Topic: censorship

In the spirit of shining more light on how government actions could affect users, Google Inc. in early 2010, began periodically sharing number of government requests received in what it calls the "Transparency Report." Today Google released its sixth update to Transparency Report with data about government requests from January to...

Brazil has been on the news lately, and not for good reasons: an electoral judge order the arrest of Google's Director in Brazil for not complying with a court decision that ordered the removal a YouTube video with allegedly defamatory content.

A lot has been said about this, but it seems that many people got it wrong, so let's recap some of the misinterpretations that circulated...

Forbes just published this article that's being shared all over my facebook friends feed.

I left a comment on the article that I've copied and pasted here, as it is just about long enough to qualify as a CircleID post by itself.

Brendan Sasso reporting in the Hill: "Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), issued a statement late Wednesday slamming Russia for passing a bill that would allow the government to blacklist certain websites. He said...

Reply to: Ethiopia Shows That Congress Is Right to Be Worried About UN Control of the Internet post on June 20, 2012

Most international Medias picked the story wrong. And I see it being repeated. It is true that there is some legislative...

The debate about the control of the internet is intensifying, with interesting discussions expected later on this year in Dubai at the WCIT conference organised by the ITU.

Over the last 25 years the industry has moved from being mainly telephony-based to being mainly IP-based, and many say that what is now at stake is the future of the internet as we know it at this point in...

The WCITLeaks site hit pay dirt this past Friday. Someone leaked the 212-page planning document being used by governments to prepare for the December conference. Mr. Dourado summarized: "These proposals show that many ITU member states want to use international agreements to regulate the Internet by crowding out bottom-up institutions, imposing charges for international communication, and...

Afilias Limited, an Ireland-based global provider of registry services for top-level Internet domains, announced that it is the first European company to gain observer status with the Global Network Initiative (GNI). The GNI is a multi-stakeholder initiative comprised of companies and other stakeholders in the global Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry that are...

Britain's High Court — not the highest, but well up the ladder — has officially ordered Internet service providers to block Sweden-based file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. That means top British ISPs must shut off access to the site as soon as possible. ISPs Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media have said they will, while a sixth, BT, has asked for a few...

In a blog post today, Michael Geist writes: "The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules), but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week. Several...

"While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries," says Michael Geist in a blog post today.

Geist writes: "With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style...

The White House today released a response to SOPA and PIPA petitions and the legislative approaches to combat online piracy. The response, prepared by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh...

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the subject of substantial controversy in the United States, and the domain name industry is squarely in the middle of the debate. Many DNS service providers and technology developers in the industry oppose SOPA, Afilias among them. Here's why.

First, let us say that Afilias...

As you read this, please keep in mind that I say it all with a track record nearly 14 years of being proactive and having a zero-tolerance policy toward criminal activity and network abuse...

In a letter released on Monday, the Internet Society Board of Trustees has expressed concern with a number of U.S. legislative proposals that would mandate DNS blocking and filtering by ISPs to protect the interests of copyright holders. "Policies mandating DNS filtering undermine the open architecture of the Internet and raise human rights and freedom of expression concerns," says...

It was fascinating last week to read coverage of congressional hearings around the SOPA bill, or Stop Online Privacy Act. The bill has strong support from the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big pharmaceutical companies. It's opposed by most technology and telecom companies, plus consumer advocate groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and...

The Internet Society (ISOC) has addressed human rights issues related to Internet access stating "[t]he increasing pressure to limit access to the Internet has escalated the sense of urgency in addressing this situation." ISOC, in the announcement, reaffirmed its policy area and its work to bring attention to the impact of Internet freedom on other aspects of human rights. From the...

It has been about six months since I got together with four of my friends from the DNS world and we co-authored a white paper which explains the technical problems with mandated DNS filtering. The legislation we were responding to was S. 968, also called the PROTECT-IP act, which was introduced this year in the U. S. Senate. By all accounts we...

The Council of Europe plans to establish an Internet user charter to guarantee the rights of consumers in an era of increasing government attempts to seize control of the Web, its deputy secretary general said on Tuesday. "We want to emphasize the development, perhaps in the form of a charter on the rights of Internet users so they can claim openness, universality, access and...