Censorship is arguably the most irreversible path a publication can travel. We are a semi-forgiving society that understands journalists will get the story wrong from time to time. We know that there are ethical boundaries that must occasionally be crossed. We are forgiving when a publication gets too controversial or stands behind the side of an argument with which we do not agree. When censorship enters the equation, a publication loses everything important to it. Credibility is gone. Unbiased reporting can no longer be expected. Every opinion and fact posted will be seen through the eyes…

To those without the technological expertise to fully understand what this all means, it could seem as a harmless measure by a government body to protect copyright materials. To anyone who knows what deep packet inspections, embedded digital watermarks, and trace-back mechanisms are, this is the most dangerous digital path the world has traveled since the internet was first conceived. The United Nations voted yesterday to support internet eavesdropping. Make absolutely no mistake about it – this is the very clear and unavoidable start of full-blown censorship. It is the beginning of the…

In a recent post on TechCrunch, Twitter was reported to have used their country-to-country blocking powers for the first time. The popular social media platform, at the request of local authorities, acted on a request to deactivate a Neo-Nazi Twitter account. TechCrunch reported that- Twitter users outside Germany can still view content from the @hannoverticker Twitter account of the banned group, but users trying to access it from within Germany will see a message saying the account is being withheld. This country-specific blocking policy was announced by Twitter in January as a compromise…

There’s been a lot of focus, especially in the past year, on internet censorship. From the battle against online piracy to the recent use of Facebook and social media channels to apprehend criminals, many people are stopping to wonder where their privacy ends on the Internet – in my humble opinion, it starts and ends with you. You can hear some of my opinions on the “post” button on your Facebook profile being another symbol of your automatic forfeit of privacy on fishbat’s podcast, Reel Time, but I wanted to take the time to elaborate. Even with the most recent attention, the issue of privacy…

Twitter is one of the hottest internet tools on the planet. At the current time, however, it is also one of the most scrutinized. Once viewed as a medium that empowers the right of free speech, some are now questioning whether it has sold out to the governmental powers that be. The matter at hand here is the increasingly controversial issue of censorship on Twitter. Infringing on free speech? Twitter recently announced a policy that gives it the power to block certain tweets from users in certain countries. Apparently its new stance stems from wanting to distance itself from nations where free speech…

After last week’s high-energy American Censorship Day flew through with amazing responses from websites everywhere, much of the buzz has faded in the last few days. That simply cannot happen. SOPA, the bill that would grant power to the US government to censor websites, punish users, and have unprecedented control over the internet in general, is up for a vote next month. Despite all of the feverish activity, now is not the time to slow down. This is a sprint – the vote is next month – and the money (via campaign contributions) behind those supporting the bill is growing. Congress must be contacted….

Google’s war against torrents is being kept quiet. No announcements. No press releases. You will only find the story in blogs that are carefully watching. In essence, Google is removing keywords from their Suggest and Instant results so that they are no longer recommended when people start typing them. If you continue all the way through on a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google will offer the results. Reluctantly. They won’t help you out at all, even if you type all the way to the “n.” Try typing in “BitTorren” without the last “t” into Google. Apparently, they have no idea what you’re talking about….

For those of you following the Google Vs. China melodrama, you know the internet giant is doing its best to walk a fine line between revolutionizing search in China and getting kicked out. So far, Google’s tactic has been to redirect users from its google.cn page to google.com.hk, effectively providing uncensored search. But now Google’s Internet Content Provider license is up for renewal, and if the license is not renewed then Google’s entire presence in China will disappear. In an attempt to appease the government, Google has slightly modified the way users are sent to Google’s Hong Kong search…

Google takes on the world’s governments today, publishing details about how often countries around the world ask it for user data or instruct it to censor information. The data is available using Google’s newly-introduced Government Requests Tool (illustrated above). Interestingly, Brazil took the top of the list with 3,663 data requests the US took second place with 3,580 and the UK came in third with 1,166 such requests. Sure, we know Google has withdrawn from China in protest against that country’s censorship, but it was unable to publish those figures as they are state secrets. Brazil…

If China and Google were listed as a couple on Facebook, right now they’d have to change their status to ‘It’s Complicated’, as China’s state-run Xinhua news agency expressed an angry and pointed criticism of Google’s behavior. For weeks now, rumors have been swirling that Google is about to pull out of China after it became unhappy with the conduct of the Chinese government, who Google have suggested may have been connected to a hacker attack that temporarily took down the search engine in China….