censorship

Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Friday after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

Twitter just announced that it has set up the ability to block content on a country specific basis (e.g., if Germany demanded some content be taken down, Twitter can now just have that content blocked in Germany).

I know some people saw this and got upset about "censorship!" but looking at the details, it actually looks like Twitter is doing a smart thing here.

Two of the largest Internet providers in the Netherlands clashed in court with the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN today.

The ISPs argued that blocking The Pirate Bay would be useless, even dangerous, as it could take down the entire network.

In addition they feel that this type of censorship violates basic human rights such as freedom of expression.

BREIN disputed these concerns and said that the ISPs want to keep The Pirate Bay online because they profit from the site.

Previously confidential documents detailing Universal Music’s meetings with the former UK government over the Digital Economy Act are revealing a whole lot more than the pair intended.

Blacked-out sections now uncovered show that Universal believed that ISPs could spy on their users and hand over information to rightsholders in order for them to sue.

Just as we hear the Chinese government claim credit for cracking down on infringement online, comes the news that there are 41% fewer websites in China than a year earlier.

What distinguishes
Copyright from Censorship?
The profit motive.

Last year the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt filed an appeal in their case with the MPAA. With the appeal isoHunt hopes to overturn a District Court ruling that obligates the site to operate an MPAA-approved censorship filter.

The case is still ongoing and the Appeal Court has now granted Google the opportunity to chime in as well, leading to critical comments from both the MPAA and isoHunt.

Some groups are pushing the social network to police its website

Eben Moglen, renowned free-software attorney, has proposed a new open-source software-based approach to the Internet to avoid censorship, network restrictions, and centralized control.

Ah, the power of censorship. It appears that some other countries may be jealous of Homeland Security getting to seize all those domain names, or the proposed COICA law that would allow even more domain seizures in the US. drew points out that, over in the UK, law enforcement is also asking for official power to force Nominet to shut down domains that it claims were "used by criminals." That seems pretty broad.