Leftist "Media Reform" Group Accused of Censorship
Project Censored is censored by the National Conference for Media Reform. Activist Fran Shure complains to Josh Stearns of "Free Press" about suppressing a "...
By: americassurvival
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Leftist "Media Reform" Group Accused of Censorship - Video
Apple's 'baffling censorship problem' has left app developers and comic publishers unsure about what they can submit to the App Store, after an issue of space fantasy comic Saga is blocked for containing adult content.
Edition 12 of the comic, which is distributed through an iPhone and iPad application, was not allowed to be published because it contained two scenes of gay sex. Explicit adult content is banned under Apple's terms and conditions, but previous issues of Saga have been granted access to the App Store, despite having similar content.
Ron Richards, director of business development at Image Comics, told IBTimes UK: "Censoring of apps is definitely a problem, especially for apps that contain content [such as comics, books, magazines].
"We find this particular instance baffling since Saga has contained sexually explicit imagery in previous issues and those were approved, and the same issue [edition 12] is approved for sale within Apple's iBookstore with no issue whatsoever."
Saga writer Brian K. Vaughan said in a blog post: "As has hopefully been clear from the first page of our first issue, Saga is a series for the proverbial 'mature reader.' Unfortunately, because of two postage-stamp sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow's Saga #12 from being sold through any iOS apps.
"This is a drag, especially because our book has featured what I would consider much more graphic imagery in the past, but there you go."
One of the offending images (seen here censored by a black box) appeared on the television headset worn by one of the comic's characters.
Richards added that such censorship "is not something I would ever want to see in a free market, so I'm glad that we have alternatives to this single marketplace."
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Comic Publisher 'Baffled' by Apple 'Censorship Problem'
BEIJING At a rare public forum on cyberissues Tuesday featuring American and Chinese government officials, U.S. diplomats and business leaders tried using economic arguments to persuade China to stop its cyberattacks and Internet censorship.
Chinas heavy-handed Web restrictions not only slow Internet speeds and make company data less secure, but they also have tangible economic effects on the country, said Gary Locke, the U.S. ambassador to China.
Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats was even more blunt in calling out China for its actions.
I ask my Chinese friends to question whether this kind of activity serves Chinas real interests as it seeks to attract high-end investment, aims to develop international markets for its innovative products, and wants its companies welcomed and respected as they increasingly invest around the world, Hormats said.
In recent months, after news reports publicly tied cyberattacks originating from China to the Chinese military, U.S. officials have taken a harsher and more direct tone in confronting China on the issue.
Tuesdays comments were made during an Internet forum sponsored by Microsoft, which carefully featured an equal number of Chinese and U.S. officials.
Chinese officials stuck mostly to previous boilerplate responses to such accusations: China is in the early stages of its development; far from perpetrating cyberattacks, China is among the most frequent targets; andChina opposes the actions of rogue hackers.
One Chinese official, however, went on the offensive.
Recently some people have cooked up this theory of a Chinese cybersecurity threat, said Qian Xiaoqian, vice minister of Chinas State Council Information Office. It is a variation on the popular theory of a rising China threat.
China has long opposed hacking, he said, and thinks we shouldnt militarize the cyberspace and attack other countries in violation of laws and regulations and also in violation of moral standards.
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U.S. government, business leaders push China on cyberattacks, Internet censorship
The word censorship evokes Communist Russia or North Koreanot exactly sleepy, friendly Santa Fe.
Yet according to Tiffany Shackelford, the executive director for the national Association for Alternative Newsmedia (of which SFR is a member), thats exactly what happened to SFR last week.
In case you missed the breathless TV newscasts (A provocative cover for an unconventional paper! KOAT proclaimed), last Wednesday, a disgruntled reader confiscated some 400 copies of SFR shortly after the most recent issue hit newsstands.
People who steal papers just to keep information from getting out to the public are actively engaging in acts of censorship, Shackelford says. Thats an act of censorship.
It started with an anonymous call around 10 am. The caller said the paper was filthy and said he planned to remove copies of SFR from newsstands around town. Although he didnt specify what, exactly, he considered filthy, the cover of the paper featured the headline Nuts to Buttsa reference to a controversial prison shakedown technique, and the topic of that weeks cover story. The image showed the backs of a mans bare legs (actually, the legs of SFR staff writer Joey Peters), with an orange prison jumpsuit around his ankles.
Here at SFR, angry calls about less-than-G-rated material arent exactly uncommonbut rarely do they turn into acts of censorship.
Ultimately, it probably did less harm than good. By the end of the day, we had ordered 1,000 additional copies of the Nuts to Butts issue and taped two TV interviews for that nights 10 pm broadcast. Only around 400 of the 19,500 papers wed printed were actually taken, and the rest were flying off the stands.
When theres something in there that someone doesnt want people to read, they wanna read it, you know? says Brian Clarey, the editor of the Greensboro, NC-based YES! Weekly, an alternative weekly paper that experienced a similar incident in 2009. There really is no such thing as bad publicity. Ive had to repeat that to myself over and over and over again, but something like this is great.
But to Shackelford and others, the ease with which free papers like SFR can be suppressedand the lack of recourse when it comes to prosecuting censorshippoint to more worrisome trends.
When the government doesnt fully prosecute people, theyre aiding and abetting censorship, Shackelford says. Were talking a lot about transparency these days, and how the government is getting allegedly better on things like freedom of information, yet theres a major, major issue with censorship.
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The Censorship Issue
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.