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By Alex Johnston Epoch Times Staff Created: November 1, 2012 Last Updated: November 1, 2012

A woman is using a computer at the Internet caf Time Online in downtown Moscow, Russia, on May 5, 2002. Russian Internet service providers are obliged to block websites with banned material under a law that went into effect on Nov. 1, 2012. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

A law allowing the Russian government to take websites offline went into effect Thursday. It was designed to target websites harmful to childrenbut also targets sites deemed extremist.

Critics accuse the government of creating a tool that could shut down opposition websites and would create a climate of widespread censorship in Russia.

When the bill was proposed in July, Wikipedias Russian language website blacked itself outto protest the measure. It passed in July and was signed by President Vladimir Putin. Court approval is not necessary to block a site.

Press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borderssaid the Kremlin will likely misuse the law.

We are forced to conclude that no political will exists to resolve the laws contradictions and to eliminate those that pose threats to freedom, despite criticism of the law from many quarters, the group said in a statement.

The group said that Russia is looking to redefine the meaning of what treason means and is looking to increase penalties for blasphemy convictions.

Taken as a whole, the latest legislative initiatives in the Duma [Russian Parliament] give all the appearance of a concerted attack on freedom to disseminate information, it said.In each of these bills, imprecise language and vague definitions are far too open to interpretation. We call on members of parliament to revise their proposals in light of the fundamental right to freedom of information.

Some worry that authorities could plant banned material and content on opposition websites, creating a reason to shut down the sites, according to Radio Free Europe.

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Russian Censorship Law Goes Online

BEIJING For most of the last two decades, director Lou Ye has angered Chinese authorities by making movies that touch on sensitive subjects like sex and politics and then by screening them at foreign festivals without official approval. He's had multiple films banned, and was barred for years from even practicing his craft.

His newest work, the dark melodrama "Mystery," looked like a chance for the 47-year-old to come in from the cold. Lou received approval from China's censorship body before screening his movie at the Cannes International Film Festival in May. After the festival, he registered the $2.6 million noirish tale, made with 20% French financial backing, as an official French-Chinese co-production.

But weeks before the mid-October opening of "Mystery" in Beijing, Chinese authorities told Lou to edit two scenes containing sex and violence. They also asked him, without explanation, to cancel the co-production agreement.

PHOTOS: U.S.-China box office comparisons

In China, the world's second-largest and fastest-growing movie market, friction between filmmakers and government regulators is a regular occurrence, yet often, the difficult back-and-forth takes place behind closed doors. This time, Lou took the fight public, posting documents online and blogging for weeks about each interaction and negotiation with authorities. The skirmish raises unsettling questions about Chinese officials' willingness to scuttle business deals and impose new censorship requirements, even after issuing approvals.

"This is the Chinese way. It's not good, but this is the way," Kristina Larsen, the French producer on "Mystery," said in a phone interview from Paris. "Basically in France, no one wants to go into co-productions with China you have this different culture, and all the censorship. It's too complicated."

Over the years, Lou has suffered repeated censorship at home and enjoyed a growing reputation abroad. Officials from China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television banned his first film, "Weekend Lover," for two years. His 2000 movie "Suzhou River" was also banned. "Summer Palace" which chronicled a generation's political awakening and disillusionment amid the pro-democracy protests that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown was submitted to the Cannes festival without government approval in 2006, and afterward Lou was prohibited from filmmaking for five years. He defied the ban to make "Spring Fever," about a doomed gay affair, and the film won best screenplay at Cannes in 2009.

REPORT: Reel China - coverage of the Chinese movie industry

"Mystery" centers on a wife's discovery of her husband's affairs, and touches on some potentially sensitive subjects like the behavior of police. In his postings on Sina Weibo the Twitter of China Lou said officials had asked him to reduce the number of hammer blows in one bludgeoning scene from 13 to 2.

After two weeks of negotiations, Lou was able to declare a victory of sorts: He agreed only to darken the final three seconds of the bludgeoning sequence. And, to voice his displeasure, he said he would remove his name from the credits on the film though it still appears on posters and other promotional materials. The film was scheduled to open in China on Friday.

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Director takes Chinese censorship, business battles public

Posted: Nov. 1, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

Looking back over the past several decades, it's amazing how often collections of words and pictures have rubbed so many people the wrong way.

And just what happened when those collections of words and pictures - you know them as comic books - angered the powers that be can be seen in "Seduction of the Innocent," an exhibition that runs through Nov. 28 at Alternate Reality Comics, 4110 S. Maryland Parkway.

The exhibition is part of the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival, which is, in turn, part of the Vegas Valley Book Festival. Curated by Las Vegas writer/illustrator Pj Perez, the exhibition features reproductions of rare comic book covers, photos and artwork.

That comics would even be thought of as worthy of censoring might surprise readers who aren't followers of the art form. When a previous iteration of the exhibition was mounted a year ago at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Marjorie Barrick Museum, some viewers "were sort of ignorant of" the 80-year history of comic books in America, Perez said.

Last year's showing "served its purpose so well, we decided to bring it back so more people would be exposed to this," he said.

Perez describes the exhibition as a "visual timeline" of key events in the history of comic book censorship since the 1930s. It was then, according to Perez, that comic strips created for newspaper syndication began to be collected into the first true comic books.

Back then, criticism and censorship of comic books were likely to revolve around issues such as vulgar street language, disrespect for authority and stereotypical depictions of ethnic cultures, he said.

By the '40s, the now wildly successful entertainment medium started to become the focus of a backlash that would see comic books blamed for such social problems as juvenile delinquency.

"Obviously, we spend a good amount of time on the mid-'50s," Perez said. "The inspiration for the show's title is, of course, the Fredric Wertham book 'Seduction of the Innocent.' "

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Exhibit Looks At Comic Book Censorship

U.S.-funded programs to beat back online censorship are increasingly finding a ready audience in repressive countries, with more than 1 million people a day using online tools to get past extensive blocking programs and government surveillance.

But the popularity of those initiatives has become a liability.

Activists and nonprofit groups say that their online circumvention tools, funded by the U.S. government, are being overwhelmed by demand and that there is not enough money to expand capacity. The result: online bottlenecks that have made the tools slow and often inaccessible to users in China, Iran and elsewhere, threatening to derail the Internet freedom agenda championed by the Obama administration.

Every time we provide them with additional funding, those bottlenecks are alleviated for a time but again fill to capacity in a short period of time, said Andr Mendes, director of the Office of Technology, Services and Innovation at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which funds some of the initiatives. One could reasonably state that more funding would translate into more traffic and, therefore, more accessibility from behind these firewalls.

The United States spends about $30 million a year on Internet freedom, in effect funding an asymmetric proxy war against governments that spend billions to regulate the flow of information. The programs have been backed by President Obama, who promoted the initiatives at a town-hall-style meeting in Shanghai three years ago.

During his debate last week with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Obama briefly raised the topic of government surveillance in China, accusing the former Bain Capital chief executive of investing in firms that provide surveillance technology to Chinas government.

For his part, Romney has repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for what he calls its failure to stand up to the authoritarian governments in China, Iran and other countries where Internet freedom is curtailed. The two candidates meet Monday for the third and final debate, this one focusing on foreign policy.

The U.S. government funds nonprofit groups and others to develop software that can be downloaded by users in other countries with pervasive censorship. The most widely used tools route Internet traffic through other countries, allowing users to bypass Internet firewalls as well as surveillance.

The task of keeping the Internet free, however, is becoming harder.

Chinas Great Firewall has grown more sophisticated in recent years, with the Communist government employing tens of thousands of monitors to filter content and watch users. Iran, meanwhile, has stepped up its already-substantial censorship efforts amid a mounting economic crisis, instituting new bans on overseas audio and video content and advancing plans for an Iran-only intranet.

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Internet anti-censorship tools are being overwhelmed by demand

London, Nov 1 (ANI)

A new law in Russia that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to remove such websites has finally taken effect in the country.

The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July.

According to the BBC, the authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial.

The authorities have claimed that the goal is to protect minors from websites featuring sexual abuse of children, offering details about how to commit suicide, encouraging users to take drugs and sites that solicit children for pornography.

Human rights groups have, however, said the legislation might increase censorship in the country.

According to the report, they call it another attempt by Putin to exercise control over the population.

"Of course there are websites that should not be accessible to children, but I don't think it will be limited to that," Yuri Vdovin, vice-president of Citizens' Watch, a human rights organisation based in Saint-Petersburg, said..

"The government will start closing other sites - any democracy-oriented sites are at risk of being taken offline. It will be [an attack on] the freedom of speech on the internet," Vdovin added.

--ANI

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Censorship fears loom as Russian law allowing 'Internet blacklisting' takes effect