Censorship

White House on SOPA: Protecting Intellectual Property Must Not Threaten Open, Innovative Internet

The White House today released a response to SOPA and PIPA petitions and the legislative approaches to combat online piracy. The response is prepared by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff.

US House Committee Announces Oversight Hearing on DNS and Search Engine Blocking

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa today announced that the Full Committee will hold a hearing on January 18 to examine the potential impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on security, jobs and the Internet community. The Committee will hear testimony from cybersecurity experts and others from the technology community.

Over 80 Internet Inventors and Engineers Send Open Letter to US Congress

A group of 83 Internet inventors and prominent engineers sent an open letter today to the members of the United States Congress, stating their opposition to the SOPA and PIPA Internet blacklist bills that are under consideration in the House and Senate respectively.

ISOC Joins Opposition to Stop Online Piracy Act

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 Internet Society (ISOC).

ISOC Issues Statement in Response to Increasing Internet Access Restrictions by Governments

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.

Internet Three Strikes Laws Violate International Law, Says UN Report

Michael Geist reporting in his blog: "The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has released an important new report that examines freedom of expression on the Internet. The report is very critical of rules such as graduated response/three strikes, arguing that such laws may violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Moreover, the report expresses concerns with notice-and-takedown systems, noting that it is subject to abuse by both governments and private actors."

China Sets Up Internet Oversight Body, Has Authority to Investigate and Punish

Caixin reports that the State Council, China's cabinet, has set up an office to regulate internet activity, according to an announcement released on May 4 via an official website. The new department, called the State Internet Information Office, will supervise online content management and process approvals of businesses involved in online news reporting, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua. The new agency is reported to have the authority to investigate and punish online content-providers if necessary.

Governments Increasingly Trying to Control the Internet, Warns New U.S. Report

The U.S. Sate Department annual human rights report released on Friday has expressed concerns over the increasing trend among governments spending more time, money and attention in efforts to control their citizens access to the Internet and other communication means. To aid people seeking to speak out, the U.S. government is helping to finance circumvention technologies to avoid firewalls, reports the Associated Press. "To deal with governments hacking computers or intimidating dissenters, the U.S. government has trained 5,000 people from around the world on how to leave less of a trace on the Internet."

Google to Let Users Block Sites Based on Domain Names

In pursuit of its efforts to improve Google search results, the company on Thursday announced the release of a new feature that enables users to block specific search results based on domain names.

No Government Veto Over Future Top-Level Domain Names

Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET News: "The Obama administration has failed in its bid to allow it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a proposal before ICANN that raised questions about balancing national sovereignty with the venerable Internet tradition of free expression. A group of nations rejected that part of the U.S. proposal last week, concluding instead that governments can offer nonbinding 'advice' about controversial suffixes such as .gay but will not receive actual veto power."

Internet Service Restored in Egypt

Renesys reports that Internet services in Egypt have been restored. According to the report, Egyptian Internet providers returned to the Internet at 09:29:31 UTC (11:29am Cairo time). "Websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt, MCDR, and the US Embassy in Cairo, are once again reachable. All major Egyptian ISPs appear to have readvertised routes to their domestic customer networks in the global routing table."

Egyptian Government Shuts Down Most Internet and Cell Services

The Egyptian government has disabled most Internet and cell phone services in an apparent effort to disrupt the anti-government protests gripping the country. Egypt's four primary Internet providers all stopped moving data early Friday, effectively cutting off Egyptians from the outside world and each other.

Affidavit Shows Errors in Homeland Security Domain Seizures

TechDirt reviewed the affidavit filed by the United States Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division when seizing various hip-hop and bittorrent-related domain names recently, and discovered some very deep misunderstandings of how content appears on web sites.

Report on Governments Involved in Edited DNS Responses

Earl Zmijewski reporting in Renesys Blog: "There's been sudden interest recently in a Chinese route hijacking incident that occurred way back in April, brought about by a new report to the US Congress that highlighted the event. A second Chinese event, also in the report, has received almost no attention despite being much more interesting (technically, anyway). A Chinese DNS censorship incident occurred just one month earlier, in March..."

BlackBerry Service to be Suspended in UAE from October 11

Imran Ahmed Shah writes: Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) announced on Sunday to ban Blackberry Services, this ban will take effect on October 11. This ban will affect hundreds of thousands of BlackBerry users who access Internet, e-mail and messaging services on their mobile handsets.