Not only that still some sites like flickr.com are blocked, DU is expanding it’s blocking services in the UAE.
Money was invested for a new logo:
Now where we have a new fancy logo, isn’t it time to integrate google adsense to monetarize the blocked page?
Just an idea. 
Country: China
The Epoch Times has learned that police in China’s Guangdong Province have been selling anti-Internet censorship software for profit, opening yet another, though unexpected, channel to promote Internet freedom to the Chinese people.
The Chinese authorities’ Internet repression is considered the most extensive and advanced in the world. The regime not only blocks Web site content, but also monitors the Internet access of individuals. Amnesty International notes that China has the world’s largest recorded number of cyber-dissidents.
The key to breaking through the censorship in repressive regimes and helping the millions of people living in closed societies who wish to gain freedom of information, is developing Internet anti-censorship tools.
The most popular anti-censorship products, free of charge, are UltraSurf, FreeGate, GTunnel, FirePhoenix and GPass, developed by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC), an alliance of several leading organizations specializing in developing and deploying anti-censorship technologies.
These five different tools allow millions of Internet users inside repressive societies, including China, to safely communicate online, and to access websites on human rights, democracy and other topics of interest.
GIFC’s anti-blocking software has become one of the most widely used channels for people who live in closed societies to communicate with the free world.
According to GIFC, currently these five tools accommodate an estimated 95 percent of the total anti-censorship traffic in closed societies around the world, and are used daily by millions of users.
One Internet user, nicknamed Chen Xin, told The Epoch Times that even the local police found the blockade-busting software to be a good business opportunity. One businessman who was selling anti-censorship software on the street was warned to watch out for the cops, but he admitted that he was a policeman.
“This ironic scene is not uncommon in China,” said Chen, “It happens in other cities too.”
Chinese Web users expressed their gratitude towards the software developing companies in messages such as: “I would be dying inside without the anti-blockage software,” “With your help, we now have eyes and ears,” “I’ve been using UltraSurf for five years. I can’t live without it.”
“I thank all of the participants who have made visiting blocked websites possible. I believe all people who live under this totalitarian regime need your products and support services,” writes one happy software user. “I wish FreeGate could be installed on every computer in China.”
FreeGate was initially released in only Chinese and English versions. As the software became more popular in other countries, other versions such as a Burmese version were added. In July last year, a Farsi version was released to meet the increasing demand of the Iranian people.
Source:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/20941/
Country: Germany
“The attack on the freedom” is a new book (only awayable in German) by Juli Zeh on monitoring data on the Internet. “One-sided and polemical” the author cites her own work. But provocation is the best way to readers, the risk posed by the monitoring state to keep in mind.
Ethan Zuckerman, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University
(Nov 13, 2008 at Princeton University, Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP))
The rise of the internet as a publishing medium has been paralleled by a rise in censorship of political material by concerned governments. More than forty governments filtered or censored the web in some fashion in the past year, and Web 2.0 technologies, which enable average users to publish, are the subject of much concern to state censors.
The creative use of Web 2.0 tools by activists can help create common cause between politically active and naïve web users, exposing government censorship. Some governments, notably the Chinese government, are ahead of the curve and are changing strategies for censorship, baking it in to new Web 2.0 tools rather than blocking content at ISP or gateway layers.
We explore a wide range of ways activists have used the read/write web to advocate online, evade internet censorship and build bridges between activist and apolitical web users.
Country: China
ANCHOR:
NTD is getting word from people in mainland China that the Internet blockade is getting even stronger than ever before. More websites and chat rooms are getting blocked.
STORY:
Mr. Li is an Internet user in mainland China. He tells NTD that the Chinese Communist Party has closed down a lot of websites recently. Among them the QQ Tengxun software company, which hosts online chat rooms and forums.
[Mr. Li, Mainland China Internet User]: (quote1, male):
“This Internet block is even more serious than what happened during the Olympic Games. During the Beijing Olympic Games, they didn’t close chat rooms The CCP uses the excuse of closing vulgar websites, but it hasn’t even closed those pornographic websites. So this is just an excuse. The CCP’s main aim is to block freedom of speech.”
Mr. Yu is another Internet user in mainland China. He says online postings on his personal website were taken down without reason.
[Mr. Yu, Mainland China Internet User]:(quote2, male):
“I just shared my ideas or expressed my own feelings. I didn’t break the law.”
Bill Xia is the CEO of the American Dongtai website technology company.
[Bill Xia, Dongtai Website Technology Company]:(quote3, male):
“It’s very funny that the CCP uses the regime’s power to attack something ‘vulgar’ with the excuse of violating the law. The CCP says many of the websites that were closed were not registered. This scared a lot of Internet companies so they’re about to check their users to make sure that there isnt any content which the CCP doesn’t like posted on their sites.”
The BBC reports that the Communist Party has around 30-thousand Internet police for monitoring emails alone.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales speaks out against censorship of the internet in China and Iran.
Good, clean internet censorship? Help get this advert on the air and in the air – on every Qantas flight in the country during the next sitting week of Parliament.
The Government’s test trials on internet censorship are about to end, the results are nearly in and they’re looking to announce their plans to filter all internet activity.
We know exactly where every politician will be – on a Qantas flight to Canberra as Parliament resumes. Your contribution will allow us to show this ad directly to them, and their staff, making it an issue they can’t avoid.
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=684
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=129391402&blogId=478487396
Sex. Ass. Falun gong. Chances are, if youre reading this right now, you dont live in Yemen, Myanmar, or China. Internet censorship can take many forms, from restricting private internet access to blocking searches for politically volatile keywords. Exercise your internet freedom by taking a look at our latest Transparency.
HAR (alias Hacking at Random) is a four day outdoor hacker conference in Vierhouten in the netherlands. On three tracks were lectures hold and the topic censorship and web censorship has been covered a lot.
There was for example a talk and a disscussions with wikileaks, a talk about search engines and censorship and a talk about the censoring mob.
The anonymous vs Scientology talk was not really censorship related but is a good example for how to fight on the internet.
All lectures are recorded, you can watch them at www.rehash.nl. (currently not all lectures are available, but this will change in the next days.
In 1998, the U.S. Congress enacted a sweeping Web censorship law that nearly everyone promptly forgot about.
Why? The explanation is simple: The American Civil Liberties Union immediately filed a lawsuit to block the U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judge granted an injunction barring prosecutors from enforcing the law. That injunction has been in place ever since.
But now that could change. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. in Philadelphia will hear closing arguments in the Child Online Protection Act case, and a ruling is expected by early 2007.
It’s unlikely that Reed will lift the injunction, but it is possible. The case has already gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court once, at which point the justices asked Reed to evaluate whether the effectiveness of blocking software had changed in the last few years–a crucial question on which much of the case hinges. (That’s because the ACLU argues filterware is a less restrictive means than a Net-censorship law.)
If Reed sides with the Bush administration, mainstream Web publishers will have plenty to worry about.
COPA makes it a federal crime to knowingly post Web pages that have sexually explicit material that’s “harmful to minors.” Violators could be fined up to $50,000 and imprisoned for up to six months.
That affects far more than just porn producers — even news organizations publishing articles and videos that could be deemed “harmful to minors” might be in trouble.
Plaintiffs in the ACLU’s forgotten lawsuit include the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Salon.com, bookstores and a now-mostly-defunct group called the Internet Content Coalition. (Members of the ICC include News.com publisher CNET Networks, MSNBC, Sony Online, The New York Times and Time, Inc.)
There’s no guarantee that judges will strike down laws like this one (or even keep them on ice indefinitely). Just last week, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a state version of COPA that restricted e-mail that could be deemed “harmful to minors.” Web publishers, take note.
(source – cnet.com)
