Porn filters on mobile phones are censoring political websites, according to a report by Open Rights Group. The report found that 60 websites with no sexual content were blocked by porn filters. The blocked websites include Biased-BBC, a website challenging the impartiality of BBC News, and La Quadrature du Net, a digital rights group. [...]

A major study of the web-blocking tools used by mobile operators has revealed that the filters are erroneously censoring scores of legitimate websites, and run with little transparency. The criticism comes from the Open Rights Group, which has been studying which sites mobile users have had problems accessing. [...]

The plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has been mired in controversy since its signing in 2010 faces another roadblock with one of its members, the European Union, likely to reject the Agreement. [...]

Controversial anti-counterfeiting agreement stalls in face of protests as European commissioner says it is unlikely to pass. [...]

Speaking on Friday, Kroes said that "we are now likely to be in a world without Sopa" – the US's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act – "and Acta." [...]

Continuing a recent trend, The Pirate Bay and other large BitTorrent sites are now being blocked by Internet providers in India. Visitors who try to access the sites are redirected to a banner which informs them that the Department of Telecommunications ordered a blackout. Torrent sites are not the only target, as the blockade also censors the video sharing site Vimeo, one of the largest communities of indie filmmakers. [...]

Censorship of internet content can take many forms and ranges from governments blocking the dissemination of political opinion to blacklisting pornographic and pirate websites. [...]

According to the ONI data, Iran was the worst ranked, with "pervasive" filtering in the political, social and internet tools categories and "substantial" for conflict/security filtering. Tested in 2011, Iran's filtering was rated as being "highly" consistent and had "medium" transparency. [...]

Last week we saw the Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest bloc in the European Parliament, turn against ACTA. Combined with the stated position of the Green party there, that means ACTA is closer to being thrown out when the vote for ratification takes place in Brussels this summer.

The deciding factor is how politicians in the centre-right coalition of Liberals and Conservatives will vote, and there are now signs that they too are contemplating rejection [...]

Millions of Internet users in Iran will be permanently denied access to the World Wide Web and cut off from popular social networking sites and email services, as the government has announced its plans to establish a national Intranet within five months. [...]

Fears that software similar to that which government wants to use in Britain is being sold to monitor dissidents abroad. [...]

It is the responsibility of manufacturers to ensure their technology is not used to perpetrate human rights abuses. But there are now calls for them to be subject to stringent export controls requiring a licence to sell abroad.

ACTA and TPP have much in common. That's no coincidence, since they are both born of a common desire to move away from multilateral forums like WIPO that are relatively open to scrutiny, to invitation-only groups negotiating behind closed doors. That lack of transparency has allowed all kinds of extreme measures to be proposed without any countervailing arguments being heard about why they are neither fair nor sensible. [...]

House representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) introduced a bill back in November called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (H.R. 3523) or CISPA. It has since been referred to and reported by the appropriate committees. Since then, according to Representative Rogers’ own web site, over 100 members of congress have already announced their support for the bill [...]

The European Commission took a stance yesterday (4 April) in favour of a quick adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), against the will of the European Parliament, which plans to reject it in a plenary vote by the summer. [...]

The statement comes in response to noises from the Socialist and Green groups in the European Parliament, which vowed to "bury" ACTA by the summer, before the Court would have a chance to issue a verdict. [...]

Today, the European Commission has taken the next step in the important process of referring the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). By agreeing on the legal submission to be put before the ECJ, the Commission aims to respond to the wide-ranging concerns voiced by people across Europe on what ACTA is about and whether it harms fundamental rights in any way. [...]