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The UK Government are proposing to introduce a Digital Economy Bill.  The owners of copyright material will be able to pursue individuals who are sharing their content and take legal recourse.  Persistent offenders can eventually be blocked by their ISP. "Persistent" offenders will have received 50 notices before the Government can request that the ISP block their access to the internet. Sites that host material / content that breaches the bill will be issued with a series of take down notices. This impacts all sites - not just those whose servers are based in the UK.  If the site does not comply with the take down notice it will be possible for the site to be blocked within the UK. 

This article discusses the different ways to access content that is blocked, down etc on the Internet. I'm not 100% sure if this would work around the Mandatory Internet filter in Australia though! But interesting read. 10. Skip Past Annoying User/Pass Requests 9. Read Articles That Rupert Murdoch Wants You Paying For 8. Change User Agents to Get Around Browser Blocks 7. Get to Gmail When It's Down 6. Get Actually Usable BitTorrent Speeds 5. Get To Sites Taken Down by Traffic 4. Control Computers At Home 3. Download YouTube and Other Flash Videos 2. Access Country-Blocked Streaming TV 1. Roll Your Own Proxy to Access Blocked Sites

Another social network site has been blocked in China which is location-based. When people tried to chick-in to the location Tiananmen Square due to its 21th anniveristy, the link were blocked.

Plurk, a micro-messaging service that competes with Twitter, discovered that it is being blocked in China.

Amendments made to the digital economy bill last week, handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites, threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said in an open letter to the Financial Times. The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups and academics, objecting to amendment. Theoretically the amendment could lead to sites such as YouTube being blocked in the UK.

The Iranian government has allegedly blocked a popular French broadcaster website because of its reliance on social networking sites and other amateur techniques of online journalism.

blog entry: it may seem as simple as eating here, but it's definitely not up there in China. Day after Google announced to resign China, couples of foreign reports' email accounts were either hacked or blocked. Coincident? !!!

Seeing google's step out from the users' view, people are angry at what the government has done.

EMI can't sell Pink Floyd singles online. Could be a precedent for other copyright/authorship cases. 

In an effort to disrupt communications and head off huge opposition demonstrations planned for Thursday, the Iranian authorities on Wednesday drastically slowed Internet service in Iran and shut down text messaging services, and an official said that Gmail, the Google e-mail service, would be blocked.

Spam filters are not always smart, in some cases results into the blocking of harmless websites or e-mails

An article on how the increasing flow of internet traffic could potentially lead to a form of 'gatekeeping' of users by providers. It has always been perceived that there was network neutrality as providers charged a flat rate for unlimited internet access. However, the article argues that this is not the case as there has aways been some form of management of traffic so that an acceptable level of service is maintained. An extreme example is the court case between BitTorrent users and the provider Comcast. Comcast blocked this service as it was effecting service. This was challenged by users who initially won. However in a challenge by Comcast, Washington found in their favour as it found that the Federal Communications Commission could not decide how Comcast should manage its network. Another interesting point made is the potential for service providers to charge content providers who attract a large amount of traffic.This way good service is guarenteed, through essentially sharing the burden of cost. Obviously this is fiercely opposed by businesses. Clearly this all has the potential to change the relationship between users, content providers and service providers.

The Dutch Anti-Piracy organisation BREIN has run out of options to try to shut down bit torrent websites and therefore has asked Internet provider Ziggo to block Torrent website ThePirateBay. Ziggo made clear that they are for 'open internet' and do not think they are responsible because they are just an intermediate.

Since May 20, some Muslim Nations ban Facebook and You Tube after the publication of groups and videos like "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" a Facebook group that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

In almost an exact mirror of the situation in Pakistan, Bangladeshi authorities have banned Facebook and thousands have taken to the streets to protest. This is in response to the "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day" page that was set up on Facebook. One man has been arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) over the images. Images of Bangladeshi leaders were also posted to the site.

According to Stephen Conroy, there is nothing that can be done to stop the passing of the legislation implementing mandatory internet filtering. He stands by all the statements he has previously made, and advises this IS occurring in June.

This article is about Stephen Conroy's push for the Internet filtering regardlessof the scrutiny it has undergone over the past months. The government will force ISPs to block a series of websites that have been secretly identified as refused classification.

Guest blog on Jenkins' MIT site about internet filtering in Australia by Mark McLelland from University of Wollongong.

The "Digital Economy Bill" has been passed by the Lords and is now expected to be rushed through the Commons before the general elections. Despite criticism by the UK's major telecommunication providers and global internet giants like Google, the government said it was still committed to giving courts the power to block websites which are infringing copyright. The bill is mainly aiming to tackle internet privacy. Some of it's paragraphs however could lead to internet censorship.