Archive for the 'International' Category

• 3.21.08 YouTube & Censorship posted in International

  The WSJ has a good article on Youtube and censorship. The article discusses the various countries that have acted to have Youtube blocked for political reasons, or petitioned to have content removed and Youtube’s response of blocking specific content for users in specific countries. While I don’t expect such an article to go into depth [...]

• 3.8.08 Google Removes Streetview of US Army Bases posted in International

  The Register reports that Google removed the streetview component of US army bases from Google Earth. AP reports:
  Citing security risks, the Pentagon banned Google teams from making detailed street-level video maps of U.S. military bases after images of a Texas base ended up on the popular Internet site.

• 3.8.08 US: Airforce Blocks Blogs posted in International, Internet Censorship

  Wired reports that the USAF is blocking any URLs with “blog” in them.
  AFNOC has imposed bans on all sites with “blog” in their URLs, thus cutting off any sites hosted by Blogspot. Other blogs, and sites in general, are blocked based on content reviews performed at the base, command and AFNOC [...]

• 2.27.08 Australia: Filtering in Test Phase posted in Filtering Technology, International

  The Australian government is moving ahead with plans to introduce filtering at the ISP level. They’ll block content that is deemed to be harmful to children.
  ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households.
  To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs.

  The [...]

• 2.27.08 Microsoft: Gates Says Censorship Won’t Work posted in International, News Monitor

  Bill Gates says that in the end, Internet censorship will not work. He suggests that censorship will be overcome by “commercial forces”, which is interesting because on the one hand companies are self-censoring already but some are also pushing for change. For example, Google is trying to have censorship treated as a barrier to trade. [...]