Free Republic

A Glimpse Of The Future Under SOPA: Warner Bros. Admits It Filed Many False Takedown Notices from the is-this-what-we-want? dept While entertainment industry execs still continue to pretend that it's obvious when things are infringing, they continually ignore the very real concerns raised by many of us about SOPA/PROTECT IP/ICE seizures. The concern isn't about taking down the infringing content. It's about the overreach of these efforts, and how it can and will be used to take down other, legal content. This is not some hypothetical scenario. We hear about bogus DMCA notices being issued all the time, and...

November 2, 2011 - - The baseless legislation introduced today by Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) discriminatorily targets traveling circuses, including Representative Moran’s own constituent Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the largest traveling circus in the United States. The bill is designed to censor entertainment and remove the right to let the American public choose for itself whether Ringling Bros. Circus, a 141-year old American institution, can continue to operate. In this day and age, when businesses are failing, the economy is struggling and families are worried, Congressman Moran is busying himself with legislation that immediately threatens to end...

How does an 'activist' blogger know when she's doing a good job? When people try to stop her or intimidate her. censorship Reporters without Borders (RWOB) ranks Honduras as 143rd of 178 countries in their 2010 Press Freedom Ranking. While RWOB often sites government intimidation, many journalists and bloggers freely admit to self-censorship for various reasons, including personal safety, job security, business or organizational interests, and others. I use the pseudonym 'La Gringa' for obvious reasons — and note that this is very different from an anonymous poster who could be one of millions of anonymous posters. 'La Gringa' is...

I have tried to place a snarky comment about obama and attackwatch several times on facebook, for some odd reason the comment never appears, wOw

Local veterans and volunteer groups accuse Department of Veterans Affairs officials of censoring religious speech — including the word “God” — at Houston National Cemetery. In one example cited in documents filed this week in federal court, cemetery director Arleen Ocasio reportedly told volunteers with the National Memorial Ladies that they had to stop telling families, “God bless you,” at funerals and that they had to remove the words “God bless” from condolence cards. “It’s just unfair that somebody would ask us to take God out of our vocabulary,” said Cheryl Whitfield, founder of Houston National Memorial Ladies. “I could’ve...

Eli Pariser made his mark on the Internet as the executive director of MoveOn.Org, the liberal group that was perhaps the first to turn the Web into a tool for massive political action. Now he's worried the Internet is becoming too polarized, politically and otherwise, because of tools used by some of the technology and social-media world's biggest players. His new book, "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You," details the ways Facebook, Google, Aol and numerous other online hubs quietly are personalizing the Internet for their users.

What goes through the mind of the lefties when they bring up crap like this? Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME): A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the ‘Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act,’ was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.” ~~~ “…is it really necessary to put the word ‘killing’...

The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internetfrom the free-speech-isn't-free dept This is hardly a surprise but, this morning (as previously announced), the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill -- despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. What's really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it's seen as a way to make many...

Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, says the govt. needs time to review the Refused Classification guidelines that determine what will and will not be blocked. The process is expected to take at least 12 months.Merely days after Australia’s new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, reaffirmed her govt’s commitment to impose“voluntary mandatory� ISP filtering of all “inappropriate content� and “offensive and illegal material,� the country’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, has announced that the govt will now delay the plan for at least a year as it conducts a series of transparency...

After intense media scrutiny, the Transportation Security Administration on Tuesday backed off a new policy that would have restricted employees from visiting "controversial opinion" sites at work.

Bert Chapman, a faculty member at Purdue University, has drawn a lot of resentment and protest since writing a blog last month. Mr. Chapman blogs at Conservative web page Townhall.com. His views are extremely conservative, and his blog posting of Oct. 17, 2009 is no different. In the post, Mr. Chapman shows his opinion on homosexuality, citing his disagreement with the lifestyle based upon religious principle. Throughout the article, he brings in statistics on the costs of treating AIDS, the problems of tainted blood supplies, the forcing of medical personnel to treat STDs. All of these he seems to throw...

16-year-old high school student Jennifer Rankin fully intended to unite her voicelessness with that of the unborn as part of the annual Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity when she arrived at school yesterday, reports Bill Henry of Sun Media, reports Patrick B. Craine, LifeSiteNews.com. She was impeded, however, by her school principal, who stated that the right to free speech does not apply on school property and who forced Rankin to remain in isolation for the entire day as long as she participated in the event.

A group of hard-Left filmmakers and writers from around the world have been using their celebrity to try to coerce the Toronto International Film Festival into banning Israeli films. Their petition, which is filled with misstatement of facts and rewriting of history, describes Israel as "an apartheid regime." It focuses not so much on Israel's occupation of the West Bank since 1967, but rather on Israel's very existence since 1948. It characterizes Tel Aviv, a city built by the sweat of Jews largely on barren coastal land, as illegitimate.

CHIPPEWA FALLS, WI – The middle tablet in the Jason Zunker memorial at the Chippewa County Courthouse must be removed within 30 days. The Chippewa County Buildings and Grounds Committee voted unanimously Tuesday morning to order the tablet removed, and the two remaining smaller tablets be pushed closer together.

Dr. Michael Savage interviewed Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily on the July 24th broadcast of "The Savage Nation". It appears that search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Bing are collaborating with the Obama administration to censor posts about the Obama Birth Certificate/Citizenship issue. Farah tells Michael Savage that within a period of 24 hours, all of WorldNetDaily's stories about the Birth Certificate/Citizenship issue had been buried deep in the search results of all three search engines.

WASHINGTON – Putting aside their own competitive interests, representatives of more than two dozen of the nation's top talk shows held an unprecedented private meeting over the weekend to brainstorm strategies against what they agreed are government plans by to squelch critical political speech on radio.

Update on: CNN Cries Copyright, YouTube Pulls Founding Bloggers Susan Roesgen Video I wish them luck.Yesterday, we officially filed our DMCA counter-notice in the matter of CNN’s censorship of Founding Bloggers’ coverage of the Chicago Tax Day Tea Party. A copy of the counter-notice is available at Ben Sheffner’s blog Copyrights & Campaigns, where he’s been devoting much of his valuable energy toward documenting and publicizing what CNN has tried to do in this case. Read the restTheir new in depth report:

I stumbled on the political forum at the "Truck.net Roundtable Forum" and witnessed a lopsided representation of todays events and issues by a few liberals on the forum. To add a little balance, I created and had an account activated with the login id of "Ophir". I posted 3 or 4 articles that were critical of the present administration and was immediately banned from the forum. The administrator came up with ridiculous claims of "racism" and "using multiple logins". I have asked the admin to call me directly. No reply has come back. The forum can be found at http://roundtable.truck.net/viewforum.php?f=28...

In today's Huffington Post is Joseph A. Palermo's "Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer and the Importance of Net Neutrality." Net neutrality, you see, is yet another way the Left hopes to silence their opposition -- and Palermo calls on Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do exactly that. I guess he gets partial credit for honesty. And if this latest example of the Left's rush to suppression via Obama's FCC makes you think of the old Censorship Doctrine or any of the new ones -- "localism," "diversity in media ownership" and serving the "public interest" -- well, it should.

The Australian government is already planning to block legal internet content when its "great firewall" eventually goes live. That is the fear expressed by some of the most trenchant critics of this scheme, including Senators Simon Birmingham (for the Liberal Party) and Scott Ludlam (for the Greens) following another shift in emphasis by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in evidence to the Environment, Communications and the Arts committee on Monday. The Australian government launched a trial of its filtering software on 11 February, in association with a number of ISPs, including Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. The...

In 2006, Thailand announced it was blocking access to YouTube for anyone with a Thai I.P address, and then identified 20 offensive videos for Google to remove as a condition of unblocking the site. ‘If your whole game is to increase market share,’ says Lawrence Lessig, speaking of Google, ‘it’s hard to . . . gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or in ways that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.’ In March of last year, Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, was notified that there had been a precipitous drop in activity...

The MSM’s nauseating, pro-Obama bias during the campaign was almost too much to bear. The Libs won, and the un-Fairness Doctrine is on the front burner, once again taking aim at right-wing talk radio. The fallback position for Conservatives has always been, “well, we always have the right-wing blogs.” Now it appears that Google is trying to finish off the right-wing blogosphere once and for all. More . . .

Video: Tito the Builder - What a Guy! He's not Holding Anything Back About Obama

BEIJING (AFP) - Foreign reporters will not have complete access to the Internet during the Beijing Olympics, Games organisers said Wednesday, reversing a pledge to bring down the Chinese firewall of censorship. Sites linked to the banned Falungong spiritual movement and other unspecified ones would remain blocked for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games, organising committee spokesman Sun Weide told AFP. "During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee. However "sufficient" access falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China's...

Blog Shut Down by 'Christian' Apologist's Threat Contact: Pastor Dustin Segers, Coalition of Concerned Bloggers, ChristianResearchNetwork.com, 336-848-7197 MEDIA ADVISORY, July 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- Pastor Dustin Segers submits the following and is available for comment: How safe are our blogs? That question was raised again when on the evening of July 26, 2008, a popular religious blog was shut down by an Internet service provider. A complaint filed by Christian author and apologist, Richard Abanes, claiming that one article on the religious opinion site, Apprising.org, had slandered him, caused the web host, IPower, to send its publisher, Ken Silva, a...

China's "Live" Olympic Broadcast Will Be Delayed 10 Seconds to Avoid Airing any Embarrassing Political Episodes By chinafreepress.org Jul 8, 2008 - 11:41:36 PM To avoid broadcasting any undesirable incident, China's government has instituted a 10-second delay on the "live" broadcast of the Olympics. According to sources, the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party has ordered all regional television stations to implement a 10 second delay on their "live" Olympic broadcast. This delay order is meant to protect against any political protest--whether shouting a slogan or unveiling a banner--being broadcast, including any by foreign athletes in competition or...

This post got booted from Craig's list but why ? All the vile garbage on there why would *this get booted ?? ============================================== * Earth worship day idea -- more ideas water bottles This builds off of your idea, takes it a step further. Collect water bottles of all sizes and shapes and build (depending on volume of bottles collected) a giant idol of Gaia. The bottles might need to be mashed down flat to fit all together but I think it could work if a creative mechanical type person can come up with a workable design. The sculpture could...

There have been rumors and suggestions that certain users at Digg have “special powers” in the past, so what I saw could simply be one of those users who can alone bury stories submitted to Digg, at any stage of the voting process. Or (with tin foil hat on) Digg might have decided to ban Ron Paul. There’s zero way of knowing, and Digg never talks about its internal workings so we have no way of finding out which one it is, or even if it’s a combination of both. I wonder how long it will take for someone on...

CAIRO, Egypt — In Iran, a large red icon pops up on computer screens. In Syria, there's a discreet note from the filter. Other Arab nations display "blocked" in bold lettering or issue crafty "page not found" replies. However the censors put it, the message is clear: You're not permitted to see this Web site. Governments in the Middle East are stepping up a campaign of censorship and surveillance in an effort to prevent an estimated 33.5 million Internet users from viewing a variety of Web sites whose topics range from human rights to pornography. As a result, millions of...

VIDEO: Lord of the Rings Film Star Ian McKellen Admits to Ripping Out Hotel Bible Sections Against Homosexuality By John-Henry Westen AUKLAND, NZ, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality. In an August 10 interview on New Zealand's TV1 Close Up program McKellen was confronted by the interviewer questioning the truth of the rumour "He's the one, that when he stays in hotels rips the part...

Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday. Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets. Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level,...

Having traveled in the Soviet Union several times, I got used to reading the headlines in Pravda, Novosti, etc. The wording used by apparatchiks in those days of Stalinist repression are now being echoed by the Democratic National Committee on its website. The DNC is frothing at the mouth in the hopes of stifling freedom of expression -- a TV show, namely ABC's "The Path To 911." What's really frightening is that the Democratic Senate leadership has threatened to revoke ABC's broadcast license if it doesn't censor the 911 drama. Here is the DNC in its own words -- proving...

I am currently capturing Michael Medved's interview of the creator/producer of Path to 9/11. If anyone would like to hear it, tell me how to make it available.

Sens. Reid, Durbin, Stabenow, Schumer, and Dorgan sent a letter to Disney today containing the following passages:... Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation. The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold...

They chase each other at high speed wielding axes and hammers. But the famous cartoon duo of Tom and Jerry are in trouble for smoking on screen. Media regulator Ofcom received a complaint from a viewer who took offence at two episodes involving smoking. In one, "Texas Tom", the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the other, "Tennis Chumps", Tom's opponent in a match smokes a large cigar. In a bulletin posted online, Ofcom noted "concerns that smoking on television may normalise smoking", and...

Bible club lawsuit roils school Most Downingtown East High School Prayer Club members just wanted to call themselves the Bible Club, use the word Christian, and put religious symbols and quotes from Scripture on their school posters, several students say. But the three students and two parents who took the Chester County school district to federal court last month said the students also wanted the right to voice their opinions as Christians on any number of topics, including abortion, homosexuality and premarital sex. And that has triggered a collision between those who want public schools to be havens from society's...

Wikipedia Attempts To Censor Israel News - Again By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----May 27......The Israel News Agency, which has been a favorite target of Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda and the Hizbullah is again in the sights of Wikipedia for a third time in four months. The Israel News Agency, Israel's first on-line Government Press Office accredited news organization since 1995, has had it article removed three times on Wikipedia. The Israel News Agency, which directly disseminates news from the Israel Government Press Office, in addition to local, international news, features and editorials, has a...

Google is currently the premier search engine. However, it's results are getting worse by the day. Besides being bombarded with gateway search engine pages no matter what term you type in, you are not getting relevant results. In other words, you are not seeing legitimate pages that other search engines like Yahoo will return. For proof of this I give you the term "privacy service". This one affects us and our service at www.cotse.net. Cotse.Net is a privacy service. According to our logs it is indexed daily by Google. According to Google, we are not penalized in any way by...

For Penn State student Josh Stulman, years of hard work ended in disappointment yesterday when the university cancelled his upcoming art exhibit for violation of Penn State's policies on nondiscrimination, harassment and hate. Three days before his 10-piece exhibit -- Portraits of Terror -- was scheduled to open at the Patterson Building, Stulman (senior-painting and anthropology) received an e-mail message from the School of Visual Arts that said his exhibit on images of terrorism "did not promote cultural diversity" or "opportunities for democratic dialogue" and the display would be cancelled. The exhibit, Stulman said, which is based mainly on the...

Unlicensed email servers illegal under new rule China has introduced regulations that make it illegal to run an email server without a licence. The new rules, which came into force two weeks ago, mean that most companies running their own email servers in China are now breaking the law. More than 600,000 servers were sold in China last year, according to market researchers. It's unclear how many of these are running mail server software, which includes programs like Microsoft Outlook Server, Sendmail, Qmail or Lotus Notes. The new email licensing clause is just a small part of a new anti-spam...

NEW YORK - Banned by Comedy Central from showing an image of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the creators of "South Park" skewered their own network for hypocrisy in the cartoon's most recent episode. The comedy — in an episode aired during Holy Week for Christians — instead featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag. In an elaborately constructed two-part episode of their Peabody Award-winning cartoon, "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper's publishing of caricatures of Muhammad. Muslims consider any physical...

Open letter #2 to Google from the People's Cube (posted on Google.com Help Center at 8:30pm on March 10, 2006 "Out of sight, out of mind" - translated into Russian and then back into English, the idiom turns into "invisible lunatics." That also describes The People's Cube's search results in Google. Dear comrades at Google:At some point, quite recently, our popular site "The People's Cube" (ThePeoplesCube.com) was purged from Google search results. MSN , Yahoo and other search engines still have it - but Google has erased/blocked any link to the site in its database. One can still find links...

Is Google censoring the blogs? First do no evil right? Thinking and communicating thoughts is the essence of humanity. Example #1---here is a posting on JihadWatch today Egyptian editor who printed cartoons has left the country Egyptian Sandmonkey, who has done such important work during the entire cartoon rage episode, and was the first to reveal that the Egyptian paper Al Fagr printed the cartoons in October, now tells us that the editor responsible has left Egypt -- not surprising, since editors who printed the cartoons in Jordan and Algeria have been arrested. 1. Search Google with the phrase “...

Stanford University has indicted The Stanford Review, Stanford’s only conservative student publication, for defying a ban on door-to-door distribution in an act of civil disobedience. Staff of The Stanford Review distributed their publication door-to-door in the residence halls on campus in violation of University policy. The University responded swiftly by filing a formal complaint to the Organization Conduct Board to begin an investigation, which could result in sanctions. “We believe this ban to be an unreasonable restriction on freedom of speech on a college campus,” argues senior Ben Guthrie, former Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Review. Stanford University is engaging in...

Google is a window on the world, but your view can depend on whether you're in the West or the East. Search for images of "Tiananmen," as in Tiananmen Square, scene of the 1989 student democracy protest, on the China site, Google.cn. Most of the time the results turn up pictures of the Beijing plaza: a flock of birds soaring above the grounds, the square all lit up at night, tourists posing for the camera.

Check this out for SCARY!!! tiananmen - Google Image Search. tiananmen - Google Image Search in China.

Yaa, you repukes are not doing so well, huh? Imagine, you repukes control the presidency, both houses of Congress, and appointed 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. Yet the Supreme Court thre out sodomy laws in all 50 states and recognized the right of government to seize land for any reason. And you couldn't pass your Social Security changes could you? Sorry, that was your last shot. Come November, we're going to start seeing more Democratic faces in the House. It's the end for you guys. You guys are celebrating when Bush's numbers go *up* to 45%. Then Faux...

Bush’s giant Right Wing Noise Machine (RWNM) loves to preach about the Bush economic miracle. In fact, the RWNM’s current thinking is Bush doesn’t spend enough time talking about his economic triumphs. If only he did, then everyone would fall in line and believe in the great Bush economic miracle. There is one problem with this argument: it’s a lie. Any way you look at the Bush economy, it comes up short. Today, I want to compare Bush’s job creation record with other economic recoveries. As usual, Bush comes up way short. The national Bureau of Economic Research has identified...

Why does anybody support George w Bush as President? He is clearly the worst President I have ever seen -- a complete disaster. And before you say anything, I have been a registered Republican for 25 years.

When Howard Stern begins his satellite radio career on January 9th, he may learn that he hasn't escaped the censors. Where terrestrial radio is sometimes disciplined by the FCC, satellite radio is governed by something far more malignant: The Orthodox Liberal-Left. At least, that was my experience with XM--the number one satellite radio service and rival to Stern's Sirius. I was aggressively sought by XM to do a show. But XM's left-wing programming officials' idea of what my views should be were far more restrictive than a governmental body properly trying to enforce decency in extreme cases. At XM, they...