As Russia Expands Its 'Think Of The Children' Laws To Copyright, Agency In Charge Investigated For Infringement

Last week we wrote about how the Russian equivalent of SOPA had been amended in order to ban swearing online. Although that was worth noting for its entertainment value, probably more important is the fact that the same law -- originally brought in to take down sites about drugs, suicide and child pornography -- has also been widened to include copyright infringement, as TechWeekEurope reports: 

On Techdirt.

Peru Proposes Default Internet Censorship Requiring Opt-in To View Pornography

Techdirt has run a number of posts about David Cameron's dangerous plans to apply default online censorship and make porn opt-in in the UK, supposedly to "protect the children". Now it looks like Peru is following suit (original in Spanish): 

On Techdirt.

UK Sliding into Something Worse than Censorship

Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock, you will have heard and probably read plenty about the UK government's grandstanding proposals to make pornography opt-in. I won't waste your time by going through the many reasons why that is a foolish idea and won't achieve the things the government says it will. Instead I'd like to concentrate on some disturbing hints about where this could be going, and why we need to start fighting any such plans now.

On Open Enterprise blog.

What the EU Pornography Ban is Really About

It began last week, with an article by the Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström, who wrote about a vote that will take place in the European Parliament (possibly tomorrow):

On Open Enterprise blog.

European Parliament Considers Banning All Pornography, Blocks Emails From EU Citizens Protesting Against Censorship

A few weeks ago we wrote about Iceland's thoroughly daft idea of trying to block porn there. Bad proposals for the Internet always seem to spread, and so it should perhaps come as no surprise that the European Parliament will be considering a similarly unworkable proposal, but in a rather more covert way, as the Pirate Party politician Christian Engström noted on his blog: 

On Techdirt.

Evidence That UK Needs Mandatory Porn Filters? Informal Survey Done At One School

In the UK there is currently a campaign and associated petition from the organization "Safety Net: Protecting Innocence Online", which calls for mandatory Net filtering of pornography -- people would need to opt out of the system if they wanted to view this material. The justification -- of course -- is the usual "won't someone think of the children?" Here's the pitch: 

On Techdirt.

UK ISPs Are Already Planning To Offer Porn Filters -- So Who Needs New Legislation?

Last week Techdirt wrote about the possible introduction of an "opt-in" license to view porn online in the UK. As we noted then, there is nothing to stop parents from installing their own filters to block access to certain kinds of Web sites now. But it seems that soon, they won't even have to do that:

On Techdirt.

Home Office Utterly Clueless on Pornography

What a bunch of incompetent, arrogant fools:

The Home Office has admitted that it has been trying to force ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) blacklist, even though it doesn't know what the organisation does.

Speaking exclusively to Computer Shopper, a Home Office spokesman thought the IWF deletes illegal websites and doesn't look at the content they rate.

He also revealed that the government's measures to ensure that the IWF is blocking illegal content only consist of "meeting with the IWF fairly regularly for updates on how they're doing."

Against the background of countries like Australia secretly blocking Wikileaks, this use of unappointed censors that are never questioned or even checked by any kind of review body is really getting dire. When will these politicians come to their senses?

OOXML and Porn: What's the Connection?

Talking of Document Freedom Day, here's an amusing - and symptomatic - story:

anonymous supporters of OOXML use Domains by Proxy registar in order to register a site with a very similar address of Document Freedom Day's. The OOXML support site is Document Freedom Day **dot com** and redirects to a well known astroturf site which pretends to be a community of OOXML supporters.

This technique is a redirection scam which, according to the explanation given by the Online Internet Institute, takes place

* when you go to one URL and are automatically transferred to another URL. It further explains that it
* doesn't always send you to a porn or gambling site and that
* it could be a scam to lure you to places you had never intended to go.

Which is clearly the case here: to confuse users who expect to check out the Document Freedom Day event page, and lure them into their own OOXML astroturf site.