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April 25 2012
“ Last Friday, Diana Cornwell did what many parents of children with disabilities do after a successful experience with a child who has more needs than many: She posted photos of her 7-year-old son, Cole, who has Down Syndrome and is non-verbal, on Facebook. On Friday afternoon, Cole had attended his first Special Olympics event, at a local high school in Davison County, North Carolina. As his mother told WCNC (News Channel 36), he was “all smiles.” ”— Facebook Tells Mother: Remove Photos of Down Syndrome Child | Care2 Causes
March 03 2012
February 21 2012
“— Secret Service Seizes JotForm.com, Nuking Millions of Online Forms (Updated) | Threat Level | Wired.comJotform.com, the domain name of a business providing hosting for online forms, has been seized by the Secret Service, essentially gutting the company’s business.
The Wednesday seizure of JotForm.com, with the assistance of the domain name’s registrar, GoDaddy, disabled about 2 million JotForm.com forms, said Aytekin Tank, the site’s founder. The embeddable forms are hosted by the company and let sites quickly put up contact and sign-up forms online.
GoDaddy told Wired it took the site down at the request of law enforcement.
Tank has informed its “hundreds of thousands of users” in a blog post to alter their form URLs to jotform.net, which should revive a customer’s hosted forms.
“They have disabled the DNS without any prior notice or request,” Tank said of GoDaddy. “They have told us the domain name was suspended as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation.”
(...)
The agency did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment. ”
February 20 2012
“ Le 15 février, le compte officiel et certifié sur Twitter de Nicolas Sarkozy était créé quelques heures avant sa déclaration de candidature. Le 16 février, Twitter censurait le compte @_nicolassarkozy. Ce compte parodique existait depuis septembre 2010. Son caractère parodique était inéquivoque. Il ne violait donc pas les conditions générales d'utilisation de Twitter, qui précisent qu'en cas de compte parodique, la mention précisant le caractère caricatural ou parodique du compte doivent figurer dans l'intitulé de celui-ci. Les archives récupérées de ce compte montrent qu'il respectait absolument cette exigence du contrat Twitter. ”— Twitter Censure 5 Comptes Non Favorables à Nicolas Sarkozy
February 15 2012
“ While the Terrorism Act 2006 authorizes British law enforcement agencies to order certain material to be removed from websites, lawmakers on the Home Affairs Committee stated that “service providers themselves should be more active in monitoring the material they host.” Their report raises serious concerns that political and religious speech will be suppressed. Security expert Peter Neumann who testified before the Committee asked why websites like YouTube and Facebook can’t be as “effective at removing . . . extremist Islamist or extremist right-wing content” as they are at removing sexually explicit content or copyrighted material that violates their own terms of service. ”— Members of UK Parliament Recommend Censoring Online Extremism | Electronic Frontier Foundation
February 03 2012
“ Most of the blogosphere’s attention has been focused on Twitter’s new censorship policies released last week, but Google has quietly unveiled its new policies for its blogging interface, Blogger. The changes reflect a compromise similar to Twitter's, allowing them to target their response to content removal requests by certain states. Over the coming weeks, Google will redirect users to a country-code top-level domain, or “ccTLD”, which corresponds to the user’s current location based upon their IP address. Google also provides users a way to get around these blocks by entering a formatted No Country Redirect or “NCR” URL. ”— This Week in Censorship: Electronic Frontier Foundation
January 31 2012
“— British tourists arrested in America on terror charges over Twitter jokes | Mail OnlineTwo British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe'.
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: 'Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?'
”
January 30 2012
“— Lauren Weinstein's Blog: Twitter's Censorship MuddleUnfortunately, there is virtually no evidence to contradict, and vast evidence to support, the notion that the more "localized" and "frictionless" a censorship system, the more governments will expand their use of such systems over time.
In the Internet context, the problems triggered by providing localized censorship capabilities are easily visible on both sides of the fence.
”
January 29 2012
“ There is a world of difference between a democracy banning speech on “security” grounds when the citizens know what the decision is, who made it, and how to change it, and a dictatorship banning its own “security”-infringing speech by autocratic fiat. ”— Twitter, Democracy, and Internet Freedom | TechCrunch
January 26 2012
“— Twitter caves to global censorship, will block content on country-specific basis as required - Boing BoingA new Twitter policy which goes into effect today allows the social network "to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country," so that Twitter can further expand globally and "enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression."
The Twitter blog post announcing this news was titled "Tweets still must flow." And yes they must, but apparently in some countries, only if they're censored?
”
“— EU countries – including Ireland and Poland – sign ACTA treaty - New Media - New Media | siliconrepublic.com - Ireland's Technology News ServiceEither way, the treaty was signed today by European nations, including Belgium, the UK, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
The signing took place at a ceremony at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The treaty has already been signed by Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the US
”
“ Critics, mistrust and suspicion is one thing, but panic, mumbling and spreading disinformation is another thing. Looking at some finds on the biggest Polish social news platforms, looking at the comments of some readers, I get the impression that the lion's share of the protesters have no idea what ACTA is about. They've made up fantastic stories and are passing them on. The mass is getting crazy “Impale PM”, “Let's burn the Minister on the stake!”, “They will all lock us down in prisons!”. And then also Anonymous, who just make the whole protest look ridiculous in the eyes of mature older voters. ”— Poland: Government Will Sign ACTA Despite Massive Protest - Global Voices Advocacy
“ Avec la loi Hadopi, le projet de loi SOPA/PIPA et la fermeture de Megaupload, les tentatives de censure par des lobbys qui voient leurs cadenas sauter continueront sans aucun doute. Voulons-nous la culture que l’on nous impose depuis si longtemps ou la vraie, celle que l’on découvre et qui nous parle vraiment ? Si l’on veut défendre cette culture non officielle qui se bat pour survivre, il faut se battre contre cette dictature des majors qui cherche à imposer sa vision éculée d’un monde sans Internet par des actions liberticides. ”— [LePlus.Nouvelobs] Megaupload : Quand les majors tentent d'imposer leur propre vision de la culture | La Quadrature du Net
January 20 2012
“— SOPA Getting a Face-Lift: How Evil Will It Be? | Threat Level | Wired.comSenate Major Leader Harry Reid’s (...) (is) a big supporter of the bill and a big recipient of donations from Hollywood, may no longer have the votes needed to overcome Wyden’s hold.
Here are some of the remaining controversial provisions in both bills that could be up for amendment:
*The bills give the Justice Department the power to seek court orders requiring search engines like Google not to render search results for infringing websites. Politco reports that removing that provision in PIPA is being discussed privately.
*The bills also allow the Justice Department to order internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T to block their users from visiting blacklisted sites. That would be unprecedented in the United States, though it’s a common tactic used in countries like Syria, Iran and China to clamp down on political dissent and adult content.
*The SOPA proposal bars the distribution of tools and services designed to get around such blacklists. The ban could arguably cover tools such as VPNs and Tor used by human rights groups, government officials and businesses to protect their communications and evade online spying and filtering.
”
January 19 2012
“ (...) These anti-SOPA protests represent a shift in how politics are played out, and I’m not sure it’s a step forward. To begin with, the biggest actors in the SOPA/PIPA protests today are corporations, which are changing their sites and asking their users to take action. Second, the protests, which are taking place almost entirely on the web, leave out chunks of our society that aren’t connected to the web or don’t rely on those sites, making those people oblivious to the issues involved.— Web blackouts. Is this the new face of American activism? — Tech News and Analysis
(...) Considering that most of the tech companies that are in protest generate their money based on user interaction.I would say in almost all cases they will be aligned with the users perspective. Facebook, google, etc have basically become the collective bargaining group(read:union leaders) of free speech on the internet. They are essentially in the business of facilitating the trading of ideas. ”
January 18 2012
January 06 2012
“— U.S. Government Calls to Censor Twitter Threaten Free Speech | Electronic Frontier FoundationTHE STREISAND EFFECT
If Twitter is not required by law to ban the accounts, then shutting down these groups' accounts--no matter how odious their speech--would be a level of censorship the social networking site has heretofore avoided, and with good reason: As Wired points out, "The loss of an official Twitter account would by no means silence terrorist groups. Instead, it would make them go through the inconvenience of relying on less centrally-accessible sock puppet accounts or fanboys to repost messages and links from other outlets."
”
“ Freedom Against Censorship Thailand posted a blog summarizing the recent history of free-wheeling Internet censorship in the country. The organization analyzed published reports from Thailand’s iLaw Foundation and other sources, including figures showing hundreds of thousands of sites blocked and billions of baht (equivalent to tens millions of US dollars) spent to block the offending pages. FACT claims that on December 28th alone, the MICT blocked 777,286 websites. ”— Thailand Continues Massive Crackdown of Online Speech | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“ More to the point, as the GAO observes, just because the movie and record industries lose a certain amount of money from online piracy in the United States doesn’t mean the economy as a whole suffers by that exact same amount — particularly if the money that would have been spent on those pirated movies and albums just ends up getting spent elsewhere. ”— SOPA: How much does online piracy really cost the economy? - The Washington Post
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