web censorship

Just before Christmas the MPAA published a blog post which looked at DNS filtering, why apparently it’s a good thing, and how it won’t break the Internet.

It appears that more and more countries are viewing web censorship as a viable political tool. As the US government considers going down that road by requiring DNS blocking on certain sites over copyright infringement, Sri Lanka has decided to jump into the game as well, blocking five news sites that officials found insulting.

Last week, in response to a High Court judge’s decision to order UK ISP BT to block Usenet indexer Newzbin2, the operators of the site delivered on their promise to neutralize the looming threat.

Following a complaint from the Motion Picture Association, earlier this year a judge at London’s High Court ordered leading UK ISP BT to block subscriber access to Usenet indexing site Newzbin2.

Beijing

There can be little doubt that when it comes to hot tools for dealing with sites allegedly infringing the copyrights of the music and movie industries, site blocking and web filtering is absolutely in fashion this year.

Senator Wyden continues to be one of the few politicians actually concerned about the impact of the government's expansive view towards seizing domain names and stifling speech online.

His latest is to point out that Homeland Security's strategy with these domain seizures appears to be completely in conflict with the State Department's position on internet freedom, as laid out by Hillary Clinton.

Last Thursday the public prosecutor of the Sardinian capital Cagliari ordered a nationwide blackout of BTjunkie.

Italian ISPs have to block both the IP addresses of the site and its domain name as the BitTorrent site is an alleged hotbed for online piracy.

The concept of government-backed web censorship is usually associated with nations where human rights and freedom of speech are routinely curtailed.

But if Canberra's plans for a mandatory Internet filter go ahead, Australia may soon become the first Western democracy to join the ranks of Iran, China and a handful of other nations where .......