and foreign reporters warned not even to go outside for the next 3 days. Dec. 7 is Students Day, marking the anniversary of the deaths of three student protesters in...

Obama: I Don't Really Do Twitter

But the president wants the Chinese to be able to

(Newser) - If you’re one of Barack Obama’s 2.6 million Twitter followers, you’ve been suckered—the president says he’s never sent a tweet in his life. In a Q&A session in Shanghai, Obama was asked what he thought of China’s restriction of Twitter. “I...

Today's Hot Topic in Syrian Blogosphere: Masturbation

Regime doesn't seem to mind as long as it doesn't challenge authority

(Newser) - Syria’s authoritarian regime has been quick to lock up bloggers who tweak it even slightly, but it seems to have turned the other cheek as a flame war over masturbation has erupted. One blogger’s call for a crackdown on the evidently widespread “secret habit” elicited a push...

Quietly, Censorship Takes Hold in Iraq

(Newser) - When Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, his draconian censorship laws fell with him, and Iraq was flooded with American news, Egyptian soap operas, and Turkish music videos—not to mention pornography and jihadist videos. But now, reports the New York Times, censorship is quietly making a comeback in Iraq,...

Secret 'Batman' Tech Heroes Protect Internet: Prof

(Newser) - The Internet keeps functioning thanks to the efforts of an army of unsung heroes, a Harvard cyberlaw expert told a tech conference yesterday. The professor used as an example Pakistan's attempt last year to take YouTube offline—the site went down across the world, but volunteers from a tech forum...

China Censors Artist Leading Quake Inquiry

Police stake out whistleblower's studio, shut down blog

(Newser) - The Chinese artist who has made investigating the deaths of children in the Sichuan earthquake a personal crusade is facing a government crackdown, reports the CBC. Ai Weiwei's widely read blog has been deleted, and plainclothes police officers are staking out his studio in Beijing. Ai has relaunched his blog...

China Scraps Web Filter Software Mandate—for Now

(Newser) - China is postponing enforcement of a new rule mandating that all new computers be sold with filtering software. The rule was to go into effect tomorrow, but the official Xinhua News Agency said in a brief report today that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had decided to delay...

US, Russia Clash Over Cyber-Security

Countries dueling plans could prompt new arms race

(Newser) - The cold war may be going digital, the New York Times reports, as the US and Russia clash over how to combat attacks in cyberspace. Washington has dismissed Moscow’s call for an international treaty, preferring to promote cross-border cooperation in hunting down hackers. “We really believe it’s...

Anti-Porn Curbs Mask Chinese Crackdown on Dissent

Google blocked as Beijing ramps up Internet controls

(Newser) - The Chinese government ramped up restrictions on Internet use yesterday, sharply curtailing access to medical research on sexual health. It's the latest escalation in what Beijing calls an anti-pornography campaign that will culminate in new filtering software, called the Green Dam, that will be installed on all new computers from...

Facebook, Google Roll Out Persian Updates

Internet companies rush new tools for Iranian protesters

(Newser) - Twitter has taken extraordinary measures to keep its site running during the Iranian election protests, and now other websites are speeding up developments. Today Facebook launched an early version of its site in Persian, relying on 400 volunteers to translate pages into the local language. "We felt it was...

Web Users Worldwide Help Iranians Thwart Censors

Expatriates, Pirate Bay work to get information on protests out of Iran

(Newser) - Iranians are using every trick in the book to get information past the country's tight censorship of the Internet and to the outside world—and the outside world is doing its best to help, CNET reports. Sympathizers have set up a huge number of proxy servers to help disseminate information...

China Orders PC Makers to Bundle Web Filters

Newly required software strengthens Beijing's controls on Internet

(Newser) - Starting next month all computers in China must ship with software to block certain websites, the Wall Street Journal reports. The government says the move is to block "harmful" content such as pornography from young web surfers, but it could also be used to filter politically sensitive material. The...

HuffPo Scrubs Vid of Drunk Israelis' Obama Rants

(Newser) - The Huffington Post censored a video of young people in Israel using using racial slurs to attack President Obama, and Gawker wants to know why. Max Blumenthal, who shot the film, says a HuffPost administrator told him the clip lacked “any real news value.” Notes Blumenthal: “For...

China Reportedly Blocks YouTube
China Reportedly Blocks YouTube
Mar 24, 2009 2:22 PM CDT

China Reportedly Blocks YouTube

Tibet-related videos bring Great Firewall down on video site

(Newser) - YouTube is suddenly inaccessible for most of China, the BBC reports. Chinese censors have reportedly blocked the site after finding videos of soldiers beating Tibetans, including monks. China wouldn’t confirm whether or not the site was blocked, saying only that it “is not afraid of the internet.”...

Cute Animal Video Needles China's Censors

'Grass-mud horse' sounds like something a whole lot dirtier

(Newser) - Two months after it first appeared as a cartoon on a Chinese website, the grass-mud horse is everywhere; videos of the adorable alpaca-like creature have drawn millions of hits, and stuffed animals are for sale. But the grass-mud horse is not a children's cartoon; it's a filthy pun that slipped...

China Censors Obama Speech
 China Censors 
 Obama Speech 
Jan 21, 2009 4:00 PM CST

China Censors Obama Speech

President's inclusion of communism as defeated ideology irks government

(Newser) - Chinese censors clipped parts of Barack Obama’s inaugural address from yesterday’s live telecast, including his message for the world’s despots, the New York Times reports. The streaming audio translation was muted after Obama said “communism” in a sentence about using alliances and enduring conviction to defeat...

Chinese Web Surfers Embrace Facebook Clone

'You have to respect the local user' says Berkeley-educated Facekoo founder

(Newser) - Since its March introduction, Facekoo has drawn 350,000 users and is one of the fastest-expanding social-networking sites in China, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. And, says its Hong Kong-born, Berkeley-educated founder, that’s because it fills a void left by Western sites whose mere translations to Chinese miss all...

China Lashes Out at Search Engines Over Porn

Tries to crackdown on 'vulgar' content

(Newser) - China is accusing Google, local rival Baidu, and other top search engines and Web portals of threatening public morals by linking to porn and other “vulgar” content, the Financial Times reports. Such Web censorship campaigns aren’t uncommon in China, but this is the first time it’s gone...

Facebook Moms Protest Breast Ban

Breast feeding not obscene, angry group declares

(Newser) - A 58,000-strong Facebook group plans to protest the site's ban on breast feeding photos through, er, Facebook. Cyber-organizers are asking users to temporarily swap their profile photos this weekend for breastfeeding pictures banned by the Facebook policy, reports the New York Daily News. The revolt started when the networking...

China's Great Firewall Back Up
 China's Great Firewall Back Up 
Dec 16, 2008 3:43 PM CST

China's Great Firewall Back Up

Censorship, relaxed during Olympics, on rise again as economy slows

(Newser) - China has quietly reinstated the web censorship lifted during its Olympics image cleanup, the New York Times reports today. As in the past, the tightening comes as growing unemployment raises the government’s fears of social unrest. The government defended its right to censor sites that violate Chinese secession laws,...

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