Censorship and the Internet are topics that have gone hand in hand since the birth of the World Wide Web more than 20 years ago. Proponents of various levels of censorship often target online pornography with their efforts, and a new report suggests censors may soon get their way in Egypt. According to local news agency Egypt Independent, Egypt’s Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology has taken preliminary steps that could lead to a nationwide ban on internet porn. Minister for Telec...

A new report from Seth Godin of PaidContent claims Apple is rejecting eBooks from its iBooks store that contain links to Amazon. “I just found out that Apple rejecting my new manifesto Stop Stealing Dreams and won’t carry it in their store because inside the manifesto are links to buy the books I mention in the bibliography,” Godin stated. In an email, Apple’s review team told Godin the book was rejected due to “multiple links to Amazon store.” The Cupertino-based company’...

Twitter announced recently that it now has the ability to, and will begin to, censor content on the social network by country. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” the company said in a blog post Thursday. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there.” Twitter gave France and Germany as examples, two countries that ban pro-Nazi rhetoric from being posted on...

Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web as long as you’re not asking Al Gore, has come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently causing an Internet uprising. ”If you’re in America then you should go and call somebody or send an email to protest against these bills because they have not been put together to respect human rights as is appropriate in a democratic country,” Berners-Lee told the Sydney Morning Herald. SOPA, which is currently being revised before it i...

While a number of high-profile websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit went dark on Wednesday to protest web censorship bills, Google made its opinions known and urged users to do the same. Two bills before congress known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) have caused outrage among internet users who fear the bills may bring about unwarranted censorship. Google has come out in opposition of the bills, and it wants users to sign a petition to make their voices heard by Congress. “Tw...

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion said in a statement on Monday that it has agreed to filter pornographic content from BlackBerry devices in Indonesia. The news comes following pressure from the Indonesian government, which put strict anti-pornography laws in place in 2008. “Research in Motion is fully committed to working with Indonesia’s carriers to put in place a prompt, compliant filtering solution for BlackBerry subscribers in Indonesia as soon as possible,” the company said in a stat...

If you didn’t already think the people behind the RIAA and MPAA were insane, we’re positive that your opinion on them will change as soon as your read what the two associations have proposed in a recent letter to the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. Here are but some of the changes the two have asked for:The installation of spyware on computers which would seek out and automatically delete illegally obtained mediaCensorship of the internet which would block the transfer of illegal file...

As its long and drawn out public battle over internet censorship with the Chinese government continues, Google has made the decision to immediately halt the practice of censorship in China. As of today, all traffic to Google.cn will be redirected to the uncensored and Hong Kong-based Google.hk. Google isn’t exactly sure how the Chinese regime is going to react to this action — according to Google this redirect is “entirely legal” – but Google’s David Drummond (SVP, Corpora...

This week, you might have heard that Apple removed over 5,000 applications from its mobile App Store. What did most of the apps have in common?  Scantily clad women. Apple’s VP of World Wide Marketing, Phil Schiller, was quoted by the New York Times: “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.” Whatever the reason, the move di...

4chan, the internet message and image board known for its legion of anonymous users, has been explicitly blocked by Verizon Wireless. 4chan founder Christopher Poole said, “Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards… After an hour and a half on the phone, we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are ‘explicitly blocked.’” The reported bloc...

In a move guaranteed to attract well deserved controversy, Andy Burnham, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has publicly stated that delegates from the British government hope to meet with members of the Obama administration to pitch the idea of creating a content-based rating system for all English-based websites. Essentially what Burnham is proposing is having the internet follow the same rules as British TV where it is against the law to air violent programs before 9pm. But si...

Every time Google drops a new product, the internets go wild with excitement, speculation, and general madness. All of this hoopla is generally for good reason, as the boys down in Mountain View have a history of rolling out revolutionary services that quickly gain ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives. The recent introduction of the Chrome browser was no exception to this rule, though if the EULA is any indication of Google’s plans, we might want to hold off on wide-scale adoption. According to sev...