censorship

A United Nations agency has used a summit in Dubai to renew its efforts to gain more control over how the Internet is managed.

The International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency, has circulated draft language, which was leaked today, that would let the organization take what it describes as a more "active" Internet role in the future.

It shows that the ITU would become involved in "Internet-related technical, development and public policy issues" -- a broad phrase that sweeps in hot-button areas including cybersecurity, spam, surveillance, and censorship.

The draft document (PDF) was disclosed the … Read more

A Russian-led coalition has withdrawn a controversial proposal to turn Internet governance over to a United Nations agency, a plan opposed by Western governments during ongoing talks over an international communications treaty.

The proposal, supported by China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others, would have called on the U.N. to help member states seize control of key Internet engineering assets, including domain names, addresses, and numbering. The United States, Canada, France, Sweden, and others opposed the proposal, fearing that it could do grave harm to the current free and open Internet.

The U.N. agency, called the … Read more

Iran has launched a video-sharing site in its latest effort to provide alternative, government-sanctioned Internet services.

Dubbed "Mehr," the Farsi word for affection, the site aims to attract Persian-speaking users and promote Iranian culture, according to the About Us page reviewed by the Agence France-Presse.

"From now on, people can upload their short films on the Web site and access [IRIB] produced material," said Lotfollah Siahkali, deputy chief of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

The Iranian government has been waging a battle against what it calls "inappropriate" content on the Internet. The government announced … Read more

The inner workings of United Nations telecommunications agencies aren't usually headline news. But then again, most U.N. confabs don't grapple with topics as slippery as Internet censorship, taxation, and privacy.

A U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union has kicked off what has become a highly controversial summit this week in Dubai, capping over a year of closed-door negotiations over an international communications treaty that could have a direct impact on the Internet. The summit continues through the end of next week.

It's true, of course, that U.N. meetings often yield more rhetoric than … Read more

A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations.

Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."

The ITU adopted the confidential Y.2770 standard for deep packet … Read more

The Internet is back up in most parts of Syria, which had been experiencing what some say was a state-orchestrated outage presumably designed to hamper rebel forces.

The BBC reported today that the country's capital city of Damascus again had Net access, and Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data, said in a blog post today that it had confirmed a "largely complete restoration of the Syrian Internet."

Renesys and other companies that offer back-end Net services detected a sharp cutoff in traffic to Syria on Thursday. According to Reuters, Syria's minister of information blamed the outage on terrorists, … Read more

Google and Twitter have restarted their Speak2Tweet service to let people disseminate voice messages over Twitter as a way to sidestep Syria's Internet blackout.

The Speak2Tweet service got its start during Egypt's Internet blackout in February 2011 but has been largely dormant since then. Late yesterday, Google announced on Google+ that it's brought the service back online:

In the last day, Internet access has been completely cut off in Syria. Unfortunately we are hearing reports that mobile phones and landlines aren't working properly either. But those who might be lucky enough to have a voice connection … Read more

A Moscow district court has ruled that videos by jailed Russian punk band Pussy Riot are considered "extremist" material and must be blocked by Internet providers in the country, according to news reports.

The unnamed judge today read out the IP addresses of the Web sites hosting the Pussy Riot videos and ordered them to remove the videos, according to the Associated Press. It is not clear whether Google-owned YouTube was on the list.

Government experts labeled the videos a "disguised call to organize mass riots on squares similar to the Occupy Wall Street or the events … Read more

A new proposal would temporarily stop the federal government from pushing through bills and regulations on the Internet's content.

Recent attempts to regulate the Internet -- in the form of SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA -- are all dead in the water after failing in Congress. But the potential of poorly thought-out changes remains a reality.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released a draft of the proposed bill, dubbed the "Internet American Moratorium Act 2012," to Project Madison on Monday. The crowdsourcing platform allows people to read and amend draft bills online, striking through text and adding … Read more