Courtesy: Cairokee

Egyptian band Cairokee has announced that four songs from its upcoming album have not been approved by Egypts Censorship Board. In a Sunday statement on its Facebook page, the band wrote that the album will not be commercially released in its full form given the boards decision.

The censored songs include lyrics about everyday life, our problems as young people, social media and what we see on TV our usual topics, said 33-year old frontman and songwriter Amir Eid, who doesnt think any of the content is particularly controversial. If anything, I feel, as a songwriter, that I didnt say everything I wanted to say.

It is a standard practice for the Censorship Board to review songs before commercial release, but Cairokee, whose rise to fame came as a result of their politically-inspired music, has not had songs blocked before.

Set for release on July 11, Nota Beida (A Drop of White) will be the five-member bands seventh album, following 2015s Nas W Nas. The title track was released as a single in May and has been viewed over 880,000 times on YouTube.

On Wednesday, days after a sold-out show on July 1 as part of Londons Shubbak Festival that featured teasers from the new album, Eid told a maa Masr that the band was not given an official reason for the Censorship Boards decision.

We dont know the real reason, he said. Its possible the album wont be released commercially at all. He added that the matter is currently being handled by the bands lawyers.

While the Censorship Board has objected to the use of certain words in the past, in this case they objected to the release of entire songs, Eid said.

One of the songs that was not approved by the board, which is titled Al-Keif (The High), tackles youth drug use. Ironically, Eid says, the band was contacted by the Social Solidarity Ministrys drug use prevention and treatment program, which asked if it could use the song in an upcoming media campaign.

We will continue with our initial plan and release the full album online, said Eid, cautioning that he did not want to overstate the issue. We have our own parallel world in which we operate. Our fans are all online, and thats that.

The good news is that well keep going, and our music will remain free, read the the bands Facebook statement. It will be available on the internet and on digital stores, with visuals for each song.

Although formed in 2009, Cairokee became widely known during the 2011 revolution, after it recorded the song Sout al-Horreya (The Voice of Freedom), which some protesters took up as an anthem. The song was subsequently picked up by radio stations and TV channels.

The band has since collaborated with prominent figures in the regions music industry, including Algerian singer Souad Massi and late Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm.

Its latest album includes a collaboration with vocalist Abel Rahman Rushdy, who is known for his sufi style of singing.

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Censorship Board bans songs from Cairokee's new album - Mada Masr

ANALYSIS: Measures for smartphone use and online conduct bring the junta into line with Chinese internet control

Proposals passed by the NRSA call for mandatory fingerprinting and face-scans for every owner of a mobile phone. (Pinterest.com/facial-recognition)

The junta's chief reform body has voted almost unanimously for a complicated set of stringent restrictions including mandatory fingerprint and face scanning even to buy time to use a mobile phone.

The National Reform Steering Assembly (NRSA) passed the 84-page set of proposed new rules for online conduct on Monday by a vote of 144-to-1.

If adopted by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and its appointed National Legislative Assembly (NLA), smartphone and internet users are in for some major changes.

The NRSA measures impose stringent restrictions on internet usage, intended in part to identify the posters of all content on services such as Facebook and YouTube.

The package of wide-ranging measures would place Thai censorship and online restrictions even closer to those of nations such as China and Iran, which try to tightly control citizens' access to information.

The proposal passed Monday suggests initial steps including requiring that all cellphone numbers be registered with not only users' 13-digit citizen identification numbers - as is already the case - or (for foreigners) passport details, but also their biometric fingerprints and facial recognition data.

Other measures to be taken later include the establishment of a central social media watch centre to look for content considered inappropriate by the government.

The reforms also mandate an upgrade to technology used for intercepting internet communications. The government already has several offices engaged in monitoring online activity and also encourages members of the public to report material considered offensive.

The major target of the authorities is lese majeste offences, but since seizing power in 2014, the ruling junta has in practice also criminalised political dissent and criticism of its actions. Charges under the Computer Crime Act and other, specific coup-related measures, have resulted in long prison sentences in cases that do not involved lese majeste.

The new proposals are part of the government's 20-year "National Strategy" plan to retain influence after elections are held. The regime has suggested that polls may be held next year, but has never set an election date.

The expanded censorship proposals follow earlier NRSA plans to set up an appointed council to regulate print and online media. It would require journalists to be licensed or risk prison.

Media organisations urged its rejection, saying its definition of who needs a licence is too broad and it restricts freedom of expression.

The junta's planning emulates efforts at social discipline in China, although with important differences.

In China, authorities have also pressed enforcement of real-name registration for internet and cellphone users over the past several years with varying degrees of success. Operators of Chinese social networking platforms have acknowledged that requirements for real-name registration have not always been fully implemented because they can be onerous and were likely to hurt their ability to draw more users.

But China at least has its own social media networks, and bans Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other such networks popular in Thailand.

In major Chinese cities, though, as in Thailand it has become harder to obtain cellphone numbers without registering one's ID, and with the proliferation of smartphones in China, many social media accounts are now linked to mobile phone numbers.

Such requirements are arguably more easily imposed on Chinese internet companies, which have long complied with requests that they carry out censorship on the internet in return for the right to compete in a large and lucrative market.

Chinese social media platforms employ thousands of people to scrub posts off their sites if they are been deemed to violate censorship demands.

In Thailand, the regime has depended on self-censorship by internet providers.

The number of Thais employed finding and listing websites, pages and post for censorship is not known, but such operations are known to be operated by the government, at least two police divisions, the army and navy and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC).

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Reform body votes for tight social media censorship - Bangkok Post

Japanese games developer discusses his own experience of being asked to remove 'boob slider' which made female characters' breasts get bigger

A JAPANESE game developer has spoken out to provide a rare insight into Nintendos alleged censorship of games deemed too raunchy or shocking for Western audiences.

Nintendo is famed for producing child-friendly video games, whilst publishers in Britain and the US focus on big, bloody affairs like Fallout and DOOM.

But some of the games it originally releases into the the Japanesemarket are very different from the ones which see the light of day in North America and the rest of the world.

Nintendo follows a strategy of localisation in which parts of games are re-written to make more sense to players outside of Japan.

Gamers are worried that this process could allow progressive and censorious social justice warriors (the name for a very vocal group of censorious activists) to dictate a games story and character designs, overriding its original creators intentions.

NowTetsuya Takahashi, CEO of the Japanese developer Monolith Soft, has revealed his own experience with Nintendos shadowy localisation division.

He was the executive director of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which originally featured a shocking depiction of a 13-year-old character Lin Lee wearing a bikini as well as a ridiculous boob slider that allowed players to choose the size of their characters breasts.

Both were removed from the game which was released in North America.

As a developer, I do feel like itd be ideal to be able to adjust the content so that its culturally acceptable, whether its in the US or in the EU, he told Kotaku.

For example, there was a discussion about the breast slider.

Jokingly, I said: well, would it help if we had a crotch slider for the male? Obviously it was a joke, but they responded obviously its not gonna work out. I do realise theres a cultural difference between what Japanese people think and what the rest of the world thinks.

In recent years, several of Nintendos products have come under heavy criticism from the gaming community for being badly localised for American audiences.

This process is led by a wing of Nintendo called Treehouse,which is alleged to have been involved in the censorship of popular video games like Fire Emblem: Fates, which saw significant chunks of the game alteredand in some casesremoved.

A petting minigame, where players could spend personal time with characters as they tap the screen with the stylus, was removed. But the romantic dialogue remained intact.

Another change involved the removal of a controversial scene social justice warriors claimed was support for gay conversion therapy.

It was intended as a lighthearted moment where a man-hating character perceives everyone around her as female after consuming a magic powder.

To nip potential controversies in the bud, Nintendo devised a new strategy to have its staff form professional relationships with Japanese developers to tell them how best to make their games and inform them of any content with cultural relevance.

Also speaking to Kotaku, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the creators are always involved during localisation in this new strategy and explained how the process worked.

He said: In terms of what gets localised, theres a simple collection of words that we use to define how we think about this: its cultural relevance and understanding of the ratings and ratings implications.

Fils-Aime provided adding a few years onto a characters listed age as an example of such a change to avoid a mature rating, but didnt list any games in particular.

The significance of Nintendo of Americas localizers participating during development cant be overstated.

Gamers fear it means that progressive and censorious social justice warriors can now dictate a games story and character designs, overriding its original creators intentions.

Critics fear the rise of political correctness in the United States and especially among video game industry professionals mean such a collaboration will only lead to further censorship of Nintendos games.

And this time, gamers may not even know about it.

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Nintendo's alleged 'censorship' of games deemed too sexy or shocking for politically correct Western audiences revealed - The Sun

Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron at a joint press conference in Paris in June. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

The terrorism legislation watchdog has likened Theresa Mays proposals to punish companies such as Facebook and Google for failing to tackle extremist propaganda to Chinas strict regime of internet censorship.

Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said internet companies should be brought firmly onside rather than threatened with fines.

In a speech delivered at the Terrorism and Social Media conference in Swansea, reported in the Times, he said: I struggle to see how it would help if our parliament were to criminalise tech company bosses who dont do enough. How do we measure enough? What is the appropriate sanction?

We do not live in China, where the internet simply goes dark for millions when government so decides. Our democratic society cannot be treated that way.

May outlined the idea of punishing companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Google if they fail to remove extremist propaganda and terrorist material from their platforms in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing.

After a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in June, May said they were both determined to ensure the internet could not be used as a safe space for terrorists and criminals.

The UK and France are to develop plans to create a new legal liability for tech companies that fail to take action against unacceptable content.

Speaking at the time, May said: The counter-terrorism cooperation between British and French intelligence agencies is already strong, but President Macron and I agree that more should be done to tackle the terrorist threat online.

In the UK we are already working with social media companies to halt the spread of extremist material and poisonous propaganda that is warping young minds. I can announce that the UK and France will work together to encourage corporations to do more and abide by their social responsibility to step up their efforts to remove harmful content from their networks, including exploring the possibility of creating a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove unacceptable content.

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Watchdog likens May's internet fines threat to Chinese censorship - The Guardian

I recently sat down to play a game of NBA 2K as I assume most people do on a Friday night when theyre losing yet another battle with writers block. Before I even got into an actual game (where I eventually demolished the Pistons with the Raptors by the way), I heard a familiar voice on the start menu.

Mans never been in Marquee when its shutdown, eh. Trusss mi daddi

The Vine loop that swept the culture. I hadnt even heard Shutdown in 2K17 before this. Being from London, I proceeded to rap Skeptas verse out loud but something was different. The absence of p*ssy in the chorus made me realise that Id never heard the clean version before, a fact Im both disappointed and proud of. Oh well, it made no difference to me, hence the carefree performance that followed in my living room.

But some of the censorship in the first verse caught my attention again, albeit for a different reason. Perplexingly, prison and Gs were both excluded from the vocals.

It reminded me of an infamous Kanye West interview from almost twelve years ago. During a visit to Canadas Flow 93.5, Ye voiced his opinion on the phrase white girl being censored on Gold Digger. He argued that the line when he get on, he leave yo ass for a white girl was less of an insult and more social commentary. An intelligent observation more than a stereotype. The conversation about the video ended up revolving around Ye walking out of the room after being constantly interrupted by DJ Hollywood Rich but the point should not be diminished.

Censorship and Hip-Hop have always had a bizarre relationship. Perhaps its a stigma, perhaps we bring it on ourselves. Perhaps its both. I wholeheartedly comprehend leaving words like n*gga, b*tch and f*ck (and specifically for this song, rolling and smoking) off the radio and other public forums like video games but its also mandatory to look at the context in which they are utilised.

On Shutdown, Skepta raps God knows I dont wanna go prison. Skepta is arguably the biggest rapper from London and despite his success in the US being only recent, he, along with the rest of BBK, has had a dedicated legion of fans for about a decade now. A substantial amount of those fans are impressionable youth who I can guarantee you would benefit infinitely more from hearing him say that he doesnt want to end up in prison than hearing nothing at all.

In the next bar of the song he says me and my Gs aint scared of police. A line that I can understand there being some level of contention about, but also a line that is still relatively harmless when you genuinely try to understand it. Although I think its safe to say that the police situation in America is vastly worse than here in the UK, we do face our own issues and empathise greatly with our brothers and sisters in the States. The line essentially reinforces confidence in the communities that need it and is a positive message well worth spreading.

However, both Gs and police are withheld in the game. Ill start with Gs.

This is one of a few examples of slang getting lost in translation over time. When it first started being used in Hip-Hop, calling someone a G was actually short for calling them a God, not a gangsta. Its one of the many bits of terminology that Hip-Hop adopted directly from the Five-Percent Nation via Wu-Tang, Nas and numerous others. JAY-Z is wearing a Five-Percent chain in the image above. Its a legitimate term of endearment. Come to think of it, the word police getting censored regardless of the context has some comical irony to it.

We have to re-evaluate what were trying to do with censorship. Are we dismissing negative words and messages or are we fearfully cleaning things up to an extent that we oversimplify and are ignorant of the rebellious roots which have been so fundamental in Hip-Hop? When dealing with such complex material, we cannot afford to look through such a narrow scope. Surface level analysation of songs invites surface level songs and vice versa. A vicious cycle. Context is pivotal.

by Akaash Sharma

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The Necessity Of Context In Hip-Hop Censorship - HipHop-N-More (blog)

On Wednesday, one day after Facebook announced that 2 billion people use its service every month, ProPublica released a bombshell investigation into the company's hate-speech censorship guidelines. The report included documents revealing that Facebook's rules often end up protecting the rights of those in power over those who are powerless. These two revelations are inextricably entwined, each enabling and necessitating the other.

Facebook is the biggest social network on the planetmore than a quarter of the human race uses its siteprecisely because it so actively censors and curates its community and follows local laws that enable it to exist even in oppressive countries. And because it is so huge, people who most need a platform for expression online cant afford to not be on iteven if that means enduring seemingly arbitrary censorship.

This is the network effect in action. As more people use Facebook, its value increases exponentially. That is especially true for people who don't have other networks through which they can share informationpeople such as dissidents, activists, or minority groups. Now that Facebook is the single biggest network on earth, the price people pay by leaving it is enormous.

Facebook wouldnt like to call themselves a monopoly, because that comes with regulations, but from a lot of perspectives they are the dominant player, says Steven Murdoch, a researcher at University College London. Whether its a corporate monopoly that could be fined by the European Union is a question for another time, but one thing is clear: Facebook is certainly a social monopoly. In order to get an audience, which is what people often want if they are, say, an activist, they need to stay involved with the dominant player. And that is Facebook, Murdoch says. The next most popular social media site worldwide, What's App, is also owned by Facebook. The next most popular non-Facebook-owned social media site in the US is Twitter, which has only 328 million active users. If you want your message to reach the most people, you better post to Facebook.

In order to get that big, Facebook has to be everything to everyone. "The fundamental disconnect is that they are making global rules about protecting groups of people, whose status and relationship with other groups varies locally." says Judith Donath, an expert on online communities at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Appeasing the majority is the middle road Facebook has to walk in order to be a safe enough place for billions of people to want to engage. The mainstreamness and rigidity of Facebook is what lets it get so huge, Donath says. A site like Twitter, which has much laxer rules about hate speech, can never be as big as Facebook because some people find it unsafe or offensive. In fact, it was its "buttoned-up" quality, as ProPublica notes, that allowed Facebook to surpass its earliest rival, MySpace, which allowed more offensive content to proliferate on its site.

According to Facebooks internal documents, in order to systematize the censorship of hate speech so billions of people feel safe, it uses a simple formula: "protected category + attack = hate speech. Protected categories include things like race and gender, but not age. If someone attacks a person who is in a subset of a protected category, Facebook's rules seem to treat them as no longer protected. That results in strange and culturally tone-deaf inconsistencies, such as the revelation that white men are protected from hate speech but black children are not.

When this came to light Wednesday, people on social media quickly expressed their outrage, but few were surprised. Though Facebook hasnt been transparent about its policies, people who have been censored in seemingly arbitrary ways have noticed for years. One of the people Facebook censored, and whom ProPublica highlighted, was poet and Black Lives Matter activist Didi Delgado, who earlier this year published an article on Medium titled Mark Zuckerberg Hates Black People, in which she discussed at length how Facebooks guidelines penalized her and her fellow activists.

"I, like many Black organizers, have taken to maintaining two accountsa primary and a backup. Its infuriating and tedious, but I chalk it up to the Black tax," Delgado wrote. "Since Black organizers are more likely to have their content flagged and removed for 'violating community standards,' weve had to find workarounds to sustain our online presence and engagement."

Delgado is stuck using the same platform that she says hates her precisely so she can maintain that online presence. Even though Delgado uses other networks to reach her audienceMedium, for instance, and Twitter, and Patreonshe hasnt deleted her Facebook account. Neither have any of the other people who ProPublica found had been targeted by Facebook's guidelines. Nor has Damon Young, a writer who says his account was suspended over a post about racism after the police officer who shot Philando Castile was acquitted. When there's robust competitionsay, Uber and Lyft in the ride-sharing marketyou can delete one account in protest of a companys polices and use the other. Not so with Facebook.

Instead, people wait until Facebook turns their accounts back on, and then resume posting. They operate multiple accounts, as Delgado does, knowing that Facebook could suspend one of them at any time.

Murdoch says people often counter that anyone who disagrees with Facebook's policies is free to leave it. But that is a privileged position, he says, coming from people with alternative communication networks. For a large portion of people on Facebookand especially for people whose work is to share informationgiving up Facebook means being less effective at what they do.

Leaving Facebook is always an optionif you don't mind leaving the biggest audience on earth behind, not to mention the platform where most of your friends are. It's a very tough tradeoff, particularly for activists like those discussed in the story, who need access to the biggest possible audience to do their work, says J. M. Berger, a fellow at the International Centre for Counter-TerrorismThe Hague, who studies how people use the internet.

Facebook has all the power in these relationships. When the site first went global, after leaving the siloed dorm rooms of its infancy, Facebook empowered people to tell their side of the story, to have their voices heard outside of the mainstream systems that had otherwise silenced them. Mainstream media doesnt care about your plight? Post directly to Facebook. Dictatorial regime wont let you speak about your hunger, frustration, oppression? Post directly to Facebook. Facebook has been, in some real ways, a way to route around censorship. But as it grows, it is also becoming a censor that forces people to route around it.

One way to do that, now that the guidelines have been made public, is to pick your words carefully. According to the guide, Facebook will consider it hate speech if you write White people suck, but not if you write White people on the internet suck. Your other option is to post to smaller sites. A tweet may not get you the 2 billion-person audience of Facebook, but it might get your words out there.

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Facebook: Too Big to Delete - WIRED

BY TONY BOUZA

Humans learned the importance of controlling the extremes of other humans very early onabout contemporaneous with learning of the efficiency and importance of conveying their messages and controlling behavior. Artists were called the antenna of the race by a poet who saw them as key definers of our nature and prospects. The Nazis burned books. A free press is the embodiment of our democratic ideals and the greatest adornment of our societynotwithstanding an idiot presidents definition of a free press as an enemy of the people. Ibsen cringes. And that is why the Walker Art Centers decision to dismantle and burn The Scaffold is so dismaying, whether they actually go through with the burning or not. Artists promote debates and provoke discussions. Without them our society would be a barren, sterile place. The Scaffold was intended to illustrate both the folly and cruelty of man, when driven by dumb passions and un-surrendered prejudices. How can we combat our ignorance without guidance? The position of the Dakota Native American community that The Scaffold be dismantled and burned is an uninformed act of censorship. The Walkers craven surrender to intimidation simply fuels right-wing extremists contempt for political correctness. And what a great example of intellectual flaccidness it is. The creator of The Scaffold transferred the intellectual property rights to the sculpture to the Dakotas, who seem to be entertaining second thoughts about burning the artwork. As with the pipelinea faint whiff of extortion permeated the backdrop.* [see Editors Note below] Last winter we saw the Native Americans demonstrate against a pipeline in North Dakota despite its operators having secured all needed permits and despite the fact that it touched no Native Americans lands. It looked to me like an attempt to secure something through the interruption of construction. Despite the fact that it is both safer and cheaper to transport fuels through pipelines than truck or rail. The demonstrators were doused by fire hoses, very likely creating grotesque versions of ice sculptures. A cruel and unnecessary response by the authorities. Arrests were legitimate. Acts of gratuitous cruelty and repression were not. Such events raise critical and fundamental questions relating to moral courage. If the emperors naked, why not just say so? A totally fraught element was recently introduced when NBC anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed Alex Jones. The guest holds that the killing of 20 children in Connecticuts Sandy Hook elementary school was a media hoax. His assertions triggered the febrile right to call the victims families with threats and imprecations. It is in its very ugliness and emotion that the test of freedom is forged. Sympathies flow to the families. Antipathy is aboil for the conspiracy theorist Jonesa friend of President Trumps. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make ye free. That is all we know and all we need to know. [Editors Note: Im sure Tony knows that all political acts of resistance are, in some way, acts of extortionwhether it was Thoreau in a Concord jail or Martin Luther King in a Birmingham Jail. But the greatest extortionist of all time must have been Mahatma Gandhi. His hunger strikes held the holiest man in India hostage, and he threatened to kill him if the British did not surrender India.]

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Censorship - Southside Pride

All Photos Courtesy Ryan Estrada

The Russian-owned blog community LiveJournal previously banned political solicitation, part of a decade-long effort to censor Russians who were using the platform to criticize the government. Now, LiveJournals former comic artist has returned from an eight-year absence... bringing back LiveJournals Frank the Goat one more time to protest the sites abuses from the inside.

Back in 2006, indie comic artist (and LiveJournal user) Ryan Estrada really wanted to make a series about Frank the Goat, LiveJournals longstanding mascot. So, he worked out a deal with the sites owners: Hed make a commissioned comic about the goat with full creative control over the character and story, and in exchange they wouldnt have to pay him for it. For three years, Estrada charmed LiveJournal fans with a variety of stories about Frank and his friends.

It was a weird experimental series, where each chapter was a different genre. I did a musical, a rom-com, a murder mystery, a kids book, a horror story and others, Estrada told me. It was a fun way to try new things with a character that had a built-in fanbase.

This was right around when the Russian government was really starting to take interest in the site, as it had grown in popularity among journalists and citizens who were trying to circumvent Putins censorship of the media. One year later, everything came to a head. A Russian business bought LiveJournal and began the process of moving it over to Russian servers... meaning everybody who used the service (Americans like George R.R. Martin included) were subject to Russian censorship laws. Estrada ended the comic in 2009.

LiveJournal, a blog community thats hosted a lot of science fiction authors and fans (including

Estrada recently learned about just how bad Russian control of the site has gotten, primarily from a recent episode of the Reply All podcast. He told me he was appalled to learn how the Russian government was actively censoring anti-government and pro-LGBTQ content, which reportedly included a governor hiring thugs to assault a Russian who was using LiveJournal to spread his message, breaking his fingers so he couldnt type.

They were doing all this under the flag of a mascot that I may not have created, but that I had given personality to, Estrada said. The Frank the Goat I know didnt stand for that. I didnt want an outdated comic praising the company under my name to be this sad time capsule that might lead people to believe I support any of it.

When Estrada realized he still had administrative access to his Frank the Goat LiveJournal account, and the contract was never technically canceled, he decided to use his platform to create one final Frank the Goat comic. One that speaks out against what hate and fear turned a beloved site into.

As of now, the comic is still up on LiveJournal. It technically violates the sites rules against political solicitation, particularly involving LGBTQ representation but, since Estrada lives in South Korea, he wouldnt face actual prosecution for it. However, he can be kicked off LiveJournal for posting the comic, and the Frank the Goat account can be shut down. In the meantime, it serves as an homage to a community that was once treasured by scifi fans, and later used as a tool to fight for freedom.

If something isnt right, you should speak up. Use what little scrap of power and privilege you have to raise your voice, even if it is super dumb and involves drawing pictures of goats singing and kissing sheep, Estrada said.

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LiveJournal's Goat Mascot Is Back to Protest the Site's Russian Censorship - Gizmodo

June 30, 2017 BerlinGerman lawmakers approved a bill on Friday aimed at cracking down on hate speech on social networks, which critics say could have drastic consequences for free speech online.

The measure approved is designed to enforce the country's existing limits on speech, including the long-standing ban on Holocaust denial. Among other things, it would fine social networking sites up to 50 million euros ($56 million) if they persistently fail to remove illegal content within a week, including defamatory "fake news."

"Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins," said Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who was the driving force behind the bill.

Mr. Maas said official figures showed the number of hate crimes in Germany increased by over 300 percent in the past two years.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have become a battleground for angry debates about Germany's recent influx of more than 1 million refugees, with authorities struggling to keep up with the flood of criminal complaints.

Maas claimed that 14 months of discussion with major social media companies had made no significant progress. Last week, lawmakers from his Social Democratic Party and Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Union bloc agreed a number of amendments to give companies more time to check whether posts that are flagged to them are illegal, delegate the vetting process to a third party, and ensure that users whose comments are removed can appeal the decision.

But human rights experts and the companies affected warn that the law risks privatizing the process of censorship and could have a chilling effect on free speech.

"This law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem," Facebook said in a statement.

"We feel that the lack of scrutiny and consultation do not do justice to the importance of the subject. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure safety for the people on our platform," the company said, noting that it is hiring 3,000 additional staff on top of 4,500 already working to review posts.

Aside from the hefty fine for companies, the law also provides for fines of up to 5 million euros for the person each company designates to deal with the complaints procedure if it doesn't meet requirements.

Social networks also have to publish a report every six months detailing how many complaints they received and how they dealt with them.

Among those cheering the law was Germany's main Jewish organization, which called it a "strong instrument against hate speech in social networks."

Germany has long had a law criminalizing Holocaust denial a response to the country's Nazi-era history of allowing racist ideas to become genocidal policy.

"Jews are exposed to anti-Semitic hatred in social networks on a daily basis," the Central Council of Jews said. "Since all voluntary agreements with platform operators produced almost no result, this law is the logical consequence to effectively limit hate speech."

The nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which has frequently been accused of whipping up sentiments against immigrants and minorities, said it is considering challenging the law in Germany's highest court.

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Germany passes censorship law to fight online hate speech - Christian Science Monitor

If you tried to search for Emma Watsons Wikpedia page in Iran in 2013, you wouldnt have been able to find it; the article was one of 963 blocked by the government. This tidbit about the Harry Potter actress is found in a 2013 University of Pennsylvaniareport on Irans censorship of Wikipedia. Researchers at Harvards Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society recently built on this publication by analyzing censorship of the site in 15 countries since 2014. In a report published in May, they found that censorship of Wikipedia has declined since then due to the sites new security measures.

In fact, they discovered that only three countries blocked access to parts of Wikipedia during the duration of the study: China and Uzbekistan were blocking the Chinese- and Uzbek-language versions of Wikipedia (read more coverage of censorship in China, and its use of fake social media posts to influence public opinion). Thailand had once blocked the Yiddish versionmost likely a weird misconfiguration, says Justin Clark, a software developer at the center and the principal author of the report. They derived their results partly by analyzing data from the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedias parent organization) that showed when people load Wikipedia articles, and partly from 41 servers located in different countries around the world that tried to load Wikipedia and could determine if the website was blocked.

Clark says there are multiple reasons for the changing levels of censorship. The first is Wikipedias transition from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) guides the way a websites data is sent to a browser. Because the connection is unencrypted, however, other people can intercept that connection and see the data being sent. In HTTPS, the s stands for secure; the major difference between the two protocols is that HTTPS encrypts the data being communicated.

Wikipedias transition affected the way countries could block access, Clark explains. With HTTP, a country could block an individual Wikipedia article. But with HTTPS, the country needs to choose between blocking every article or none. Countries are choosing the latter. As the report states: Russia once again blacklisted Wikipedia over a single cannabis-related article, but the ban was reversed less than 24 hours later.

Monitoring censorship of Wikipedia matters because Wikipedia is one of the most prominent, and most important, sites out there, says Rob Faris, the research director at the center, who also worked on the report. How countries treat Wikipedia, he continues, is indicative of how important Internet freedom is not only to them, but also to the rest of the world. Clark adds that understanding the information controls imposed on the Internet is important for allowing an informed citizenry to emerge.

As the first complete empirical deep dive into incidents of the blocking of Wikipedia projects around the world, Faris says, the report will inform future research as other investigators follow its methods. He also notes that accessing Wikipedia server data is novel. Such research paves the way for examining global Internet outages, Clark says, especially those deliberately caused by countries during elections or protests. He adds that after the study concluded, China blocked access to Wikipedia in additional languages spoken there, and Turkey in all languages, so the Berkman Klein Center will continue to monitor Wikipedia around the world.

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Wikipedia Against Censorship - Harvard Magazine

Credit: Berkman Klein Center

A sharp increase in web encryption and a worldwide shift away from standalone websites in favor of social media and online publishing platforms has altered the practice of state-level internet censorship and in some cases led to broader crackdowns, a new study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University finds.

The Shifting Landscape of Global Internet Censorship, released today, documents the practice of internet censorship around the world through empirical testing in 45 countries of the availability of 2,046 of the worlds most-trafficked and influential websites, plus additional country-specific websites. The study finds evidence of filtering in 26 countries across four broad content themes: political, social, topics related to conflict and security, and internet tools (a term that includes censorship circumvention tools as well as social media platforms). The majority of countries that censor content do so across all four themes, although the depth of the filtering varies.

The study confirms that 40 percent of these 2,046 websites can only be reached by an encrypted connection (denoted by the HTTPS prefix on a web page, a voluntary upgrade from HTTP). While some sites can be reached by either HTTP or HTTPS, total encrypted traffic to the 2,046 sites has more than doubled to 31 percent in 2017 from 13 percent in 2015, the study finds. Meanwhile, and partly in response to the protections afforded by encryption, activists in particular and web users in general around the world are increasingly relying on major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Medium, and Wikipedia.

These trends have created challenges for state internet censors operating filters at national network levels. When an entire website is encrypted, it is not easy to detect and selectively block a particular dissidents page on Facebook or troublesome history lesson on Wikipedia. So unless a platform agrees to remove content, a country must either block the whole site, or allow everything through.

Twenty years ago the webs infrastructure was truly distributed; visiting a web site could mean corresponding with a server in a university, a private home, or a business anywhere in the world. Today, content and services are increasingly hosted among a handful of cloud providers, says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of computer science and George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard University and a co-founder of the Berkman Klein Center. That may have helped standardize the rollout of encryption for day-to-day communication over the web, while at the same time placing the major providers under increasing pressure to shape and censor their services by governments in markets where providers wish to have a strong physical presence.

In some respects, the shift may be reducing the blocking of communications. For example, in 2011, Saudi Arabia was blocking individual Wikipedia entries (such as one describing the theory of evolution); and individual Twitter accounts such as that of Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim, with nearly 2.8 million followers, and the human rights advocate Gamal Eid, the director of a Cairo-based regional human rights NGO. But today both of those sites use HTTPS, making such censorship practices difficult. While Saudi Arabia vigorously censors many types of content, it doesnt block Wikipedia or Twitter, which in effect allows these critics to be heard in the Kingdom.

But in other contexts, the shift has been followed by broader crackdowns. For example, in recent years Medium, the online publishing platform, has become popular among activists in Egypt. But in June 2017, Egypt blocked Medium, effectively censoring not only the activists content but also millions of other articles on the site. Similarly, Malaysia blocked Medium in January 2016 after the company refused to take down articles about a government corruption case.

And in April of 2017, Turkey blocked all of Wikipedia because censors could not block (or convince Wikipedia to remove) entries asserting that Turkey sponsored terrorist organizations. This left Turkeys population without any access to Wikipedias 290,000 Turkish-language entries. Tech companies are on the front lines; to an ever-greater extent they serve as the principal guardians of freedom of expression online around the world, says Rob Faris, a co-author of the report and research director at the Berkman Klein Center.

Among the reports many other findings is that governments are increasingly blocking content from other governments, not merely blocking internal dissidents and other non-state actors. This is particularly evident in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries.

In a related trend, the MENA region is also experiencing a rise in shared internet censorship practices among allied nations. For example, Saudi-allied countries have begun to block the same websites originating from Qatar. State internet censorship practices are increasingly intertwined with intraregional political dynamics, says Helmi Noman, a report co-author and research affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center. The regional political tensions and conflicts and political alliances around them give rise to bloc-centered similar internet censorship policies, he says. As a result, more states now ban content originating from or affiliated with rival states.

Of course, governments have other means at their disposal to suppress online speech, including arresting dissidents, pressuring companies to take down content, and shaping online narratives by launching disinformation campaigns on social media platforms.

The Berkman Klein Center report is the latest of several studies and media reports from the past year documenting global censorship practices. Governments have also blocked encrypted mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber that allow users to spread information quickly and securely, and even shut all internet access within national borders at certain times.

Regimes that aggressively filter the internet typically use third parties usually private companies that specialize in selling filtering technologies to detect and carry out content blocking. State censors have extended the reasons and rationales for internet censorship. The fight against terrorism has provided one justification for expanding political censorship, and states have exploited this to target political speech they find offensive. More recently, state censors have started using claims of fake news as motive to censor the internet.

For more information and to download a copy of the report, visit the Berkman Klein Center website.

Excerpt from:

New Berkman Klein Center study examines global internet censorship - Harvard Law School News

A country has the right to prevent the worlds Internet users from accessing information, Canadas highest court ruled on Wednesday.

In a decision that has troubling implications for free expression online, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a companys effort to force Google to de-list entire domains and websites from its search index, effectively making them invisible to everyone using Googles search engine

The case, Google v. Equustek, began when British Columbia-based Equustek Solutions accused Morgan Jack and others, known as the Datalink defendants, of selling counterfeit Equustek routers online. It claimed California-based Google facilitated access to the defendants sites. The defendants never appeared in court to challenge the claim, allowing default judgment against them, which meant Equustek effectively won without the court ever considering whether the claim was valid.

Although Google was not named in the lawsuit, it voluntarily took down specific URLs that directed users to the defendants products and ads under the local (Canadian) Google.ca domains. But Equustek wanted more, and the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that Google had to delete the entire domain from its search results, including from all other domains such Google.com and Google.go.uk. The British Columbia Court of Appealupheldthe decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada decision followed the analysis of those courts.

EFF intervened in the case, explaining [.pdf] that such an injunction ran directly contrary to both the U.S. Constitution and statutory speech protections. Issuing an order that would cut off access to information for U.S. users would set a dangerous precedent for online speech. In essence, it would expand the power of any court in the world to edit the entire Internet, whether or not the targeted material or site is lawful in another country. That, we warned, is likely to result in a race to the bottom, as well-resourced individuals engage in international forum-shopping to impose the one countrys restrictive laws regarding free expression on the rest of the world.

The Supreme Court of Canada ignored those concerns. It ruled that because Google was subject to the jurisdiction of Canadian courts by virtue of its operations in Canada, courts in Canada had the authority to order Google to delete search results worldwide. The court further held that there was no inconvenience to Google in removing search results, and Google had not shown the injunction would offend any rights abroad.

Perhaps even worse, the court ruled that before Google can modify the order, it has to prove that the injunction violates the laws of another nation thus shifting the burdent of proof from the plaintiff to a non-party. An innocent third party to a lawsuit shouldnt have to shoulder the burden or proving whether an injunction violates the laws of another country. Although companies like Google may be able to afford such costs, many others will not, meaning many overbroad and unlawful orders may go unchallenged. Instead, once the issue has been raised at all, it should be the job of the party seeking the benefit of an order, such as Equustek, to establish that there is no such conflict. Moreover, numerous intervenors, including EFF, provided ample evidence of that conflicts in this case.

Beyond the flaws of the ruling itself, the courts decision will likely embolden other countries to try to enforce their own speech-restricting laws on the Internet, to the detriment of all users. As others have pointed out, its not difficult to see repressive regimes such as China or Iran use the ruling to order Google to de-index sites they object to, creating a worldwide hecklers veto.

The ruling largely sidesteps the question of whether such a global order would violate foreign law or intrude on Internet users free speech rights. Instead, the court focused on whether or not Google, as a private actor, could legally choose to take down speech and whether that would violate foreign law. This framing results in Google being ordered to remove speech under Canadian law even if no court in the United States could issue a similar order.

The Equustek decision is part of a troubling trend around the world of courts and other governmental bodies ordering that content be removed from the entirety of the Internet, not just in that country's locale. On the same day the Supreme Court of Canadas decision issued, a court in Europe heard arguments as to whether to expand the right-to-be-forgotten worldwide.

EFF was represented at the Supreme Court of Canada and the British Columbia Court of Appeal by David Wotherspoon of MacPherson Leslie & Tyerman and Daniel Byma of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin.

Originally posted here:

Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship - EFF

DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Twitter, a privately owned social media giant that boasts of more than 300 million users, is censoring a pro-life group's ads, labeling them hate speech.

On Monday, Tucker Carlson covered this ongoing censorship by Twitter on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight. Live Action is the pro-life group, who's ads are being called hate speech by Twitter and flagged on their social media platform.

Carlson invited on his show Catholic convert Lila Rose, founder and president of the organization, to discuss the issue. On the show, Rose explained exactly what Twitter was objecting to. "The kind of tweets," said Rose, "that they're calling a violation of their hate and sensitive policy show ultrasound images, they're fact checks of Planned Parenthood, they're discussing the prenatal life in its beauty. These are the sorts of tweets that Twitter is trying to block."

Carlson posted a picture of one such ad that Twitter refused to allow on its platform. It was a picture of a baby in utero with the caption, "I AM NOT A POTENTIAL HUMAN. I AM A HUMAN WITH POTENTIAL." On top of the ad is a message by Rose, which reads, "Everyone deserves the right to life! Join me in standing up for human dignity and the least of these."

According to Carlson, Twitter wants Live Action to delete these so-called "sensitive ads" before it will allow the group to buy more ads. Rose points out that Planned Parenthood (PP), the nation's biggest abortion chain, is allowed by Twitter to run ads on their platform, but Live Action, who she calls "the leading pro-life platform for the pro-life movement," is not allowed to do so. She says Twitter is claiming such ads violate their "hate and sensitive policy."

"This is something that they've been kind of keeping a secret, and now we're trying to get this news out that they've been blocking us," said Rose. Carlson responded, "But meanwhile the abortion industry gets to advertise all it wants."

Rose points out that the abortion giant PP has more than a one billion dollar budget and is committing almost 900 abortion every day, yet Twitter ironically says "they're not violating the hate and sensitive policy." She said Live Action is simply "exposing them, talking about the value of preborn life," which she says are messages that a lot of Americans agree with.

She says Twitter has been banning their ads for months now. She relates that Twitter wants them to delete their entire website and create an entirely new website before they can do any more advertising on Twitter. Carlson posted a response from Twitter, which claimed its policy was a set of "clear, transparent rules." Rose denies that the rules are clear because it "took over a year to finally get from Twitter what's wrong with these tweets showing ultrasounds."

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Tucker Carlson Spotlights Twitter Censorship of Pro-Life Group - Church Militant

A voting rights and campaign finance watchdog group is claiming political favoritism and censorship after allegedly being denied the ability to post billboards in Mitchell and McDowell counties.

Democracy North Carolina tried to post billboards calling attention to the ongoing investigation by the State Board of Elections into the campaign finances of state Sen. Ralph Hise, a Mitchell County Republican and chair of the Senate Select Committee on Elections.

The State Board of Elections began investigated Hise has after he allegedly withdrew about $10,000 in excess loan repayments from his campaign and failed to disclose receiving more than $9,000 in donations from political action committees.

Weve been trying to let the voters in Sen. Hises district know about his problems for a month, but the billboard industry seems so worried about making him mad that they are refusing to rent us space for our message, said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina.

Hall said in a press release he was initially encouraged to rent space by sales agents at two companies; he selected billboard locations, submitted the artwork and sent it back with modifications requested by the agents. He signed a contract with Lamar Outdoor Advertising for a billboard in Spruce Pine and a contract with Fairway Advertising for another billboard along I-40 in McDowell County.

In both cases, regional managers of Lamar and Fairway Outdoor Advertising called to cancel the contracts, saying the message proposed for the billboards was political and too controversial or too controversial and could cause problems for the company, according to the press release.

It was very clear in talking with the billboard executives that were the victim of political favoritism and censorship, Hall said. Billboard companies are involved in plenty of controversial and political advertising, but they also have high-priced lobbyists, they want favorable legislation and they dont want to anger a powerful state senator at this crucial time.

Hall claimed in the press release one of the companies has a billboard attacking Muslim on I-40.

Its very disappointing, Hall said. But well continue to shine the light on Sen. Hises campaign violations and expose whatever he is hiding.

At least one of the billboards has been posted on U.S. 19E near the Yancey-Madison county line.

As of press time Hise was more than 50 days past the May 5 deadline set to amend his campaign finance reports.

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Voting rights advocacy group claims censorship - Spruce Pine Mitchell News

Greetings, all.

Before the main event, lets hit the mailbox

bob_a_booey Uh oh. Looks like somebody got triggered by my comment in reply to the other now deleted comments that the dam level isnt that hard. It isnt. The myth comes from people who have played the game maybe 1 or 2 times who havent adjusted to the different mechanics the stage uses compared to the rest of the game, and immediately declare it the hardest thing in history. Or people that saw the AVGN video and simply paraphrase it, which seems to be the case here as this dude is obviously an AVGN fan (his Friday the 13th section is almost a verbatim copy of the AVGN video). I havent played the game in 20 years and I guarantee I could go back and finish that level without too many problems.

First off, if any comments are ever deleted, I have zero hand in it. As a matter of fact, if anyone from 411mania is reading this, please never delete ANY comments from my articles. I dont play that censorship business.

You know, a lot of people told me the dam level isnt a big deal. I looked at it again on youtube, and I swear I played a different level. I thought those damn electric weeds were all over that level. As a kid though, that level was a bitch.

As for your thinly veiled accusation that I ripped off the AVGN, no. First off, Im a big fan of James, and Cinnemassacre. Hes a guy I look up to. That said, I can honestly say with no hyperbole, that Ive never laughed at an AVGN video. Not once. I absolutely do not think James is funny. Hes at his best providing information, thats where he shines. To me, he isnt funny, so Id never steal his material. Also, how on Earth would people not notice from the jump, considering how popular he is? Id have to be pretty fucking stupid.

Either way, thanks for reading, brother.

Team J-Rod Friday the 13th is way more of a complex game then most give it credit forits all about patterns, certain events trigger the appearance of other weapons. I actually love it, because its so different than almost every other game on the NES. Honestly, I absolutely agree. It was a pretty deeply stacked game, and quite different, but at the same time it sucked. John Landing the plane during Top Gunand why did we all have that bloody game.

Oh man, was that a MOTHERFUCKER or what? I remember nothing about that game over than that, and being almost in tears trying to land that fucking plane. Why I cared, I dont know. I didnt like the game, I never saw the movie. That fucking thing.

Also, shout-outs to Ghost & Goblins and that bullshit ending, Tyson from Mike Tysons Punch Out, and Battletoads and that insane 2nd-player fiasco.

Alright, lets hit the main-event.

Before we get to the article, I just want to talk about how asinine TV/film censorship is in the first place. Back in the 30s, they cut a line from Frankenstein where the good Dr. says he knows what its like to be God. Back then, that was just too crazy. Then in the 80s, thanks to Regan, the way he shaped America, and things like the PMRC, horror films became one of the biggest catalyst for our youth to find themselves at the doorstep of debauchery & mayhem. So, the MPAA board hacked most horror films to absolute death. Then today youve got things passing for an R that could have had to be rated X back in the day. So, what this basically says is that censorship is pointless. We end up changing our minds in the future anyways, and deciding that this or that is no longer that bad. Mean while, pieces of art are being butchered by people who push their own thoughts & beliefs into things that they have no real concern for. The same goes for TV. In the 50s they couldnt use the word pregnant on I Love Lucy, but now shows in prime time can throw around goddamn & shit as much as they please. Things are going to constantly be pushed, and eventually accepted. Canadian TV is completely uncensored, and shockingly the country hasnt burnt down in the middle of the night. Another thing thats complete inane is how the top of a womans buttcrack has to be blurred out, yet we can show the rockin double D titties of some fat guy from the Biggest Loser. Whats more visually repugnant? A chicks ass, or a dudes massive, hairy nipple? I mean, after seeing something like that, I can barely jack-off that night. So, lets take a trip down memory lane as we learn about TVs crusade to save us, and some of its finest examples.

Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed When watching Casino, or Goodfellas on TV, its apparent that the greatest insult you can deal to one person is that the hope that they are forgotten. That theyre no longer remembered. Any time Pesci or DeNiro would get fired off, theyd spout off with a forget you!. Then, dare say that didnt hurt someones feelings, youd have to pull out both of your big-guns and fire off with a you motherlover!. Truly drawing gasps from everyone who was around to hear the personification of rage and verbal vitriol. But then again, their rage could come from the fact theyre all wearing bullskin. At least thats what I think theyre talking about, because just as often as theyre forgetting someone theyre talking about their bullshirt. To anyone who endorses this kind of censorship, I say go forget yourself.

The Big Lebowski Do you know what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass? If youve only seen The Big Lebowski on basic cable then you have no idea what the answer is. You do however know what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps. Thats right. Youre hiking up in the Alps, having the time of your life when you all of a sudden come across a stranger. You guys might strike up a convo, you may just pass by with a nod & a smile. Either way, hes going to absolutely bash the hell out of your neighbors car. Because thats what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps. Im dying to know how this all worked out. There had to be a couple of guys in the edit bay discussing it. Should we just cut out fuck?, What? Are you kidding me? You know how dumb thatll sound? No, were better than that. Were TNT. Were about quality & integrity. Man, having that job would be awesome. Youd be watching some Anne Hathaway film for a second, to get a look at her boobies, and youd wonder why on Earth her voice isnt matching her mouth, and why shes talking about some guy named Caliber Winfields dick. I seemed to get off track there. Anyway, in the film, Walter goes nuts on a man whom he believes is his target, and keeps yelling about what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass. But then again, now we know that if you fuck a stranger in the ass, or find a stranger in the alps, the inevitable consequences will be the same.

ORIGINAL:

TV EDIT:

Bulletproof We all know that for a man, theres nothing worse than being forced to sing & dance for another dude. In the underrated classic Bulletproof, Adam Sandler is a car thief named Archie Moses whos best friends with fellow thief Rock Keetz. Well, Archies been making some money on the side of their car stealing operation, and he decides to let Keetz in on it. So as Archie is having Keetz meet the big man, Colton, played by James Caan, hes told to search him because Colton doesnt trust him. Archie then makes a major proclamation that if Keetz is a cop, hell sing & dance. So, you can imagine Archie is praying Keetz isnt a cop, because who wants to get up and have to sing & dance? No self-respecting man, of course. Its a fate worse than death. Later, a big drug-trade goes wrong, and Colton blames Archie due to the fact Keetz was a cop. Well, its a little weird, because he mentions Archies promise regarding Keetz being a cop, and then has Archie get on his knees and tells him to enjoy his last meal. What? If you want a guy to sing & dance, you want him on his feet, and you dont want him sluggish from a big meal. So, you can see right there such foolishness. Later at the end of the film, Archie gets some payback on Colton for trying to make me sing & dance. Perfectly understandable. I mean, Ive heard of tons of guys in prison who damn near kill, or do in fact kill guys who have tried to make them sing & dance. Like I said, no male wants to do that. Hell, Id rather suck a dick.

Die Hard 2 In the pantheon of action films there are many facets that have to meet quality standards in order for it to bust someone right in the mush. On of them, is a rockin catchphrase. Our hero, John McClane, has one of the more well known & classic catchphrases. In Die Hard 2, its Christmas time again and John is chilling in an airport. He notices some no-good-knicks up to no good, or perhaps theyre not, whatever, because hes got the 12 days of Christmas forem. A 12 round clip, that is! Now, hes out to dispatch these baddies and pick up his wife because he has a rockin Die Hard-On. When youre as bad-ass as John McClane, you dont get boners. Because to get a boner, would imply that at one point you didnt have one. So, much like when your stupid girlfriend has people over and you want to watch G Is For Gianna in the living room, uninterrupted, what do you do to a plane full of terrorists? You blowem the hell up. So, as is customary in each case, before you deal the death blow you giveem the catchphrase. McClane gets all cocky and letsem have it. Yippie-Kai-Yay, Mr. Falcon! Who the hell is Mr. Falcon? Theres no Mr. Falcon on the terrorists plane manifest. I mean, theres nothing even close. How the HELL could they justify this? Im dying to know. Not to mention the guy who says Mr. Falcon isnt even close to sounding like Bruce Willis. Plus, it sounds like it was recorded with a motherfalcon sofa.

ORIGINAL:

TV EDIT:

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people. Twitter: @CaliberWinfield Instagram: @CaliberWinfield I post almost daily with workout related stuff to help you cats out, along with whats coming down the pike via the MME, and general pop culture from the 80s and 90s that I cant seem to let go of. Email:[emailprotected] If you just cant wait until next week, you can also find me at these fine places: The Man Movie Encyclopedia: The Hall of Burly Vol. 1 A collection of the first 19 MME articles written for 411. You get all the classics like Commando, Robocop, and Die Hard, not to mention bad-assery such as Point Break and They Live. Beyond that, you also get two new articles. My Top 5 favorite action movies, and what I believe to be the Top 5 most over-the-top scenes in action movie history. I wont lie, its the greatest self=help/martial arts instruction book of all time.

My Summer Vacation At Camp Crystal Lake My brand new ebook thats become so popular its charting on the album sales charts. I cover the Friday The 13th franchise in Man Movie Encyclopedia fashion, followed up by a few list-based articles, chronicling my favorite kills, moments from the franchise, and a few other subjects. $3 via amazon, or simply email me and get it for $2, either way, itll probably change your life. Caliber Winfield On The Facebook Anything new that I do you guys can find here. Last I checked I was at 54 likes, which is pretty fucking solid in my book. However, I saw Joe Lee and A Bloody Good Time were over 110. Cmon now, we cant let them beat us, can we?! Mercy Is For The Weak Podcast Along with my co-host, we cover everything from movies, music, TV, video games and pop-culture, to pro-wrestling, and all things burly. Were on hiatus at the moment, but theres a decent catalog to go through. All Things Caliber I merged my wrestling website into my long standing website thats been up for over 6 years. Anything under the sun, Ive written about it.

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The Man Movie Encyclopedia: 4 Instances Of Terrible TV Censorship - 411mania.com

But it is already near impossible to hold a private conversation with anyone in the Chinese capital who takes an interest in politics without talk turning to Mr. Guo and his unverified insider tales of elite corruption and power plays. People here have followed each unveiling of Mr. Guos often long-winded allegations by creeping around Chinas barricade of internet censorship.

I dont think the party has ever had a big businessman so boldly challenge it like this, said Bao Tong, a former senior aide to Zhao Ziyang, a former party leader who was toppled from power during the 1989 protests. How to respond is a dilemma.

Mr. Guo, who also goes by the name Miles Kwok, has delighted in doling out his allegations on a lively Twitter feed as well as in hourslong talks and interviews broadcast, sometimes live, on YouTube and Mingjing, a Chinese news website based in the United States. All those sites are blocked in China.

During a broadcast in mid-June, which went on for more than four hours, Mr. Guo seemed to enjoy teasing the interviewer.

I dont get how youre just sitting there. Are you made from flesh and blood? Mr. Guo said as he laid out pictures and diagrams that he said proved his claims. Such huge news. Why dont you take off your clothes and get excited?

Mr. Guos stories have caused a stir in part because he socialized with security officials before he left China several years ago and has shown a familiarity with whos who in elite party families. But many of his recent claims are unverified and disputed, and Mr. Guo has sometimes left out important details needed to test the accusations.

Yet even without confirmation, the allegations appear vexing for Mr. Xi.

Mr. Guo has described himself as a paladin defending Mr. Xi and even acting indirectly on his orders. But the billionaire has also asserted that Mr. Xis plans for choosing a new leadership team for his second five-year term at the coming congress are mired in conflict. There is little evidence of that, but Mr. Guo has thrown a firecracker into the careful choreography of the lead-up, some experts said.

No matter whether these allegations are bogus or exaggerated, they have become a distraction, said Deng Yuwen, a current affairs commentator in Beijing. People who dislike Xi the democratic opposition, cadres unhappy with his policies are also finding something to focus on in Guo Wengui.

Much of the speculation has focused on the future of Mr. Wang, one of the most powerful men in China and the primary target of Mr. Guos ire. Party insiders have said Mr. Xi may want Mr. Wang to stay in office, bucking the established retirement rules.

But Mr. Guo wants Mr. Wang out and has claimed again and again that his extended family has amassed staggering wealth through a web of companies. At a minimum, the pounding has bruised Mr. Wangs reputation among members of the urban elite who have heard Mr. Guos claims. The state news media has long presented him as an incorruptible graft buster with the courage to catch tigers corrupt officials in the partys high echelons.

What if the tiger hunter turns out to be a tiger? asked Mr. Bao, the former senior aide. How do you explain that?

Still, Mr. Guos claims are uncorroborated and have been challenged even by some critics of the party.

Much of what Guo Wengui says is incorrect or speculative, said Zhang Lifan, a businessman and liberal intellectual in Beijing who has jousted online with Mr. Guo. Hes just letting off fireworks to create a ruckus.

Asked about Mr. Guos allegations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said he was a crime suspect whom China had put on an Interpol list, and it referred questions to the legal authorities. The State Council Information Office, the government agency that deals with such inquiries, did not respond to faxed questions.

Leaders in Beijing face a quandary: Openly disputing Mr. Guo would give him more prominence, while ignoring him could be read by some as a sign that he is telling the truth, several experts said.

You cant give him attention, but you cant ignore him, either, Mr. Bao said. You might have been able to entirely ignore Guo Wengui before, when society was shut off and had no access to information. But that doesnt work now. You cant act dumb.

Mr. Guo, his business and his employees have been assailed by a wave of lawsuits in China and the United States claiming unpaid wages and debts, fraud and libel. The authorities have also channeled vitriol against Mr. Guo through Global Times, a tabloid that the party often uses to attack its foes.

Hes lied so much that the lies dont match up, and Guo Wengui has totally given up on logic, the newspaper said this month.

Still, the editorial nodded to Mr. Guos acumen as a showman: It must be said that hes a spectacle, and at home and abroad there are those who loathe Chinas political system and get a kick out of political rumors enjoying taking in this spectacle.

Though some opponents of the partys rule inside China and abroad have embraced Mr. Guo as a folk hero, others warn he is an opportunist who could drag democracy advocates into perilous undercurrents of party infighting.

Mr. Guo has denounced some of these critics, accusing them of lacking the backbone to support him.

Hes become a divisive force in the democratic movement abroad, said Li Weidong, a former Chinese magazine editor living in New Jersey who has fought with Mr. Guo. Theres a clash of views over whether to back him or keep a distance.

Much of the whispering in Beijing has fixated on Mr. Guos claim that he still has powerful patrons inside the party, including an old leader whom he has not named.

But no Chinese leader is likely to make common cause with a volatile, talkative exile like Mr. Guo, said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who studies Chinese politics.

Those attempting to do that must be mad since they can get caught easily and suffer the consequences, he said.

Professor Pei added that Mr. Guo was unlikely to derail Mr. Xis plans for the next leadership. For his allegations to disrupt these preparations, there need to be at least a critical mass of senior officials who demand an investigation, he said. Under the current conditions in Beijing, it is inconceivable that there are people in Beijing who dare to take such risks.

Michael Forsythe contributed reporting from New York, and Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing.

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Tycoon's Claims Reverberate in China Despite Censorship and Thin ... - New York Times

YouTubeIn a federal lawsuit filed last week, a group of Jewish plaintiffs allege that San Francisco State University has systematically turned a blind eye toand in some instances actively facilitatedcensorship and harassment of Jewish students and speakers on the public university's campus. The lawsuit points, in particular, to the 2016 disruption of a speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, numerous incidents of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel speech on campus, as well as an incident in which the Jewish student organization Hillel was allegedly banned from a student fair.

Opinions about the lawsuit fall along predictable dividing lines. The editorial board of J., the Jewish News of Northern California, praised the suit and argued that the protesters at the Nir Barkat event had "trampled the free speech rights of Jewish students." On the other hand, Dima Khalidi of Palestine Legal called the Barkat protest "political speech that is protected by the First Amendment" and said that "the complaint is going to fail."

Both sides have a point. The lawsuit raises real concerns about the treatment of Jewish students at SFSU. But the plaintiffs seem to want it both ways: Even as the suit contends that SFSU is violating the free speech rights of Jewish students, it also demands that the university censor protected speech by Palestinian students and their allies, citing anti-Jewish harassment.

As Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "the freedom to speak and freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin." If, as the lawsuit alleges, SFSU officials told campus police to "stand down" while anti-Israel protesters disrupted Nir Barkat's speech, the university may indeed have violated students' First Amendment rights to invite and hear a speaker of their choosing.

Video footage of Barkat's attempt to speak at SFSU last year shows protesters engaging in loud, sustained chanting while students attending the speech huddle around a seated Barkat in an attempt to hear him. While protest is indeed protected by the First Amendment (as is a normal level of "booing" and brief interruptions from the audience), the right to protest does not extend to the right to be so vocally disruptive, for such a prolonged period of time, that the speaker cannot be heard.

And if, as the suit alleges, the university allowed the Hillel student group to be excluded from tabling at a university-sponsored fair because of the organization's viewpoint, that too could constitute a First Amendment violation at a public university like SFSU.

Moving from the First Amendment to the harassment claims, some of the speech cited by the plaintiffs may have crossed the line from protected speech into unprotected threats, such as counter-protesters allegedly yelling "get out or we will kill you" at Jewish students participating in a Hillel-sponsored peace rally.

Other parts of the lawsuit, however, point to examples of clearly protected speech and expression as grounds for the claim that a "hostile environment" exists for Jewish students on campus. In alleging that the university has been deliberately indifferent to a racially hostile environment, the plaintiffs point to examples of constitutionally protected political expression such as posters featuring a picture of a dead baby with the caption "Made in IsraelPalestinian Children Meat, Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License," as well as students holding placards proclaiming "my heroes have always killed colonizers" and "resistance is not terrorism" alongside portraits of Leila Khaled, the first female airplane hijacker. It is not difficult to see why such speech would offend many students, but asking a government institution like SFSU to police this kind of political rhetoric in the name of preventing a "hostile environment" is a prescription for both First Amendment violations and political side-choosing.

In short: it's complicated. If the truth of the allegations is proven in court, the plaintiffs have some very real grievances about some of the university's conduct and, certainly, about what J. refers to as the "selective outrage" when it comes to the university's response to Jewish students on campus versus other students who claim to feel silenced or threatened. But in other ways, the suit goes too far, citing constitutionally protected political speech and expression as examples of harassment.

This fight should never have had to go to court in the first place. A university campus should be a place where people who disagree about important issues can discuss their differences openly, not a place where opposing views are shouted down, threats are tossed across protest lines, and both sides work to suppress the speech of their opponents.

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'Get Out or We Will Kill You': Jewish Students Allege Censorship and Harassment in Campus Lawsuit - Reason (blog)

Russian authorities are currently discussing blocking the Telegram messaging app, as it can be used by terrorists. We examine cases from the past when the Soviet elite banned different information sources.

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State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of the USSR Chairman Sergey Lapin during a TV management meeting, 1973 / Lev Nosov/RIA Novosti

The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917 while championing freedom, yet one of their first decisions was to limit free speech through harsh censorship. In early November 1917, the Soviet government signed the Decree on Press which prohibited publishing any bourgeois articles criticizing the Bolsheviks authority.

Peasants reading a newspaper which published Lenin's decrees on land and on peace, 1918. / RIA Novosti

As the years passed political censorship grew stronger, reaching its peak under Joseph Stalins reign. After his death the state relaxed its stance but censorship remained until Mikhail Gorbachev declared glasnost in the late 1980s.

As the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GSE) puts it, Soviet censorship had a different character than the one existing in bourgeois states and aimed only at protecting the interests of the working class. This is a bold statement, especially given the fact the Soviet elite employed censorship for its own bloody gain, most notably during Stalins Great Purge.

A meeting of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class in February 1897. Shortly after the picture was taken the whole group was arrested. / Nadezhda Krupskaya

The physical eradication of Stalin's political opponents was followed by their obliteration from all forms of pictorial existence, British historian David King wrote in his book The Commissar Vanishes. Retouchers worked hard erasing traces of fallen leaders from all photographs and images. For instance, Nikolay Yezhov, an infamous chief of the NKVD (secret police organization, the predecessor of the KGB) who masterminded the mass political repressions in 1936-1938, fell out with Stalin and found himself in the hands of the secret police in 1940, before being executed. After that Yezhov disappeared from all photographs with Stalin.

The same happened to another notorious NKVD chief - Lavrentiy Beria. One of Stalins most trusted allies, he was left high and dry after his patrons demise in 1953 and was also executed. This was followed by an insistent government request that all people who owned a GSE containing an article about Beria must replace it with a revised version, which had no mention of the ill-fated official.

In 1921, the young Soviet government created the Glavlit (General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press) which for decades remained the main instrument of controlling literature. Glavlits censors decided if a book was published in the USSR, or if it was banned.

As a result, Soviet citizens could not read many books, some of which are now regarded as classics - including Mikhail Bulgakovs Master and Margarita and Boris Pasternaks Doctor Zhivago, not to mention most works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that criticized the Soviet regime. The circulation of books written by migr writers who had fled Soviet Russia were, of course, prohibited - robbing the public of Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Nabokovs novels, to name just two authors.

Tape recorder Tembr MAG-59M, 1964 (attributed as self-made). / State museum of political history of Russia

Nevertheless, the Soviet government wasnt able to completely eradicate literature it deemed dangerous. Through the ages, people opposing censorship have circulated handmade copies of banned literature. In the Soviet Union, this was called samizdat (self-published) and scores of illegal books were enjoyed by readers as a result.

Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the USSR from 1953 to 1964, was more liberal than Stalin, whose repressive policies he condemned in his secret speech in 1956. According to the Russian historian Leonid Katsva, Khrushchev even thought of abolishing ideological censorship in art, but changed his mind.

Artists Avdey Ter-Oganyan and Yuri Palaichev with his 'New Nude', Taganrog, 1988. / Avdey Ter-Oganyan's archive

One of the factors that influenced Khruschevs decision was his encounter with the avant-garde. After witnessing the New Reality exhibition performed by young artists, Khrushchev became very angry with their unrealistic style of painting and started shouting: Soviet people dont need all this! We declare war on you!

Under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964 to 1982) the state continued to oppress artists working outside the realm of social realism. For example, in 1974 the government demolished an unofficial avant-garde exhibition in the suburbs of Moscow using bulldozers and water cannons. The event became known as the Bulldozer Exhibition.

Throughout the Cold War both the West and the USSR were trying to influence each others population by providing alternative points of view. In 1946, the BBC started broadcasting radio services for Soviet citizens. Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and Deutsche Welle all followed suit a couple of years later.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin was not happy with Western media trying to meddle with Soviet citizens so it started blocking radio frequencies used by foreign stations. According to Rimantas Pleikis, a radio journalist from Lithuania, the USSR possessed the most powerful and wide scale anti-radio system in the world.

But even that system had cracks. Those who wanted to continue tuning in to the foreign voices and alternative opinions - along with jazz and rock music - found a way. Finally, in 1988 Mikhail Gorbachev officially stopped blocking Western radio stations.

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Soviet censorship: How did the USSR control the public? - Russia Beyond the Headlines

Everyone whos visited the internet has seen the ugliness that a websites comment section can host. Oftentimes, hate, slander and generally ignorant comment threads will bury genuine, insightful and civil discussion, leaving readers frustrated and hostile to say nothing of the irrelevant trolling, name-calling and spam that will just as often flood the page. How is a news organization meant to combat this? Some, like the New York Times, will strictly moderate each comment and leave articles open for comments for only a brief period. NPR shut down their comment sections in August of 2016, electing to move the discussion over to their myriad of social media platforms, as has Business Insider.

Although approaches such as these may hide inflammatory and discriminatory posts, they come at the cost of curbing free and open expression, as well as weakening the channels for direct communication between content creators and their audiences. While comment sections can easily become choked with vile posts, they still offer an open platform for the exchange of ideas, and the unfiltered expression of the audiences honest reactions to the content. The comment sections primary purpose is to enable conversation, and while its understandable that content creators would only want to see civil discussion, teetering at the edges of censorship is not the way to go.

Ultimately, inflammatory comments are an unavoidable aspect of the internet. Rather than shut down comment sections altogether, or constantly regulate each and every comment, an alternative solution is for websites to ask their users upfront to adhere to a loose set of community guidelines aimed at encouraging an environment of relevant and open discussion. Its inevitable that some users will still post comments that others will not like, but instead of silencing those users, the website can, in addition to maintaining community guidelines, give each user the tools to block or hide posts which they find objectionable. A solution like this gives users more power over what they can see, and allows for free discussions without moderators having to constantly regulate or ban anyone.

The existence of abusive and hateful comments can be credited to the nature of the internet itself as an open and wild platform that can never be truly, completely controlled. Anyone can put anything out there, and while this isnt an inherently bad aspect, many people use that power for malicious ends, particularly in comment sections. As much as an article or videos comment section allows for interaction between the creator and the audience, it also allows for the audience members to be as spiteful and confrontational as they please. It would be easy to chalk this up to the anonymity that being online affords you: Some websites allow commenters to post completely anonymously, but even if they dont, you can make an account with a fake name and profile, then flame and troll all you want with little to no repercussions. Even if you get banned, you can just make a new profile ad infinitum.

There may not be any absolute blanket solution to alleviate this issue. However, one way of addressing it may be to limit or remove anonymity as an option for posting online, and require users to log into and use their Facebook profile to post comments, as some websites currently do. This could cause users to be more careful about their posts, since it can be tied to their real identities. There are plenty of comments online that users would not be willing to say with their real name attached to it, since they would be held accountable and possibly get in trouble for what they say. Potentially, this could serve to reduce the amount of abuse and venom that we see online.

However, this solution could also be ineffectual. The problem is that anyone can make a fake social media profile, Facebook profiles included. Besides that, despite the added accountability, people make poor decisions with their personal social media all the time. Consider the Harvard freshmen who recently got their admission offers revoked for posting obscene memes and jokes on Facebook. And besides them, there is no shortage of examples of people getting fired or arrested for posting things that can be considered unprofessional, threatening or illegal. Consider also that Facebook, Twitter and other social media are no haven from toxic and idiotic comments in general. While one would think that having your real name and reputation at stake for what you post online would serve to curb abusive and hateful content, it seems that vitriolic posts and comments will always crop up here or there.

Another aspect to weigh is whether there are situations where anonymity can be more valuable than accountability. For some users, remaining anonymous is the only way in which they feel comfortable expressing how they truly feel about certain sensitive topics, or to talk about their personal experiences without fear of compromising their privacy or that of their friends or family. However, just because there are some legitimate uses for anonymity online doesnt discount that many users also abuse their anonymity to harass, stalk and bother others. Although having your identity tied to your online presence may not always deter users from posting hateful content, complete anonymity and the lack of accountability also allows plenty of users to harass and attack others all they want, meaning that neither of these extremes can work for keeping comment sections civil and constructive.

Dealing with online comments is a tricky business. Comment sections can be informative and spark thoughtful conversation, but are also home to a myriad of spam and worthless and generally terrible posts by users who have nothing better to do. However, it is not the job of a websites moderator to obsessively monitor each and every comment or rule with an iron fist. Instead, sites that allow comments should establish guidelines for the kind of content they want to see, and then give the the users the power to respond as they will. In order to facilitate a free and open discourse, the policing of comments should only be kept to a bare minimum, such as removing posts which incite or threaten violence or contain other illegal content. Free expression is essential for intellectual conversation, and maintaining that means coexisting with speech that not all users will appreciate.

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Fixing toxic comment sections requires light moderation and guidelines, not censorship - Highlander Newspaper

Donald TrumpDonald TrumpPelosi: Trump insisted he won popular vote in our first meeting NYT's David Brooks: Trump has not fulfilled promise of new conservatism Should government 'outsource' censorship to Facebook and Twitter? MOREs Twitter account manages to create controversy even when hes not tweeting. Over the last few weeks, many legal academics haveaccusedthe President of violating the First Amendment by blocking some critics from posting on @realDonaldTrumps timeline. Their argument and a recent Supreme Court decision on free speech and social media create an even stronger case that all government accounts on social media with companies with discriminatory speech codes are unconstitutional.

Earlier this month, attorneys with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Universitywroteto the president on behalf of two Twitter users who were blocked by Trumps account.They argued the account is a designated public forum for citizens to respond to the President. Knight Institute director Jameel Jaffer explained, Having opened this forum to all comers, the president cant exclude people from it merely because he dislikes what theyre saying.

Last week, The Supreme Court unanimously invalidated a state law barring registered sex offenders from social media inPackingham v. North Carolina. The case strengthens the concept that social media is a public forum. Justice Anthony Kennedys opinion noted that a fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen. He described "social media in particular" as one of the most "important places" for Americans to express these rights.His opinion emphasizes how citizens can interact with their public officials on social media,noting on Twitter, users can petition their elected representatives and otherwise engage with them in a direct manner.

This ruling does not necessarily prohibit President Trump from blocking his Twitter antagonists.UCLA law professor and Washington Post legal blogger Eugene Volokharguesthat the Trump is not acting as a government official with his private account, as opposed to the official @POTUS handle. However, he acknowledges it is unsettled law and ultimately the question is whether Trump is acting as Trump-the-man and not Trump-the-government-official in running.

Whether or not the @realDonaldTrump can block accounts is an interesting, but relatively trivial, issue. However, these recent cases could have a far more consequences for Twitter and Facebooks speech policies. Both companies prohibit hate speech, even when not accompanied with harassment or threats. These policies would be unconstitutional if enforced by the government.

While Twitter and Facebook are private companies, the state effectively adopts their unconstitutional speech restrictions when government agencies and public employees conduct official business on the platforms. Conservatives have accused Facebook and Twitter of suspending accounts for taking merely taking strong stances against refugee admissions and illegal immigration. Congressmen haveheldTwitter town halls on these very topics, which effectively excluded citizens who Twitter kicked off. Even if these complaints are unfounded and the platforms only censored extremist and Alt-Right accounts, those users still have the constitutional right to interact with their government officials.

While the First Amendment rarely applies to non-state actors, the government cannot delegate censorship to a private party. For example, a church or private club have the right to kick out its members for advocating legalized abortion. However, if a city council rented a church or clubhouse for a town hall, the city could not prohibit the pro-choicer from attending the meeting and advocating his policies on the grounds that it is just following a private organizations policies. Either everyone would be allowed to attend the town hall, or the city would have to find another venue.

Mark Epstein is an attorney and legal policy advisor forThe American Cause, a nonprofit conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Should government 'outsource' censorship to Facebook and Twitter? - The Hill (blog)