The Telegraph reports that a court in Russia has blocked access to YouTube after the website was accused of hosting extremist propaganda. The decision came after a video entitled “Russia for Russians,” a Russian extremist slogan, was allegedly posted on the video sharing site.

The court, in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, also ordered the local internet services provider, to block four other websites.

YouTube

The other sites were blocked for containing excerpts of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, which was banned by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in March after it was found in violation of laws against extremism.

The court ordered the internet provider RA RTS Rosnet to block access to the five websites. The provider says it has appealed the July 16 ruling.

Russia’s anti-extremism laws have been criticised for being used to stifle freedom of expression.

Earlier this month Russian museum curators were found guilty of “inciting religious hatred” for displaying a painting of Jesus Christ with Mickey Mouse’s head superimposed.

Last month, a Pakistani court reimposed a ban on YouTube after content deemed offensive to Muslims resurfaced on the website when a previous ban was lifted in May.

The court ordered the ban after evidence of content on the websites regarding the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran was presented at a hearing.

In 2008, the Chinese government blocked Internet users in the country from accessing YouTube after videos of a government crackdown on Tibetan protesters challenging Chinese rule were posted on the site.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7915831/Russian-court-blocks-YouTube.html

Some internet porn sites in China now accessible

The Independent reported on leaks from Twitter that internet porn that once was blocked by Chinese government censors was now openly available.

“Are they no longer cracking down on pornographic websites? A lot of porn sites and forums are accessible,” technology blogger William Long wrote on his feed.

Messages like that startled Chinese Web surfers, long accustomed to the authorities’ Internet blockades. The country had been in the midst of highly publicized anti-pornography sweeps, and there had been no announcement of any change in government policy.

Yet eight weeks later, the porn sites are still accessible. Still unanswered are questions about whether it’s an official change in policy, a technical glitch or some sort of test by the usually disapproving Chinese Internet police.

“This has never been done with the (Chinese) Internet before,” said Beijing-based Internet analyst Zhao Jing, who goes by the English name Michael Anti.

Whatever the reason, the change has thrown into sharper relief what many people see as the main mission of China’s aggressive Internet censors: blocking sites and content that might challenge the political authority of the communist government. Websites about human rights and dissidents are also routinely banned.

“Maybe they are thinking that if Internet users have some porn to look at, then they won’t pay so much attention to political matters,” Anti said.

The government has not said why the porn sites were unblocked. Repeated calls to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology went unanswered, and the Ministry of Public Security and State Council Information Office – all involved in Web monitoring – did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/some-internet-porn-sites-in-china-now-accessible-2033867.html

India unveils world’s cheapest laptop

The Guardian reports that India has developed the world’s cheapest laptop – a touchscreen device which resembles Apple’s wildly popular iPad but will cost just £23.

The prototype was unveiled today by Kapil Sibal, the country’s human resource development minister, who said 110 million Indian schoolchildren would be the first recipients.

Then, from next year, the device – designed to bridge the digital divide and boost India’s economy – will become available to students in higher education.

Sibal said: “The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35 [£23], including memory, display, everything.”

Past low-cost technologies produced by the country include the £1,450 Tata Nano car and a mobile phone costing less than £11. The iPad retails at about £429 in the UK – 18 times the cost of the Indian laptop.

The tablet computer, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, will eventually be made available to the public. It will run on an open source Linux operating system with Open Office software and can be powered by solar panel or batteries as well as mains electricity. It will have no hard drive but users will have access to a USB port, 2GB of memory and a video-conferencing facility, internet browsing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/23/india-unveils-cheapest-laptop

Be careful what you tweet

The BBC discusses how online tools and services such as Twitter and Facebook create a social space that encourages informality, rapid responses and the sort of conversation that typically takes place between friends in contexts that are either private or public-private, like the street, pub or cafe.

Unfortunately, online interaction has other characteristics which are very different from those of a casual conversation in a cafe.

Not least the fact that many services make comments visible to large numbers of people and search engines ensure that a permanent record is kept of every inane observation, spiteful aside or potentially libellous comment on a respected public figure.

This is something that TV nutritionist Gillian McKeith has just discovered the hard way, and her experience offers a salutary lesson for anyone who wants to use social media tools to enhance their reputation rather than expose themselves to public ridicule.

It all started last week when Twitter user @rachelemoody made a remark about Bad Science, Dr Ben Goldacre’s much admired book on the poor state of media coverage of medicine and science. The book includes a chapter that criticises Gillian McKeith’s work…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10740954

The Telegraph reports on how Google has promised to cease automatically redirecting its Chinese users to its Hong Kong website, which lies outside the bounds of Chinese regulations and can therefore offer uncensored results. However industry experts warned that its move may be too little too late.

The search engine had been using the Hong Kong loophole to game the system since March, after previously announcing that it was determined to stop censorship on its searches.

However, the Chinese authorities have now acted to close down the route. “It is clear from the conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed,” said David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, on the company’s official blog.

Without the license, which expires in two days, Google would not be able to operate a business in China and its site would “effectively go dark”, Mr Drummond added.

In a last-ditch bid to save its China site, Google has resurrected its Google.cn webpage and will now use it to offer its music service and its maps. Any user who then wishes to carry out a search can click a button which will send them back to Hong Kong. “This is not a concession, it is exactly the same service except with one extra click,” said one industry source.

A spokesman for Google would not comment on whether the gambit would satisfy the Chinese government. However, Yu Yang, the head of Analysys International and one of China’s most prominent internet experts, said it was “not likely” that Google would have its license renewed.

He said: “As long as the fundamental dispute over censorship continues, Google will have to keep stepping back as the government advances forward.” But he added that Google would probably “come back to China one day” and that the company’s Hong Kong and American websites would still be accessible to mainland Chinese. “If they blocked the Hong Kong site it would contradict the idea that Hong Kong is part of China,” he said.

Google has been locked in a head-to-head battle with the Chinese government since January, when it announced that it would stop all censorship on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. Although the company only has 30 per cent of the Chinese market, its users include the influential middle classes, academics and professionals.

Access the original article online at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7860639/Google-may-be-forced-out-of-China-despite-changing-censorship-tactics.html

After yesterday’s report on how pornographic websites are to be assigned a .xxx domain, InternetSafety.com has announced that the new policy will actually double the avenues available to access adult content online and fail to provide the claimed filtering benefits.

Under the ICANN guidelines, sites with adult content are not required to purchase a domain ending in .xxx or to abandon their existing .com addresses. Therefore, existing adult sites will be able to purchase .xxx versions of their domains and simply use the new address to point traffic to their existing .com site, effectively doubling their presence on the Internet.

For that reason, simply blocking the .xxx domain will not prevent access to porn sites. In addition, since non-porn sites will also be permitted to register the .xxx domain, the whole-domain blocking strategy will likely lead to unnecessary filtering.

According to Internet Filter Review, there are 4.2 million pornography websites containing 420 million pages of material, drawing 75 million unique visitors every month, and accounting for 12% of all online destinations. A full 25% of all search engine requests are pornography-related, nearly 43% of all Internet users view porn, and 10% of adults admit to an Internet porn addiction.

Officials in Pakistan are to begin monitoring websites such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, MSN and Bing for content that could be offensive to Muslims, blocking access to any links that are deemed inappropriate.

The move follows the outrage that was caused when Facebook hosted a blasphemous competition to draw pictures of Muhammad, although the site isn’t actually on the list to be monitored.

Pornographic websites will soon all be assigned domain names ending in .xxx, after receiving the go ahead from ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

The decision is favoured by many as it will make it easier to filter or block adult content - good news for parents protecting their children online.

According to Internet Pornography Statistics, the word“sex” is the number one search term in the world, accounting for a quarter of all internet searches.

CNN reports that the mobile web in China has loopholes where content could go under the radar of government censors, analysts say.

“It could be anything else the government normally frowns upon or does not consider healthy, which could be political content to pornographic content,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, a market research and strategy consultant firm.

Mobile phones in China have not escaped government control. Last December, nine Chinese ministries initiated a campaign, which ended in March, to crackdown on pornography transmitted via mobile networks.

Mobile carriers also began monitoring text messages for pornographic and other “illegal” content, blocking phone services to subscribers found to have sent such messages, state media reported in January.

However there are signs that the mobile Web has holes, which some say could grow bigger as more people buy smart phones and third-generation networks become stronger. Out of China’s 346 million netizens, as the country’s Web users are known, 233 million use mobiles to access the Internet, according to government statistics.

“It’s not because the government does not want to regulate the mobile Web, it’s because the system and the situation makes it much harder to regulate the mobile Web than the real Web,” said Li Qiang, a researcher with the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Technically, for the moment, the mobile Web is less regulated than the real Web.”

The country’s three mobile phone operators — China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom — shoulder responsibility for monitoring content flowing through their networks.

Access the full article online at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/17/china.mobile.phone.web/index.html

We have reported on various occasions about the dangers of Chatroutlette. The site is rapidly growing in popularity but unfortunately with perverts, voyeurs and those looking for explicit webcam chats with strangers.

Probably due to the sheer amount of people using the site inappropriately, rumours are circulating that it’s looking to introduce software to automatically block images of male genitals.

Although web traffic to the site has more than quadrupled in recent months, the site has come under fire from users who complain that it now the domain of men who only use it to flash.

But the site’s owners are looking to tackle this problem. Its 17-year-old Russian developer Andrey Ternovskiy is believed to be looking at implementing a service that may add software that can quickly scan video to determine if male parts are being shown.

The site will also flag up those users who are frequently ‘nexted’, or who people do not want to remain chatting with, as this will usually mean that they are engaged in something unsuitable.

However, some users did not seem so keen on the idea of censoring what is one of the internet’s wilder websites. ‘So if you remove the spectacle, what is left? Only, Banal, and uninteresting conversation, which will send chat roulette into the dead pool,’ wrote one fan on a forum.

It will be interesting to see how effective the software is – and if it works well, will it be demise of Chatroulette as we know it? Filters or no filters though, the site still won’t be suitable for children. If you’re a parent, make sure the www.chatroulette.com URL is blocked using parental control software.

Foursquare blocked in China

The Telegraph reports that Chinese authorities appear to have blocked access to the Foursquare service in mainland China. The reasons for the censorship of the geolocation service remain unclear, but some have speculated that it could be linked to the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese government is notorious for stifling discussion about the event, and already blocks internet searches that contain those key terms.

It appears that some Foursquare users have been “checking in” to Tiananmen Square in a show of solidarity with Chinese dissidents, and to commemorate those who died in the massacre. The current “mayor” of Tiananmen Square is a Foursquare user called Chommy.

According to Techblog86, a website that covers technology news in China, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people using the Foursquare service to ‘visit’ Tiananmen Square. The blog has a screenshot of a user’s Foursquare app on the iPhone, which shows hundreds of people checking in at the site of the massacre.

It remains unclear whether the blocking of Foursquare in China is a permanent or temporary move by the authorities. It already uses its “Great Firewall” to filter content that it deems unsuitable for Chinese citizens, such as websites about Tibet, the religious group Falun Gong or the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which hundreds of student protestors were crushed by government tanks. Access to Google and Facebook is also blocked in China.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/7802992/Foursquare-blocked-in-China.html

Bangladesh unblocks Facebook

Bangladesh has unblocked Facebook after officials said the US-based website had agreed to remove caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and “obnoxious” images of the country’s leaders.

Dhaka blocked the site a week ago, angered by the content.

Last month Pakistan briefly blocked all access to Facebook in the run-up to “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” – a contest planned by some users. Most Muslims consider representations of Muhammad to be blasphemous.

Bangladeshi officials, apparently in response to the same issue, said Facebook had “hurt the religious sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population” by carrying “offensive images” of Muhammad.

At the time, Dhaka also raised objections to images of political leaders including current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/10247858.stm

Skinbook: the social network for nudists

The Times to Karl Maddocks, who two years ago created Skinbook, the world’s largest nudist social network.

Thousands of people have flocked to the site that has many of the same features and functions as Facebook — except everyone on it is naked.

Skinbook sees itself as a safe haven for those intrigued about stripping off in public, but without having to meet the strict regulations of many nudist clubs. It does have some rules though. Blank profiles are not accepted, or overtly sexual chatter. The site claims to have had 150,000 applicants but only 10 % make the grade.

“You’ve got to be there for the right reasons,” said Mr Maddocks. “With the nature of the site, we’ve got to do our best to protect people’s privacy,” said Mr Maddocks. The site has quickly gained popularity and is beginning to approach the same size as the country’s largest nudist organisation, British Naturism, thought to have about 13,000 members.

Skinbook says it has a younger audience, with the average age of members between 35 and 40, compared with the country’s more established nudist organisations where ages are about 55 to 60. Skinbook also claims to have more females and couples in its membership than most similar groups.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7144381.ece

A new study conducted by Psychologies magazine has found that one in three kids have seen porn on the internet before they are 10 years old.

Eight in 10 children between the ages of 14 and 16 admitted to viewing porn online at home, due to lack of parental controls on the computer or being tech-savvy enough to bypass the restrictions.

However, 70% of British teens report that they haven’t been physically intimate with someone, so are viewing explicit and often violent pornographic content well before it comes to the real thing.

Experts warn that this makes individuals more likely to have relationship problems in the future and more worryingly, commit rape.

Sociologist Michael Flood commented, “there is compelling evidence that pornography has negative effects on individuals and communities. Porn shows sex in unrealistic ways and fails to address intimacy, love, connection or romance. It doesn’t mean every young person is going out to rape somebody but it increases the likelihood.”

Two in three teens report that they can easily access porn using the internet on their mobile phones.

Talking to children about what they look at online is important in helping to protect them. Make sure kids aren’t allowed to access the internet in the privacy of their bedrooms – keep the family computer in a public place where you can check what they are up to. Installing parental control software will also help to block sites with pornographic content, to help protect children online even when you’re back is turned.