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On the Internet censorship issue, MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar has requested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to withdraw India's proposal to the United Nations for control of the Internet through a 50-member inter-governmental body

BANGALORE, INDIA: Internet censorship has become a buzzword these days. As the Centre is seemingly hell-bent on imposing stringent restrictions on the Internet, activist groups of different hues and orientations have been up in arms, protesting such moves tooth and nail.

On May 17, there was the case of blocking file-sharing websites in the country, which came up at the Madras High Court that witnessed an order against some torrent websites being passed. The move led to many Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including Airtel and Reliance, blocking their own set of websites.

It was later revoked following protests and an appeal from ISPs to unblock those restricted sites. Anonymous, a hacktivist group, took to the streets across several cities in India and brought about awareness among citizens on the burning issue.

In this background, Rajya Sabha MP from Bangalore Urban district, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on May 15 with regards to India's proposal to the United Nations (UN) for control of the Internet through a 50-member, inter-governmental body.

Also read: How users unblock torrent sites

The proposal, in his words, is an assault on our citizens' freedom of speech. "India's statement in the UN in October 2011 regarding government control through a United Nations Committee on Internet Related Policies (CIRP) over the Internet is inherently against the open, democratic, inclusive and unhindered growth of the Internet," states Chandrasekhar.

"It harms India's reputation, has been submitted without a prior public consultation with multi-stakeholder groups, and therefore needs to be withdrawn."

Later, in a letter dated June 1, 2012 addressed to the PM again, the MP expresses his regret over India not withdrawing its proposal at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) in Geneva.

Chandrasekhar's argument is that India's refusal to withdraw "yielded the worst possible results, wherein countries with dubious record on human rights and democracy have publicly aligned their positions to that of India during the review of the implementation of the outcome of WSIS in Geneva".

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Internet curbs: Rajeev Chandrasekhar's letter to PM

Published: 7:36PM Monday June 25, 2012 Source: ONE News

The range of films and television programmes on offer at DVD stores could become more limited for Kiwi viewers.

This is because of a funding squeeze at the Censor's office and the fact that more film distributors are choosing not to put their movies up for classification.

A fee of around $1100 to get one movie or DVD a censor's classification is a small fee when it comes to hits like The Avengers.

But for distributors of smaller films and TV shows the fee can be a big barrier.

Jill Macnab of Vendetta Films says the fee means some TV series are not released in New Zealand

"To have to consider that you're going to recoup that from your sales, it often doesn't happen. So we often find that TV series in particular don't get released in New Zealand," Macnab said.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification gets around a third of its $3 million annual budget from private distributors like Vendetta Films, while the rest comes from taxpayers.

Chief Censor Dr Andrew Jack says that funding structure is not working properly and it is vital they find out why, otherwise "New Zealanders might in future see a narrow range of products available for them watch".

Independent Wellington DVD store, Aro Street Video, said it is already aware of hundreds of films that are not publicly released in New Zealand because of high censorship costs.

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Censorship fees shrink range of DVDs at stores

Calcutta News.net Sunday 24th June, 2012

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has criticised the Chinese government's censorship policy as morally wrong and said 1.3 billion people of China have a right to know the reality.

"Totalitarian regimes like China's have for several decades depended far too much on cruelty, so fear and distrust are part of their atmosphere. This is why they try to conceal reality," the Nobel Peace laureate said.

"The 1.3 billion Chinese have a right to know the reality of their situation and they have the ability on that basis to judge right from wrong. For this reason, censorship and restricting people's movements are morally wrong and limit their creativity," he said in an interview with a magazine in Scotland Saturday, according to a post on the Central Tibetan Administration website here.

The Tibetan leader remarked: "This approach is short-sighted and has to change. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao too has spoken about the need for change and even democracy in China."

On the issue of Tibet, he said: "We are conducting a non-violent struggle in the spirit of reconciliation. It is worth supporting, because it must succeed. Our failure will support those who argue that you can only achieve your goals through force and violence."

He said self-immolations by Tibetans was very sad but showed a commitment to non-violence. "However, they are a clear sign of desperation."

The Dalai Lama along with many of his supporters fled Tibet and took refuge in India when Chinese troops moved in and took control of Lhasa in 1959.

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Censorship in China is morally wrong: Dalai Lama

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Censorship in China morally wrong: Dalai Lama

Could be GI Green there on the other side of the planet

There's plenty of it in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as well

For Westerners who enjoy living in democracies, its easy to answer the question of whether or not censorship is desirable. It is not. But in China, which doesnt respect free speech, thats not an especially useful question. A more uncomfortable question would be: Just how different is Chinas censorship from ours?

New data released by Google as part of its Transparency Report shows that government agencies in many Western democracies have asked the company to remove political content that users had posted to its services. Its alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect Western democracies not typically associated with censorship, wrote Google policy analyst Dorothy Chou in a blog post yesterday.

In the second half of last year, for example, US agencies asked Google to remove 6,192 individual pieces of content from its search results, blog posts, or archives of online videos a 718 percent increase from the first half of the year. During the same time period, US law enforcement agencies lodged 187 take-down requests, including one related to a blog post that allegedly defamed a law enforcement official in a personal capacity.

Google received numerous similar requests from Spain, Italy, Australia, Germany, Poland, Canada, and others. It did not comply with most of them, but the company did act in response to 42 percent of removal requests from the US in the second half of 2011.

Google was also at the center of the highest-profile censorship debate related to China. In 2010, much was made of the companys partial withdrawal from the country in response to what it said was a sophisticated cyber attack that targeted the Gmail accounts of dozens of China-connected human rights activists. No sane person would contend that such hacking was justified. But few could feign surprise. Government surveillance of its citizens is an unfortunate fact of life not just in China, but also in other, supposedly free countries. The Bush Administrations warrantless wiretapping program, a huge breach of privacy and human rights conducted with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, is the most obvious example of that.

Supporters of that wiretapping program, carried out as part of that embarrassment to freedom known as the Patriot Act, might protest that it was conducted in the name of stamping out terrorism, and that casting such a wide net monitoring thousands of innocent Americans was justified for the good of the country. The CCP would argue, too, that their surveillance is also for the good of the country. That is particularly true when it comes to the sensitive topic of spreading online rumors.

Just last weekend, it demonstrated how seriously it takes that by arresting two people for spreading rumors that a cloud of pollution over the city of Wuhan was caused by an explosion at a chemical plant that leaked toxic gases. Spreading rumors falls into one of the nine categories of information that the government deems harmful and therefore bans. As we all know, it also has no qualms about blocking specific news sites and thwarting searches for key terms (three of which begin with the letter T).

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Internet Censorship Isn't Just for China