Mediaboss Marketing

Popular video sharing site Vimeo was blocked by Indonesias largest telco Telkomsel for a short while. And while it was still being blocked, the only reasonable answer that the companys customer service and staff had was that Vimeo was somehow associated with the only thing that is being widely censored in Indonesia: porn.

As the third largest democratic country in the world, the news media here can still talk about anything that they want (albeit with a few discouragements), even when it is related to the first familys dodgy tax returns. One of the reporters of the above article tweeted about his experience being contacted time and time again by the presidents staff. And The Jakarta Post office was heavily discouraged from publishing the article. But still, the government couldnt do anything other than that, and the article was published, putting the president in the spotlight.

But as the second largest Muslim populated country in the world, it is still very sensitive about pornographic material. The ICT minister Tifatul Sembiring (being also a representative of an Islamic-oriented political party, the PKS) has vowed to curb porn in Indonesia. This is the same minister who has blocked more than one million porn sites, and was even able to force RIM (now known as Blackberry) to filter porn on its Blackberry handsets two years ago.

Just last week Tifatul also made a request to Twitter to see if the US-based company can censor porn-related tweets to protect Indonesian children from accessing those sites. Twitters new country-by-country censorship policy might be able to grant that request, but so far there is no update about the enquiry.

While porn sites are definitely being blocked by the Indonesian government, interestingly porn site Xvideos is sitting securely at the 48th spot in Indonesia according to Alexas rankings. There are indeed ways to overcome the censorship like changing the DNS address, using proxy servers, or using VPN services. And you could do those on your mobile phones too.

Though sometimes the government and telcos get it right concerning which sites should indeed be blocked under the nations anti-porn laws, there are times when they get it wrong. Vimeo is one such example - its an artistic site crucial for young filmmakers in the country to get global, creative exposure.

Indonesia is still a democratic country which respects your freedom of speech - but with a religious twist. But when an unfair block happens, young web users know that there are ways to still access whatever is being censored.

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Censorship in Indonesia: No Porn Please!

iDCLOAK's unblock proxy list is specially designed for censorship circumvention and is constantly updated with fresh proxies.

Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) April 07, 2013

We have a full schedule of service releases for 2013, says iDCLOAKs Director of Marketing, Gill-Chris Welles, and the free proxy servers list is an important first. For one, it is a calling card for our companys entrance into the existing proxy market so those who already use proxies know we are here and that we are a serious player. Perhaps even more important is that the free list is helping us raise public awareness on the advantages of using a proxy as a buffer for your internet privacy were saying Never used a proxy before? Well, here, have a try. And internet censorship circumvention is of course going to be the main reason people do try proxies out.

The iDCLOAK proxy database contains some 2,500 open proxies from over 70 countries and is managed by an online proxy checker bot which verifies that proxies are live and provides important data about the proxy to the user. The selection menus embedded in the list allow users to filter the proxy database according to specific preferences, such as: country, port, proxy protocol and even speed or level of anonymity.

We want users to move away from the idea that a proxy is a single-state service it neednt be so fixed in its operations. Regular unblock proxy sites offer very little choice regarding performance or IP location you just punch in a URL and see what happens. To bypass censors successfully at acceptable speeds you need to know where you are routing your connection to and what speeds the proxy is running at. Our proxy list gives you that data up front and lets you search for proxies according to a whole range of specific criteria you set. Later this year we are releasing our Smart VPN, a much more advanced cross-platform product that will streamline the proxy bypassing process while providing even more choice than our list offers now. For users to get the most out of the iDCLOAK Smart VPN, we need to raise consumer expectations of circumvention technologies. The iDCLOAK proxy list is doing just that.

The iDCLOAK Smart VPN software-based proxy is due for release in the coming months. For those interested in learning about forthcoming products, or looking for an education in web anonymity, security or internet censorship circumvention, visit http://www.idcloak.com.

Gill-Chris Welles idcloak Technologies Inc. 7862109230 Email Information

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iDCLOAK Technologies Releases a Proxy Servers List Designed Specifically for Web Censorship Circumvention

With over 500 million YouTube views, TED Talks have attracted guest speakers such as Bill Gates, Richard Dawkins and Julian Assange and in the process, made conferences cool again.

But in recent weeks TED Talks with their mantra - ideas worth sharing - have been accused of censorship after two British speakers had their talks removed from TEDs official website.

The row involves two British speakers, the journalist and author Graham Hancock and Cambridge and Harvard University lecturer Rupert Sheldrake. Both speakers have been deemed as provocative amid accusations of pseudoscience at lectures they gave at a TEDx talk a franchised spin-off of the main TED Talk brand. Hancock describes a war on consciousness that prevents the world from gaining a higher state of awareness through shamanic principles and psychoactives like the South American potion, ayahuasca.

Rupert Sheldrake, a biochemist gave a speech which was loosely based on his book, The Science Delusion in which he refutes enduring dogmas which he claims are holding back legitimate scientific enquiry.

Both speakers who spoke at the TEDx conference in east London last month had their speeches pulled from its YouTube channel. After complaints from Sheldrake and Hancock and many TED viewers, their videos were reinstalled, but not on the main website in the naughty corner as Mr Hancock described it.

Hancock and Sheldrake have also called for the anonymous science board which advises TED on the legitimacy of speakers, to be revealed something which TED is refusing to do, citing they are unpaid volunteers.

At the talks, speakers are given 18 minutes to present their ideas, which range from a mixture of science and culture through to storytelling.

But in recent months, a series of controversies dogged the not-for-profit organisation and whose acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, leading many to question the integrity of the organisation which charges audiences several thousands of pounds to watch a speech, yet pays its speakers nothing. In 2009, TED decided to license its brand allowing anyone, around the world to stage TEDx events.

Last week in California, officials withdrew the license awarded to organisers of TEDx West Hollywood. Organisers said the conference theme who were talking about the reality of ESP, was pseudoscience.

Graham Hancock, said: I think it comes down to the management of popular culture, rather than leaving people to make up their own minds.

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TED conference censorship row

Today in international tech news: After failed threats, France's intelligence agency draws thousands of eyes to the Wikipedia page it wanted removed. Also: A human rights group will equip activists with an electronic tracking bracelet that can trip a social media alarm; a European telecom gets big dough from Canada -- again -- to use BlackBerry; and China's Tencent defuses online angst and confirms its WeChat app will remain free.

Intelligence agents for the Direction Central du Renseignement Intrieur -- France's top intelligence agency -- were accused of censorship after threatening to arrest and charge a Wikipedia volunteer.

The hubbub originated with an article that contains classified military secrets, according to operatives, and ergo is a threat to national security. The article, which is still available, describes a military radio relay station in France that is believed to be part of the country's nuclear detection and deterrent network.

In March, the DCRI contacted Wikipedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, about taking down the page. Wikimedia replied that DCRI hadn't provided evidence that the article was a risk, and therefore left it online.

Things got more interesting last week when the DCRI summoned a 30-year-old library curator, who is a Wikipedia volunteer and who has administrator's access to the site. The man reportedly had nothing to do with the page in question but claims he was told to take it down all the same. After declining, he was reportedly told that he would be held in custody and charged for failing to comply.

This sequence of events, rather predictably, resulted in unintended consequences: The vice president of Wikimedia France said that the page in question had between 10 and 60 visitors; as of Sunday, there were "around 10,000 from around the world."

The Wikimedia VP did add, though, that the page would indeed be taken down if DCRI produces the requisite legal papers.

[Source: The Guardian]

Stockholm-based human rights group Civil Rights Defenders has issued a GPS bracelet that will send out an alert should a bracelet's owner ever be kidnapped.

The first five bracelets -- designed to tip off CRD, nearby activists and CRD's social media network -- were handed out last week at "Defenders' Days," a CRD conference. Fifty-five such bracelets will be distributed over the next 18 months.

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France Implicated in Wikipedia Censorship Threat

SINGAPORE: Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong said the country's policy on censorship is evolving and moving away from censorship towards one of classification and self-regulation.

Mr Wong was speaking at a recording of Channel NewsAsia's programme "Ask Minister" where he was posed a range of questions from censorship to arts education.

He also said the government should work with a consultative panel made up of Singaporeans from diverse backgrounds and get them to share their views before setting any boundaries.

Mr Wong said: "Rather than to say these are OB markers and don't touch them whether it's politics, race or religion and say 'thou shall not touch it', I think we should move away from that and we should move to a situation where we have a dialogue on what the artist would like to convey even if it's a provocative issue on politics, race or religion and then have a conversation - whether it's with MDA that looks at content regulation or more importantly with audiences so that audiences can understand what they are doing."

Catch more of the discussion with Mr Lawrence Wong on April 9 at 8pm on "Ask Minister", exclusively on Channel NewsAsia.

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Censorship among issues to be discussed in "Ask Minister" programme