Censorship

Baidu's Political Censorship is Protected by First Amendment, but Raises Broader Issues

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Baidu, the operator of China’s most popular search engine, has won the dismissal of a United States lawsuit brought by pro-democracy activists who claimed that the company violated their civil rights by preventing their writings from appearing in search results. In the most thorough and persuasive opinion on the issue of search engine bias to date, a federal court ruled that the First Amendment protects the editorial judgments of search engines, even when they censor political speech.

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After On-Air Mishaps, Embarrassed Newscasters Turn to Copyright Law

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Whether we consider the purpose of copyright to be to protect economic rights or moral rights, copyright is a powerful yet dangerous instrument.

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An Increase in Infringement or the Promotion of Censorship? The Growing Tension of VPN Use

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In the days of unwarranted government surveillance and elaborate data collection, people increasingly rely on anonymizing services to keep their online activities private, such as proxy servers, encrypted cloud storage, and virtual private networks. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, route online communications through a secure and encrypted private network to a remote server (sometimes in a jurisdiction with greater protection for freedom of speech or weaker law enforcement).

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Heads Up, Online Radicals -- You're Next

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For me, thinking about one of the Obama administration's latest initiatives to keep us all safe online is like one of those pattern recognition puzzles (you know, like "What is the next term in this sequence: O, T, T, F, F, S, S, E, N, __?").  Here, the sequence is:

cyber bullies, scammers, gangs, sexual predators, ________?

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@Parody or @Crime? AZ Bill May Blur the Line

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Arizona State Representative Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) introduced Arizona House Bill 2004 in December, which would amend Arizona’s criminal code and make it a class 5 felony to impersonate somebody online, including, specifically, on a social networking site. A class 5 felony carries in Arizona a presumptive sentence of a year and a half imprisonment. Rep.

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RT the Hate: France and Twitter Censorship, Part Two

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Last October I wrote about the rise in popularity among French Twitter users of the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good jew"). In December we saw a growth in other offensive hashtags, including the homophobic #Simonfilsestgay, ("if my son is gay") or the xenophobic #SimaFilleRamèneUnNoir ("if my daughter brings a Black man home").

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Twitter, France, and Group Libel

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On October 16, the Union des Étudiants Juifs Français (Union of French Jewish Students, UEJF) asked Twitter to remove several racist and anti-Semitic tweets. Using the hashtags #unbonjuif and #unbonmusulman ("agoodjew" and "agoodmuslim," respectively), some Twitter users were posting derogatory comments about Jews and Muslims, some allegedly meant to be 'jokes.'

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No More Art Cops in Los Angeles?

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You might recall the Los Angeles Police Department's infamous Special Order No. 11, which directed officers to document in a so-called Suspicious Activity Report ("SAR"):

[A]ny reported or observed activity, or any criminal act or attempted criminal act, which an officer believes may reveal a nexus to foreign or domestic terrorism

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