Robert Scoble, a popular tech blogger and Facebook user, recently found that a comment he wanted to post on the social networking site seemed to be censored. Scoble tried to comment on a post by someone he didn’t know personally. Instead of seeing the comment below the original post, he received a message informing him that his comment could not be posted as it was “irrelevant or inappropriate”. This seemed surprising as the comment was related to the original post and Scoble claims it was in no way unfit for publication.

Facebook comment censorship or bruised egos?

Facebook’s error message was misinterpreted by Scoble to imply that the social network had taken upon itself the task of analysing and censoring comments. In spite of this being quite contrary to Facebook’s stated policies, Scoble couldn’t perceive that his comments could ever be perceived as spam, so he automatically assumed that Facebook was censoring his text.

It is known that users have the right to inform Facebook about inappropriate messages and comments by flagging them. Facebook then takes the necessary action to block such posts. If it is found that a particular user’s messages are repeatedly inappropriate, that user can be blocked from the site altogether. However, this particular post did not fall into that category.

On enquiry it was found that it was not so much the blocking of the comment, but the wording of the message that created confusion. Facebook has clarified that the comment was blocked due to some features in their algorithm, which is used to block spammers. They are in the process of trying to find out what exactly in the controversial comment caused the spam blocker to get triggered.

The official statement from Facebook on this issue is, “To protect the millions of people who connect and share on Facebook every day, we have automated systems that work in the background to maintain a trusted environment and protect our users from bad actors who often use links to spread spam and malware. These systems are so effective that most people who use Facebook will never encounter spam. They’re not perfect, though, and in rare instances they make mistakes. This comment was mistakenly blocked as spammy, and we have already started to make adjustments to our classifier. We look forward to learning from rare cases such as these to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future.”

A document in this regard has been leaked to Gawker by oDesk, a company to which some of this business is outsourced by Facebook. The document shows that there are fairly strict guidelines about what is permissible and what is not, although these guidelines can also be quite confusing.

Facebook abuse standard violations document leaked to Gawker Media

It has been found that gory images such as those showing deep wounds or crushed limbs are allowed. Of course, these images of crushed limbs or such should not include a view of any internal organs. On the other hand, pictures showing nipples, including of breast feeding mothers are not allowed.

Any form of sexual activity is also banned even if the sexual parts are covered. In contrast, foreplay even between same sex individuals is allowed, though Facebook has historically displayed a degree of bias against gay and lesbian themed images.

There is some confusion with regards to material regarding drugs. It is alright to show a picture of a person using marijuana but it is not acceptable to show a drunk or unconscious person.

Guns are not mentioned in this document. While Facebook doesn’t allow advertisers to promote firearms or weapons, neither the content policy document nor the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities provide any indication about whether Facebook condones or disallows promotion of guns and weapons organically by users.

While Facebook monitors some of the sensitive material itself, some of their content moderation work is outsourced. This is understandable, considering the amount of material that is uploaded on Facebook by their 840 million+ users.

On the other hand, how they maintain the privacy of their users when they outsource this material is debatable. Even though Facebook says that they do not part with user information, a disgruntled employee of the outsourcing company, Amine Derkaoui, says he was able to link content to users’ identities.

This only means that users should be careful not to upload material that they would rather not have others see, even for private viewing.

The ruling indicates that the media can still talk about these sites without actually naming them.  In other words, they can use general terms such as ‘social networks’ but not the actual names of the network concerned.

This has been done with a view to prevent the unfair promotion of these sites as it results in indirect advertising of the more popular networks and leaves behind the lesser known sites that are struggling to gain a foothold. It also prevents French broadcasters from promoting American businesses rather than local sites.

A lot of presenters and media personalities are now in the habit of saying “look me up on Facebook/Twitter”. In future, they will only be able to say “look me up on the social networks”.

This ruling has quite expectedly caused a lot of resentment in certain sections of the media as an unnecessary interference on the part of the government. Critics have gone so far as to claim that such interference will stifle future innovation, though it’s not quite clear how.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that this ruling is quite fair as it will indirectly help the other lesser-known social networking sites to gain some sort of foothold in the market.

The ruling, which has been passed in accordance with a law from 1992, is also being seen to be in defiance of the EU ruling on free access to the Internet and in a manner of speaking, a restriction on the freedom of choice.

Christine Kelly, spokeswoman for the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), the government broadcasting authority, reportedly said: “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are other social networks that are struggling for recognition.

However, as of the 1st March, this is set to change in the U.K.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is being empowered to monitor ads and claims made by companies on various internet sites including their own. This monitoring will also encompass unpaid for statements.

Matt Wilson of the ASA says, “The principle that ads have to be legal, decent, honest and truthful is now going to extend to companies’ claims on their own websites.”

If the ASA finds that some claims made by a company are exaggerated or unsupportable, they can now take action against it.

As of now, however, the only action possible is to enforce withdrawal of the statement.

This seems to clearly leave a loophole for manipulation, as it is possible for a company to make some exaggerated claims, to gain a lot of customers and then withdraw the claims on their own before any form of complaint is made to the ASA.

The comments made by customers on a website will not be regulated by the ASA unless the company concerned makes use of positive endorsements to advertise their products.

To encourage companies to stick to ethical claims, the ASA plans to announce the names of the companies which are found to misuse the web. They may also release ads warning consumers about the defaulters.

Last year, when the ASA had no power to act against claims on the websites, they still received 2,500 complaints. In anticipation that this number could now increase greatly, the ASA has already increased their staff strength by 10%.

Google has recently decided to hire a number of new employees in China. They are on the lookout for candidates to work on a variety of roles ranging from technical to marketing departments, with designations ranging from software designer to national marketing manager.

Six months ago, Google had to shut down their search service in mainland China following differences with the Chinese government. Since then, users have been referred to the Hong Kong site. The site, however, is not always available, thus causing Google to lose more market share.

The reported loss suffered varies according to various sources. According to Shanghaidaily.com Google’s market share fell from 23.6% to 12.3% and the search engine’s ranking also fell from the second position to the third. According to Analysys International, Google has retained the second position in the market, but their market share has fallen from 30.9% to 24.2%

In spite of this loss in market share, Google has continued to maintain offices for research and development and for advertising. A spokesperson for the company says, “Our engineering teams in Beijing and Shanghai continue to focus on bringing a steady stream of innovation to our services in China,”

This information, coupled with the fact that Google actually renewed their license to operate Google.cn in July, has given hope that they may be in talks with the Chinese government and may eventually restart their operations in the mainland.

In the meantime, Baidu, the official search engine for China, is way ahead of Google in terms of market share. Advertisers are still keen to do business with Google as it has been found that users who opt for Google are more educated and also richer than most others, and are thus more likely to spend money on the products and services being advertised.

Considering that China already has over 420 million internet users and continues to grow, even 20-30% of the Chinese Internet audience could bring substantial revenues to Google. It is in their best interests to restart their search service in mainland China.

Initially, only the video sharing site YouTube had been banned for alleged insults to the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This ban on YouTube has been in force since May 5 2008. The site had also been previously banned in 2007.

The Telecommunications Presidency issued a statement last Friday, announcing that they were blocking various Google sites. The reason for doing so was stated to be “because of legal reasons”.

Some of the sites have been completely banned while others are very slow to respond. Among them are docs.google.com, translate.google.com, books.google.com, google.com/analytics and tools.google.com.

When users in Turkey attempt to access any of the banned sites they get a message that says, “Access to this site is banned by court order.”

According to local sources, the ban does not punish Google but the local users instead. Many users are now trying to change their DNS settings to bypass the Turkish Internet Service Providers and thus avoid the ban.

A free-press outfit, ‘Reporters Without Boarders’ has said “It is time the Turkish authorities demonstrated their commitment to free expression by putting an end to the censorship that affects thousands of websites in Turkey and by overhauling Law 5651 on the Internet, which allows this sort of mass blocking of sites.”

Google is reported to have told The Register that folk at Mountain View, CA believe that the services have been banned accidentally and they are working with the Turkish government to set matters right.

GoDaddy will stop registering .cn domain names. However, they will continue to manage existing registrations.

Speaking at a U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China, Christine Jones, Executive V.P. of GoDaddy said that the decision was made following the new requirements that the Chinese Government has imposed on the registration of new websites.

The Chinese government has now made it mandatory for newly registered sites to provide a photo ID of the person registering the site along with other details of business registration in China.

Jones later admitted that GoDaddy had also been a target of the same spate of cyber attacks that sparked Google’s battle with China.

Ellen Nakashima and Cecilia Kang at The Washington Post write, “The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of website content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also believes the rules will have a ‘chilling effect’ on new domain registrations.”

Google and GoDaddy might soon be joined by PC manufacturer Dell, who has also suggested that they may move their operations from China to India. Could this increased monetary pressure, arising from the loss of business from China might make the government rethink their stance?

In January this year, Google threatened to cease operations in China, if they were not allowed to provide uncensored search results.

Until yesterday, Google waited in the hope of being able to sort out the issue with the Chinese government, but early on Tuesday, they announced their decision to quit the country.

Google has not, however, completely walked out of the country. Instead, the company has moved search operations out of Beijing into Hong Kong, where they are currently not required to censor search results.

Chinese Reaction: “Are we bothered?”

While this solution allows Google to operate within the laws laid down by the Chinese government, the company seems to have ruffled a lot of feathers. The decision might be widely commended in the Western press, but in China the sentiment is largely negative. Google is not the market leader and their presence will not be missed by the masses.

“We still have Baidu.com. I don’t use much Google to start with. Just go. Who cares?”, says an article on Chinese site, Sohu.com, “We welcome the exit of Google from China. We allowed you to earn so much money, and you still caused all this fuss. If you don’t want to abide by Chinese laws, just go away! Hong Kong is also a part of China, so you shouldn’t stay in Hong Kong either. Google is just a global thug of the US imperialists.”

Future Of Google China

The nearly 600-strong staff of Google.cn is unsure of their future. So far, they have resisted any temptation to move to other companies. Similarly, advertisers on Google have also resisted moving to other sites. This will definitely change if the Chinese government blocks Google altogether.

At present Google has retained a research and sales division, a map service and a free music portal, which is ad supported.

The Chinese government has condemned Google’s move to shut operations in China and have said that Google has violated their earlier commitments to follow the rules of China, as they had promised in 2006 when they first entered the Chinese market.

The government may decide to completely block all Google-related matter from the Internet in order to retaliate against the search provider.

Update: TechCrunch reports that the Chinese government has reacted to Google’s cheeky exit strategy by blocking the search results pages for certain search terms that they normally would have censored.

The New York Times is also reporting that Google’s ties with other Chinese companies are now being strained as the Chinese government is pressuring China Mobile and China Unicom to cancel their ageeements and plans.

The study carried out in the first half of January 2010 found that keywords related to homosexuality had been filtered out in both the Arabic and English versions. When Arabic keywords like ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘porn’ or ‘homosexuality’ were queried, a pop-up message appeared saying, “Your country or region requires a strict Bing Safe Search setting, which filters out results that might return adult content.”

In the English version, use of these keywords is censored for Image searches, but Web searches for gay and lesbian sites are allowed.

Bing searches for ‘gay’ censored in Middle East

Unfortunately, this censorship also blocks out searches related to sex education and gay equality rights.

Bing does not offer users the option to turn off the Safe Search setting in the Middle East.

It was, however, found that if users who are physically present in an Arabic country change their country setting to a version of Bing that is offered in another region, such as North America or Europe, then the censorship does not occur, and users can thus gain access to all the searches that are banned on the Arabic version.

Another way users could initially bypass the censorship was by using another non-filtered keyword along with the filtered keyword. For example, the keyword ‘lesbian’ is filtered but ‘lesbian rights’ was not filtered. This, however, seems to be fixed, and both queries are now being censored.

Surprisingly, OpenNet did not find any censorship relating to other sensitive topics such as politics, terrorism, religious rights or minority issues and gender equality.

As of now, it is unclear whether Microsoft has imposed this censorship upon itself, or is working under instructions from the local authorities.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has made it clear during an interview with CNBC & Bloomberg that Microsoft plans to continue working in China, and they will toe the line as is expected of them.

Following a meeting with President Obama at the White House, he told Bloomberg, “There are cyber attacks on all companies, of any size, from all parts of the world, not just China, at all times, so it’s hard for me to understand how that got tied into the whole notion of doing business in China.” He further said, “China’s the second largest market in the world … [Pulling out of China] is not something we’re thinking about. That’s not part of the way for us to grow.”

Google’s announcement stated that the company had been the direct victim of highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks that had originated in China. The attack not only resulted in the loss of corporate infrastructure and intellectual property, but also targeted various human rights activists.

Microsoft, on the other hand, said that they had not been affected by any such attacks and their email system has not been breached. The ethics of bowing to the Chinese government’s cesnorship requirements don’t seem to bother Microsoft.

Microsoft’s market share in China, which is currently estimated at just 0.25%, may grow if Google quits the Chinese search market.

U.S. Government officials have clearly stated that they support Google’s decision to pull out of China. White House spokesperson, Robert Gibbs said, “Our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.” While the White House has not yet taken any action against China, Philip Crowley of the State Department said that they will issue a formal message to Beijing and ask for an explanation.

If Google is to be believed, freedom of expression on the Internet is at stake here, as is the future of several companies who wish to do business in China, which is the world’s largest Internet market. Though, that is little more than grand-standing on Google’s part.

Human rights organisations in China have asked other companies to follow Google’s lead and withdraw from China if censorship continues.

So far, however, there is no indication that other companies will withdraw, and China seems adamant on maintaining their policies, since they know that the Western world will not be able to withdraw from their country very easily.

Search results that would have previously been censored now show on Google.cn

When Google was first launched in China, in January 2006, the company received a lot of flak for agreeing to censor some of their search results, in keeping with China’s political policies. However, they felt at that time, that it would be better to provide at least some services in China, rather than none at all. Google was also hopeful that the situation would improve gradually.

Following a series of hacker attacks last month, Google found that at least 20 other major corporations from diverse fields had been attacked. They was also found that apart from stealing corporate infrastructure, the hackers tried to illegally access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google has taken a very serious view of these attacks and decided to stop playing ball with the Chinese government by refusing to censor search results in China. They will hold talks with the Chinese government regarding this and will shut down their Chinese operations if necessary.

China is currently the largest Internet market and although Baidu is the largest search engine there, Google has a 35% online advertising market share, worth about £620 million last year. However, according to Goldman Sachs, Google’s China earnings are only about 1% of its total revenue, and hence the decision to shut down is likely to be financially inconsequential in the short run.

It is possible, that these developments may affect Microsoft’s plans to operate in China.

While Google’s decision was appreciated by some, many criticised it as being opportunistic, empty posturing and just another blackmail tactic.

The popular social network was blocked for being ‘illegal’ back in 2006. This time, the reason for blocking it seems to be politically motivated, although no official reason has been provided for it yet.

In fact, when questioned about it, the President said he was unaware of it and would investigate the matter.

The country is facing its 10th Presidential elections, which are due to be held on the 12th of June.

The candidates set to run for office are the current President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Mir-Hossein Mosavi the former speaker of the Majlis, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai, who is a conservative.

The powers that be have reason to believe that their main political opponent Mir-Hossein Mosavi has over 5,200 supporters on Facebook. It is obvious that they do not want him to make use of the network as a way to campaign and motivate his followers against the incumbent President.

In spite of being blocked time and again in Iran, Facebook remains the 10th most popular site in Iran as reported by Radio Free Europe.
A spokesperson of Facebook said, “We are disappointed to learn of reports, that users in Iran may not have access to Facebook, especially at a time when voters are turning to the internet as a source of information about election candidates and their positions. We are investigating these reports.”
“We believe that people around the world should be able to use Facebook to communicate and share information with their friends, family and coworkers. It is always a shame when a country’s cultural and political concerns lead to limits being placed on the opportunity for sharing and expression that the internet provides.”
This kind of restriction on access to information and networking is one of the hazards that the citizens of non-democratic countries have to face, and it only reminds the rest of us, about how lucky we are to be living in a democracy.
Several sources have criticized the blocking.

Now that it has been confirmed that terrorist organisations and other unscrupulous groups are using the latest technologies to communicate and organise their actions, it has become essential for law enforcers to keep track of the various communications methods which these people may employ.

Earlier, plans had been afoot to create a database, on a government run computer system, for all communication taking place via email, phone calls, social networks etc. This plan has, however, been shelved, as it was seen as being too invasive, apart from the cost and other practical difficulties in setting it up.

Communications service providers will be required to store only the contacts people make, and not the content. They will, however, have to record some third-party data or information that is partly based overseas. The proposed system will not record personal information such as the messages or photos which are posted.

Information stored by the communications firms will be accessible by authorities such as the police and MI5 when required. They will require top level authorisation from a public body to do so.

Home Secretary, Ms. Jacqui Smith said to the BBC, “Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime.”

The project is estimated to cost about 2 billion pounds, and while the Liberal Democrats are pleased that there will be no centralised database, many still feel that a careful balance will have to be maintained between investigative powers and the right to privacy. Some even believe that this project is a colossal waste of time and public money.

According to YouTube, the Chinese Government has not contacted them or given any reason for the ban. YouTube, and parent company, Google, are trying to have the service restored.

Without either denying or admitting to the blockage of the site, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “Chinese Government has taken up management of the network according to the laws.”

Blocking of Foreign websites in China is nothing new. The government often blocks any content which they feel is inappropriate or objectionable.

Last year, they had blocked YouTube, for showing videos of the anti-government Tibetan demonstrations in an attempt to prevent the public from knowing about the protests.

The current block, coincides with the release of a video by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, which shows the ill-treatment of the Tibetan protestors by the Chinese authorities during the demonstrations which occurred last year.

Another site, Blip.tv which also posted the said video has also been blocked.

By blocking foreign sites the Chinese government, hopes to be able to lure the Chinese public away from them and towards local websites such as Tudou.com because it is much easier to control the content shown on these sites.

China, is however not the only country to ban YouTube. It has been banned off and on in various countries, such as Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan etc. whenever the governments there disapprove of any content.

On 3^rd February, there were reports about the presence of thousands of sex offenders on the site. Most of these users had earlier been barred from using MySpace. John Cardillo, who runs Internet security firm Sentinel, says they found 8,487 registered sex offenders on Facebook, using only basic search operations, in just a few days.

Facebook has responded by claiming that the figures are grossly exaggerated, but they have disabled 4,679 accounts that correspond to user IDs flagged by Sentinel “as a precaution”.

The very next day, there was news of a sex ring of at least 31 high school students, using fake IDs to lure and blackmail young users into performing sexual acts.

Facebook’s response to this story seems especially disturbing. They claim that less than 1% of their users are affected by impersonation schemes. With a user base of 150 million it could mean that almost 1.5 million could potentially be affected!

Facebook has tried to mend some fences, by making some changes to the rules and regulations to be followed by users, which could prevent the creation of fake accounts and provision of false information on user profiles. One change specifically states, “If you are required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction, you may not use the Facebook service“. It looks as though Facebook is doing what they can to protect their users and their own reputation.

A couple of days later, CNN reported that phishing attacks are thriving on Facebook. Unscrupulous users are gaining access to accounts of other users and then impersonating them to ask their contacts for money.

As a result of these scandals, both Facebook and MySpace, which has faced similar problems, have been reportedly banned from the General Assembly of Computers of Maryland. And this could be just the start of their problems. In the past, Google’s social network, Orkut, almost got banned by the government of Brazil until Google was forced to cooperate and reveal user information to help stop the propogation of child pornography.

The perception that Facebook is a safe social network, due to their strict policies, has started crumbling due to the rapidity of its own growth.

In order to keep pace with their growth, Facebook will have to invest heavily in manpower and technology to keep out undesirable elements of society and safeguard their reputation. However, even with the best of efforts it may never be possible to be 100% secure again.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has proposed that any information submitted by unknown users should first be sent to trustworthy editors for confirmation or ‘Flagged Revisions’ before it is posted for general viewing on the online encyclopedia.

False information could have been prevented from appearing by locking certain articles to prevent edits, or by preventing unknown editors from editing. But, as Cade Metz points out, both these options are contrary to the principles on which Wikipedia is based.

The reason for the debate on the introduction of flagged revisions is that it defeats the whole purpose of Wikipedia, which has so far allowed all users to make changes to articles as they see fit – a principle that has made Wikipedia so popular.

Jimmy Wales says that if flagged revisions had been introduced, such false reports would definitely have been prevented. He claims that during a survey of Wikipedia users, 60% were in favour of this scheme. However he admits that while such an editorial system is already in use for all articles in the German version of Wikipedia, it has resulted in a delay of 3 weeks before publication, which is clearly unacceptable. The delay for the English version should be no more than 1 week and preferably even less as only some of the articles will be edited.

Those in favour of the scheme have applauded the move as being “in the best interests of the project”.

On the other hand, those opposed to this proposal have protested strongly saying that even the false reports had been removed in just 5 minutes, which is very impressive, and hence the flagged revisions that will delay the articles greatly should not be introduced.

DMOZ started off and grew tremendously in popularity on the same principle. Power corrupts, though, and DMOZ was no exception to this and neither will Wikipedia be.

It is very likely that once editors get even greater powers to police and filter content they will start forming cartels and abusing this power to ensure that only the content and opinions that they want will appears on Wikipedia. Reports in the past have already alleged formation of cartels by groups of active editors who almost immediately overwrite changes that go against their thinking.

Users have been asked to suggest other alternatives to this proposal. T3 magazine reports that a vote held in the next fortnight will decide how things will proceed.

Officials say they will ban the publication of blogs related to certain topics that they consider inappropriate.

Although government sources say they are in the process of “regulating” the system, it is obviously a way to censor information.

At the present moment, about 25% of the population of Vietnam, that is over 20 million people use the Internet, and blogs have become an important source for people to learn the latest news, as there is a lot of control and restriction on traditional media.

The guidelines being issued through a government document state that only “clean and wholesome” language should be used and bloggers should follow Vietnamese law. Users are also prohibited from discussing topics of national security, state secrets and any other subject which may incite violence.

Internet Service Providers will be held responsible for the matter published through their websites, although international service providers such as Google and Yahoo! have not yet been approached officially.

If the government gets its way, the service providers will have to report to them every six months and also provide information about bloggers on request.

The director of the state-run Bach Khoa Internet Security Center said they would manage the system through “random checks”. They would be creating a legal corridor, thus enabling the bloggers to decide what is right and wrong, and inform the government when violations are found.

If these suggestions are passed into law, violators would face up to $12,000 in fines or 12 years in jail.

Wikipedia users have not taken very kindly to this action. The page in question, was the cover of an album by the Scorpions, a German heavy metal band. The album had been released way back in 1976.

The decision to block the page was taken after the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) warned the service providers that the picture might be illegal. They said it was a “potentially illegal indecent image of a child” less than 18 years of age.

Users, who have strongly objected to the move, say that the IWF was not meant to censor popular sites such as Wikipedia. They also stated that the photo in question was available in several books and had never been called illegal.

The IWF however, stands by their decision, saying that they had even consulted the police before issuing the warning.

Since ISPs such as BT, AOL and News International are members of the IWF, this picture is now inaccessible to about 95% of internet users in the U.K.

What is annoying a lot of users is that along with the photograph, even the text on that page has been blocked.

David Gerard a volunteer at Wikipedia, said on BBC’s Radio 4 that the picture was still available on the album cover on the band’s box set and also on several other websites.

When asked why the same picture on Amazon had not been blocked, IWF said that it was a “pragmatic” decision, which has led users to believe that the educational site Wikipedia is being bullied, while Amazon, which is a relatively cash rich site has been left alone as they may sue the IWF.

The spokesperson of the IWF, Susan Robertson however defends the action, by saying that they only act on the reports they receive, and the only report received so far had been of Wikipedia. She said that the analyst team and police partners would be consulted, regarding the image on Amazon.

The IWF has been requested by the Wikimedia Foundation to remove Wikipedia from the blacklist, as it is one of the best educational sites and even has better information than many encyclopedias.

Update: The IWF has reversed its decision on Tuesday, after invoking its own appeals procedure. They issued a statement saying “in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.”

A few days ago, the President of the local branch of the youth wing of the main opposition party in Dubrovnik, Mr. Niksa Klecak, was imprisoned for setting up an anti-Sanader forum. He had started a group called “I bet I can find 5,000 people who dislike Sanader”. He was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, under the cover of an old law that had been laid down in the then nation of Yugoslavia.

The police also said that he had put up a photo of Mr. Sanader wearing a Nazi uniform.

A few days later, another man was called in for questioning in the city of Zagreb, for sending out posters through Facebook for an anti-government protest that was being planned. The BBC reports that these posters were received by almost 60,000 members of the opposition.

The Prime Minister has been reported to have said that he deplored the use of Nazi symbols for the purpose of political satire.

However, he asked his Interior Minister, Tomislav Karamarko, to conduct an enquiry along with the Police Director Vladimir Faber, regarding the above mentioned incidents.

He said, “No one should be detained or arrested in Croatia for expressing different views. This is not about this or that government or party, but about freedom.”

The country is being closely watched by members of the European Union for changes in their justice system, as Croatia hopes to be included in the union soon.

Citizen Lab has come across a database, which has thousands of words, that are considered to be politically sensitive. Whenever a Skype message contains any of these words, it gets automatically blocked. The database on which these words are stored also stores the personal information of the users, including their IP address, username and phone number. The database is insecure and hence is publicly available, which is a blatant breach of security for the users.

According to Citizen Lab, there is a surveillance system in place, which selects and stores messages transmitted through online telephones, and text messages. The messages that get deleted may contain some commonly used words such as democracy, Taiwan, Tibet, Voice of America, milk powder, Olympic games, earthquake, Tiananmen and SARS. The database reportedly contains over 1,50,000 messages, and it is possible to identify all the senders and recipients by entering just a username.

The internet service provider Skype, which runs its services in China in a joint venture with the Chinese company TOM online, under the name TOM-Skype, says that they are aware of the filtering of data by the Chinese authorities, but are concerned by reports about the resultant breach of security.

Citizen Lab has enquired whether or not Tom online and Skype are cooperating with the Chinese authorities and if so to what extent.

President of Skype, Josh Silverman has said that it is common knowledge that that Tom Online follows procedures to meet the local laws and regulations, such as monitoring and blocking messages containing certain words, which the Chinese government disapproves of. However according to policy these messages are to be deleted. They will have to investigate to know if the policy has been changed to allow storage of these messages and why.

The use of the Olympic symbol upset the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which registered a complaint under the DMCA law, alleging copyright infringement under intellectual property rights.

What most likely upset the IOC was the transition of the Olympic rings into the handcuffs. While the Olympics have always been a platform to depict equal rights, freedom and sportsmanship, the handcuffs signify just the reverse.
In light of this complaint, YouTube was left with no choice but to remove the offending video from their site.

Supporters of Free Tibet have retaliated by criticising the IOC, stating that this is a case of unjustified censorship, as the video in question is absolutely legal and non-infringing.

The IOC, in reply, has stated that the video was taken down by ‘automated copyright protection software‘, which has been installed to prevent the illegal uploading of Olympic content.

The video, however, has already found its way to other sites, allowing users to continue viewing the clip:

Olympic rings turn into handcuffs. Click image to view the video.

Ensuring that the 2008 Olympic games do not turn into a political fiasco is in the best interests of the IOC and the Chinese government. They have both been working hard to squash any negative publicity around the events, rather unsuccessfully, and often to a ridiculous extent, such as by denying the presence of obviously high levels of pollution near the Olympic venues.

Specifically the parliament will be discussing a bill by which they can then enforce the death penalty for certain ‘crimes’ that up until now, have attracted a lesser sentence. Details on the bill can be found on a site promoting human rights for Iran:

http://www.iranhumanrights.org/main/library.html

Of particular interest to the Iranian law enforcers will be people who set up weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy. Apostasy – the abandonment or forsaking of religious faith, vows or principles – is considered a particularly intolerable crime in the extremely religious state.

Bloggers who commit these so-called crimes will be categorised as enemies of the state (Mohareb) or enemies of God on Earth (Mofsed fe-al-arz).

The official agency says that the bill is intended to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society.” In other words, they will further reduce the levels of tolerance in the country.

At present they ‘only’ arrest bloggers who may dare to challenge the government in any manner.

According to Amnesty International, 317 executions were carried out in Iran for various crimes last year, which is close to double the number of executions in the previous year when they carried out 177 executions.

It so happens that blogging has become a very popular activity among youngsters in Iran, who often try to challenge the old school of thought, which is extremely conservative.

According to The Committee to Protect Bloggers, Iran is one of the worst places to live in for bloggers, as they are constantly harassed, even to the extent of imprisoning bloggers and students.

The idea has been propagated with a view to protect children from the harmful content available on mobile sites, such as cyber crimes, pornography and bullying, to which children would be especially vulnerable.

Council members made an earnest request to parents, schools and all others concerned, to help restict mobile phone usage by young students of elementary and junior high school levels to calls only, as far as possible.

Prime Minister Fukuda agreed with the council’s conclusion that the use of mobiles can lead to various problems. He was reported to also wonder if children really need to possess mobile phones at all. It is estimated that about one-third of children between the ages of 7 and 12 years and 96% of high school students use mobile phones.

Only about 1% of these children have blocks on potentially harmful material, thus exposing them to fraudsters, pedophiles and harmful content. Even protected sites such as the school bulletin boards can be hacked into.

The Government will be considering these proposals carefully, before setting up guidelines in the next few weeks.

Protests erupted in Lhasa the capital of Tibet, against the Chinese government. The Chinese government blocked the popular video-sharing website YouTube to restrict the public from getting information on the protests. Soon after, access to other sites such as Yahoo!, Google News, the Guardian UK, The Times Online and the BBC was either completely cut off or selectively filtered.

The Chinese government usually encourages the use of the Internet for educational and business purposes, but has placed online filters to regularly block access to any foreign material that they feel is inappropriate or objectionable. Chinese websites such as youku.com, tudou.com and 56.com have not published any information about the protests in Tibet as theses sites are expected to enforce self-censorship.

Chinese users trying to access YouTube, just found a blank screen. The government has made no official statement about this move. Interestingly, today YouTube has almost as many videos depicting opposition to the Tibetan protests as it has of protesters against the Chinese government.

Video on YouTube showing protests in Tibet

This is the second time in less than a month that an Eastern government has blocked access to YouTube. In the last week of February, the government of Pakistan had ordered the national ISP to block access to YouTube, leading to the site going down worldwide due to a propogation error.

While the Internet allows individuals from all over the world to share their thoughts and experiences, it also allows more and more people in the world to become aware of the plight of others. Stamping out free speech by banning video sharing sites and newspapers might cocoon the citizens of China temporarily, but in the long run, the Chinese government will end up hurting its own credibility in the West.

coComment allows users to keep track of all the comments and discussions they are participating in or observing on the web. Users get notified when someone adds to their comment stream or discussion. And, if they’re bloggers, the users can display the comments they make elsewhere back on their own blog.

Farhad Divecha: Let’s start with a quick introduction of what coComment is all about…

Matt Colebourne: Certainly, we are one stop shop to track, manage, share,and explore conversations on the Web. We can keep track of all the conversations that an individual is having, and so they can place comments on 50 different sites, local forums and whole bunch of different places. We will follow all those conversation and they will receive updates. We would also allow them to share those conversations with other people via, say their Facebook profile or any other profile for that matter. Currently we have about fourteen and a half million that we are tracking on a thousands of different sites.

Farhad: So could you essentially pick conversations from a number of places and syndicate or show them on any other place that you wanted to?

Matt: Yes, exactly. And all of your conversation will show up on your profile page on coComment.

Farhad: Can users then decide who can see these conversations and who cannot or is everything just public information?

Matt: Users can decide. The new version gives users the opportunity, should they wish to control who can see everything they say.

Farhad: Let’s talk a bit about the social aspect of this. I find this concept quite interesting because one of the problems that I personally face, and in fact quite a few of the people I have spoken to recently also face, is the problem of too much social variety. We all have profiles on a number of different networks and blogs that we visit regularly.

You start talking in one place about one thing; you like the discussion there and you might share it with a few friends by then starting a new conversation elsewhere about the same topic. A little bit down the line you see somebody else talking about the same topic, and you pipe in there. Soon you have participated in a conversation on the same topic in 10 different places with 10 different people, and you start losing track of what you have said. How does coComment’s offering tie in that social aspect and does it rely in some ways on everybody who is conversing with you also using it?

Matt: No not necessarily; because you can bring people in the conversation using a range of third-party tools such as Twitter but I think what makes a great conversation the first thing is the topic should be something that the audience is interested in, and the other thing is that people who participate in the conversation. For example you could visit a cathedral and just have a look around, which isn’t the most exciting thing for me. However, if the tour guide I appointed was absolutely mesmerising and told me the history of the place and really brought it to life, I would have had a different experience and enjoyed the same activity thoroughly.

For us the question was therefore, if that is what makes a good conversation, how do we bring this model online? We are not trying to build a social network. What we are doing is allowing the natural conversational behaviour to operate on the Internet, allowing people to share stories and getting others to participate.

Farhad: In some ways, though, that still leaves one slight problem unsolved … if you have these conversations in 10 different places, and they might be conversations around a really interesting topic and in each of those places you have two or three really interesting participants with whom you want to carry on the conversation, you still have to go to 10 different places to carry on that conversation, or somehow get all of them to converge in one place.

Matt: Bear in mind that all of those conversation are tracked in a single location, so you are only ever 1 click away from each one. What the system will also do is tell you who your neighbours are, and so therefore point out to you that they are commenting on the four different blogs that you’re commenting on, and therefore you should possibly connect to them. What coComment cannot do is take the user away from the site. So while you can’t bring the conversations together, what you can do is view them all in the same location so that it becomes much easier.

Farhad: That’s good because it does take the pain away to a great degree.

Now let’s talk a little bit now about the reason we actually got in touch in the first place. A post that we published in mid-January talked about the Government of India’s plans to regulate blogging and whether that was a good idea. Also, in recent times we have had a lot of different stories come up in the news from countries like Russia, China and Iraq where people do not enjoy freedom of speech as we do. People in these countries use blogs to voice their opinions and use search engines like Google to find information.

In countries like Iraq where people are not typically connected, even now, to the World Wide Web, and the newspapers are controlled by the government or the dictatorships, people use blogs and the Internet in general to voice opinions that otherwise would never be heard.

How is coComment changing that, or making it easier to give a voice to individuals from the various parts of the world where normally one would never have heard their opinions?

Matt: Firstly the biggest one, probably, is access to a larger audience. What could have been a small cry lost in the wilderness could now be heard by millions if what the individual was saying was relevant.

There is also the bigger issue of freedom of speech. What people who oppose that individual’s freedom of speech tend to use as defence is the disruption created and the impact on other individuals. What we’re doing here is saying “let’s turn things round a little bit.” What we say to people is “let us not impinge on what people want to say,” we say this to publishers, brand owners and corporations as well, “because if the users don’t say it here, they will say it somewhere else, and you may never know about it.”

Rather than censoring on behalf of individuals, we let the other individuals react and take the first person down. We should treat bloggers and their visitors as adult. Users then think about the social consequences of saying something and that makes each user choose what they do or not say. This is a far, far better solution than trying to get an employee or officer or a censor board to moderate on behalf of individuals.

I think we support the freedom of the individual to say what they want and we also support the freedom of the reader to choose what to read.

Farhad: Just playing the devil’s advocate here, one could make the argument that a system like yours could also work very well for those who want to stifle freedom of speech.

Instead of having to monitor a hundred thousand different venues where a person or a dissident could go and speak. Now all they need to do is to come to one place and monitor all the conversations. In some ways, this system is making it easier for dictatorships or governmental regimes who do not advocate freedom of speech and try to thwart it.

It becomes so much easier for the government of China or a dictator or a Communist President to pinpoint who the particular dissident is and where they are voicing those opinions and shut them down by whatever means. And what’s worse is that the means these guys use tend to be a lot more drastic than just banning conversations or user profile or giving them lower trust ranks.

What would your response be to that sort of a counter argument, I mean, it is making things easier, isn’t it?

Matt: We did not make things easier. To be honest with you we do not do anything that could not already be done. We just present conversations in a way that benefit the end user. We have not built anything that can be employed by people who want to abuse freedom of speech to do something they cannot already do.

Farhad: Yes absolutely, you are right there. You have not made it possible, but you have made it easier

Matt: Well we have made it slightly, but bear in mind we certainly mitigated the very small potential for misuse because we don’t require the users to tell us who they are, we don’t require them to be registered for three days and can use the guest id for that period, but also we don’t assume any ownership of the content; The content either belongs to the site that hosts it or to the end user, and what that means is that we believe the content is the user’s content and we will protect their rights to it, and to do whatever they need to with it without heed to any kind of oppressive government.

Farhad: Alright, could you tell me a little bit more about the data privacy aspect. You touched upon this yourself when you said that users don’t need to identify themselves on your website but very often most other websites do require users to identify themselves before they start placing comments also most comment systems will very easily track the IP Address etcetera. So is there some way that users could use the coComment system to hide their identities?

Matt: I wouldn’t say they can actively use it to hide because obviously they’re still commenting on the site and not on coComment. They can essentially use something called meta conversations where the person can write a comment on any website anywhere in the world and it looks like it’s on the site, but actually it is hosted on coComment. Now if they do that those conversations can be public or private. If it’s public, any other coCommenter can see it. If it is private, only the people that you select will see it.

Farhad: When people can see your comments, though, would they also be able to run a backwards check or who is and figure out where you are coming from?

Matt: The point is, that they won’t even see the conversation unless you’ve chosen to let them see it. They won’t even know the conversation is there.

Farhad: But you see, at times with people who want to voice their opinions, they want to share their views but not necessarily be found. Someone who is against the Russian Premier right now, or against the Iraqi government, would want everybody else to hear what his thoughts are but still not necessarily be want to be found.

Matt: In which case this would be perfect. They would set up the system to make the comments public to coComment, make that available to a limited audience, such that those people who are interested get notified and then select whom they want to allow to participate.

Farhad: It would be interesting to know how many people are aware of such things in the third world, and can use it. And with knowledge of such a system whether countries like India and China would even be having debates about regulating blogs because they would then realise that they can’t do much, since there is always going to be a way around it.

Matt: Yes, it is quite a neat way around it, because even though the content appears to be sitting on the site, to end users and the search engines, it is actually sitting on our servers and getting sent direct to the end users.

Farhad: I now have just two last questions – what is the future going to hold for coComment and what do you think is the future of blogging, conversations and social networking online? Which way are we headed? Which way are you guys headed? And which way is the entire blogosphere and the Internet headed, in your opinion?

Matt: Our opinion is that the whole aspect of commenting or conversations is going to become bigger, because essentially Web 2.0 is about interaction, people interacting online is becoming ubiquitous – even my 70-year old mother is going onto website and commenting rather than writing letters. This space is absolutely exploding, and rightly so, because what it does is it enables people to find out more information, to say what they think about it and defend there views publicly in front of thousands, in a way that was never possible before. That can only be a good thing.

Farhad: Well, it has been very interesting talking to you. I think the conversation has touched upon some very interesting topics. For us here it does not seem as much of a minefield as it does out in the East right now. We take this freedom for granted. I would have been shocked if the UK government or the US or Canadian government ever even considered regulating blogs or any other form of social networking, but there are people out there who see blogging as the only venue to air their views. I hope that this right is never taken away from them.

Screenshot of a coComment user profile

Micronet, one of the local ISP’s in Pakistan sent out an email to all users, apologising for the ban on YouTube. User jk on the Pakistaniat blog shares the email contents:

Dear Valued Customer:

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (www.pta.gov.pk) has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to www.youtube.com web site for containing blasphemous web content/movies.

The site would remain blocked till further orders from PTA. Meanwhile, Internet users can write to youtube.com to remove the objectionable web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order un-blocking of this web site.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience.

Best Regards

Manager
Technical Assistance Center
Micronet Broadband Pvt. Ltd.
Islamabad

This isn’t the first time Pakistan has tried to block Internet access and messed up while doing so. Back in September 2006 the government of Pakistan blocked access to BlogSpot, the then most popular blog platform for Pakistanis. This was later reported to be just a technical glitch. Then in March 2007 the national ISP, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), ended up blocking access to a large number of popular websites including Google, Microsoft.com, BBC, CNN and Yahoo! in an attempt to follow the Pakistani Supreme Court’s order to filter all websites containing “blasphemous” content.

Religious reasons cited by the government, however, seem to be a ruse to cover-up a political agenda. President Musharraf has been accused of exploiting the religious sentiment of the nation to suppress a number of videos uploaded on YouTube that apparently show evidence of vote rigging in the country’s recent election.

What might have been just another case of censorship in the state that went largely unnoticed outside Pakistan, became an international even when the resulting ban on YouTube got propagated outside Pakistani ISPs, blocking users from accessing the website in most countries across the world.

A post on the Wired Blog explains that Pakistan Telecom complied with the government directive by changing the Border Gateway Protocol entry for YouTube – essentially updating its local internet address book for where YouTube’s section of the internet is. The idea was to direct its internet users to a page that said YouTube was blocked.

Unfortunately, the ISP announced the new route to upstream providers. The upstream providers didn’t verify the new route but accepted it and then passed it along, cascading the bad address around the net, until most everyone using the net on Sunday would have been directed to the Pakistani’s network block. The blunder not only took down YouTube, but also choked the Pakistani ISP, which was quickly deluged with millions of requests for videos.