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Web Censorship on the Increase
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 15, 2007 02:57 PM
from the xxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxxxx dept.
from the xxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxxxx dept.
mid-devonian writes "Close on the heels of the temporary blocking of YouTube by a Turkish judge, a group of academics has published research showing that Web censorship is on the increase worldwide. As many as two dozen countries are blocking content using a variety of techniques. Distressingly, the most censor-heavy countries (which includes China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan) seem to be passing on their technologically sophisticated techniques to other areas of the world. 'New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China's block on Wikipedia or Pakistan's ban on Google's blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as 'keyword filtering', which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words.'"
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Your Rights Online: Turkey Censors YouTube 482 comments
FM Reader writes "After a controversial mock-up video reportedly submitted by a Greek member about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, Turkish courts ordered the national ISPs to ban the online video service, YouTube. YouTube hostnames are currently redirected at the DNS level to a page that announces the court order."
[+]
Politics: Turkish Assembly Votes For Censoring of Web Sites 247 comments
unity100 writes "CNN has some news about a recent development in Turkey where the Turkish assembly, totally out of line with Turkey's commitment to EU membership, has voted to have sites that 'insult to the founder of modern Turkey' censored from entire Turkish population. This, just about a month after the decision to censor YouTube was reached by the Turkish courts. 'On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish state -- a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in Turkey.'"
[+]
Politics: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 545 comments
Vexorian writes "Is there direct or indirect censorship in the media towards delicate but important topics? Project censored lists 25 stories that did not seem to get the attention they deserved. Whether intentionally or not, for the most part the media skipped over these important topics. From the article: 'Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. More recently referred to as network neutrality, the issue has become a tug of war with cable companies on the one hand and consumers and Internet service providers on the other. Yet despite important legislative proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout 2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for occasional coverage on CNBC's Kudlow & Kramer, mainstream television remains hands-off to this day'."
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IT: Users Rage Against China's 'Great Firewall' 277 comments
slugo writes with a CNN article about young professionals increasingly aware of the small part of the internet they're allowed to play in. Intelligent and internet-savvy, these users are frustrated by China's overactive concern for internet health. "Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent ... Yang's fury erupted a few days ago when he found he could not browse his friend's holiday snaps on Flickr.com, due to access restrictions by censors after images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre were posted on the photo-sharing Web site. "Once you've complained all you can to your friends, what more can you do? What else is there but anger and disillusionment?" Yang said after venting his anger with friends at a hot-pot restaurant in Beijing. The blocking of Flickr is the latest casualty of China's ongoing battle to control its sprawling Internet. Wikipedia and a raft of other popular Web sites, discussion boards and blogs have already fallen victim to the country's censors."
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uh oh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:uh oh (Score:4, Insightful)
I appreciate your rejection of all governments as self feeding power machines, but even en masse anarchists will not help the ills of society. Largely because anarchists are not very organized, but also because government is a necessary evil. Necessary if for nothing else to free us from more oppressive governments. So I ask you as your fellow countryman, to get personally involved in politics. No revolution was won by apathy. (pun only partially intended)
From Common Sense http://www.bartleby.com/133/1.html [bartleby.com]
Parent
XXXX XXXX! (Score:4, Funny)
xxxx xxxx Xxxxxxxx!
xxx... xxx!
XX XXX XXX XXXX XXXXX!!!!!!X!X!X!XXX
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
,
And they're in it with the Saudis, too. Check out what happens when you paste in Arabic text:
See?!?!? It all just disappears!
Re: (Score:2)
you can't stop me (Score:4, Insightful)
As the FCC has found out, people will just make up new words, that are worse than the old words. Like "Blumpkin".
Re:you can't stop me (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Frag off (Score:2)
Whereas... (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to the web, Mr. Cheney!
Democracy, Freedom and Naked Babes (Score:3, Funny)
Just try and search for them, I dare you!
Re: (Score:2)
government (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:government (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes you think that the people of other countries define freedom in the same terms as the Shashdot Geek? Not all forms of censorship are driven from the top down.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It's necessary. (Score:3, Funny)
In Solviet Russia... (Score:2, Funny)
This is good news (Score:5, Funny)
At this time in history, people all over the world are waking up to the damage that capitalism and "Democracy" have brought to the world. America and Europe and their nineteenth-century ideas of "rights" and "freedom" have brought little else but war, genocide, terrorism, environmental devastation, immoral depravity, exploitation, and chaos.
Small wonder that a recent Beijing Star poll shows that People's Republic of China is the most respected nation on earth. We move forward together harmoniously into twenty-first century, the century of Communism.
Re: (Score:2)
On subject: By blocking themselves off to educational parts of the internet these countries only make themselves more backwards. Web 2.0 has taught us that collaboration creates innovation and advances everywhere, in every walk of life.
The Bible says that God confounded language because man working together could achieve anything. It's interesting to see backwards nations removing themselves from a global community like this. Lets see how
Hmm. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Censorship on Slashdot? Nah! I mean I'm here at work reading away and...
[NO CARRIER]
Gee... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gee... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which UN? The one that continually turns a blind eye to human rights violations until their complicity shows up in the news? The one that can't do anything without the US' say-so? I fail to see how that would be useful.
Parent
This is unsurprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Not somebody else's problem (Score:5, Informative)
Web censorship is not something that only happens halfway around the world in countries like Uzkbekistan and Burma. If you're from the UK, meet Cleanfeed [wikipedia.org], a soon-to-be compulsory system for blocking "illegal" content. Only a select group of secretive internet wizards [wikipedia.org] know how it works, and a circle of elders living deep in the mountains [wikipedia.org] are in charge of deciding exactly what is and isn't "illegal content". Not everybody runs it just yet, but its effects are already being felt [wikipedia.org].
Morocco as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, the government here is also known to block blogs and such that are critical of the king, as well as other sites that may be considered "unfriendly" to Morocco. However, in my surfing I have not come across any sites that have been blocked, but then again, I am mostly looking for news and information about other parts of the world, so I guess the sites I frequent aren't worth blocking.
Re: (Score:2)
I know that bush doesn't like criticism, but has he really gone so far as to block blogs?
oh wait, you mean your king.
nevermind.
well, yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
Should we be surprised here? I'm not.
Proud to be an American (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Proud to be an American (Score:5, Funny)
And when they aren't looking, all their kids try to get inside us, sometimes when we don't want it, but we let it happen anyway 'cause it feels so good.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well if you hadn't grabbed me by my ear & embarrased me in front of Tammy when I was 13, you'ld have grandkids by now !
Saturday Night Live Syndrome (Score:3, Interesting)
The report seems to cover 13 countries, none of which are exactly bastions of civil liberties. Only Thailand and Turkey are countries that even have a medium record of civil rights. I think the fact that people in Uzbekistan can't access sites critical of their government is both one of the smaller concerns of both the internet, and of the civil rights of Uzbekistan's citizens.
If more countries that actually had long-standing traditions of free speech, or emerging traditions of free speech, were suffering censorship, that might be a story. But as it is, this hardly seems like dramatic news.
Should have seen it coming (Score:2)
Phase 2: Internet is letting Jews do their Jew things more. Must stop this! How we do that? Oh? Wawawewa! Thank you, China!
need to add Russia to the list... (duh...) (Score:2)
Thu Mar 15 2007 11:37:07 ET
President Vladimir Putin has decreed the creation of a new super-agency to regulate media and the Internet, sparking fears among Russian journalists of a bid to extend tight publishing controls to the relatively free Web.
Putin signed a decree to create one entity that will license broadcasters, newspapers and Web sites and oversee their editorial content.
Raf Shakirov, who was dismissed as editor of the Izvestiya daily after critical
Don't forget, the US has increased censorship (Score:2)
I understand why other countries ... (Score:2)
Is your site blocked? (Score:2)
Missing out a major player (Score:2)
Holy crap (Score:3, Funny)
So what? (Score:2)
The answer is simple. End-to-end encryption of _everything_.
One wonders how the Chinese government would respond to that.
All the better for non-censored parts of the world (Score:2)
It's all the better for those of us who (still) have uncensored access to the Net. People who are kept ignorant can't compete with us effectively.
Actually, I had an interesting case of this some year
What quote fits best here... (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, information wants to be free!
Fact of life (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter whether we think we believe in Freedom and all that, we all know that there has to be limits to what can be said. It is generally accepted that 'Freedom of Speech' doea not allow us to perpetrate crimes on the net - such as soliciting child pornography or teaching how to fly passenger planes into tall buildings, just to mention a few. The question is where should the limit go - should we allow hardcore porn on websites that target children? No?
A very big factor in what one thinks is suitable is culture - have you ever seen those adverts for HSBC (an international bank)? They are all about how some things are different in different countries (and how important local knowledge is); like eg. that showing your bare feet may be fine in USA or Australia, but is considered extremely rude in Thailand. What I am saying here is: You and I don't necessarily know what is an absolute no-no in other countries, and we should not be too hasty in condemning what other countries choose is not acceptable on the Net. Filtering in China is after all not denying Americans access to things they feel are OK.
On the other hand, I fully understand and respect that there are certain things that should never be censored - but I don't think freedom of speech as a fundamental right is something you can use as an excuse for not being able to show a bit of cultural sensitivity. One of the main reasons that freedom of speech is important is that democracy doesn't work without it - people must have the right to know all there is to know about the decision they make when they vote; it is not primarily there to ensure that everybody can pour all kinds of tripe out in the public space.
Re: (Score:2)