Twitter has caught some flack in other countries for giving accounts free reign on what they can tweet. Twitter responded that it’ll adjust its policy to include the ability to censor tweets if a country demands it to. We just might see Twitter’s first high profile case sooner than later because Brazil just sued Twitter for allowing accounts to tweet where DUI checkpoints are. More »
Another bill which would have violated the civil liberties of many — Hawaii’s H.B. 2288 Internet Dossier bill — has been pulled off the table following public outrage. And for good reason; the law would have tracked every website Hawaiians visited and linked that browsing history to a name and address. It opened the door to profound first and fourth US amendment violations. But worst of all, it was born out of ignorance. More »
In a slight change in policy, Twitter just announced that it enabled the ability “to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world”. Basically, if a tweet is illegal in a certain country, it will be censored in that country. In the rest of the world, it’ll still be completely visible. More »
In early 2011, the FBI contacted New Zealand police. It wasn’t a casual call to catch up on international policing issues – the FBI wanted the New Zealand police force’s help in bringing down what it claimed was a “Mega Conspiracy”. Today, all that came to a head, as Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was one of four people arrested for copyright infringement and conspiracy, with three others still at large. More »
British game developer Richard Garriott went to space on October 2008. He took a camera with him and filmed a little short called Apogee of Fear starring him, two American astronauts, one cosmonaut and his mum. Updated: NASA backtracks. More »
The SOPA Blackout may be spreading across the internet today, which includes Wikipedia. But as Giz comrade Mark Wilson points out, there’s one Wiki entry you can actually navigate to: the Stop Online Piracy Act page (DUH!). More »
If you hadn’t heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet’s most influential sites — Reddit and Wikipedia among them — are going dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes? More »
The web’s been grumbling and muttering about SOPA for a while now, but we’ve not really seen any big gestures made. That’s changing: Reddit admins have announced a blackout to protest against the act. More »