Australia PM backs controversial Web filter

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Hai Linh Truong

AFP | October 12, 2010

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Tuesday renewed her backing for a controversial Internet filter, saying it was driven by a “moral question”.

The proposed filter will block access to material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse, and will be administered by Internet Service Provider companies.

However, web giants like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have slammed the initiative as setting a precedent for censorship, while cyber-activists have hit government websites with a targeted hacking campaign.

“My fundamental outlook is this: it is unlawful for me as an adult to go to a cinema and watch certain sorts of content, it’s unlawful and we believe it to be wrong,” Gillard said in a press club address.

“If we accept that then it seems to me that the moral question is not changed by the medium that the images come through.”

The plan, which has also drawn concern from the US State Department, was put on hold pending a content review in July as national elections loomed.

Angry user groups have launched an online campaign accusing the government of censorship, likening the proposed system to firewalls operating in China and Iran.

Concerns have also been raised about the filter’s impact on Internet speeds and the methods through which restricted content would be determined.

Gillard said how to set up the filter “is more complicated, but the underpinning moral question is, I think, exactly the same”.

A review of what material should be excluded by the filter is expected to take at least 12 months.

Microsoft to offer free software to Russian NGOs: official

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Howard Lifshitz

AFP | September 15, 2010

MOSCOW — Microsoft on Wednesday said it would supply free software to Russian nongovernmental organisations after a media report that the US software giant was aiding Russian police in stifling dissent.

The New York Times said earlier this month that Russian authorities had used a crackdown on pirated Microsoft software as a pretext to confiscate computers and harass non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Lawyers retained by Microsoft backed police during their raids on several occasions, it said.

After the report the company condemned the Russian authorities’ practice of using anti-piracy laws to put pressure on NGOs and said it would ensure that Russian NGOs have free software.

“We are preparing a programme of free software for NGOs and for some media,” a spokeswoman for Microsoft’s Moscow office, Irina Meshkova, told AFP.

“We will announce the list and the selection criteria later, as well as the timescale for this decision to come into force,” she added.

In January, police raided the office of Russian NGO Baikal Environmental Wave, saying that they were searching for pirated Microsoft software, the New York Times reported.

Police confiscated computers in the operation against the campaign group, which opposes the government-authorised reopening of a paper factory on the banks of pristine Lake Baikal in Siberia

On Monday, Microsoft senior vice president Brad Smith said in a blog post that the company would draw up a new software licence for NGOs that would provide them with free, legal software.

“We’re creating in Russia a new NGO Legal Assistance Program focused specifically on helping NGOs document to the authorities that this new software license proves that they have legal software,” he said.

Microsoft estimated last year that it loses around one billion dollars per year from piracy in Russia.

Pakistan, Turkey Target Google, Other Sites

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | The Wandering Angel

By Tom Wright, Marc Champion And Amir Efrati | The Wall Street Journal | June 26, 2010 

A move by Pakistan to begin monitoring for anti-Islamic content on major websites—including those run by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.—is the latest sign that censorship looms as a threat to Internet companies in a number of countries.

The Pakistan announcement on Friday came a day after a communications minister in Turkey, which has blocked thousands of sites including Google’s YouTube, said the video site was “waging a battle against the Turkish Republic” and suggested that the situation could change if Google were to register and pay taxes.

Authorities in Pakistan on Friday said they would start monitoring major Internet search engines, including Google and Microsoft Corp.’s Bing.com, as well as the e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. The move follows an action last month against social-networking site Facebook Inc., which Pakistan blocked for several weeks after it hosted a page in which users could post pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The portrayal of Muhammad is forbidden by Islam, and the ban was lifted when the site removed the page.

A YouTube spokeswoman said it was aware of the actions announced in Pakistan and said it will work to keep its services accessible there. “Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our content policies,” she said.

She added that the company remains “disappointed” about the continuing ban on YouTube in Turkey “against a safe and lawful international service enjoyed by millions of people around the world.”

Regarding Pakistan’s decision, a Microsoft spokeswoman said, “Government decisions to restrict online content should respect the rights of individual users and be adopted through open, transparent and publicly accountable processes.” A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the company “was founded on the principle that access to information can improve people’s lives, and we are disappointed to learn about the monitoring and possible blocking of our sites in Pakistan.” Amazon declined to comment.

Google and other Internet companies have helped some Asian countries, such as India and China, enforce certain standards online by removing material that governments find objectionable or violate local laws. YouTube blocks access to videos in Thailand that might be seen to insult the king—which is against the law in that country—and Nazi imagery that is illegal in some parts of Europe.

Earlier this year Google stopped self-censoring its Internet search results in China after complaining it had been hit with a cyber attack originating from that country. China’s own Internet filters now censor Google’s searches.

A number of countries in the Islamic world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have banned Internet content in the past for being sacrilegious. But those countries have authoritarian governments that closely monitor the Internet and the media. In Pakistan, where Islamists have vied with secular-minded politicians since the country’s creation in 1947, the implementation of such bans is fraught with difficulties.

On Friday it remained unclear how the state-run Pakistan Telecommunication Authority would be able to monitor millions of links on the Internet to ensure blasphemous material wasn’t appearing on sites like Google and Yahoo.

In Turkey, Google has been the most prominent victim of a 2007 law that has resulted in the closure of thousands of websites, putting the government under pressure in recent weeks as newspapers and opposition parties have begun to cry foul over the restrictions being placed on ordinary web users.

In May 2008, a Turkish court shut down access to Google’s YouTube due to material posted on the site that was found to be insulting to the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

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Earlier this year Turkey’s communications ministry extended the ban to other Google sites, a move that appeared to be triggered by a separate tax battle with the U.S. giant. As a result, Turks suddenly lost direct access to GoogleMaps and other sites, as well as to YouTube. However, many ordinary users have been able to circumvent the closures.

The opposition People’s Republican Party, usually a fierce defender of Ataturk’s honor, on Thursday attacked the government in parliament for creating what one parliament member called a “culture of censorship” in the country, including Internet censorship.

Some of Turkey’s top leaders have sought to distance themselves from the Internet closures. President Abdullah Gul earlier this month sent out a public message through his account on micro-blogging site Twitter.com, saying he “cannot approve of Turkey being in the category of countries that bans YouTube [and] prevents access to Google.”
Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com, Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com and Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com

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