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Web giant says it received more than 1,000 requests from government officials for the removal of content in the past six months, complying with more than half.

Google reports it has seen an "alarming" incidence in government requests to censor Internet content in the past six months.

The Web giant said it received more than 1,000 requests from governments around the world to remove items such as YouTube videos and search listings. The company, which said it complied with more than half the requests, released a catalog of those requests as part of its bi-annual Global Transparency Report.

"Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different," Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, said in a blog post. "When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."

Google said it had received 461 court orders for the removal of 6,989 items, consenting to 68 percent of those orders. It also received 546 informal requests, complying with 46 percent of those requests. The study doesn't reflect censorship activity from countries such as China and Iran, which block content without notifying Google.

"Just like every other time, we've been asked to take down political speech," Chou wrote. "It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

Among the take-down requests was a Polish demand for removal of an article critical of a development agency, a Spanish request for removal of 270 blogs and links to articles critical of the public figures, and a Canadian official's request for removal of a YouTube video of a man urinating on his passport and flushing it down a toilet. All were denied.

However, the company said it complied with the majority of requests from Thai authorities for the removal of 149 YouTube videos that allegedly insulted the monarchy, a violation of Thailand law. The Web giant said it also granted U.K. police requests for removal of five YouTube accounts that allegedly promoted terrorism. Google also said it complied with 42 percent of U.S. requests for the removal of 187 pieces of content, most of which were related to harassment.

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Google sees 'alarming' level of government censorship

Summary: Nearly 10 years ago, Cleanfeed was designed to protect the British public from child abuse imagery. A decade later, the same system is used to enforce ISP blocks on file-sharing and Magnet-link websites like The Pirate Bay. How did the U.K. fall into censorship creep?

Censorship is a slippery slope.The United Kingdom: my home. Case in point:

Nearly five years ago, the U.K. pushed the Web censorship switch. Most U.K. residents didnt even notice. Designed by telecoms giant British Telecom (BT), Cleanfeed was used to filter out child abuse imagery, and did so with great success.

Users would not see a warning message or a startling warning about the content they had tried to orinadvertentlyaccessed. The page just wouldnt load.

In 2007, Home Office minister Vernon Coaker ordered all U.K. ISPs to subscribe to Cleanfeed to prevent access toscenes of sexual abuse and criminally obscene content.

And then things began to change.

The U.K.s anti-piracy legislation, the Digital Economy Act, was brought into law by a tiny minority of parliamentaryrepresentatives in 2010. In all fairness, it was only a matter of time.

But a series of delays means the law is yet to swing into full effect. Its three-strike system, designed to inform copyright infringers that repeated acts would lead to Internet disconnections, has been put on ice until 2014.

The United States followed in the U.K.s footsteps with the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA. In a similar fashion to the Digital Economy Act, it would allow copyright holders to seek court injunctions against websites that enable or facilitate copyright infringement.

See the article here:
'Censorship creep': One-third of UK falls under The Pirate Bay block

Summary: Nearly 10 years ago, Cleanfeed was designed to protect the British public from child abuse imagery. A decade later, the same system is used to enforce ISP blocks on file-sharing and Magnet-link websites like The Pirate Bay. How did the U.K. fall into censorship creep?

Censorship is a slippery slope.The United Kingdom: my home. Case in point:

Nearly five years ago, the U.K. pushed the Web censorship switch. Most U.K. residents didnt even notice. Designed by telecoms giant British Telecom (BT), Cleanfeed was used to filter out child abuse imagery, and did so with great success.

Users would not see a warning message or a startling warning about the content they had tried to orinadvertentlyaccessed. The page just wouldnt load.

In 2007, Home Office minister Vernon Coaker ordered all U.K. ISPs to subscribe to Cleanfeed to prevent access toscenes of sexual abuse and criminally obscene content.

And then things began to change.

The U.K.s anti-piracy legislation, the Digital Economy Act, was brought into law by a tiny minority of parliamentaryrepresentatives in 2010. In all fairness, it was only a matter of time.

But a series of delays means the law is yet to swing into full effect. Its three-strike system, designed to inform copyright infringers that repeated acts would lead to Internet disconnections, has been put on ice until 2014.

The United States followed in the U.K.s footsteps with the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA. In a similar fashion to the Digital Economy Act, it would allow copyright holders to seek court injunctions against websites that enable or facilitate copyright infringement.

Read more:
'Censorship creep': Pirate Bay block will affect one-third of UK

Nearly 10 years ago, "Cleanfeed" was designed to protect the British public from child abuse imagery. A decade later, the same system is used to enforce ISP blocks on sites like The Pirate Bay. How did the U.K. fall into "censorship creep"?

Censorship is a slippery slope. The United Kingdom: my home. Case in point.

Most U.K. customers accessing The Pirate Bay will see this, or a similar message.

Nearly five years ago, the U.K. flipped the Web censorship switch. Most U.K. residents didn't even notice. Designed by telecommunications giant British Telecom (BT), "Cleanfeed" was used to filter out child abuse imagery, and it did so with great success.

Users would not see a notice or a startling warning about the content they had inadvertently accessed or had tried to reach. The page just wouldn't load.

In 2007, Home Office minister Vernon Coaker ordered all U.K. ISPs to subscribe to Cleanfeed to prevent access to scenes of sexual abuse and "criminally obscene" content.

And then things began to change.

The U.K.'s antipiracy legislation, the Digital Economy Act, was brought into law by a tiny minority of parliamentary representatives in 2010. In all fairness, it was only a matter of time.

But a series of delays means the law has yet to swing into full effect. Its "three-strikes" system, designed to inform copyright infringers that repeated acts would lead to Internet disconnections, has been put on ice until 2014.

The United States followed in the U.K.'s footsteps with the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA. In a similar fashion to the Digital Economy Act, it would allow copyright holders to seek court injunctions against Web sites that "enable or facilitate copyright infringement."

See the article here:
'Censorship creep': Pirate Bay block will affect one-third of U.K.

15 June 2012 Last updated at 11:19 ET By Mario Cacciottolo BBC News

Argyll and Bute Council are in the news for falling foul of what's known as the Streisand Effect - the act of trying to suppress information but simply making it more widespread as a result.

Martha Payne, from Argyll, was writing about her school dinners on her NeverSeconds blog, taking pictures of them and offering ratings for their nutritional value.

But Argyll and Bute Council banned her from taking photos of her school's food, saying press coverage of the blog had led catering staff to fear for their jobs.

However, they reckoned without the Streisand Effect, which saw the photo ban make headline news in some of the nation's biggest media organisations and the story spiral into a much bigger one that it ever was before.

The furore forced the local authority to reverse the ban, with the leader issuing a statement to say there was "no place for censorship" on the council.

The story sums up the Streisand Effect, named after singer Barbra Streisand, which is an online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove information - a photo, video, story etc - results in the greater spread of the information in question.

Paul Armstrong, head of social for Mindshare, a global media network, says the Streisand Effect is a reminder to brands and celebrities about the effect groups, and individuals, can have on the internet in a very short space of time.

"People have an innate inquisitiveness. When this is mixed with a fear of missing out, feeling something is being hidden from them or that someone is overacting to something, it can cause individuals to react in undesired or mischievous ways that others then support.

"Mix this combination with a natural dislike for censorship and brands or individuals can have a recipe for disaster on their hands."

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The Streisand Effect: When censorship backfires