Censorship And Free Press

Fighting Internet Censorship in Australia: Via EFF.org Updates. Our fellow Internet freedom advocates at Electronic Frontiers Australia are gearing up for an important fight in the new year as the Australian government proposes mandatory national Internet filters with a secret blacklist. EFA is looking for volunteers and colleagues — particularly Australians, but they can use help from outside Australia as well — to help take on this critical...  

p2pnet news view P2P | Politics:- Almost exactly a year ago, “Is Australia the latest country to take on the role of corporate copyright cop?” – asked p2pnet, going on: “In the face of determined opposition from Oz ISPs, chairman Rudd’s censorship plans may be far more wide ranging than first suspected. “Kevin Rudd’s Labour government has [...]  

What's that Skippy? A satirical website's been taken down? The Australian company that runs the .com.au domain registry has been accused of abandoning its own procedures to censor a website satirising communications minister Stephen Conroy's ISP filtering regime.…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work  

Jimmy Kimmel is no fan of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the regulatory body in charge of policing the airwaves. Each week he mocks their job by doing a segment called "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship," that takes normal every day language and uses censorship to make it seem lewd or inappropriate. As a result everything from "Sesame Street" to CNN comes out dirty...and hilarious. Last Friday, Kimmel compiled the decade's...  

Novinite.comRussians fear Cyrilic domains will give way to censorshipFudzillaThe government refutes the censorship claims saying they were unfounded and says that these new domains will open Internet doors to a whole class of people ...Russians Wary of Cyrillic Web DomainsNew York TimesNew York Times Reviews Cyrillic IDNsIDNBlog (blog)Russians Not Keen on IDN Top Level DomainDomain Name Wire (blog)all 16 news articles »  

Most tech-savvy Australians are pretty upset about the government’s proposal of mandatory internet filtering. But some anti-censorship groups are more upset than others. Michael Meloni, editor of Somebodythinkofthechildren.com has launched a new website called The Gift Of Censorship, and for every 1000 letters sent to Senator Conroy through the website, they’ll also deliver a bag of coal in a large red sack to the minister. (more…)  

Jytte Klausen, author of the recently published book The Cartoons That Shook the World and the subject of much controversy since the Yale University Press unilaterally decided to excise inclusion of the controversial cartoons of Mohammed central to the book's premise, discusses the incident in the current magazine published by Index on Censorship, a British organization promoting freedom of expression. In her engaging interview, Klausen...  

Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy declared his determination last week to push through mandatory internet censorship of a government-defined blacklist of websites, sparking an online frenzy in blogs and on Twitter. News of the proposed internet censorship propelled the issue to a “trending topic” on Twitter for several hours, under the hashtag #nocleanfeed. Tweets from angry Aussies [...]  

Censorship of Obama questions, cooperation with 'gays' citedWND.comA viral alarm spreading among conservatives that the American Conservative Union is accepting homosexual sponsorship for its annual ...and more »  

I don't know if this will get moved to the Soapbox (I would want my kid sister to see this) but here goes:The Great firewall of Australia has already been used to blatantly suppress dissent:The Inquirer[^]The register[^]I have sent an email to the auDA (ceo@auda.org.au), please do the same if you feel inclined and particularly if you live in Australia.The last line of my email read:"Might I respectfully remind you the government is, in the end...  

What are the electoral consequences of net censorship? Next to none, says Possum Comitatus. The seats of Melbourne and Sydney are the only places it even stands a chance of becoming an issue.  

Internet Censorship Plan Approved In Australia | Stephen Conroy — This is the lead-up to political site blocking. The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users. The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on...  

First they take the extreme forms of expression that 98% of us find repulsive and move to ban these. Then they begin to lump in other forms of expression and information that run counter to their official policies. Soon, all free expression: the good and the extreme are banned or severly limited. Its called guilt by association and its how totalitarian regimes infiltrate so as to gain a foothold. No one of us really believes that the majority...  

It’s clear Lifehacker readers think the plan to make Internet censorship mandatory in Australia in 2010 is a deeply stupid idea. While there may be ways of working around the filter, not having the filter would clearly be a better idea. How can you effectively make your views known? (more…)  

Slashdot – Nov. 15, 2009: At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, “The...