Freedom House Report Finds Internet Freedom Continues to Decline Freedom House released its Freedom of the Net 2015 report, finding that “internet freedom around the world in decline for a fifth consecutive year as more governments censored information of public interest while also expanding surveillance and cracking down on privacy tools.” Among its key findings were…
Australia Abandons Net Censorship Plans; Google Blocked in China Australia, which surprisingly has a checkered history in terms of internet censorship, has abandoned a plan to filter all internet content. Instead, the government is working with Australian ISPs to block 1,400 child abuse websites on INTERPOL’s “worst of” list. When Australia initially announced the filtering program,…
Advertiser Settles Text Messaging Claim under TCPA for $47 Million Jiffy Lube’s parent corporation may pay $47 million under a class action settlement arising from sending text messaging wthout opt-in consent in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Unlike CAN-SPAM which does not impose any opt-in requirements, text messages require opt-in consent under the TCPA.…
Google Transparency Report Shows Troubling Spike in Government Demands for Takedowns Google released its regular report on government requests for information and/or to remove content. Google notes: Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added…
China Launches Social Media Crackdown to Squelch News of Political Scandal and Dissident Escape In the past few weeks, China has been trying to purge social media from references about a political scandal involving a high-ranking party official and blind-dissident Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest to the U.S. Embassy. April began with a crack down…
Last fall, the entertainment lobby pushed for the passage of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) during the lame duck post election session only to be blocked by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). COICA sought to allow seizure of “rogue websites” dedicated to the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods, but was quickly…
Google Sounds Alarm Bell over Internet Trade Barriers “More than 40 governments now engage in broad-scale restriction of online information, a tenfold increase from just a decade ago.” This was one of the opening points of a white paper released by Google entitled “Enabling Trade in the Era of Information Technologies: Breaking Down Barriers to…
Cyber Report 