Category Archives: Transhuman News

LAHORE: In a small Internet cafe, Abdullah gets round the censors with one click and logs onto YouTube, officially banned for a year and at the heart of Pakistan's cyberwar for control of the web.

On September 17, 2012 Islamabad blocked access to the popular video-sharing website after it aired a trailer for a low-budget American film deemed offensive to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

Pakistan summoned the most senior diplomat of the United States present in the country to protest against Innocence of Muslims, demanding that the film be removed and severe action taken against its producers.

A year later, the film is barely mentioned but YouTube, whose parent company is US multinational Google Inc, is still banned in Pakistan, as it is in China and Iran.

Pakistan is no stranger to censorship. Foreign television programmes deemed offensive are blocked while scenes considered too daring are censored in films shown at cinemas.

But the YouTube ban is in name only.

Internet users like Abdullah Raheem, a university student in Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore, can easily access the site through a simple proxy or Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Most people who go to school or university know how to access YouTube, but not the rest of the population, says Abdullah.

Only 10 per cent of Pakistan's estimated 180 million people have access to the Internet, one of the lowest rates in the world.

This ban has no impact, Abdullah declares, who still feels guilty about logging onto YouTube. As a Muslim, I'm ashamed... because 'Innocence of Muslims' defiled Islam.

Read more:
Pakistan's internet censorship “has no impact” - DAWN.COM

PORT DICKSON: The Film Censorship Board (LPF) should be prudent in evaluating the 'The New Village' film as it has the final say on its screening, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. He said LPF should be cautious in making whatever decision as the film was said to have concealed an intrinsic message in glorifying communist terrorists and putting them in better light than members of the security forces during insurgency.

Although the film depicted a love story, the characters featured and the message hidden should be evaluated carefully, he said. "I am not supporting any security forces in the film, but the British army is portrayed as being arrogant, but was the communist better than the security forces?" he said after launching the Royal Malaysian Police's Governance Structure and Organisational Design workshop here.

He said LPF should be prepared and responsible for public reaction towards the film if it were to approve its screening.

"But if the audience give a good rating to the film, then credit should be given to LPF," he said. - Bernama

Continue reading here:
Censorship board told to be prudent with The New Village film evaluaton

Thursday, 12 September 2013 09:02

Datuk Seri Zahid HamidiPORT DICKSON: The Film Censorship Board (LPF) should be prudent in evaluating the 'The New Village' film as it has the final say on its screening, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

He said LPF should be cautious in making whatever decision as the film was said to have concealed an intrinsic message in glorifying communist terrorists and putting them in better light than members of the security forces during insurgency.

Although the film depicted a love story, the characters featured and the message hidden should be evaluated carefully, he said.

"I am not supporting any security forces in the film, but the British army is portrayed as being arrogant, but was the communist better than the security forces?" he said after launching the Royal Malaysian Police's Governance Structure and Organisational Design workshop here.

He said LPF should be prepared and responsible for public reaction towards the film if it were to approve its screening.

"But if the audience give a good rating to the film, then credit should be given to LPF," he said.

-Bernama

Original post:
Censorship Board Told To Be Prudent With The New Village Film

Tom Simonite for MIT Technology Review 2013-09-12 18:31:10 UTC

Nine years after Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard University to build Facebook, one of the universitys political science professors, Gary King, decided this year it was time to launch his own social media site. But King didnt set up his Chinese social network to make money; instead, he wanted to get an insiders view of Chinese censorship, which relies on Internet providers censoring their own sites in line with government guidelines. King wont disclose his sites URL, to protect people involved with his project.

Previous studies of Chinese censorship have mostly involved monitoring Chinese social sites to see which updates censors remove (see Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to Chinas Plans). Some have relied on rare interviews with insiders willing to talk about their role in censorship. By contracting with a major Chinese provider of web software to help run his site, King could instead inspect the available censorship tools firsthand. He could also ask the companys representatives whatever he wanted about how those tools should be used. When we had questions, we just called customer service, King says. They were being paid to help us.

Along with some parallel experiments on established social sites, Kings dabble in Internet entrepreneurialism has shown that Chinese censorship relies more heavily than was known on automatic filtering that holds posts back for human review before they appear online. The researchers also uncovered evidence that Chinas vast censorship system is underpinned by a surprisingly vibrant, capitalistic market in which companies compete to offer better censorship technology and services.

Censorship of Chinese sites is sometimes inconsistent and is known to rely heavily on people screening posts manually. But the software the Harvard researchers bought to run their site came with an unexpectedly complex toolkit of automated censorship tools, King says, and the company that provided it was happy to give advice on how to use them. The options were really quite astounding.

Not only could new posts be automatically held back for manual review by a human censor based on specific keywords, but they could be treated differently based on their length, where on the site they appeared, and whether they started a conversation or contributed to an existing one. Specific people could be targeted for more aggressive censorship based on their IP address, how recently they had last posted, and their reputation in the community.

Making customer service calls to the software provider the team had contracted also revealed that it was possible to choose from a range of extra paid-for plug-ins offering more sophisticated filtering options. Those conversations also shed light on the perennial mystery of just how many censors there are screening online posts in China. King was told that, to keep the government happy, a site should employ two or three censors for every 50,000 users. Based on that, he estimates there are between 50,000 and 75,000 censors working at Internet companies inside China.

In a parallel experiment, Kings group recruited dozens of people inside China to help post 1,200 different updates to 100 different social sites to see what got censored. Just over 40% of all those posts were immediately held back by automated censorship tools. Those filtered posts either appeared within a day or two or never made it online. Watching the fate of different posts suggested sites used a wide variety of different censorship technologies and procedures.

Those findings and Kings experience running his own site suggest that China has created a kind of competitive market in censorship, he says. Companies are free to run their censorship operations mostly as they wish, as long as they dont allow the wrong kind of speech to flourish. That creates an incentive to find ways to censor more effectively so as to minimize the impact on profitability. Theres plenty of diversity and room for technical and business innovation in censorship, says King. Companies get to experiment and choose from firms trying to sell them censorship technology.

Jason Ng, a research fellow at the University of Toronto specializing in Chinese censorship, says that Kings look at the options available for censorship is unprecedented. The authorities seem to recognize that government isnt best suited for the performance of censorship, Ng says. Its better for private companies to do this not just for innovation but for resources.

Original post:
Academics Launch Fake Site to Get Inside China Censorship

New research shows Chinas online censorship relies on a competitive market where companies vie to offer the best speech-suppressing technology and services.

Nine years after Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard to build Facebook, one of the universitys political science professors, Gary King, decided this year it was time to launch his own social media site. But King didnt set up his Chinese social network to make money; instead, he wanted to get an insiders view of Chinese censorship, which relies on Internet providers censoring their own sites in line with government guidelines. King wont disclose his sites URL, to protect people involved with his project.

Previous studies of Chinese censorship have mostly involved monitoring Chinese social sites to see which updates censors remove (see Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to Chinas Plans). Some have relied on rare interviews with insiders willing to talk about their role in censorship. By contracting with a major Chinese provider of Web software to help run his site, King could instead inspect the available censorship tools firsthand. He could also ask the companys representatives whatever he wanted about how those tools should be used. When we had questions, we just called customer service, says King. They were being paid to help us.

Along with some parallel experiments on established social sites, Kings dabble in Internet entrepreneurialism has shown that Chinese censorship relies more heavily than was known on automatic filtering that holds posts back for human review before they appear online. The researchers also uncovered evidence that Chinas vast censorship system is underpinned by a surprisingly vibrant, capitalistic market where companies compete to offer better censorship technology and services.

Censorship of Chinese sites is sometimes inconsistent and is known to rely heavily on people screening posts manually. But the software the Harvard researchers bought to run their site came with an unexpectedly complex toolkit of automated censorship tools, says King, and the company that provided it was happy to give advice on how to use them. The options were really quite astounding.

Not only could new posts be automatically held back for manual review by a human censor based on specific keywords, but they could be treated differently based on their length, where on the site they appeared, and whether they started a conversation or contributed to an existing one. Specific people could be targeted for more aggressive censorship based on their IP address, how recently they had last posted, and their reputation in the community.

Making customer service calls to the software provider the team had contracted also revealed that it was possible to choose from a range of extra, paid-for plug-ins offering more sophisticated filtering options. Those conversations also shed light on the perennial mystery of just how many censors there are screening online posts in China. King was told that to keep the government happy a site should employ two or three censors for every 50,000 users. Based on that, he estimates that there are between 50,000 and 75,000 censors working at Internet companies inside China.

In a parallel experiment, Kings group recruited dozens of people inside China to help post 1,200 different updates to 100 different social sites to see what got censored. Just over 40 percent of all those posts were immediately held back by automated censorship tools. Those filtered posts either appeared within a day or two or never made it online. Watching the fate of different posts suggested sites used a wide variety of different censorship technologies and procedures.

Those findings and Kings experience running his own site suggest that China has created a kind of competitive market in censorship, he says. Companies are free to run their censorship operations mostly as they wish, as long as they dont allow the wrong kind of speech to flourish. That creates an incentive to find ways to censor more effectively so as to minimize the impact on profitability. Theres plenty of diversity and room for technical and business innovation in censorship, says King. Companies get to experiment and choose from firms trying to sell them censorship technology.

Jason Ng, a research fellow at the University of Toronto specializing in Chinese censorship, says that Kings look at the options available for censorship is unprecedented. The authorities seem to recognize that government isnt best suited for the performance of censorship, says Ng. Its better for private companies to do this not just for innovation but for resources.

The rest is here:
Academics Launch Fake Social Network to Get an Inside Look at Chinese Censorship