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Christian groups are complaining of "censorship" after the High Court upheld the Mayor of London's ban on a controversial bus advert suggesting gays can be helped to "move out of homosexuality".

A judge rejected accusations by Core Issues Trust, a Christian charity behind the ad, that Boris Johnson used his position as chairman of Transport for London (TfL) to obtain the ban in order to secure the gay vote and advance his 2012 re-election campaign.

Mrs Justice Lang, sitting at London's High Court, said: "In my view, such unlawfulness has not been established on the evidence."

But she gave the Trust permission to appeal because of the fundamental issues raised by the case over the right to freedom of expression. The ad posters earmarked for the sides of the capital's buses read: "Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get over it!"

The trust said they were in response to a bus poster campaign by gay rights group Stonewall, which carried the message: "Some people are gay. Get over it!"

Mr Johnson condemned the "gay cure" ad as "offensive to gays" and said it could lead to retaliation against the wider Christian community.

The trust, which says its works with gay people seeking to change their lifestyles but rejects the idea of offering a gay cure, argued its right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated by the ban.

The judge ruled the trust had been a victim of unfairness in the way the ban had been introduced in April last year. She said: "TfL's decision-making process fell below the standards to be expected of a responsible public body."

But the Trust's Article 10 rights were outweighed by the rights of gays to respect for their private and family life under article 8(1). The judge said TfL was legally justified in imposing the prohibition in the run-up to the mayoral elections in May 2012 because the ad would cause "grave offence" to gays and "increase the risk of prejudice and homophobic attacks."

At the same time TfL's interests "coincided with those of Mr Johnson, who also wished to avoid causing offence and avoid criticism which might damage his election campaign," and the judge said: "The overlap in interests did not render the decision unlawful."

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UK & World News: ' Censorship ' claims over gay ad ban

The maker of a documentary in support of oil and gas fracking has accused the International Monetary Fund of censorship after it declined to show a key clip from his film at a conference.

Phelim McAleer, whose film FrackNation argues in support of the controversial exploration technique, said the IMF was afraid of offending Russia by letting him show the clip at the conference this week.

The clip suggests that allowing fracking in Eastern European countries such as Poland would ease the region's dependence on imported energy.

It alleges that powerful gas exporter Russia was financing the anti-fracking movement to protect its sales.

"Basically they were censoring my presentation, they were censoring my speech," said McAleer.

"They're trying to force people not to say terrible things because it could offend one of their senior members," he told AFP. "They didn't want to offend Russia."

McAleer had been invited to make a presentation at lunch on Wednesday, the first day of the two day joint IMF-Oxford University conference in Washington on commodity prices.

But he decided not to attend after the IMF said in an email that it could not permit the clip on Russia and Poland "without allowing others to have their say on the matter".

"Since that isn't possible on this occasion, Phelim will have to skip that," it said in the email, viewed by AFP.

The IMF said it welcomed McAleer showing other excerpts from his documentary.

See the article here:
Fracking film maker accuses IMF of censorship

The maker of a documentary in support of oil and gas fracking accused the International Monetary Fund Thursday of censorship after it declined to show a key clip from his film at a conference.

Phelim McAleer, whose film "FrackNation" argues in support of the controversial exploration technique, said the IMF was afraid of offending Russia by letting him show the clip at the conference this week.

The clip suggests that allowing fracking in Eastern European countries such as Poland would ease the region's dependence on imported energy.

It alleges that powerful gas exporter Russia was financing the anti-fracking movement to protect its sales.

"Basically they were censoring my presentation, they were censoring my speech," said McAleer.

"They're trying to force people not to say terrible things because it could offend one of their senior members," he told AFP.

"They didn't want to offend Russia."

McAleer had been invited to make a presentation at lunch on Wednesday, the first day of the two day joint IMF-Oxford University conference in Washington on commodity prices.

But he decided not to attend after the IMF said in an email that it could not permit the clip on Russia and Poland "without allowing others to have their say on the matter."

"Since that isn't possible on this occasion, Phelim will have to skip that," it said in the email, viewed by AFP.

Read more here:
Pro-fracking filmmaker accuses IMF of censorship

In response to a statement from Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), saying it will discontinue its popular RSS service on July 1, one Google Reader fan posted a petition to Change.org, asking the company to reconsider. The petition has since been signed by 136,000 people, and although such a response is unlikely to change the decision of a company whose users number in the billions, a noteworthy pattern has emerged among some of the Change.org users who commented on the petition.

Charlotte Hill, a communications manager for Change.org, said many of the comments came from people living under oppressive regimes, who say shutting down Google Reader is like shutting down their access to the outside world.

Commenter Yaroslav Sedyshev, from Kazakhstan wrote, [In my country] many blog services are banned by government, so google reader [is] one of the easy ways to access banned content. I'm using it every day and i'd be very upset if it's no longer available.

One commenter from China echoed that concern: Google Reader is essential for many Chinese Web users like me to circumvent Internet censorship here. Love the product. Please dont let it go.

Similar comments came from elsewhere in those countries, as well as from commenters in Belarus and Iran.

Hill said Change.org was able to confirm the IP addresses of the commenters. All but one, she said, came from the countries in which the users claimed to reside. Moreover, 75 percent of the petition signatures came from outside the U.S., and 12 percent came from countries that Reporters Without Borders or the OpenNet Initiative have identified as having Internet censorship

Pedram Alvandi, a social media expert and Google Reader user in Iran, told IBTimes that access to most well-known international news sites are blocked in his country, as are social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. But he said Google Readers integration with Gmail makes it possible to access blocked content.

Your website [ibtimes.com] is blocked right now, Alvandi said. I cannot read it or even subscribe to its RSS feed. But because Reader is part of my Gmail, and it is not blocked, I can access that and search your official name [International Business Times] in Google Readers search box. It gives me all your RSS feed to subscribe.

Without Google Reader, Alvandi said he would be forced to seek out an antiproxy website such as Filter Shekan, which would slow down the speed of his already extremely slow Internet. Currently, Iran has the slowest Internet in the region, with 155 mbps, according to Net Index, a provider of broadband testing and Web-based network diagnostic tools.

The companys decision to kill Google Reader may have angered many users, but Alvandi said hes just disappointed. It seems that Google doesnt care about its loyal audiences, he said. Theyre thinking more of Google Pluss success. They already showed that by eliminating the social media features in Reader a while back.

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Google Reader Death May Aid Internet Censorship , Say Oppressed Users Who Rely On The RSS Feed

concealment sends this quote from an article about evading internet censorship with the sneakernet: "Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Saturday told newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that 'nothing is changing' in Cubas ossified political system and that 'the situation of press freedom in my country is calamitous.' But Sanchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives known as memory sticks. The small computer memories, also known as flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access to information. 'Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick,' Sanchez said, 'and it is difficult for the government to intercept them. I can't imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't.'"

Originally posted here:
Cubans Evade Censorship By Exchanging Flash Drives