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Recent decisions by technology companies, especially upstream infrastructure technology companies, to drop neo-Nazis as customers have captured public attentionand for good reason. The content being blocked is vile and horrific, there is growing concern about hate groups across the country, and the nation is focused on issues of racism and protest.

But this is a dangerous moment for Internet expression and the power of private platforms that host much of the speech on the Internet. People cheering for companies who have censored content in recent weeks may soon find the same tactic used against causes they love. We must be careful about what we are asking these companies to do and carefully review the processes they use to do it. A look at previous examples that EFF has handled in the past 10+ years can help demonstrate why we are so concerned.

This isnt just a slippery slope fear about potential future harm. Complaints to various kinds of intermediaries have been occurring for over a decade. Its clear that Internet technology companiesespecially those further upstream like domain name registrars are simply not equipped or competent to distinguish between good complaints and bad in the U.S. much less around the world. They also have no strong mechanisms for allowing due process or correcting mistakes. Instead they merely react to where the pressure is greatest or where their business interests lie.

Here are just a few cases EFF has handled or helped from the last decade where complaints went upstream to website hosts and DNS providers, impacting activist groups specifically. And this is not to mention the many times direct user platforms like Facebook and Twitter have censored content from artists, activists, and others.

Youll notice that complainers in these cases are powerful corporations. Thats not a coincidence. Large companies have the time, money, and scary lawyers to pressure intermediaries to do their biddingsomething smaller communities rarely have.

The story gets much more frightening when governments enter the conversation. All of the major technology companies publish transparency reports documenting the many efforts made by governments around the world to require the companies to take down their customers speech.[1]

China ties the domain name system to tracking systems and censorship. Russia-backed groups flag Ukrainian speech, Chinese groups flag Tibetan speech, Israeli groups flag Palestinian speech, just to name a few. Every state has some reason to try to bend the core intermediaries to their agenda, which is why EFF along with a number of international organizations created the Manila Principlesto set out the basic rules for intermediaries to follow when responding to these governmental pressures. Those concerned about the position of the current U.S. government with regard to Black Lives Matter, Antifa groups, and similar left-leaning communities should take note: efforts to urge the current U.S. government to treat them as hate groups have already begun.

Will the Internet remain a place where small, marginalized voices get heard? For every tech CEO now worried about neo-Nazis there are hundreds of decisions made to silence voices that are made outside of public scrutiny with no transparency into decision-making or easy ways to get mistakes corrected. We understand the impulse to cheer any decisions to stand up against horrific speech, but if we embrace upstream intermediary censorship, it may very well come back to haunt us.

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10+ Years of Activists Silenced: Internet Intermediaries' Long History of Censorship - EFF

Kirill Serebrennikov was arrested in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. He was later charged with fraud, Interfax news agency reported, citing Russia's investigative committee.

The committee, which investigates high-profile crimes, said Serebrennikov is accused of embezzling more than $1.2 million of government funds between 2011 and 2014, by taking money allocated for a theatrical project.

The 47-year-old creative director of progressive theater Gogol Center in Moscow has denied wrongdoing.

Serebrennikov faces a hearing on Wednesday, where he will learn whether he will await trial in prison or under house arrest. Supporters plan to gather in protest outside the city center court at midday during that appearance.

Reaction within Russia's cultural community was swift and outraged, with many expressing fears of a clampdown.

Andrey Saveliev, a prominent director and longtime colleague and friend of Serebrennikov, told CNN that people felt Serebrennikov was targeted because of his ''inconvenient and ideologically nonconforming'' work.

"Perhaps, if his art did not cause such a stir every time and did not cause such a stormy reaction, what is happening now would not be interpreted as an act that presumably has political reasons behind it,'' Saveliev said.

Opposition news site Meduza published an open letter in support of the director and condemning what it called a ''fabricated case," comparing his case and specific charges to that of dissidents who were persecuted during Soviet times.

Referring to the estimated 4 million people prosecuted for counter-revolutionary activities under Article 58 of the Soviet penal code, the editorial said: 'We know that the article on fraud is nothing better than the infamous Article 58, it is the same effective and universal tool for punishing people, except no one gets shot.''

One of Russia's most famous actresses, Liya Akhedzhakova, wrote on her social media account that the situation was reminiscent of the dark days of those purges, likening Serebrennikov to theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, victim of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's purges.

Meyerhold was executed in 1940 after his experimental works were deemed anti-Soviet.

Investigative committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said authorities have substantial evidence against Serebrennikov, saying ''his guilt in committing large-scale fraud is confirmed by the testimonies of witnesses, the results of investigative activity, financial documents obtained during the investigation and other evidence.''

Long considered one of Russia's most gifted talents, Serebrennikov is known for his controversial productions and anti-censorship stance.

He was also an outspoken supporter of artistic freedom in Russia even as socially conservative forces gathered strength.

In 2015, he defended a colleague whose opera was canceled and investigated for desecrating religious objects, criticizing conservatives in an open letter.

''Theater is a territory of freedom. If they wish to avoid being annoyed, offended, embarrassed or angry, let them sit in churches,'' Serebrennikov wrote.

His film "The Student," which won an award at the Cannes festival last year, explored the blurring of the lines between religion and state through a portrait of the growing fanaticism of a schoolboy.

Last month the Bolshoi Theatre canceled his ballet about dancer Rudolf Nureyev days before it opened. The legendary institution denied at the time that the reason was the portrayal of Nureyev's gay relationships and battle with AIDS, both controversial subjects in the biography of the Russian cultural icon and contemporary Russia.

On Tuesday, the director of the Bolshoi, Vladimir Urin, said Serebrennikov was a ''great artist'' and ''very gifted and talented.''

In May, Urin was one of a group of cultural figures who signed a letter in support of Serebrennikov, which was then delivered personally to Russian President Vladimir Putin as he was awarding one of them with a state medal.

Serebrennikov was initially questioned in May as a witness in an embezzlement case, according to state news agency Tass.

He was released at the time but two colleagues were remanded in custody. One has reportedly been charged and testified against Serebrennikov.

CNN's Darya Tarasova contributed to this report.

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Russian theater and film director arrested - CNN

Aerial View of Cambridge city centre taken from St. John's College.Andrew ParsonsPA Images/Getty Images

Following criticism from academics, Cambridge University Press has reversed its decision to self-censor a journal distributed in China that referenced topics deemed too sensitive.

The U.K.-based publisher said in a statement Monday that it had "reluctantly" agreed to remove 315 articles from copies of its journal The China Quarterly that were to be distributed in the country, following a "clear order" from the importer, but that it had since decided to reinstate the blocked content, which reportedly included topics such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Cultural Revolution, Tibet and Taiwan.

Cambridge University Press, founded in 1534, is the oldest publishing house in the world, and has for centuries maintained a reputation of scholarly excellence. It's decision to remove the content provoked backlash from academics around the world. In an open letter published on Medium Sunday, Georgetown University professor James Millward called the move a "craven, shameful and destructive concession to the PRCs growing censorship regime ."

Upon backing down, the publisher said the block had been a temporary measure pending discussions with University of Cambridge's academic leadership and a scheduled meeting with the Chinese importer in Beijing.

Read More: China Just Earned Its Worst Ever Score in an Annual Global Press Freedom Survey

"Academic freedom is the overriding principle on which the University of Cambridge is based," Cambridge University Press said in its statement. "Therefore, while this temporary decision was taken in order to protect short-term access in China to the vast majority of the Presss journal articles, the Universitys academic leadership and the Press have agreed to reinstate the blocked content, with immediate effect, so as to uphold the principle of academic freedom on which the Universitys work is founded."

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A Top Publisher Bowed to China's Censors. Then it Bowed to Outraged Academics - TIME

Events | Space | Policy | Research | People | Trend watch | Publishing

Illegal shark haul in the Galapagos A ship patrolling the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador seized roughly 300tonnes of sharks and other fish from a Chinese vessel found inside the park boundaries on 13 August. The haul consisted mostly of sharks and included some hammerheads that are listed as endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Ecuadors environment ministry said on 15August. Authorities detained all 20 crew members of the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, who could face up to 3years in prison if convicted of environmental crimes. It is illegal to catch, trade or transport sharks through the marine reserves waters.

Ecuador Ministry of Environment/EPA

Cosmic rays probed On 16 August, a NASA instrument to examine cosmic rays was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS). The equipment, called CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass investigation), was carried aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule that took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The instrument, which has already flown on several long-duration balloon flights launched from Antarctica, will now be renamed ISS-CREAM. To complete the theme, NASAs cargo also contained real ice cream for the astronauts on board the space station.

Weapons warning More than 100 specialists in artificial intelligence and robotics have signed an open letter asking the United Nations to ban lethal autonomous weapons, such as robots that decide for themselves which targets to attack. Such technology is on the cusp of development and could usher in a third revolution in warfare, says the letter, released on 20 August. It follows an almost identical call in 2015 by a similar group. Last year, the UNs Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons set up a group of experts to discuss lethal autonomous-weapons systems; it will meet in November.

Foundation head Kathy Hudson, a former deputy director of the US National Institutes of Health, will head the People-Centered Research Foundation (PCRF). The 16August announcement also acted as an official launch of the PCRF, a spin-off from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). PCORI is an independent non-profit organization set up by the US government in 2010 to fund clinical research based on analyses of medical-records data from US facilities. Its authorization expires in 2019, but it provided US$25million in seed money for the PCRF. The non-profit foundation will continue to support the 20studies currently under way at PCORI, which draw from the medical records of more than 40million people to compare the effectiveness of various therapies.

Moon challenge Companies vying to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE an international competition to operate the first privately funded rover on the Moon have been given a three-month extension. The new deadline of 31 March 2018 was announced on 16 August. Five teams are competing for the US$20-million grand prize, which requires a robot to land on the Moon, travel 500 metres and beam back high-definition images and video by the deadline. All of the teams have already arranged launch contracts. XPRIZE also announced two milestone prizes that will reward partial success. Teams that complete one orbit around the Moon or enter into a direct descent to the surface will split $1.75million; those that can prove they landed their craft without serious damage will share $3million. If they go on to win the grand or second prizes, this money will be deducted from the final award.

Child clinical trials Companies developing drugs that may be relevant in childhood tumours must now include children in their testing before the treatments can be approved for sale in the United States. On 18August, President Donald Trump signed a bill to reauthorize the US Food and Drug Administration, which contained the provision about child clinical trials. Drugmakers rarely include children in trials, meaning that promising treatments cannot be used in young people with cancer.

Climate committee US President Donald Trumps administration has disbanded a government advisory committee that was intended to help the country prepare for a changing climate. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established the committee in 2015 to help businesses and state and local governments make use of the next national climate assessment, which is due in 2018. The legally mandated report will lay out the latest climate-change science and describe how global warming is likely to affect the United States. The advisory groups charter expired on 20 August, and Trump-administration officials informed members late last week that it would not be renewed.

Rule rollback US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on 15 August repealing environmental rules put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama, to minimize the impacts of climate change on new infrastructure. The order includes measures intended to streamline federal regulations and hasten infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges. But it also includes a controversial provision revoking requirements that the federal government account for flood risks posed by global warming during the planning and review phases of such projects. The order requires federal agencies to make decisions on permits within 90 days, and sets a goal of completing environmental reviews within 2 years.

Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty

Amazon road A highway that would slice through a biodiversity hotspot in the Amazon rainforest got the green light last week. Bolivian President Evo Morales approved the 300-kilometre road, which will cut through Isiboro Scure National Park and Indigenous Territory. The decision removed protections placed on the park in 2011 after thousands marched to defend the area, which is home to 14,000 people, most from indigenous communities. Protests against the highway have continued in recent years (pictured). A 2011 report (see go.nature.com/2wolcby) predicted that construction of the road would lead to a loss of 64% of the parks trees within 15years, because it would open up access to illegal logging.

Oldest ice ever Scientists have recovered 2.7-million-year-old ice the oldest ever found from a core drilled in Antarctica. The ice was extracted from a relatively short core at a depth of less than 150metres in a coastal part of East Antarctica, researchers announced on 15August at a conference in Paris. It exceeds the previous record-holder, drilled in 2004, by almost 2million years. The scientists extracted the latest ancient ice in 2015 in the Allan Hills region, where glacial flow brings deep ice from the continents interior close to the surface. The core might offer clues as to what triggered climate fluctuations throughout the Pleistocene epoch, or Ice Age, which stretched from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago.

Crash-site data Australian science agencies have released information on the possible crash site of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Geoscience Australia, a government research agency, re-examined satellite images taken two weeks after the aeroplane went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014; it found at least 12objects that were probably synthetic. Drift analysis of the objects by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation suggests that they are likely to have originated from a region northeast of the area searched in 2015. The reports were released on 16August to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which coordinated the search until it was suspended in January this year.

Anti-poaching death A prominent wildlife conservationist who worked to stop animal poaching was gunned down in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on 16August. Wayne Lotter was the director and co-founder of the PAMS Foundation, a Tanzania-based non-profit organization that helps African countries with conservation and anti-poaching efforts. Police in the country are investigating the murder.

Cholera is wreaking havoc in war-torn Yemen as sanitation, water and health systems collapse. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that, since April, there have been 500,000suspected cholera cases and about 2,000people have died due to dehydration from vomiting and diarrhoea. An estimated 5,000people are being infected each day. On 14August, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized the urgent need for supplies and health workers in the nation.

Source: WHO/http://go.nature.com/2JTHK6A

Censorship row A UK publisher last week blocked access to some of its articles in China and then swiftly reversed its decision. On 18August, Cambridge University Press (CUP) confirmed that it had blocked access for Chinese readers to 315politically sensitive articles on the website of one of its journals, The China Quarterly, at the request of its Chinese importer. The publisher said that it wanted to avoid its other journals being blocked in China. More than 1,000people many of them academics signed an online petition that threatened to boycott the publisher if it did not refuse the censorship request. On 21August, the CUP said that it would reinstate the articles.

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Oldest ice, censorship row and Yemen's cholera emergency - Nature.com

Mikhail Ivshin/newzulu/NewscomThis week, The Washington Post joins several other large media outlets in giving commentary space to an academic who thinks the First Amendment maybe shouldn't protect so much free speech.

I'll give Jennifer DeltonSkidmore College's "Douglas Family Chair in American culture, history, and literary and interdisciplinary studies"this much: She's not disguising her calls for censorship of conservative opinion by claiming this will achieve some sort of racial enlightenment or equality. She openly describes this censorship as a tool for stopping the spread of political arguments she sees as dangerous.

Her example is the purge of Communist Party members from unions, the civil service, and academia in the middle of the 20th century because they were a threat to the established liberal control of the Democratic Party. The argument was that these Communists did not actually believe in free speech (probably true) and were using it as a shield to protect them while they attempt to undermine democracy.

She sees similar tactics in the alt-right, which Delton says is using speech as a weapon to attack liberal values and colleges:

It is true that higher education has brought much of this on itself through the extreme policing of speech and tolerance of student protesters who shut down speakers with whom they disagree. But that doesn't diminish the extent to which the alt-right and conservatives are using "free speech" to attack and destroy colleges and universities, which have long promoted different variations of the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.

Hilariously, she ends her commentary by saying the process of depriving these bad people of their First Amendment freedoms should not be used to censor "liberal critics" of college or government behavior. Only wrong people should be censored!

The title of this op-ed, by the way, is "When 'free speech' becomes a political weapon." Writers aren't typically responsible for their headlines, but her op-ed does describe speech as a weapon; the title reflects the piece accurately. So it's worth wondering whether Delton even grasps that she wants censorship to be a political weapon. She wants to use the government to shut down speech that undermines the institutions she and many others value. It's almost as though she understands the actual underpinnings of Supreme Court case that brought us the tiresome "fire in a crowded theater" tropea case that revolved around the prosecution of anti-war protestand still supports the ruling.

It's also fascinating in that Delton doesn't seem to want to engage in the idea that academia could actually win a debate on these issues. There is no hint in her story there could be a debate in which the values she holds dear change minds and influence people. Her commentary opens with a starkbut completely falsechoice for college presidents: Either they let conservatives speak and "risk violent counterprotests" or they censor speakers and "confirm" the speech crisis. She sees those as the only two options, as though it's simply not possible to stop violence at protests.

Many of us outside the academic bubble keep reminding folks that if the government has the authority to decide what sort of speech gets censored, it won't be people like Delton calling the shots, and that in all likelihood, it will be the weakest and least influential of our citizens who will be punished.

Now that so many of these commentaries have found homes at major media sites, it's also worth asking: What the bloody hell are these massive news outlets thinking when they run these?

Certainly news outlets should run whatever commentaries they want, and it's beneficial to present a range of different views. Don't take this as a call for media censorship, just for more thoughtful judgment.

We happen to have a president openly at war with the media and who has very little understanding or concern about the First Amendment. When major media outlets give such a high profile to commentaries that call for political censorship, are they not aware that this could blow back on them as well? Is this like media criticism of the Citizens United decision, where newspapers think that they'd be immune to censorship of corporations because the First Amendment has distinct, separate protections for the press?

Delton's justifications for compromising the First Amendment can very easily be adapted to call for censorship of the media as well. The Trump administration is openly flirting with going after media outlets who publish confidential government information. Their argument is that these leaks undermine the government and American democracy. That sounds a lot iike Delton's argument, just with a different target in mind.

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Why Are Media Outlets Giving Commentary Space to Wannabe Censors? - Reason (blog)