Censorship News & Articles

Twitter is eyeing an international expansion, and with this, the company wants to overcome regulatory and political hurdles, particularly from governments that practice online restrictions. As such, in light of the ideal that "the Tweets must flow," Twitter will be imposing a selective country-based censorship, to ensure that Tweets do flow, albeit with some limitation.

Today, parts of the Internet have gone dark in protest of proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation. From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., many sites are showing their solidarity by blacking out their sites and redirecting users to sign online petitions or encouraging them to contact their congressperson to voice their concerns.

While it seems likely that the Stop Online Piracy Act has died in the House of Representatives a week before Congress was set to vote on it, the Internet is still not breathing a sigh of relief. The fate of the Protect-IP legislation is still in the hands of the Senate. To help Congress and other Americans who may not realize what’s at stake should these acts pass, many sites are going dark on Wednesday, January 18.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the legislative bills that the United States Senate and House of Representatives are currently debating. Both the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT-IP) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) aim to prevent online piracy and copyright infringement. In an offline world, protecting others from illegally obtaining, selling or sharing others’ materials had become a manageable process. Even in the early days of the Internet, one could effectively police a handful of sites or users. But as the Internet grew, it became increasingly harder to track the transfer of copyrighted materials across the information highway.

Know what happens when the honor code of the Internet is broken? Apparently nothing.

When WikiScanner, a program that allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the online encyclopedia, revealed that people using computers at the CIA and FBI edited entries in Wikipedia, it caused quite a stir — covered in brief by Angela Natividad.

WikiScanner found that while CIA computers were editing entries on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the FBI was busy removing aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But beyond violating Wikipedia’s recommended guidelines, there have been no direct consequences for the parties involved.