Smartphones are part of a revolution that is connecting and giving a voice to people for the first time. Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, warned on Friday that the revolution has a dark side too. Read more »
Should news outlets in China engage in occasional self-censorship for the greater good of reaching readers and projecting influence? Read more »
Google has published new numbers that show how governments around the world are asking to remove more content from services like YouTube than ever before. Read more »
According to the British advertising regulator, Amazon listings are ads. That’s why a listing for a rude greeting card has just resulted in a slap-down for the online retail giant. Read more »
Updated: The popular project-hosting and code-sharing site is apparently caught up in the Great Firewall of China and is unavailable to users there, according to multiple reports. Read more »
The Hopper from Dish Network was a finalist in CNET’s “Best of CES” awards — until parent company CBS told the tech news-and-reviews site that it couldn’t include the company because CBS is suing it. How can readers trust CNET’s journalism after such a decision? Read more at paidContent »
As Twitter becomes an increasingly global media entity — and one that controls its own platform — it is running into demands from governments in countries like France and Germany to censor or block access to certain kinds of speech. How will it respond? Read more at paidContent »
Barnes & Noble won’t carry Amazon titles in its stores. But that doesn’t make Amazon author Tim Ferriss’s upcoming Four-Hour Chef “the most banned book in U.S. history.” Read more at paidContent »
We mapped Google’s transparency data to see which countries want online content removed and why. It turns out that censorship is in the eye of the beholder. Read more »
Google has released its sixth semi-annual report on government information and takedown requests. The trend is not encouraging but there may be a bright spot in that more and more companies are following Google’s attempt to shine light on censorship. Read more »
First Reddit and now Twitter have had to confront issues related to freedom of speech recently, and decide which way they are going to go when it comes to protecting it. As social media becomes more mainstream, such battles will likely become more frequent. Read more »
Google’s video site is already the number-five web service in Turkey. Now it will have to work under the fast-growing country’s laws. But that could mean a big growth opportunity for the service. Read more at paidContent »
Google says it blocked viewers in Egypt and Libya from seeing a controversial video clip on YouTube, after the video was allegedly linked to violence in both of those countries. But should Google be censoring content without even a request from a government or court? Read more »
As Twitter continues to expand its control over the content that runs through its network, even as it forms partnerships with large TV networks like NBC, media entities of all kinds are going to have to ask whether their reliance on the service is wise. Read more »
As Twitter tries to evolve from being a real-time information network into a multibillion-dollar commercial media entity, it is having to face the inherent conflict between those two goals, and many critics see the suspension of journalist Gary Adams’ account as a symptom of that conflict. Read more »
Internet censorship is once again in the news after a federal judge posited a proposed Washington law aiming to prevent child prostitution is likely unconstitutional under the Communications Decency Act. A bigger question is why free speech still reigns online except when copyright is involved. Read more »
NBC asked Twitter to suspend the account of a journalist who has been a prominent critic of its Olympics coverage. Twitter — an NBC partner — complied. Is this censorship or is there some other explanation? Read more »
According to a couple of European researchers, governments that try to limit access to the Internet or social media during civil unrest can expect to see higher overall levels of violence with fewer calm periods than can governments that keep the web open. Read more »
The British government is considering once again whether to apply mandatory filters to block all adult content on the internet. But what’s the point of campaigning for a technological solution when the technology itself doesn’t work properly? Read more »
New data released by Google shows that US government requests to remove search results, YouTube videos and other content has increased by 103 percent. Information from around the world show countries targeting everything from social network profiles to a citizen peeing on a passport. Read more »
After weeks of trying to find out why Orange mobile censored GigaOM for millions of mobile users in Britain, we finally have an answer: it’s because the company’s crude child protection blocks anything that looks like a blog by default. Read more »
As promised, hactivist group Anonymous organized demonstrations on Saturday in 16 cities throughout India, protesting the governments Internet laws and the ISPs’ blocking of popular file-sharing sites. Protesters donned Guy Fawkes masks and amassed at cricket grounds and other outdoor landmarks from Chennai to Delhi. Read more »
British mobile operators have come in for criticism recently for ‘overblocking’ — incorrectly identifying sites as adult content and censoring them from ordinary web users. After GigaOM fell foul of one network’s filters, we asked for answers. And now they’re trickling in. Read more »
British mobile firms are often accused of “overblocking” — censoring the web for their users in the name of child protection. But after GigaOM was blocked, we’ve discovered first hand how dangerous bad filters can be… and how hard it is to get answers from operators. Read more »
Mounting evidence suggests Europe’s mobile operators are becoming increasingly censorious, thanks to haphazard adult content filters that are applied to millions of users. The result? De facto, unregulated censorship that screens out thousands of legitimate websites, including GigaOM. Read more »
The curious case of the missing citizen news site. Where is the new service that China’s Twitter-beating microblog operator launched to give news organisations anonymous tips? Read more at paidContent »
A British parliamentary committee is asking Google, Twitter and Facebook to filter their services and protect individuals’ privacy. But as the web services start to push back, they may have already sealed their own fate. Read more »
Iran is tightening its grip on the Internet before Friday’s parliamentary elections, but activists from Tor and related projects vow to keep up the free flow of information. That’s the best thing the world can do for the country, says the founder of Iran’s Reddit. Read more »
Syria blocked access to live streaming site Bambuser on Thursday, cutting off one of the last windows into the embattled city of Homs, which has been under attack for days. This follows similar efforts by other regimes to suppress citizen coverage of the Arab Spring. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said on Monday that the company is not a media entity, but in most of the ways that matter, it clearly is — and that’s why its recent decision to selectively censor content that flows through its network is so important. Read more »
Why does Twitter get involved in so many interesting lawsuits? In its short life, the company has kicked up legal hornet nests involving eve… Read more at paidContent »
The news that Twitter will be censoring tweets has reinforced for many the fact that our freedoms exist at the mercy of the companies whose networks we are using — and being used by. How much trust should we have in these new information gatekeepers? Read more »
Twitter says it has implemented a new system that will allow it to remove tweets from specific countries if required to do so by law, but that it will try hard not to do this, and will be as transparent as possible if it does. Read more »
More than perhaps anyone else in Silicon Valley, SV Angel’s Ron Conway knows how important free expression on the Internet can be for fledgling technology companies to grow and prosper. So it’s probably not a surprise he’s against the proposed PIPA and SOPA bills. Read more »
The latest attack on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) shows that the tech industry is getting smarter about talking to Washington. Industry groups are now stressing how crucial the Internet is to job creation, a hot topic in the current political climate. Read more »
The Great Firewall of China is preventing local programmers from downloading the latest Node.js programming framework. The problem is that the version number corresponds to the June 4, 1989 government crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators. Read more »
In testimony on new anti-piracy legislation, Google’s policy counsel argued the payment blockade against WikiLeaks was a good example of how copyright infringement could be handled. But that blockade is a disturbing attack on freedom of the press — is that really something Google wants to support? Read more »
Google, IBM, Citi and a handful of other large U.S. technology and banking companies are pushing the U.S. government to take the lead on establishing global treaties that would assure the free flow of information across international borders. If the government is smart, it will listen. Read more »
It seems totalitarian states like Egypt aren’t the only ones struggling with the impact of social media and the desire to muzzle services like Twitter and Facebook. Britain says it’s considering a ban on social media in the wake of the riots in London. Read more »
Nina Paley is upset. Her movie Sita Sings The Blues is blocked for German users on YouTube, making it the latest casualty in an ongoing conflict between the video site and German music rights group Gema. Rights holders deny that they’re to blame for the incident. Read more »
