Free Republic

A Muslim activist group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood has asked the British government to restrict the way the British media reports about Muslims and Islam. The effort to silence criticism of Islam comes amid

HE digital tsunami that swept over the Capitol last month, forcing Congress to set aside legislation to combat the online piracy of American music, movies, books and other creative works, raised questions about how the democratic process functions in the digital age. Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs. They knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the...

Former presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson averred that criticism of President Obama has gotten dangerously out of hand. “The constant barrage of right-wing criticism leveled at the president by his enemies has reached unacceptably perilous magnitude,” Jackson insisted. “When a governor is allowed to point her finger at him or a member of Congress is permitted to get away with calling him a liar we must acknowledge that rhetoric has gone too far.” Jackson cited history to bolster his concern. “President John Kennedy was vilified by right-wingers,” Jackson asserted. “This created an atmosphere conducive to violence. The next we knew,...

When the right-wing Second Amendment Foundation teamed up with the left-wing First Amendment foundation to sue the Eastern Washington library system for filtering out gun websites, it serves as a case study as to why the Seattle Public Library was right last week when it said it wasn't going to do anything about Internet porn. There's not much titillating about Women & Guns magazine. About as racy as it gets is a recent photo spread on "practical leather" — gun holsters and casual carry handbags for the lady who packs heat. With articles like "Taming Shotgun Recoil" and "Ammunition on...

Censoring Twitter Are you worried about Twitter's new guidelines? Yes, I think it's a huge blow to freedom of speech around the world No, I think they're doing it responsibly I'm not sure

Fast forward to today and we suddenly find that an interesting situation has arisen in the Untied States in regards to ACTA. It seems that President signed the ACTA treaty a few months ago, with apparently little or no fanfare, but questions are now being asked by those who do keep a very close eye on this – was Obama even allowed to sign ACTA?

WTF? Censorship on Arizona non-candidate

Twitter has announced that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets on a country by country basis. In its blog, Twitter said it could "reactively withhold content from users in a specific country". But it said the removed content would be available to the rest of the world. Previously when Twitter deleted a tweet, it would disappear worldwide. --- In its blog post, Twitter explained that its international growth meant entering countries "that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression", citing France or Germany which ban pro-Nazi content as examples.

Last November I wrote an article titled 'The Advent of Internet Censorship in America' (http://www.free-marketing-tips-blog.com/ 2011/11/advent-of-internet-censorship-in.html). To recap: "The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith [R-TX] and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The aim of the bill is to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online transmission of restricted intellectual property." (Source: Wikipedia) Opponents of the bill says it goes too far and threatens to shut down or censor legitimate websites that might inadvertently link to...

Linky Here

On Wednesday, some of the Internet's largest entities blacked out their websites --or their logos or some of their content --in a protest against the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills making their way through Congress. If you're wondering whether all of this had an effect, the answer is yes. Big time. Wikipedia, the largest Web player to block access to its pages for a full 24 hours, reports that a whopping 162 million people experienced the blackout on the online encyclopedia's landing page. In addition, 8 million U.S. readers took Wikipedia's suggestion and looked up their congressional reps from the...

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (and its Senate alternative, the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA]) have been taking a bipartisan beating. Conservatives have joined with Leftists to savage the bill and thus its chances for passage. I too am opposed to this iteration of SOPA – it remains too overly broad. But something similar and more finely, sharply crafted – must become law. And conservatives will need to reorient themselves when a better version of the bill comes along – and support it. —– We cannot look at the SOPA debate without putting it into the broader context of...

McLEAN, Va. –  Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue. "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment. The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations -- Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was...

Hollywood would use SOPA to make it possible for anyone to single-handedly take down any site on the Internet, without the action of a court, just because anyone with access to that site (say, a commenter) used it to link to copyrighted content. What does Hollywood think? That if they win this level of power, the Internet will stop happening in the rest of the world? ................... To paraphrase our last president, Hollywood hates your freedom. There, I said it. Hollywood is the Al Qaeda of content. It clings to an antediluvian notion of how media should be created and...

There certainly hasn’t been any lack of attempts by the U.S. government — elected Representatives and Senators, and White House — to try to regulate/control the Internet in this session of Congress. It seems a new cybersecurity bill pops up at least once a week. The latest one catching all the attention is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261. SOPA is a beefed-up version of the failed Protect IP Act.... David Ulevich, an expert in Internet security calls the legislation “dangerous” for three reasons: 1) “there is no way to censor only illegal content without harming legitimate uses...

For all the talk from some that SOPA was "dead," it appears it's alive and well and getting ready for its big re-entrance. Lamar Smith has just sent out a press release saying that he intends to resume the markup in February...

In response to yesterday's PMW video-bulletin which showed the PA Mufti's speech that Muslims' destiny is to kill Jews, YouTube has frozen PMW's account. All PMW videos are working except this one but the account is frozen and PMW cannot upload new videos for the next two weeks... Editorial note: Contact Google and tell them to stop censoring valid news. Tell them to stop violating the constitutional right to FREE SPEECH: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/sharesuccess/

Data Visualizations on Internet Censorship

For Google, it's personal. The Internet search giant is no longer going to roll out the same search results to everyone. Starting Tuesday, Google will pluck only the results most relevant to you --and not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal stuff that you and your connections privately share. The idea, says Google Fellow Amit Singhal, is that Google now searches your world, not just the Web, and serves up results that combine both for your eyes only. "Your world was missing from search until now," he said. "We are bringing your world into search."

An open letter to Washington signed by the creators of some of the web's biggest sites argues that a new bill could dramatically restrict law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies -- and reshape the web as we know it. The House Judiciary Committee met Thursday to decide the next steps for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which has been the center of controversy among technologists and privacy advocates for months. If the bill passes, popular sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and even Google would be held responsible for content users post to their sites. They argue that the U.S....

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details... from the copyright-as-censorship dept Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case....

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the...

Congress is currently considering a bill that threatens to alter the Internet fundamentally. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is one of the most misguided Internet-reform efforts to emerge in years. SOPA's purported intent is to protect American copyrighted material against piracy and counterfeiting. Unfortunately, wide application of the bill's regulations would strangle the freedom of the Internet. SOPA would require the attorney general's office to target any website that is: Primarily designed or operated for the purpose of, has only limited purpose or use other than, or is marketed by its operator or another acting in concert with that...

Irony Alert: The House is holding hearings on sweeping Internet censorship legislation this week -- and it's censoring the opposition! The bill is backed by Hollywood, Big Pharma, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of them are going to get to testify at the hearing. But the bill's opponents -- tech companies, free speech and human rights activists, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users -- won't have a voice. As if you need a reminder: This is the most offensive Internet legislation we've seen in years. It will give the government and corporations new powers to block Americans'...

As Web firms recently pressed Congress to free them from liability for pirated content on their sites, they turned to a natural lobbying technique: starting a viral campaign. First came the catchy slogan: “Don’t Break the Internet.” Then came pleas for support on message boards, Twitter and online forums. The result: a million people e-mailing Congress and 87,000 telephone calls, according to figures posted on the American Censorship Day Web site.... Opposition to the bill is growing from the technology world. On Tuesday, the Business Software Alliance, which represents Microsoft, Intel, Adobe and Apple, pulled its support of the legislation,...

The Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill before the House Judiciary Committee, would require Internet service providers to block access to sites that contain copyright-infringing content. These sites would be targeted by court orders sought by copyright holders. We're all for the proper protection of copyrighted material and intellectual property, but this act vastly oversteps this goal and dangerously broadens the power of the government to censor the internet, creating blacklists based on a vague and easily abused complaint framework. The act also would require ad networks and payment services to revoke service to these sites, and it would call...

Apparently during this whole Sandusky scandal Rush Limbaugh answered a caller by saying who couldn't give the answer he wanted to give because he would no longer have a radio show or a career. I heard this interview talking about what Rush said and I don't know what to make of it. Does anyone have the transcript of Rush Limbaugh saying that there is someone who is afraid to speak against because they could get him fired? To me this is a big deal and we need to flush out exactly what Rush was saying (or was he just tweaking...

China operates the world’s most elaborate and opaque system of Internet censorship. But Congress, under pressure to take action against the theft of intellectual property, is considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China’s Great Firewall and even bring major features of it to America. The legislation — the Protect IP Act, which has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — have an impressive array of well-financed backers, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America,...

Brad Feld tweeted this web site, and Fred Wilson blogged about it. After viewing this video, I support it. PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. Here is a link to the website if you would like to support American Censorship Day too. I appreciate the sentiment of Hollywood and the music industry. People download stuff off of the internet without paying for it. Artists should get paid for things they produce-but the two bills pending before both houses of Congress are the wrong way to go about it. I don’t know the right...

On November 16th, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same...

The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. This bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality. PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites. This is the worst piece of Internet legislation in history - the lawmakers who have been sponsoring (Leahy, Lamar Smith, Conyers) are wasting taxpayer dollars on a bill that would break the very fabric of the Internet, create an Internet blacklist, kill...

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore) and six of his Party comrades are calling for a Constitutional Amendment that would limit freedom of speech “before it can destroy our democracy.” “Political speech in this country has gotten so far out of hand that democracy itself is endangered,” Merkley contended. “Right now, anyone who wants to can say anything he wants about any public figure. The only constraint is whether he has the means to get his message out. Even this constraint is melting away. With the Internet, any boob can get an audience of millions if he’s clever enough.” The trouble, according...

There are moments in a person’s life that shake you to your foundation, that cause you to rethink everything you think you know, moments that hit like a two by four upside your head. Just such moment arrived for me late on a Friday afternoon. A friend of mine, let’s call him Adam, since that’s his name, has self-published a book, Formerly Filthy Rich, My Scandalous Life with a Billionaire Cougar. . . . Now his book is at the very least R-rated, and it’s an account of his six year marriage to Nu Skin co-founder Sandie Tillotson. Nu Skin,...

U.S. Government Seeks to Create Website Ban List Written by Raven Clabough Thursday, 27 October 2011 16:23 The U.S. House of Representatives recently introduced a “rogue websites” bill that has managed to attract bipartisan support even though it would force Internet Service Providers to create a list of banned websites and prevent users of those websites from accessing their sites. The list is all too similar to the “ban lists” that are found in China. Breitbart.com reports: “US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of...

I had to go for Jury Duty yesterday in Newark, NJ (Essex County). A lot of "Jury Duty" is waiting so Essex County now lets one now that they have a room where they have free Wifi for anyone who brings a computer. Once my computer is booted and the connection is made to the Wifi router, it doesn't take long before I try to access freerepublic.com with it. So when I did I was greeted with some sort of message that the site I tried to access was blocked due to its content. I tried to get around this...

BRUSSELS—The European Commission is leaning toward proposing a ban on the issuing of sovereign credit ratings for countries in bailout talks, a top official said on Thursday. "I think it's legitimate to have a special treatment when a country is in negotiation or is covered by an international solidarity program with the IMF or a European solidarity" program, said Michel Barnier, European internal market commissioner. Should the commission, the executive arm of the European Union, come to view these sovereign ratings are inappropriate, "we could ban it or suspend the rating for the necessary time frame," he said. "I am...

Glenn Beck's hate has no place in America, much less in America's favorite pastime. Sports outlets have reported that MLB Advanced Media, the interactive arm of Major League Baseball, is teaming up with the hateful conservative commentator Glenn Beck to stream his shows online. Major League Baseball's partnership with Glenn Beck is shameful and should not be giving him a platform to spew his hate and fearmongering. MLB should immediately sever their relationship with Beck.

Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the US copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails. The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, (.pdf) show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms, and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July. One top official even used her personal e-mail account at least once during the negotiations with executives and lobbyists from companies ranging from AT&T...

Next time you call a talk radio station, beware: The FBI may be listening. According to WMAL.com, "The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet. … The FBI says it is not playing Big Brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence." The agency's reasons for recording all these radio programs don't get any clearer as the news report goes on. No doubt that is intentional.

Whether it was the decision of ESPN or Hank Williams Jr., the song that has been the staple of ESPN's Monday Night Football intro for 20 years is no more. With that, NFL fans across the country immediately began to speculate as to what would be the next song to lead into everyone's favorite Monday night programming. It turns out there may not be a song at all, at least for the time being. Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders announced via Twitter that he will do the intro for this week's matchup between the Lions and the Bears....

RICHLAND — Central Washington’s library system will head back to federal court Oct. 25 to further argue its filtering of public Internet access. The hearing in Richland before U.S. District Court Judge Edward F. Shea will consider motions left dangling after the Washington Supreme Court last year upheld the North Central Regional Library district practice of narrowly filtering Internet pages related to pornography and gambling. The state court’s 6-3 decision sided with the NCRL and its 28 branch libraries in a 2006 suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, representing three North Central Washington residents — Sarah Bradburn of...

A new course on Islam designed for journalists tries to minimize the impact and importance of “jihad” by comparing it to the number of murders in America each year. That same course claims “right-wing activists” tried to tie American Muslims to terrorism and doesn’t mention examples of Islamic attacks on press freedom.That’s the way a prominent news organization is teaching journalists in a three-hour online course. The Poynter News University, part of the Poynter Institute, launched the free course “Covering Islam in America” to guide the media on their coverage of Muslim communities.... In about 30 pages of text with...

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were made official on Friday morning, with their publication in the Federal Register. As already announced, they will go into effect on November 20. .... Consumer advocates were on the whole more positive. The non-partisan group Free Press, which champions universal access to communications, supported the rules while also voicing reservations about loopholes. " don't do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination that is already occurring in the marketplace...

Sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the Association of American Publishers, among others, Banned Books Week will be held from September 24th to October 1st; it celebrates the freedom to read and highlights the importance of the First Amendment.

IMPORTANT LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER: Operation Dark Heart On September 24, 2010, we published Operation Dark Heart. We have been receiving letters of concern that we changed the text due to government censorship, and that the government "burned" the books from our initial printing. The true facts are that the government bought the first printing in its entirety and we destroyed and recycled those copies at their request. The changes we made in the text were made at the request of the author. The Department of Defense in fact wanted further changes to the book which we refused to make....

Saudi Arabia has hired lawyers to threaten Canadian broadcasters who dare to run a TV ad critical of Saudi conflict oil. I know this because I am the volunteer chairman of EthicalOil.org, the non-profit website that promotes Canada’s oilsands as an ethical alternative to the conflict oil of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC dictatorships. Alykhan Velshi, who runs EthicalOil.org, produced a 30-second TV ad comparing the treatment of women in Canada with the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. That’s a place where women can’t drive, can’t vote and can’t even get medical care without the permission of their husbands/owners....

An Apple application that let users guess which French politicians or celebrities are Jewish was pulled from France's App Store. but its American equivalent is still available. French activist groups said the "Jew or Not Jew?" app violated bans on compiling information on people's religion and revealing that religion without their consent, according to United Press International. The app, which became available last month, can still be purchased in other countries, the newspaper said. It was developed by a Jew. Johann Levy, 35, a French-British software engineer, told the Journal his intent was to develop a "recreational" tool for...

Harvard College’s Class of 2015 found something unprecedented awaiting their arrival on campus: an ideological pledge. It was framed as a request for allegiance to certain social and political principles. No such request had been made of Harvard students since the college’s founding by Puritans in 1636. First-years are being pressured to sign a “Freshman Pledge” committing them to create a campus “where the exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment” — all in the name of “upholding the values of the College” including “inclusiveness and civility.” The request – originating from the Dean of...

Obama for America has launched a new website, AttackWatch.com, with a mission to combat online 'smears' where people have the ability to report 'attacks' directed at President Obama's policies. The website contains rebuttals to criticisms directed at the president to help his supporters 'fight back'. In 2009 while speaking in Shanghai, China, Obama said ideas on the internet should "flow freely' and stated he's a big supporter of "non-censorship", but went on to say he wishes ideas didn't flow so freely because he'd have to listen to people criticize him.

Freepers, Google and other search engines are now filtering your search results based on your browsing habits, your computer, your location, any data they can mine from your online activity. Presumably this is done for marketing purposes, but the really ugly aspect, especially for conservatives is that they can filter for political affiliation, which means that if Joe Average searches on Sarah Palin, he may end up with only results that are critical of Sarah. Same for any other candidate. This is FASCISM and we need to blow this issue to the moon. Get on it people, raise some Hell....