A church and Christian newspaper in Malaysia are suing the government after it decreed that the word "Allah" can only be used by Muslims.

In the Malay language "Allah" is used to mean any god, and Christians say they have used the term for centuries.

A spokesman for the Herald, the newspaper of the Catholic Church in Malaysia, said a legal suit was filed after they received repeated official warnings that the newspaper could have its licence revoked if it continued to use the word.

We are of the view that we have the right to use the word 'Allah', said editor Rev Lawrence Andrew.

The Sabah Evangelical Church of Borneo has also taken legal action after a government ministry moved to ban the import of religious children's books containing the word.

In a statement given to Reuters news agency, the church said the translation of the bible in which the word Allah appears has been used by Christians since the earliest days of the church.

There has been no official government comment but parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said the decision to ban the word for non-Muslims on security grounds was "unlawful": The term 'Allah' was used to refer to God by Arabic-speaking Christians before Arabic-speaking Muslims existed.

Vietnam needs to control blogs to prevent the spread of subversive and sexually explicit content, communist government officials said.

Weblogs have exploded in Vietnam in recent years, especially among youths, providing a forum for chatting about mostly societal and lifestyle issues and providing an alternative to the state-controlled media.

Recent anti-Chinese protests over the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, which were halted following rebukes from Beijing, were organised and debated on the Internet but almost completely ignored by the official press.

The ministry responsible for culture and information, which controls traditional media, in July said it was drafting regulations that would fine bloggers who post subversive and sexually explicit content online.

Deputy Information and Communications Minister Do Quy Doan said: Once we have obvious regulations, I think no one will be able to supervise weblogs better than the bloggers themselves.

With little fanfare from local or foreign media, the Japanese government made major moves this month toward legislating extensive regulation over online communication and information exchange within its national borders.

In a series of little-publicized meetings attracting minimal mainstream coverage, two distinct government ministries, that of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somusho) and that of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Monbukagakusho), pushed ahead with regulation in three major areas of online communication: web content, mobile phone access, and file sharing.

The future of online communication within Japan hinges on attracting attention to these issues and on drawing as wide a range of voices into the debate as possible. While current activism by groups within Japan such as the recently formed Movements for Internet Active Users (MIAU) have made important first steps in this direction, international attention is needed to coordinate support and confront the many pressing issues facing open communication in the Japanese cyberspace.

Web content

Plans for regulation of web content are summarized in two primary documents drawn up by the “Study group on the legal system for communications and broadcasting” under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somusho). The first document is an interim report released on June 19th, setting down basic guidelines for regulating web content through application of the existing Broadcast Law to the sphere of the Internet. The final report, made public on December 6th, sets down steps to move ahead and submit a bill on the proposed regulations to the regular diet session in 2010.

One of the key points of both reports is their emphasis on the blurring line between "information transmission" and "broadcasting", a distinction that becomes less and less meaningful as content-transfer shifts from the realm of traditional media to that of ubiquitous digital communication. The reports deal with this difficult problem in part through the creation of a new category, that of "open communication", broadly described as covering communication content having openness such as homepages and so on.

Online content judged to be "harmful" according to standards set down by an independent body (specifics of which are unclear) will be subject to law-enforced removal and/or correction.

Mobile phone access

The push for protecting young users from potentially dangerous content, such as online dating services and so-called "mobile filth", has gained momentum in recent years within Japan. The government responded to such concerns on December 10th by demanding that mobile carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI, Softbank, and Willcom implement filtering on all mobile phones issued to users under the age of 18. While optional filtering currently exists and can be implemented at the request of the mobile phone owner, few users make use of or even know of this service. The proposed regulation would heavily strengthen earlier policy by making filtering on mobile phones the default setting for minors; only in the case of an explicit request by the user's parent or guardian could such filtering be turned off by the carrier.

According to the new policy proposal, sites would be categorized on two lists, a "blacklist" of sites that would be blocked from mobile access by minors and a "whitelist" of sites that would not. The categorization of sites into each list will reportedly be carried out together with carriers through investigations involving each company targeted. The Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) of Japan is indicating that the new policy will be enforced with respect to new users by the end of 2007 and applied to existing users by the summer of 2008.

While it is not yet entirely clear what content will be covered by the new policy, a look at existing filtering services promoted by NTT Docomo reveals the definition of "harmful" content to be very broad indeed. As noted by a number of Japanese bloggers, notably social activist Sakiyama Nobuo, current optional filtering services offered on NTT Docomo phones include categories as sweeping as "lifestyles" (gay, lesbian, etc.), "religion", and "political activity/party", as well as a category termed "communication" covering web forums, chat rooms, bulletin boards, and social networking services. The breadth of this last category in particular threatens to bankrupt youth-oriented services such as "Mobage", a social networking and gaming site for mobile phones, half of whose users are under the age of 18.

File sharing

In a meeting held on December 18th. Authorities and organizations pushed for a ban on the download of copyrighted content for personal use, a category of file transfer previously permitted under Article 30 of Japan's Copyright Law.

Governments in the Middle East are stepping up a campaign of censorship and surveillance in order to block their citizens from viewing websites whose topics range from adult entertainment to human rights.

As a result, millions of Middle Easterners are being blocked from accessing news and entertainment sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

The prohibitions have led to an explosion in "circumventors," proxy servers that allow Internet users to bypass workplace or government filters. In cyber cafes throughout the Middle East, patrons still can browse blocked sites and swap web addresses for the latest "proxies."

Five of the Top 13 Internet censors worldwide are in the Middle East, according to Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based journalism advocacy group that lobbies against web censorship.

Only four Arab countries have little or no filtering: Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. On the other side of the web censorship gap are Saudi Arabia and Syria, which have consistently been described by human rights groups as the most hostile toward the Internet.

Authorities in Syria continue to ban websites, including Amazon.com last month. The government reportedly uses a filtering system called Thundercache to block content from sites such as Blogspot, Hotmail, Skype and YouTube, as well as any Arabic-language news sites.

In Iraq and the Palestinian territories, the Internet is policed mainly by the owners of Internet cafes and by Internet users themselves. Islamist militants have reportedly attacked Internet cafes in both places, accusing patrons of looking at adult material or chatting with members of the opposite sex.

Tunisian authorities block several sites, human rights workers said, but the authorities also have started holding the owners of Internet cafes liable if political activists use their establishments to post critical news about the government.

In Egypt the authorities do little or no filtering but police have rounded up at least three bloggers and harassed many more in recent years, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Iran's hard-line Shiite Muslim leadership also is a zealous censor of the Internet. The government boasts of filtering 10 million "immoral" websites, in addition to all the major social-networking outfits and dozens of pages about religion or politics.

Additionally, the ultraconservative Saudi government blocks thousands of adult websites

• So You Think You Can Drive, Mel?
  
  Maneuver Mel Gibson (who leers drunkenly from the window of a subcompact with the license plate "WTFWJD?") around a nightime highway. You tag bottles of hooch for points while simultaneously dodging flying Stars of David thrown by bearded men wearing hats, shawls, and dark suits. Hit five state troopers, and the game ends. Presumably offensive on grounds of bad taste
   
• Manhunt 2
  
  What's most offensive about Manhunt 2 isn't its violence but its cruddy gameplay: Poor AI, boring environments, and blurry execution animations make Manhunt 2 a shoo-in for the year's "Sound and Fury" award.
   
• V-Tech Rampage
  
  Attention angry people, I will take this game down from [casual games site] Newgrounds if the donation amount reaches $1000 US, designer Ryan Lambourn wrote to visitors who found his simulation of the shooting at Virginia Tech this spring offensive. Emerging shortly after Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in a campus shooting spree, Lambourn's Flash-based game, which allows you to plug dozens of pixelated students, just feels like a shallow cry for attention.
   
• Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
  
  What really upset people was the marketing campaign. We're hunting for a dangerously sexy vixen with the goods to make us moan, reads an ad for a contest sponsored by IGN, MySpace, and Playboy. The ad was illustrated with a topless model coquettishly clutching her naughty bits. The game site WomenGamers.com said : The next time people say, 'The industry does not objectify women,' we will point to that picture and this contest.
   
• Mario Party 8
  
  Nintendo voluntarily pulled its minigame compilation from UK shelves over the oopsy-inclusion of a single word: "spastic." Call me uncultured, but I had no idea this playground term for someone acting like Chris Farley in, well, pretty much any skit was actually a dictionary term for "a person affected with cerebral palsy," and was offensive overseas. Nintendo quickly changed "spastic" to "erratic" and re-released the game
   
• Resistance: Fall of Man
  
  It wasn't until this summer that the offensiveness hit the fan. That's when representatives of the Church of England got publicly huffy over a certain gun battle that takes place inside a realistic rendition of the Manchester Cathedral. Their argument? The use of [the cathedral] as a backdrop for a violent computer game is an affront to all those whose lives have been affected by guns.
   
• Scrabble 2007
  
  In the year's second quirky semantic controversy, in September publisher Ubisoft found itself defending the game's inclusion of the word "lesbo," a derisive abbreviation for "lesbian." Ubisoft's defense? The game uses a word list [from over 277,000] based on the Chambers Official Scrabble Dictionary and all approved words contained in this dictionary are playable in the game.
   
• The Darkness
  
  The Darkness is a game about a mafia hit man who ends up possessed by a bunch of snakes that pop out of his jacket like the love children of Medusa. Singapore banned the game for "excessive violence," and Germany delayed its release by a month.

11 websites have so far been blocked in Malaysia for having obscene materials and seditious messages, Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry parliamentary secretary Datuk Dr Mohd Ruddin Abdul Ghani said.

Besides blocking the websites and blogs, he said the ministry has also drawn up long-term programmes in collaboration with CyberSecurity Malaysia to boost awareness on cyber security.

Dr Mohd Ruddin said it was not difficult to block websites and blogs compared with emails featuring advertisements and pornography.

He said there was no proper mechanism to check such material spreading through e-mails, but the authorities could control and halt blogs.

However, the Cabinet will not obstruct the movement of information in the Internet because of the Bill of Guarantee, which promised free-flow of information when the Multimedia Super Corridor was first set up, he said. [...I think blocking websites is surely obstructing the movement of information]

A member of the House of Representatives has filed a bill seeking to impose stiffer penalties for perpetrators of highly scandalous crimes against decency.

Aside from longer jail sentences, House Bill 2856 filed by Cebu Representative Antonio Cuenco also seeks to increase the fines provided for in the Revised Penal Code for such offenses as grave scandal, indecency and pornography, among others, to between P100,000 to P2,000,000, among others. Currently, such offenses carry sentences of only six months or less.

The current law seems to be taken lightly by offenders since its penalties are minimal compared to the gravity of crime, Cuenco said There is no justice if we let the criminals responsible for the grim days ahead of these victims walk away unscathed -- only to be incarcerated be for a mere six months or less.

The lawmaker also said there is a need to amend some provisions in the law to curtail, if not totally eradicate the conduct of inappropriate and obscene behavior.

Authorities in Malaysia have threatened not to renew the publishing license of a Catholic weekly newspaper if it continues to use the word "Allah" in its Malay language section, Catholic and government officials said.

The Herald, the organ of Malaysia's Catholic Church, has translated the word God as "Allah" but it is erroneous because Allah refers to the Muslim god, said Che Din Yusoff, a senior official at the Internal Security Ministry's publications control department, in remarks monitored by BosNewsLife. Christians cannot use the word Allah. It is only applicable to Muslims. Allah is only for the Muslim god. This is a design to confuse the Muslim people, Che Din added.

However church sources say the Malay-language Bible uses Allah for God. We follow the Bible. The Malay-language Bible uses Allah for God and Tuhan for Lord. In our prayers and in
church during Malay mass, we use the word Allah, Reverend Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Herald, told reporters.

Yet, Che Din said there are four Malay words that must not be used by other religions, he said: Allah for God, "solat" for prayers, "kaabah" for the place of Muslim worship in Mecca and "baitula" the house of Allah. The weekly should instead, use the word "Tuhan" which is the general term for God, he reportedly said.

The Herald's permit will only be renewed in two weeks if they stop using Allah in their publication.

A Khartoum court has sentenced two Egyptians to six months in prison for marketing a book that is deemed offensive to Aisha, one of Prophet Mohammed’s wives.

Abdel Fattah Abdel Raouf and Mahrous Mohammed Abdel Aziz were sentenced under article 125 of Sudan’s penal code, the same section under which U.K. teacher Gillian Gibbons was convicted after allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed.

Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardhi said Dec. 11 following the pair’s arrest that they were guilty of bringing over the book entitled Aisha, mother of believers, devoured her sons from bookseller and publisher Madbouli in Egypt and selling it in Sudan.

The book contains blasphemous passages and particularly despicable offenses to the prophet and to the mother of believers, as Aisha is often called, Mardhi said at the time.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) said the book was titled Aisha: The Wife of Prophet Mohamed and that: The arrest is a flagrant violation of freedom of opinion and expression.

HRinfo said the Egyptians found themselves in danger when a radical islamist had bought the book and in turn informed the authorities about its contents.

Madbouly had already received permission from the Sudanese censorship authoritie s to distribute the book, written by London-based Syrian writer Nabil Fayyad, before arriving in Khartoum for the festival.

Another book confiscated at the book fair was about the Shiites, a book called Darfur, the history of war and genocide, published by Horizons House.

Egypt requested an explanation from the Sudanese authorities.

Iranian police have closed down 24 Internet cafes and other coffee shops in as many hours, detaining 23 people, as part of a broad crackdown on immoral behavior in the Islamic state.

The action in Tehran province was the latest move in a campaign against fashion and other practices deemed incompatible with Islamic values, including women wearing high boots and barber shops offering men Western hair styles.

Using immoral computer games, storing obscene photos ... and the presence of women wearing improper hijab were among the reasons why they have been closed down, Colonel Nader Sarkari, a provincial police commander, said.

Sarkari told the official IRNA news agency that police had inspected 435 coffee shops in the past 24 hours, and 170 had been warned.

Many young Iranians are avid users of the Internet, some using chat rooms to socialise with the opposite sex. Mingling between sexes outside marriage is banned and many Web sites considered unIslamic are blocked by the authorities.

In a separate campaign, IRNA said police had inspected 275 restaurants in the capital to check compliance with a new ban on smoking in public places. The ban includes water pipes, known in Iran as qalyan, offered in some outlets. Of those, 138 received a warning and 17 were shut down, police official Mohammad Reza Alipour said.

The latest campaign to clean up cyberspace has been launched by the Chinese government.

According to a notice jointly released by 12 ministries taking part in the scheme, the campaign aims to curb the growing number of illegal advertisements for sex-related health supplements, STD drugs and clinics, and sex toys.

It is scheduled to run through to next February.

Tough punishments will be meted out to medical institutions and clinics for advertising unapproved or unlicensed cures for STDs

Companies that use sexually suggestive advertisements to promote sex drugs face having their businesses suspended, the notice said.

In addition, agencies that design, make and release "vulgar" advertisements will be dealt with in accordance with the law on advertising, it said.

Those that are found to have seriously violated the law or the new regulation could be stripped of their right to operate in the advertising business, the notice said.

Websites that host illegal advertisements must remove them immediately once they are told to do so by the authorities. Those that do not do so will be closed down, the notice said.

South African Teenagers under the age of 16 caught kissing, touching or rubbing up against each other can be criminally charged.

The new Sexual Offences Act, signed into law by President Thabo Mbeki last week, has criminalised kissing, or any light sexual behaviour among people under the age of 16 - even if it is consensual.

Also illegal under the new act is any sexual activity, including oral sex, between consenting teens aged 15 and younger.

The new act, which has made sweeping changes to the definition of rape, has, however, been met with mixed reviews by IOL users who were asked: Will the new Sexual Offences Act take the romance out of being a teenager?

The Toronto Sun reports that an advocate for sex workers believes that pop culture influences, including the popular Grand Theft Auto series, help legitimize violence against prostitutes. Anastasia Kuzyk of the Sex Workers’ Alliance of Toronto told the newspaper:

Sex work is a job, and violence isn’t in the job description… There’s a video game out there where you can run down prostitutes and kill them and beat them up and take their money. It feeds into the whole subculture of allowing the violence to continue. Violence against sex workers should not be normalized, but it is.

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book America Alone.

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

A large flag showing the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs was unfurled outside the Liaison Office of the central people’s government of China in Hong Kong today by five Reporters Without Borders representatives, including secretary-general Robert Ménard, in a protest to mark Human Rights Day. Two days before Chinese authorities refused to give visas to members of the press freedom organisation.

We had initially planned to stage this demonstration in Beijing, but the authorities refused to give us visas, Reporters Without Borders said. We know that some of us are blacklisted by the Chinese immigration services (photo below). At a time when the government is compiling files on foreign journalists and human rights activists in advance of the Olympic Games, this refusal is evidence of its determination to keep critics at a distance.

The Chinese authorities are clearly not prepared to let people remind them of the undertakings they gave to improve the situation of human rights and, in particular, press freedom when they were awarded the 2008 Olympics in 2001.

It appears that YouTube really did cooperate with Thai authorities as was claimed in a selective blocking of clips deemed offensive to the monarchy.

For instance one of the disputed videos is still available to view outside Thailand but within Thailand page shows: "This video is unavailable".

A new report, published in part by Article 19, has found that freedom of expression continues to be repressed in Turkey.

Article 19 worked with the Kurdish Human Rights Project, Index on Censorship, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the Centre for European Studies in Limerick, Ireland to produce the report.

The report indicates that despite reforms in 2003 and 2004, restriction on media freedom has increased. It also indicates a rising hostility toward opposition journalists, especially Kurdish and pro-Kurdish journalists, who are labeled as writers for terrorist publications.

Culture Minister Khaisri Sri-aroon

Webboards at the Culture Ministry's website have been bombarded with hundreds of supposedly lewd web links, the Culture Watch Centre has found.

The centre found more than 500 sexually-explicit web links put up on webboards run by the ministry, which has been campaigning against obscene websites. The website, www.m-culture.go.th, could not be accessed last night.

The attack on the website comes a few days after the ministry said it was contemplating censoring novels.

Culture Minister Khunying Khaisri Sri-aroon yesterday admitted that inappropriate web links had been posted on the website. She had ordered Thongchai Masattana, director of the IT centre, to explain why webmasters had failed to detect and screen out the saucy content.

Khunying Khaisri said the ministry is mulling rating various novels, particularly adult romances and translated novels.

Many complaints had come in about the ministry's bid to censor sex and erotic scenes. Romance readers argued the erotic scenes were written in beautiful language and are not morally incorrect.

Khunying Khaisri said she personally agreed that censorship would spoil the novels.

In deciding on a rating system for romance novels, the ministry would invite artists, academics, writers, publishers and distributors to give their views. The attempt to impose a ratings system is prompted in part by the arrest of two traders selling romance novels with erotic content at a book fair in October.

A research panel made recommendations to the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for stricter regulations on “harmful material” displayed on the Internet, a move that closely follows the passage of the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online Act or "SAFE Act" by the US last week.

The act could potentially have a significant effect on adult-oriented manga and anime content. Currently, child pornography laws in Japan do not regulate manga and art that depict children who are not real or "virtual child pornography."

In Japan, a report was submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIAC) Thursday recommending that a bill be submitted to the Diet (the Japanese governing body) by 2010, imposing stricter regulations on “harmful materials” online, as well as unifying the laws on telecommunications and broadcasting.

Another panel is expected to convene between 2008-2009 in order to draft specific proposals, after which the MIAC is expected to propose a bill for regulation to the Diet.

The report cited the need to protect children from being exposed to inappropriate Internet content and pointed out that the laws currently do not allow for the government to filter online materials.

The panel’s recommendations were prompted, in part, by a survey conducted in October. Called the Special Opinion Poll on Harmful Materials, the study was conducted on 1,767 participants who were interviewed by researchers.

Survey results indicated that 86.5% of the respondents thought that manga and anime content should be subject to regulations for child pornography, and 90.9% said that “harmful materials” on the Internet should be regulated.

For the past two years, conservative Islamic parties in Indonesia, often supported by paramilitary religious groups known for their intolerance have been periodically pushing to have elements of Islamic Law become the law of the land.

This time, social critics are pushing back. On 3 December, a diverse group of activists—including many from mainstream Islamic groups—urged the country’s legislative branch to reject the proposed legislation.

What makes the debate noteworthy is the way that the Islamic hardliners have been able to disguise their end-game. In a brilliant political move, they penned a so-called “Anti-Pornography Bill” that would ostensibly protect women and children from the scourges associated with pornography.

In fact, the anti-pornography angle was just a veil. According to the authors of the document, pornography is vaguely defined to include just about anything that would offend their hyper-caffeinated moral sensitivities. Many forms of women’s bathing suits, for example, would suddenly become illegal. Any publications or works of art that showed all but a fully-dressed female form, too, would conceivably be off limits. So would many cultural events, such as those in tourist destinations like Bali.

Worse, the bill calls on “all parties” to protect morality. This has been seen as a call to arms for the Islamic Defenders Front and their ilk, which have made a name for themselves raiding nightspots during the Ramadhan fasting month.

Secular political groups oppose this shift, which they correctly note would undermine the nation’s cultural diversity. But because of the name of the bill, they are often left having to explain why they are defending “pornography.”

No date has been set for the final debate on the Anti-Pornography Bill. But with presidential campaigning set to unofficially start next year (the election is not until 2009), hard-line Islamic parties will probably try to flex their muscles—and make another push for passage of the bill—within the next two quarters.

Update: Definitions

16th December 2007

The definition of pornography according to the bill says: "Pornography is any man-made work that includes sexual materials in the form of drawings, sketches, illustrations, photographs, text, sound, moving pictures, animation, cartoons, poetry, conversation, or any other form of communicative messages; it also may be shown through the media in front of the public; it can arouse lust and lead to the violation of normative values within society; and it can also cause the development of pornographic acts within society".

Culture Minister Khaisri Sri-aroon

Culture Minister Khaisri Sri-aroon yesterday said she disagreed with a proposal to cut "romantic" scenes from translated novels.

She said it would ruin the taste for readers and affirmed that she would invite national artists, academics and publishers to formulate a rating criteria.

Following the ministry's plan for book ratings - especially for romantic and translated novels - as proposed by the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand (PUBAT), many public members posted their concerns that love scenes in books might be cut.

They argued that romantic scenes were not obscene as the translators and publishers used "sensitive descriptions" and urged the ministry to hear the opinions of the public and related parties before making a decision.

Khaisri said most of those who expressed opinions on the ministry's website agreed to the book rating according to readers' age but disagreed with the content cutting.

An Indian judge has ruled that obscenity charges may be prosecuted without requiring the court to actually review the materials in question.

The case stems from allegations by a local cyber cafe owner that Sanjay Gupta was playing a pornographic CD, potentially within view of other patrons.

The court ruled that the magistrate was not required to view the CD in order to verify its contents as being "obscene" as a prerequisite for proceeding with the obscenity charges against the defendant.

Gupta challenged the order, claiming that the magistrate was wrong for proceeding with charges against him without knowing what was actually contained on the CD he was charged with viewing at the time of his arrest — allegedly the only incriminating evidence against him.

Additional Sessions Judge A.K. Chawla dismissed Gupta's petition, claiming that the court was not required to watch the CD before preferring charges against the accused.

There are specific allegations of the CD containing obscene material, Chawla said. When this is so, it is not necessarily required that the trial court should have got the CD run and then come to the prima facie conclusion of the same containing obscene material.

Ragip Zarakolu is facing up to three years in prison for publishing a book - promoting reconciliation between Turks and Armenians - by George Jerjian, a writer living in London.

Jerjian's book, The Truth Will Set Us Free, which was translated into Turkish in 2005, chronicles the life of his Armenian grandmother who survived the early 20th century massacres of Armenians thanks to an Ottoman soldier. The historical account has prompted as much controversy among the Armenian diaspora, not least in the US, as it has in Turkey.

Mr Jerjian ... is a highly credible author with very moderate views, said the Labour MEP Richard Howitt, who will attend the hearing at Istanbul's Asliye Ceze courthouse. If even he falls foul of Turkish law it shows how far they still have to go on freedom of expression.

The MEP, who is in Turkey in his role as vice-president of the human rights sub-committee of the European parliament, said Jerjian was too scared to visit Turkey for fear he might be shot.

Zarakolu is being tried under Turkey's 301 article of law, the same legislation that was used against Pamuk, a Nobel prize winner, as well as 60 other local writers and journalists.

In February this year, six months before he went on to become head of state, Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, declared the need for article 301 to be revised, saying: There are certain problems with [it]. We see there are changes which must be made to this law. Yesterday the Turkish justice minister, Mehmet Ali Sahin, reiterated the sentiment, telling Howitt that freely expressed views that neither promote terrorism nor violence should be protected.

But while Turkish diplomats admit the contentious law has probably done more damage to Ankara's efforts to join the EU than any other single piece of legislation, observers say there has been little headway made over reforming the spirit and letter of the law.

Update: Adjourned

The trial was adjourned until 31st January 2008

All airlines may be spending a fortune on selecting the right mix for their in-flight entertainment (IFE) system, but national carrier Air India is taking a step backward. The airline is showing censored versions of movies, which already have been censored by the already strict Censor Board. Not only is the airline clipping scenes of movies but also blurring any romantic sequences, including songs.

In fact, at a time when most foreign and Indian players are busy upgrading their IFE product mix so as to make the journey more exciting and pleasurable, it’s a retrograde step for the national carrier. Foreign airlines, for the matter of fact, are now localising their in-flight content for Indian travellers and strengthening their movie library.

When SundayET contacted Air India, this is what a senior official had to say: You can’t compare Air India with other private operators. There are children on-board and you cannot permit showing anything which is sensitive in nature. In the past, questions have been raised in Parliament on the same subject.

This is in stark contrast to the fact that other airlines are showing the same movies on-board sans any censor.

Freemuse, the World Forum on Music and Censorship, says that media organizations around the world will join in celebrating Music Freedom Day on 3 March 2008.

It is day which can serve as a focus point for the media - an occasion to take a closer look at the subject of banned music, and the lives of blacklisted musicians, said Freemuse Executive Director Marie Korpe.

So far, seven media organizations from four countries are planning programs for Music Freedom Day broadcast. They include the CBC, which will be presenting a music documentary called Censor This! on that day. Seventeen other CBC radio and television programs will feature reports on music and censorship for a week.

The BBC's Radio 3 will be airing a special report on the program Songlines.

The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo will host a concert celebrating Music Freedom Day in March 2008. The concert will feature artists who are facing music censorship and will be broadcasted by NRK – the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

March 3rd is the annual Music Freedom Day where Freemuse invites musicians and journalists to consider directing their activities or programming on this day, or the days leading up to it, on the subject of banned music.

A prosecutor is investigating whether to press charges against the Turkish publisher of a bestselling book by atheist writer Richard Dawkins for inciting religious hatred.

Publisher Erol Karaaslan said yesterday that he would be questioned by an Istanbul prosecutor as part of an official investigation into The God Delusion, written by the British expert in evolutionary biology.

Karaaslan could go on trial if the prosecutor concludes the book incites religious hatred and insults religious values, and faces up to one year in prison if found guilty, Milliyet newspaper reported.

The prosecutor started the inquiry into the book after one reader complained that passages in the book were an assault on "sacred values", Karaaslan said.

The publisher said he would be questioned today and faces prosecution both as the book's publisher and translator. The book has sold 6,000 copies in Turkey since it was published by his Kuzey publishing house in June.

The EU, which Turkey hopes to join, is pressing Ankara to change laws that curb free expression and do not fit within the bloc's standards of free speech. Turkey has said it will soften a law which makes it a crime to denigrate Turkish identity or insult the country's institutions.

Douma (puppet) was a Street Fighter style game set in Lebanese politics. The online game lasted only a day before authorities compelled its creator, known only as “Z.F.”, to take it down.

Douma’s designer ZF told the Daily Star: We tried, with a medium we know [games], to give the people their given rights as citizens, to control the attitude and decisions of the politicians they elect … We tried to find another way for the fans to relieve their anger.

Players could choose their combatants from among seven prominent political figures. An eighth announces each round by riding across the battleground on a moped. From the newspaper account:

Each zaim (”chief”) has a special move with particularly devastating effects. The Hajj Hassan character’s secret weapon, for example, is a battery of Katyusha rockets, while Geagea’s is a kneeling prayer that summons the crushing fist of “God.”

ZF is hopeful the game may return soon: We are working on it, and fast, we’re just looking for the right way to do it.