Belarus is a small Eastern-European country that borders Russia. This former Soviet Bloc state is known for its breathtaking architecture, turbulent politics, and now for its effort to outlaw most of the Internet. A new law set to go into effect on January 6th would make it illegal for citizens and residents of Belarus to access domains or services based outside the nation.
As the U.S. House pledges to continue pushing for the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) next year, companies supporting the legislation are increasingly coming under fire. Old media like the movie and TV industries are obviously in favor of it, but most tech firms are opposed. One internet heavyweight that is in favor of SOPA is domain registrar GoDaddy. Now that everyone has caught wind of that, many are proposing a "Move Your Domain Away From GoDaddy Day."
Some of the biggest technology firms in existence are reportedly squaring off against India’s telecommunications minister over the filtering of user-generated content. According to several individuals that have been present at meetings, Minister Kapit Sibal is demanding that the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo proactively screen user content for disparaging or defamatory statements. 
A U.S. federal judge in Nevada has ruled on a series of requests from luxury goods maker Chanel allowing the company to seize several hundred domain names thought to be selling counterfeit goods. For good measure, the ruling also forces all search engines and social media websites to censor mentions of the offending domains. The court specifically called out Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google.
It’s been a while, so you could be forgiven for letting it slip your mind, but Google is in the habit of censoring its auto-complete suggestions. Starting almost a year ago El Goog began removing suggestions for content relating to search terms like torrent, bittorrent, and RapidShare. According to TorrentFreak, a recent update to Google’s search tools has expanded the auto-complete blackout to include the names of file sharing websites.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has deemed it inappropriate to text the word "quickie." It's just one of 1,695 supposedly 'obscene' words or terms Pakistan is trying to censor from text messages, but that Pakistan's mobile operators are refusing to ban until they receive clarification from the PTA. Other terms on the list include "fairy," "monkey crotch," "idiot," "deeper," and "no sex."
Starting alter this month, Beijing will start rolling out a free public Wi-Fi network dubbed “My Beijing.” The service is being supported by three of China’s biggest telecom companies; China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. In the next few years, the government hopes to have roughly 60% of the massive city covered with Wi-Fi. As with all free things, there is a catch. Users will have to hand over their wireless numbers to connect to the network.
As if relations between China and Google weren't already tense, it's being reported that the Chinese government has gone and blocked the Android Market in the mainland. There's no love lost between these two giant entities, though why exactly China has chosen to erect a firewall in five major provinces to block users from downloading Android apps is not yet known.
Yahoo is denying accusations that it knowingly and willingly censored email messages related to "Occupy Wall Street" protests, a leaderless non-violent resistance movement upset over the disparity of wealth and power in the U.S. Protestors accused Yahoo of foul play when their emails containing a link to the organization's website were flagged as suspicious and blocked from being sent.
Gamers living in Germany are finally able to purchase (legally) Doom and Doom II, a pair of software titles previously placed in an index of banned titles by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprufstelle), the same index reserved for pornography.Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
We introduce Intel's latest class of tablet killers and review 4 of the first Ultra...
Where have all the memorable videogame enemies gone?
This month's issue
Feature
11 Hardware Hacks
Feature
Overclock Your CPU
How-To
Supercharge Your Smartphone
Build It
A Powerful $830 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Here's what the @horse_ebooks bookmarklet (http://t.co/brE6898A) does to Maximum PC: http://t.co/Y6OhO6zk20 hours 46 min ago
- maximumpc: Microsoft on Patents: Can't We All Just Get Along? http://t.co/g0vginvG23 hours 7 min ago
- maximumpc: Google Drive Cloud Storage: Is Google Preparing To Muscle In On Dropbox? http://t.co/lCWzeYmS23 hours 32 min ago
