Country: USA

Country: USA

Internet censorship in the United States
is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. Personal Internet access in the US is not subject to technical censorship but can be penalized by law for violating the rights of others. Programs such as content-control software are sometimes used within institutions such as businesses, libraries, schools, and government offices. Though most online expression is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, laws such as those concerning libel, intellectual property, and pornography still determine how and if certain content can be published online.

Internet content that violates U.S. law and is physically hosted in the United States may be removed through legal processes. For example, pirated films available on a website hosted in California could be targeted by the U.S. legal system. Similar content hosted in another country could not.

Such content removals are routine and are usually not broadly labeled as government “censorship”. However, controversial cases have occurred that some argue cross the line into censorship.

In February 2008, the Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit prompted the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to issue a permanent injunction against the website Wikileaks’ domain name registrar. The result was that Wikileaks could not be accessed through its web address. This elicited accusations of censorship and resulted in the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepping up to defend Wikileaks. After a later hearing, the injunction was lifted.

Block against Cuban websites
In March 2008, a New York Times story mentions that eNom is known to disable domain names which appear on a US Treasury Department blacklist.It describes eNom’s disabling of a European travel agent’s Web sites advertising travel to Cuba, which appeared on a U.S. Treasury Department list published by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The article’s sources use words varying from “scandal” to “legally required” to describe “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law”, especially when the operation is as “mysterious” as that of the OFAC list.

source wikipedia.com

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)

Country: United Staates of America

Location: Denver International Airport

Critics say the airport is using the same technology used by repressive regimes in Sudan and Kuwait. (sorce: msnbc.msn.com)