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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 04 Aug 2009
The doors of the communications revolution were thrown open in Iraq after the American-led invasion in 2003: In rushed a wave of music videos featuring scantily clad Turkish singers, Web sites recruiting suicide bombers, racy Egyptian soap operas, pornography, romance novels, and American and Israeli news and entertainment sites that had long been blocked under Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Now those doors may be shut again, at least partially, as the Iraqi government moves to ban sites deemed harmful to the public, to require Internet cafes to register with the authorities and to press publishers to censor books.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 03 Aug 2009
eBay says it may have to shut down Skype due to a licensing dispute with the founders of the internet telephony service.
The surprise admission puts a cloud over the 40 million active daily users around the world who use Skype for business or to keep in touch with friends and far-flung relatives.
A recent study by market researcher TeleGeography found Skype carried about 8 per cent of all international voice traffic, making it the world’s largest provider of cross-border voice communications.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 03 Aug 2009
"It's only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming '...or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you're allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.'"
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 03 Aug 2009
Senator Conroy has committed to the public release of a report based on the data gleaned from the Federal Government's trial of ISP-level internet filtering.
"The Government has committed to publicly release the trial report prepared by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on the results of the live pilot trial," a spokesman for the Communications Minister told iTnews.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 03 Aug 2009
A security researcher at the Defcon security conference has proposed a way to get news feeds into countries that ban them via email clients. The proposal aims to simplify the process by which Internet users in censored countries can get uncensored news, making it useful in countries such as China and Iran.
Sho Ho, a researcher at the federal government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors program — which sponsors Voice of America and other programs — proposed a project that could circumvent attempts to crack down on censored web sites.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 31 Jul 2009
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Thursday began discussing a measure that would create an unprecedented crackdown against the media.
The law, if passed, would send offenders to prison for up to four years for spreading information that could be interpreted as an incitement to violence or that could affect Venezuelans' mental health.
Attorney General Luisa Ortega detailed the Special Law Against Media Crimes, telling the Assembly that it is a legal instrument "to regulate the conduct of the communications media and those who work in it."
"The communications media cannot be utilized to commit punishable offenses," Ortega said.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 29 Jul 2009
Whether it is religion, environmentalism or nonprofit charities, the Chinese government has always been wary of any organized activity it cannot directly control.
Now there is an addition to the list: simulated organized crime.
On Monday, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice banning online games that feature Mafioso kingpins, marauding street gangs or any sort of hooliganism predisposed to organization.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 29 Jul 2009
AN INTERNET filter installed by the NSW education department gave students access to pornographic material - but blocked educational sites.
One site a Year 10 student opened while searching for a type of bird contained graphic sexual material and was only barred on Monday after inquiries from The Daily Telegraph.
George Cochrane said his school-aged son and daughter, who study by distance education from their farm in Grenfell, were horrified by the sites they could access.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 29 Jul 2009
There are lots of Internet filtering products on the market that enable parents to block certain types of websites such as pornography, hate sites, or sites that promote alcohol or drug use. Most of these products run on PCs or Macs by sitting between the operating system and the browser and checking any requested sites to make sure they're not blocked. The products generally do a good job blocking requests from protected PCs, but most don't work with game consoles, Wi-Fi-equipped iPhones or iPod Touches, or any other device that isn't running the software.
Netgear is about to ship routers designed to simplify the process by allowing parents to block content on any device using the home's wired or wireless network.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 28 Jul 2009
Although not without controversy, the initial testing of the Australian government's Internet filtering system has gone off fairly well, according to reports from some of the participating ISPs. Five of the nine ISPs testing the government's filtering system reported few problems during testing, even though only 15 customers participated at one and a couple of customers at another were unable to access a completely legal porn site. The other four IPs have either yet to comment on the filter's performance or have refused to talk publicly about the results.
