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Russia's political opposition is active on the Internet, but maybe not for long. A new youth protection law allows the blocking of websites - and that could take critical opposition sites off the web.

There are no photos, just uninspiring legal texts on zapret-info.gov.ru; it's an unspectacular website set up by Roskomnadzor, Russia's Federal Surveillance Service for Mass Media and Communications.

Since November 1, 2012, people can access the state agency's data bank to check which websites Russian authorities have blocked. Critics are describing the data base as a blacklist. For a time, authorities blocked access to a popular site called lurkmore.to, which describes itself as a humoristic encyclopedia of modern culture, folklore and sub-culture. The site, authorities argued, glorifies drug consumption. Following massive protest, the block was cancelled.

The list is supposed to include websites with content harmful to minors, along the lines of new legislation to protect children signed by President Vladimir Putin in summer. The law aims to help ban child pornography, drug-dealing or details on how to commit suicide from the Internet. "We have the right to protect our children," Putin told Russian TV.

A smokescreen?

The new law is controversial: the German parliament has already expressed its concern. A motion, proposed by the coalition parties and supported by the opposition Greens, was passed on Friday (09.11.2012), saying that a blacklist threatens to become "an instrument to limit freedom of expression and impose widespread censorship on the Internet."

The motion called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to demand greater democracy, rule of law and compliance with human rights in Russia when she meets President Putin.

The topic is also likely to be raised when German and Russian business people, lawmakers and civic groups come together for the 12th annual Petersburg Dialogue in Moscow, which starts on Wednesday (14.11.2012). Freedom of information on the Internet is on the agenda there.

Russia's new youth protection law allows for the blocking of websites. Sites set up by the political opposition may also be affected if their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses coincide with those of websites deemed a threat. In July 2012, authorities blocked access for hours to the website of the prominent Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny. The Internet provider said it was because the site had the same IP address as an extremist site.

Backlash

The rest is here:
Concerns over Internet censorship in Russia

We mapped Googles transparency data to see which countries want online content removed and why. It turns out that censorship is in the eye of the beholder.

Google released data today that shows requests for censorship and surveillance are on the rise worldwide. Google keeps track of government requests to remove its content (requests itsometimes abides) and releases data biannually. We mapped those numbers, which include July 2010 through June of this year, to show the main products each government is targeting and the reasons they gave for doing so.

What it shows is that censorship varies greatly across the world some of which stretches the definition of what people usually define as censorship. For example, since the reports began in 2010, the United Kingdom has led the way with 97,891 removal requests, 96,280 of which were for Googles AdWords.

But the majority of the U.K.s removal requests occurred in 2010 at the behest of the U.K. Office of Fair trading, which asked for the removal of fraudulent ads that linked to scams, according to the July-December 2010report. Google removed nearly all of them, more than 93,000 items.

Other nations engage in a much more traditional at least in a Western sense censorship. Thailand, for example, has far fewer government removal requests (431), all of which are directed at YouTube forcriticizingThailands king.The latest numbers show in the last six months Turkey and the United States have led the world in data removal requests.

Whats perhaps most interesting about the data are the reasons Google was asked to take down content. They provide insight into a governments priorities and rationale. While Brazil and Hong Kong arediligentabout copyright requests, they are so for different reasons: Brazil had 11,613 removal requests directed at Picasa Web Albums, Hong Kong directed its 381 at YouTube. Countries across the world cited pornography as a reason for removal, with Turkey as the most aggressive (557).

And while defamation was the leading worldwide excuse for removal requests, the products that caused the defamation varied greatly, from Web Search to Blogger to AdWords. Take a look at each country to see its frequency and reasoning for petitioning Google.

Continued here:
Privacy to porno: What censorship means around the world [map]

Google said Tuesday that government requests that it remove content from its search results and other services rose by 71 percent in the first half of the year.

The owner of the world's largest search engine said there were 1,791 requests in the six months through June, up from 1,048 during the last six months of 2011, according to its Transparency Report. Turkey's government made 501 requests to remove content, up from 45 in the previous period, while the United States followed with 273, up from 187.

Google is under scrutiny from companies and governments around the world over what type of content it shows. Some countries are being more aggressive in seeking content removal from search results and sites such as video-sharing service YouTube. While the company receives many such requests, Google may choose not to comply, according to the report.

"We think it's important to shine a light on how government actions could affect our users," Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst at Google, said in the report. "The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011. But it's spiked in this reporting period."

Shares of the Mountain View company declined about 1 percent to $659.05 Tuesday. The stock had advanced 3.1 percent this year as of Monday's close.

In Turkey, the company received requests to take down content related to alleged criticism of the government, national identity and the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, according to the report. Google also received petitions concerning blogs discussing minority independence and those that disclose details about the private lives of politicians.

Turkey has in the past taken action against Google's YouTube and Internet service providers for such content.

In Germany, Google complied with a court order to remove eight search results that linked to sites allegedly defaming a politician's wife. In France, Google removed search results that allegedly violated the privacy of an individual because of a court order, the report said. Germany made 247 requests to remove content, up from 103, and France made 72, up from 31.

Google also said government surveillance is on the rise, with demands for user data increasing again in the first half of 2012. There were 20,938 requests for such information, up 15 percent from the second half of 2011.

The United States had the most user data requests at nearly 8,000, up 26 percent from the previous period. That was followed by India with 2,319 and Brazil with 1,566.

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Google: Government censorship requests rise

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