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As a followup to my previous posting on the Australian Internet defamation case, this Christian Science Monitor commentary provides a perspective on how the threat of Internet libel litigation by individuals around the world may result in web censorship.
The Kaiser Family Foundation issued a study, See No Evil: How Internet Filters Affect the Search for Online Health Information. The focus of the study was how the choice of the ‘least’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘most’ restrictive web filtering options available through six high profile systems (8e6, CyberPatrol, N2H2, Smartfilter, Symantec and Websense), impacted access to …
President Bush signed into law the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002 (Dec. 4, 2002; 116 Stat. 2766, P.L. 107-317). For more information about this new Internet domain for children, kids.us, please see NeuStar’s (the domain name manager) Proposal for Guidelines and Requirements for the kids.us Second Level Domain.
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School have published a new report on Web censorship: Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China. From the abstract: “The authors are collecting data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks. …
Amnesty International has published a well researched report on the impact of state controls on Internet access to one of world’s fasted growing population of users. The report provides a timeline that documents the imposition of various controls and regulations on Web access since its introduction to the public in 1995, and their impact on …
Data on health issues including abortions and contraception have been removed from government web sites, and complaints are escalating that such actions are motivated by the President’s political agenda. See my previous posting on this topic here, which includes references to Congressional concerns over this specific pattern of censoring health related data.
The Copenhagen press reported that the Chinese government has systematically censorsed access to the Danish search engine, Jubii. This is in no small measure due to the fact this engine provides access to sites banned by the Chinese government, including Amnesty International and the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Note: I was not familiar with Falun …
Citing cybercrime as sufficient cause, the Australian government is planning to create a Hi-Tech Crime Centre whose power will include the ability to block web sites created to facilitate protests.
The Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights indicated their support for the Global Internet Freedom Act via this letter to Reps. Hyde and Lantos. For more details and background about this bill, H.R. 5524, please see my previous postings here, here, and here.
The controversial Child Online Protection Act which specifies the “requirement to restrict access by minors to materials commercially distributed by means of the World Wide Web that are harmful to minors,” is currently under review again by U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. In May 2002, the Supreme Court remanded the case, Ashcroft v. ACLU, …
The Supreme Court will review a number of cases this week, including United States v. American Library Association, No. 02-361, requiring the use of filtering software by all libraries receiving federal funds. For up-to-date information on this case, see the American Library Association web site on CIPA.
The Free Expression Project, founded in 2000, is sustained by grants from a diverse group of backers that include the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. The organization advocates in court, through the publication of reports and surveys, and by the sponsorship of conferences, for an end to restrictions of …
