After a madman documented his plans to go on a stabbing rampage on a mobile Web Site, Japanese ISPs think the world would be a better place if they censored such content to prevent that sort of thing ever happening again.

Mobile telephone content providers have promised to set safeguards to protect young people after Tomohiro Kato posted dozens of messages warning of plans for a massacre as he drove a rented two-tonne truck to Tokyo.

Now the mobile content industry has announced restrictions on mobile online sites that would label such content as unsuitable for minors. Mobile phone websites to be labelled as 'safe' would have to closely monitor postings and report suspicious messages to the coppers.

The government said it would research new technology to filter messages on the Internet, because censorship is very effective at stopping homicidal maniacs committing random acts of mass murder because they are lonely.

The Israeli Knesset Economics Committee heard views on a controversial Internet content-filtering bill which would establish a public council to judge which Web sites are inappropriate for minors.

The bill has already passed its first reading. It seeks to shield children from violent and obscene material on the Internet, but critics say the mandated filtration would violate privacy rights and be a vehicle of censorship.

Shas MK Amnon Cohen collaborated with Eti Bendler, the committee's legal adviser, to amend the bill to address the constitutional issues that might arise.

In the bill's original version, the communications minister would decide which Web sites to filter out so that children could not access them. In addition, those who did not indicate whether they wanted filtration of sites would lose Internet service altogether.

However, the updated version of the bill allows all existing customers to continue receiving service whether or not they have indicated a preference for the filtration service.

Despite these changes, Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan, who opposes the bill, said it allows Big Brother to see everything and compared the role of the proposed council to that of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Representatives of advocacy groups who attended the meeting said the correct balance between protecting minors and protecting freedoms had still not been reached by the new version of the law because the censorship had the potential to go too far.

People have varying world views and the world view of the council's members is what will decide if a Web site is appropriate," said attorney Ron Gazit, who is acting head of the Israel Bar Association: Except for a few cases such as terror, pedophilia and racism, it is not right for the state to have a say in the educating of children because that is the job of parents.

Some at the meeting were worried that the result of involving such a council in resolving the issue would yield the opposite of Gazit's prediction and would result in too little filtration. The council will only block a minimal amount of material, in essence putting a stamp of approval on material that some parents may find inappropriate, said Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the Child.

A public service announcement showing a kiss between two men which was banned was finally aired on Croatian television this week.

The video Protect Every Kiss which was produced by a German film academy in an anti-violence campaign, was aired by Croatian Television (HTV) editor Aleksandar Stankovic.

The video was first offered by the Queer Association, but was rejected by HTV because the television deemed that it showed an explicit kiss between two men.

The HTV council did promise to the Croatian gay association, however, that all sides will be heard in a program focusing on violence against homosexuals.

The topic of the show in which the video was aired dealt with homosexuality, the rights of gays, the Church, and political messages coming from the altar.

Stankovic’s guest Ivica Šola said that he is against all censorship as it leads nowhere. Speaking of the position of the Catholic Church in the contemporary world, he said that Catholicism is the only societal prejudice that is allowed today.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a Muslim group’s complaint against Maclean’s magazine.

The long-running case came before the Commission after the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) complained that the highly-regarded magazine published an article in October 2006 likely to expose Muslims to hatred and contempt.

The article, entitled The Future Belongs to Islam, by Canadian writer and commentator Mark Steyn claimed that Muslims were on the verge of taking over Europe and the West because of demographic shifts.

The article said that their greater numbers will eventually allow Muslims to dominate Western countries, pointing out that: Muslims are reproducing like mosquitoes.

In January this year, Steyn, writing in the Calgary Herald, said: That line certainly appears in my text, but they’re not my words. Rather, they were said by a prominent Scandinavian Muslim, Mullah Krekar, to a respectable Norwegian newspaper. The imam was boasting at how Islam would outbreed Europe . . .

This is the nub of the complaints against Maclean’s: They’re objecting to a Canadian magazine quoting accurately the statements of leading Muslims. And at least two of Canada’s ‘human rights’ commissions, to their shame, have accepted their absurd proposition that accurately quoting leading Muslims is somehow ‘Islamophobic’.

According to this report, The CHRC concluded last week that the views in the article: When considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court.

But The Commission noted that Steyn’s writing is: Polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Nothing wrong with that, in any country that values freedom of expression!

New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV)'s broadcasts into Asia have been disrupted since June 16, 2008, with some fearing that it is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party's media censorship.

NTD is one of the few independent television networks broadcasting into mainland China and carries many reports on issues such as Falun Gong, Tibet, human rights in China, and the international movement to quit the Chinese Communist Party.

The satellite provider, EutelSat, told the New York-headquartered station that their W5 satellite unexpectedly stopped because of a "technical anomaly," and that they did not know when it could be repaired.

EutelSat told the station that four of the five transponders for the satellite had experienced an anomaly to part of its power generator subsystem, which affects the operating transponders used by NTD and prevents NTD from using the alternate transponders.

This incident has meant a complete shutdown of NTD's broadcasts into Asia.

Businesses now can choose the suffix for their Internet addresses after a decision to expand the choices beyond current staples such as ".com", ".co" and ".org,".

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) expanded the online naming system over prolonged objections by family advocates who say suffixes such as ".xxx" and ".sex" will only make the Internet worse.

We're going to further normalize pornography and obscenity, said Daniel Weiss, senior analyst nutter for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family Action. People are going to be further desensitized to its negative emotional and relational effects. I think ICANN has opened a Pandora's box in this decision.

Applications will be accepted next year, with new domain names costing at least $100,000.

See full article from The Register

The organization has also agreed to "fast track" certain IDN ccTLDs - country code top-level domains that use non-Latin characters. You know: Russia's country code is currently "ru," but it wants the Cyrillic equivalent.

Sorting out non-Latin codes for every country on earth will take a good two years, but ICANN wants a quicker fix for countries like Russia and China. "The issue of how to express country codes in characters other than Roman characters is an exceptionally complicated one, technically and in terms of policy," Dengate-Thrush said. "The internet has always relied on a table that outlines all two letter country codes, and that table is in English...It may take up to two years to develop a new table.

There has been speculation that the network architecture required to support new letters may create another squeeze point for state censorship.

Belarussian journalists and bloggers issued an online protest last Wednesday by not posting anything for an hour or using a black banner, lashing out against the "On Mass Media" law that the government adopted without public hearings and international expert examinations, Belarussian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reported.

Last Tuesday the House of Representatives of the Belarus National Assembly approved the law after its second reading, Jurist reported. The BAJ said that the law violates the freedoms outlined in articles 33 and 34 of the constitution.

Belarus media outlets are now banned from getting foreign financial backing and are required to register with the government. Reporters Without Borders termed the law as "repressive" and predict that censorship will increase, the Globe reported.

Ethiopia has slapped a ban on what had been billed as the nation's first exhibition of nude photography.

The photographer Biniam Mengesha told AFP he had been planning to show 45 photos at the unprecedented exhibition - titled Black Diamonds - in the capital Addis Ababa from Friday through to July 4.

Authorities from the ministry of culture asked me to submit my photos before the exhibition was inaugurated. Afterwards, they said: 'This isn't art, it's pornography', Biniam said: The photographs are fine art and include partial nudity aided by digital photography. Had it not been censored, it would have been the first in our country.

Biniam said he is arranging to show his images elsewhere in Africa in two months time.

China has ordered a strengthening of its news media propaganda system, dashing hopes of a more liberal approach to censorship in the wake of relatively vigorous domestic reporting of the Sichuan earthquake.

Party newspapers said that all domestic media had been ordered to earnestly study and implement a speech last week by President Hu Jintao, laying out guiding principles for development of China’s fast-growing news sector.

Hu said the primary task of the news media was to guide public opinion correctly, since doing so would benefit the party, benefit the nation and benefit the people: [We] must strengthen political acuity and discrimination, maintain strict propaganda discipline . . . and properly guard the gate and manage the extent [of reporting] on major, sensitive and hot topics, Mr

The party’s propaganda department has been broadly successful in ensuring that quake reporting has stressed the positive contributions of government leaders and party members.

Hu praised the handling of earthquake reporting but said innovation was needed to ensure the party could set the news agenda. City newspapers and on­line media had created new “propaganda resources”, the president said, adding that the internet should be considered the battlefield forward position for the propagation of advanced socialist culture.

Sudanese authorities confiscated an Arabic novel dealing with Darfur atrocities under the bollox pretext that the Canada based publisher had failed to obtain the appropriate permission

The Key Publishing House said in a statement that Sudanese security confiscated a novel, Desirable Glance, written by Yagoub Adam Saed Al-Nour because it failed to produce the appropriate documented permission for the book

The Desirable Glance narrates the frustration of the hero "Nour Al-Din" who tries to understand the unimaginable horror that transformed his beloved country into the current political dilemma.

Despite constitutional guarantees for the respect of freedom of expression in accordance with the Interim National Constitution, Sudanese authorities continue to control the media and the content of printed publications.

South Korea's embattled President Lee Myung-Bak is considering web monitoring because his government is getting kicked to death by bloggers.

There has been a wave of tumultuous protest inspired largely by bloggers and it is fast becoming difficult for Myung-Bak's government to cope.

It all started when he thought it would be a wizard wheeze to open the country to meat imports from the US. The bogsphere claimed it would open the country to the dangers of mad-cow disease.

Myung-Bak said that the Internet needed to become a space of trust rather than something venomous.

Myung-Bak has ruled out any intention to censor cyberspace although the Korea Communications Commission said it would consider strengthening the identity verification system introduced last year to curb cyber bullying.

A two-day workshop sponsored by the Ankara Bar Association and turk.internet.com was organized on June 18 and 19 to discuss Web site censure issues in an attempt to produce possible solutions.

Popular video-sharing Web site YouTube had been banned by court order in Turkey for one-and-a-half months when it was lifted on Tuesday night -- only to be reintroduced at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning through another court decision.

The Web site was banned yet again for hosting a video insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. The bans on YouTube have been frequent in the past few months, sparking serious debate over a law that regulates Web site content and Internet publishing, which has been criticized for restricting freedom of expression.

The frequent YouTube bans are a major embarrassment for Turkey internationally, as they place the country alongside China, Pakistan and Thailand, the only other countries to ban YouTube so far. By mid-April, 321 Web sites were banned under the Internet Publications Law and another 102 under other laws in Turkey.

The workshop heard of problems with existing Turkish legislation such that Web site owners were not given a chance to defend their Web site content. The law is also very problematic in that its ambiguous description of “obscenity”.

As a remedy, Web site owners attending the workshop suggested partial bans that would block only the illegal content and not the entire site. Experts also suggested that the authority to ban access to Web sites be given to specialized courts only, to avoid arbitrariness in Web site ban rulings.

The major reason for most of these bans, Telecommunications Authority Internet Department head Osman Nihat Sen explained, were complaints filed by individual citizens. Under the law, the police must relay these complaints to prosecutors, who are in turn legally obliged to act on them and launch court processes. The courts, in turn, have to rule in accordance with the current Internet publishing laws, which criminalize ambiguously defined offences, such as insulting Atatürk or encouraging suicide or gambling.

He also said that 10,103 complaints had been registered with the Telecommunications Authority as of June 16. One hundred seventy of these complaints caused a Web site to be blocked by court decision, and 314 more sites were blocked automatically after complaints were received, without resorting to a court. Warnings were issued to 22 Web sites, and inappropriate content was removed, Sen added: We do not have the authority to block Web sites promoting the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK]. Even when there are complaints about this kind of content, we cannot remove them. There are also videos insulting the prime minister, Islam and the Turkish flag. Those videos cannot be interfered with, because the law does not say anything about those issues. Turkey behaves like an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand. We have to implement the law.

Law No. 5651 on Internet Publishing is the legal basis of Web site bans in the Turkish Constitution. The law’s Article 8 allows for blocking access to broadcasts for the following reasons: inciting violence, online sexual exploitation of children, encouraging drug use, obscenity, prostitution, enabling means to gambling and crimes stated in Law No. 5816 regarding insulting Atatürk. The Telecommunications Authority can block Web sites with a court decision or at its own initiative.

China has only continued to tighten censorship of the Internet as the Olympics draw near, not loosen up as expected.

That's the conclusion of activists who monitor the state of censorship in China. They say that a number of China-related that events, such as the unrest in Tibet and the recent earthquakes, have caused authorities to clamp down even further on what can be published online within the country, and what information can be accessed by citizens.

My observation is that during this year the Internet police became much more efficient in terms of surveillance of the Internet activities to suppress freedom of expression, Independent Chinese PEN Centre member Zhang Yu said: The suppression is getting much more severe, just in the recent months.

Journalist arrests and convictions may have gone down since 2004 but it's not because there's more freedom in China, Zhang said. Instead, China is cracking down on the use of Internet cafes for subversive purposes by requiring customers to show ID, for example. After signing up with an ID and possibly even having a photo taken, users will be able to log in with their unique ID numbers, which will allow the cafes to keep track of exactly who is using which machine at all times. From there, if the government identifies the IP address of an unruly user on the 'Net, it should easily be able to identify the user in question.

Zhang's observations come just over a month after China admitted that it doesn't plan to fully open the Internet during this summer's Olympic Games as was previously expected. The government said that it would attempt to offer as much access as possible to international journalists and bloggers (as dictated by the host city agreement signed with the International Olympic Committee), but that there was no way China would turn off the Great Firewall entirely.

Update: Said the Small Censor to the Big Censor

23rd June 2008

It is unacceptable for China to block Internet content, a European Commissioner has said calling the Internet a free and open medium.

We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable, said Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media: So Europe speaks up in this sense, and is fighting for the freedom of speech and the freedom to receive the news.

One of the most popular video-sharing websites in China has been shut down.

The site, 56.com, which usually offers YouTube-style video, has been suspended for more than two weeks. A message on the home page blames a server upgrade, but it would be unusual for such routine maintenance to take so long.

Executives at the company refused to explain the delay, according to the Wall Street Journal, prompting concern that it may have fallen foul of regulators. 56.com is one of the three largest video-sharing sites in China, and along with similar sites has been closely scrutinised by the Government in recent months.

In December the Government issued new rules which held that in order to operate, video-sharing sites must be part state-owned. Regulators later issued guidance that some privately run sites may continue if they were given licenses and agreed to abide by content restrictions, but it has so far refused to give licenses to the three largest sites – Tudou.com, Youku.com and 56.com.

Most Chinese sites employ teams who comb through content as it uploaded - unlike YouTube, which waits for offensive or inappropriate content to be pointed out by users before it is taken down.

One of Turkey's best known singers, Bulent Ersoy, has gone on trial charged with attempting to turn the public against military service.

The charges were brought after she suggested it was not worth sacrificing soldiers' lives in Turkey's conflict with the Kurdish separatist PKK group.

The transsexual singer made her comments on television last February.

The army was conducting a major operation against the PKK in northern Iraq at the time.

Ms Ersoy did not show up in court, saying she had to attend a concert, so the trial has been postponed until September, when she will be obliged to attend.

Ms Ersoy has already said she will stand by her comments. But she faces up to four-and-a-half years in prison if she is convicted.

Ms Ersoy's trial may well scare many into silence, our correspondent says.

Amnesty International have announced the winners for its prestigious annual Media Awards, which recognise excellence in human rights reporting and acknowledge journalism's significant contribution to the UK public's awareness and understanding of human rights issues.

Gaby Rado Memorial Award (for a journalist covering human rights for less than five years)

• Lucy Bannerman, The Times
• Winner: Xan Rice, The Guardian
• Zeina Aboul Hosn, Channel 4 News, ITN

International Television and Radio

• Assignment: Louisiana burning, BBC World Service: Joanna Mills,
  Jeremy Skeet, Mike Williams
• Inside Myanmar - the crackdown, Al Jazeera English: Lucy Keating, Marcus Cheek, Tony Birtley, Badrul Hisham
• Winner: The Lost Tribe - Secret Army of the CIA, Al Jazeera English: Eunice Lau, Stephanie Scawen, Tricia Tan, Tony Birtley

National Newspapers

• Children for sale, The Telegraph: David Harrison
• Winner: Iraqi interpreters series, The Times: Deborah Haynes
• MI5's role in torture flight hell, The Observer: David Rose

New Media

• Burma coverage, Kate McGeown, BBC News online: BBC News Interactive interactivity team, newsgathering team and Burmese section World Service.
• Winner: Honour killing sparks fears of new Iraqi conflict, Institute for War and Peace Reporting: Sahar Al-Haideri
• Tibet protests, guardian.co.uk: Dan Chung, Tania Branigan, Jonathan Watts

Nations and Regions

• BBC Wales Today - Ama Sumani, BBC Wales: Alistair McGhie, Carolyn Carey Jones, Gail Morris Jones, Nick Palit
• Winner: Congo to Motherwell, BBC Scotland: Fiona Walker, Dorothy Parker, Fiona Walker, Matt Pinder
• Immigration investigation, Lancashire Evening Post: Stefanie Hall
• In the line of fire, Spectrum (Scotland on Sunday magazine): Billy Briggs

Newspaper supplements

• Gender genocide, Sunday Times Magazine: Christine Toomey
• Winner: Selling soccer into slavery, Live (Mail on Sunday magazine): Jonathan Green

Consumer magazines

• No place for children, New Statesman: Alice O'Keeffe
• Winner: Nothing Personal / Under Pressure / Crime Without Punishment, Index on Censorship: Fatima Tlisova / Sergei Bachiwin / Alexei Simonov

Photojournalism

• Winner: Congo unrest, Newsweek: Cedric Gerbehaye
• In the line of fire, Spectrum (Scotland on Sunday magazine): Angela Catlin
• There's the rub, Guardian Weekend: Justin Jin

Radio

• Honour killings, BBC Radio 4 - File on Four: Samantha Fenwick, David Ross, Angus Stickler
• The My Lai tapes, BBC Radio 4 - The Archive Hour: Rosie Goldsmith, Sue Ellis, Maria Balinska, Robert Hodierne
• Winner: Where there's muck: Mike Thomson in the Congo, Radio 4, Today Programme: Pascale Harter, Ceri Thomas, Mike Thompson

Television Documentary and Docudrama

• Winner: Storyville: The devil came on horseback, BBC FOUR / Break Thru Films: Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern, Nick Fraser, Brian Steidle
• Storyville: Taxi to the dark side, BBC TWO / Jigsaw Productions / Steps International: Alex Gibney, Eva Orner, Susannah Shipman, Don Edkins, Mette Heide, Nick Fraser
• The boys from Baghdad High, BBC / Renegade Pictures: Ivan O'Mahoney, Laura Winter, Karen O'Connor

Television News

• Exploited workers, BBC News (10:00): Annie Allison, Craig Oliver, Allan Little, Audreus Lelkaitis
• Five years in Iraq, ITN / Guardian Films: Teresa Smith, Maggie O'Kane, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
• Winner: Too young to die - Children of the frontline, ITV News / ITN: Chris Rogers, Deborah Turness

Amnesty's 'Special Award For Human Rights Journalism Under Threat

• The award was made by BBC journalist Alan Johnston to Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani, 42, the former editor of Yemen's political weekly newspaper Al-Shora. Last week (9 June) Mr Al-Khaiwani was jailed for six years, a move criticised by Amnesty, which said he should 'never have been on trial in the first place' and that 'his imprisonment looks like a clear case of the authorities putting an independently-minded journalist behind bars for his criticism of government policies.'

Amid mounting public and political controversy, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has launched an independent review of the way it deals with so-called hate speech on the Internet, Canada.com reported.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has engaged Richard Moon, an expert in constitutional law and a professor at the University of Windsor, to review its policies with regard to suppressing and punishing expression.

Although the primary task of the CHRC is to combat discrimination in housing and the workplace, the commission seeks also to protect marginalized and vulnerable Canadians from hateful or contemptuous expression. It derives its authority to do so from Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the section according to which it is a discriminatory practice ... to communicate ... any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt on the basis race, religion, or other specified characteristic.

More than a few critics charged right from the beginning that Section 13 denies Canadians freedom of expression. These critics have long demanded that the CHRC get out of the censorship business entirely. But the matter didn't make it onto the general public's radar screen until late last year, when the CHRC, as well as two provincial commissions, accepted to hear a complaint that Maclean's magazine had exposed Muslims to hatred and contempt.

In announcing the review, the CHRC states that it wants to know how to balance freedom of expression with the need to protect Canadians from hate messages.

North Ossetia in Russia wants to censor the media, banning the use of vulgar words and expressions and scrambling erotic broadcasts.

Legislators from that republic have introduced amendments to prevent journalists from using words and expressions distorting the norms of the modern Russian literary language, state languages of the republics and other languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation.

According to the authors of the bill, such distortion is a common occurrence in the Russian media.That distortion, the legislators say, is a violation of the Russian Constitution and the law “On the State Language.”

The same package of measures contains a ban on erotic radio and television programming unless it is scrambled. Currently, that programming is allowed unscrambled from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. local time.

A Turkish publisher has been sentenced to five months in prison for publishing a book by a British author about the mass killing of Armenians in 1915.

Ragip Zarakolu was found guilty of insulting the institutions of the Turkish republic under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code.

The controversial law was recently reformed under pressure from the EU to ensure freedom of speech in Turkey. This is the first high-profile verdict to be handed down since then.

Zarakolu's sentence confirms campaigners' fears that changes to the law were merely cosmetic, says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul.

In April it became a crime to insult the Turkish nation, rather than Turkishness. But insulting the Turkish nation can still be punished by up to two years in jail.

Zarakolu was brought to trial for publishing a book by British author George Jerjian on the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Passing sentence, the judge told Zarakolu he had insulted the Turkish republic and its founders. His own defence - that he had the right to criticise - was rejected.

Zarakolu's case was not referred to the Turkish ministry of justice, as required under the reforms, and he has said he will appeal against the verdict, our correspondent reports. His sentence will not be imposed until that appeal process is complete.

The justice ministry recently revealed that 1,700 people were tried under Article 301 in 2006 alone.

For more than a decade, The eXile has delighted Moscow’s English-speaking expatriate community with its irreverent mix of vicious humour, sharp political analysis and shameless hedonism.

But after 11 years of scorched-earth Gonzo journalism and taking down every sacred cow in sight, The eXile’s time appears to be up.

An unexpected inspection this week by Russia’s Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage to see if the biweekly was in compliance with Russian media laws spooked the tabloid’s investors, who withdrew their funding, said Mark Ames, the editor-in-chief.

The eXile’s closing comes after the Kremlin brought every major national media outlet to heel, leaving little room for political criticism in Russia’s public discourse.

The government media watchdog was to issue the results of its inspection on whether The eXile violated Russian media laws last Wednesday, but Ames said he had not yet heard anything. Yevgeny Strelchik, a spokesman for the watchdog, declined to give any details and said it was an internal matter between the inspectors and the newspaper.

Nothing may come at all of the inspection. They may say there are no violations at all, Ames said: But it doesn’t matter. The job is already done.

The fall of The eXile, which launched the career of Matt Taibbi, a political correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine, marks the end of perhaps the world’s most unique publishing project.

Publishing in Moscow, it found a niche in which it was out of the reach of libel laws in western countries, yet, with its small circulation and foreign-language content, remained largely under the radar screen of Russian authorities – until now. The result was a paper that published sophomoric pranks on Russian government officials and western businessmen, savage criticism of western journalists covering Russia, and misogynistic club reviews informing male readers which clubs were optimal for finding overnight female companionship.

Turkey's restrictions on free speech came under the spotlight when prosecutors launched an inquiry after a student said on a television programme that she did not like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state.

Nuray Bezirgan also expressed admiration for the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. She now faces possible charges under law 5816, crimes committed against Atatürk, after her comments last week on the popular show Teke Tek. If convicted, she could be jailed for up to four-and-a-half years.

On the show, Bezirgan - who was wearing the Islamic headscarf regarded by Turkey's secular authorities as a symbol of political Islam - was asked if she liked Atatürk. She replied: Does the right not to like Atatürk exist? If so, I do not like him. If people are persecuting me in the name of the ideology of Atatürk, then you cannot expect me to like Atatürk.

The interviewer, Fatih Altayh had earlier disclosed that Kevser Cakir, a fellow student also appearing on the show, had a picture of Khomeini on her Facebook page. The pair were being interviewed about their criticisms of the secular system, which Atatürk is seen as embodying.

Law 5816 is distinct from Article 301, which makes it an offence to insult Turkishness and under which several prominent intellectuals have been prosecuted. Turkey has been pressurised to liberalise its laws on free speech in its quest for EU membership.

Blogspot, Google's popular blogging platform is accessible again in China, judging from reports from Chengdu and Beijing.

Blogspot has been blocked and unblocked so many times in China that is barely worth mentioning: it usually works for a few weeks, and then gets blocked again. But this time seems to be different.

In the past, even when Blogspot was inaccessible in China, people using the platform could still post to their blogs even though they could not read the blogs without a proxy. Today it seems that Blogger, the part of Blogspot used for publishing blog entries, is blocked.

This may just be a technical glitch, but perhaps it is a rather subtle strategy of the Net Nanny:

With Blogspot available, most Olympic visitors are less likely to notice Internet censorship, but stopping Blogger will make it much harder for some athletes, journalists and other visitors to publish their thoughts online.

With an intention to revive cinema culture in Pakistan, the Ministry of Culture has finally decided to permit the screening of Indian movies on permanent basis.

The proposal for screening at least six movies per year has been sent to the prime minister for approval, which is likely to be approved within a few days.

Sources told The News that in a high level meeting presided by Secretary Ministry of Culture Shahid Rafi, it was decided after a heated debate that Indian movies of high quality and good subject should be screened in Pakistani cinemas to revive the cinema culture in the country. The secretary was of the opinion that Indian movies would not only help generate revenue but would also create an atmosphere of competition that would definitely bring positive changes in Pakistani movies.

He added that the proposal sent to the PM was not only about screening Indian movies in Pakistan but also included the suggestion of same number of Pakistani movies to be screened in India to maintain a balance.

Rafi said the number of movies to be screened in Pakistan could be changed if the prime minister asks to do so. It could be more than six or less than six, as it depends upon the prime minister, he added.

He said there were more than 700 cinemas in Pakistan but due to the poor quality of movies and good-for-nothing subjects, it has now been reduced to 250. People stopped going to cinemas, as there was nothing in the movies to entertain them and the cinema was confined to a particular class of people, he said.

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum have condemned what they say are the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council's repeated efforts to undermine freedom of expression in the name of protecting religious sensibilities.

WAN reminds the UN that the council's proper role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies, the WAN Board said in a resolution issued during the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum. The 1 to 4 June meetings of the world's newspapers and editors were held in Gothenburg.

In its resolution condemning actions by the UN Human Rights Council, WAN cited the council's approval of an amendment proposed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, requiring the council's investigator to report on instances where the abuse of the right to freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination.

WAN said the amendment "goes against the spirit" of the work of the UN Special Rapporteur. It said that amendment will require the rapporteur to investigate abusive expression rather than focusing on the endemic problem of abusive limits on expression imposed by governments, including many of those on the council.

The resolution issued by the groupings of newspapers and editors said, The WAN Board is concerned at what appears to be the emergence of a negative trend against freedom of expression in the UN Human Rights Council.

It noted, In March 2007, the Council has already passed a resolution, sponsored by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which opened the door to the restrictions of freedom of expression by governments on the grounds that it might offend religious sensibilities.

Thailand's Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung has kicked off a new censorship row with an order to cable-TV broadcasters to block the opposition's ASTV station. He has now denied that he intends to try to close the satellite and Internet based TV station.

ASTV, owned and operated by People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) founder Sondhi Limthongkul, is currently broadcasting saturation coverage of the PAD's anti-government rallies in central Bangkok.

Pol Capt Chalerm told provincial governors to order all cable-TV operators in the provinces to stop carrying the ASTV signal, and threatened to jail any operator who defied him.

He claimed he ordered the ban because PAD members and supporters called for the overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and used "rude words".

However, it is far from clear that the minister has any authority to halt or otherwise control broadcasts by satellite TV.

Several cable TV operators in provinces immediately suspended broadcasting the ASTV coverage of the PAD rallies following his threat of taking legal action.

The PAD decided late Friday to file a complaint with the Administrative Court against  Chalerm becase of his issuing the order.

Does UEFA censor the images TV viewers see during the Euro 2008 championships ? TV channels around Europe use a centralized video feed provided by UEFA, the organizer of the games. But there’s been a bit of debate about what gets shown and what doesn’t.

The whole issue might not have come up if Federal Cabinet Minister Samuel Schmid hadn’t mentioned the “smoke bombs” to Swiss German television.

It just was after a Sunday match in Vienna. He said he preferred the match the day before, because fans hadn’t set off smoke bombs. In fact, a significant portion of the stadium in Vienna was covered with smoke.

But that would have been news to TV viewers. Only a few wisps made it onto the telecast.

Did UEFA censor the images of fans behaving badly?

Pascale Voegeli is a spokeswoman for UEFA and said: If there are riots from some few people in the stands, there is no reason to give those people a platform on TV. So that’s why the producers they decide not to show some images.

François Jeannet is head of sports at French-language public television, TSR says the producers are right not to focus on disturbances in the stadium. Jeannet says most TV sports producers, including TSR, follow similar policies: There are some guidelines when you produce a sport event that say that you try not to emphasize or to bring publicity to agitators because you don’t want to make publicity for those actions on the field.

Update: Offside

16th June 2008 See full article from Strangeglue

The Swiss national broadcasting authority is set to formally complain about UEFA’s censoring of TV images at the European Championships.

SRG Director General Armin Walpen is concerned that UEFA’s decision not to show the incidents in question were ‘more than problematic’ from a journalistic point of view.

Walpen is preparing an official letter of protest for the governing body about their handling of the matter.

The National Geographic magazine dedicated its May issue to China, but some in China had trouble reading it — because pages had been glued together.

Readers of the 5,000 copies of the English-language edition distributed in China have reported that pages 44 and 45, which show a map of China, were stuck together.

These pages didn’t make the often-censored slip-up of treating Taiwan as a separate country, but the concern might have been labeling several borders disputed with Pakistan and India.

Another map, on pages 126 and 127, showing the distribution of China’s ethnic minorities, was also glued, perhaps because of recent sensitivities over the country’s Tibetan population.

Pages 100 and 101, which feature controversial artwork, as well as pages 128 and 129, on dissent, were also censored, presumably for more obvious reasons...

Technical changes have been made to prevent Burmese Internet users from using proxy servers to get around government controls, according to an announcement from Myanmar Teleport, one of the country’s two Internet service providers (ISPs).

In a notice to customers that was obtained by The Irrawaddy, the company said that it had upgraded its service to remove the need for proxies.

As part of this upgrade, the use of web proxies is no longer required, said the announcement: Myanmar Teleport would like to cordially request you to reconfigure your web browser settings not to use proxies.

When contacted, a technician at Myanmar Teleport confirmed that the move was intended to tighten control over access to unauthorized Web sites.

Burma has some of the world’s most restrictive Internet policies, banning blogs and exiled news providers critical of the country’s ruling junta. However, access to prohibited Web sites is often possible through use of proxy servers.

The BBC will show political protests if they occur during the Beijing Olympics, the corporation has said, even if the Games' organisers attempt to censor official footage.

The BBC, the only British broadcaster with access to stadiums this summer, says it cannot be expected to hide demonstrations if they happen at events where they have cameras.

Its decision, which it stresses will be applied "responsibly", will increase Beijing's nervousness as the Games approach.

The Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, BOCOG, has already had angry exchanges with the world's leading broadcasters who complain of delays over permits to bring their equipment into the country and to deploy them around the city.

Dave Gordon, head of major sports events for the BBC, told The Daily Telegraph that Beijing had become "more difficult" for broadcasters than the Moscow Games in 1980. He said international representatives had tried to get answers for two years on whether the Olympic broadcasting agency that provides the only feed of the actual events would show footage of protests if they occurred: They fudge the question. They won't commit to saying yes, they will cover it or no, they will not cover it. They put a lot of stress on the importance of covering the sport. I think we have to draw our own conclusions.

He added it was unthinkable that if its own cameras in the stadium picked up a protest it would not be shown: We have to cover the Olympics warts and all.

The difficulties in obtaining the necessary permits to operate for other broadcasters came to a head at a meeting in Beijing on May 29. According to minutes leaked to the Associated Press, even the representative of the International Olympic Committee described Beijing's demands as "unworkable".

Another delegate, representing Asian broadcasters, said Beijing was "suffocating the television coverage in the crazy pursuit of security".

Many broadcasters want to film live from well-known but politically sensitive locations such as Tiananmen Square. They have been told this will be allowed in principle, but complain that permission seems not to be forthcoming.

Update: Fixers

See full article from Reporters without Borders, 15th June 2008

The Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) has been insisting since January 2007 that the foreign media recruit professionals chosen by official intermediaries as translators. The latest rules want all Chinese working for the foreign media to be registered and suggest that the authorities should "select and name appropriate candidates" for the foreign media.

If foreign journalists want to propose their own candidates, they must provide an ID, a curriculum vitae, evidence of no criminal record and a medical certificate. And a contract must be signed between employer and employee.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China told Reporters Without Borders that hiring and registering assistants through government service agencies potentially increases bureaucracy, expense and oversight by the authorities. The FCCC hopes the foreign media will eventually be able to hire Chinese as journalists, photographers or cameramen, but for the time being that is not allowed.

Reporters Without Borders has also learned of a directive issued by the BOCOG media centre’s visa division telling journalists to submit precise information about coverage plans in China, including the places they want to visit and the people they want to interview, in order to obtain a J-2 visa, which is for media personnel who want to arrive before the 8 August start of the games. The BOCOG also requires a letter from an employer, which effectively eliminates freelancers.

Singapore doesn’t have the best gay track record. So it should come as no surprise to hear that artist Martin Loh’s 24-image collection, Pain To Pleasure, which illustrate men in S&M situations, has been axed.

Loh had been meant to open the show this August at a relatively liberal gallery, Utterly Art, which had also commissioned some of Loh’s more mainstream pieces.

Loh said: We live in the Victorian times, anything that is beyond the missionary position is frowned upon. The gallery is exercising some kind of self-censorship partly based on misplaced business considerations. The assumption that this will not sell is absurd.

Realizing he faces an uphill battle back home, Loh’s now trying to shop his collection overseas. And we’re sure this “censorship” publicity will do good things…

In a new attempt to prevent television viewers watching broadcasts from abroad, the Burma authorities are now forbidding electronics shop owners from selling satellite dishes and spare parts.

Satellite dishes are being seized in raids on shops and the owners are being warned they face prosecution if caught selling them, according to sources in Rangoon.

One TV mechanic, Ye Lwin, said raids had occurred in Rangoon.

A Rangoon journalist said some shops were circumventing the ban by selling satellite dishes and equipment to trusted mechanics, who then dealt directly with private households. The ban was also not being universally applied in rural areas, where people were still able to buy satellite spare parts from electronics shops.

Rangoon residents see the ban as a new attempt by the regime to prevent TV viewers watching t