Voices

China Escalates Crackdown on Internet Amid Scandal

China has stepped up its campaign to clamp down on the Internet, which has emerged as a virtual town square for exchanging information about the Bo Xilai scandal and the nation’s biggest political upheaval in years.

Voices

Facebook, Google to Stand Trial in India

Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are set to begin trial here Tuesday to face charges that they didn’t censor objectionable content from their sites, putting on stark display the legal risks for Internet companies chasing growth in India.

Voices

Eight Questions: Rebecca MacKinnon, “Consent of the Networked”

As Beijing bureau chief for CNN in the late 1990′s, Rebecca MacKinnon witnessed first-hand the arrival of the Internet in China and the Chinese government’s struggle to control a technology some predicted would help bring about the end of Communist Party rule.

Voices

Facing Lawsuit, Google Drops Some Content in India

Google Inc. removed some controversial content from its Indian services to comply with a court order in a civil lawsuit, the latest twist in the legal drama over Web censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

Costolo: Twitter Isn’t Looking to Censor Anyone

Twitter’s chief says the company’s new ability to block tweets for a particular country is about censoring content for fewer people, not more.
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Voices

Twitter Can Censor by Country

Twitter Inc. says it can now make content selectively available to users based on geography, and plans to use that ability to enter countries with “different ideas” about freedom of expression as a human right — reflecting the difficult ethical questions facing Internet companies.

The Full Valenti: Dodd Trades His Olive Branch to Tech for a Howitzer, After SOPA/PIPA Gets Delayed

What would Jack do? (And would it work anymore?)
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Voices

What Goes On When the Net Goes Dark? (Comic)

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.
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Obama Likes the Internet, So He’ll Probably Veto SOPA if It Gets That Far

Will he or won’t he?
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Unprecedented Censorship

A congressional “tech mandate” on search engines to delete a domain name from search results does not result in the website disappearing. Users can and do today find their way to these websites largely without the help of search engines. Relative to the questionable efficacy of this proposed remedy, requiring search engines to delete a domain name begins a worldwide arms race of unprecedented “censorship” of the Web.

– From a letter written by Vint Cerf to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the House Judiciary chairman and author of SOPA, warning of the dangers of the bill