filters

China keeps information in, not just out, with Internet filtering

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic and a blogging resident of Beijing's Chaoyang District, has written a good outline of how China's online filtering apparatus works: "The Connection Has Been Reset."

Aside from the fact that The Atlantic has made the lovely choice of freeing its content, the news to me was that China's filtering system is working in reverse:

Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese media at the University of California at Berkeley journalism school, told me that the authorities have recently begun applying this kind of filtering in reverse. As Chinese-speaking people … Read more

China browsing restrictions may drop off during Olympics

Something was going to give.

As Beijing prepares for the Olympics and the attending flood of foreigners, many of them reporters, expected to arrive this summer, the government's controls over the Internet have become increasingly sophisticated. But would the Olympic organizers really be OK with dozens of stories about reporters and athletes unable to reach Wikipedia and BBC?

Apparently, decision makers are indeed worried about press regarding censorship. AFP quotes an Olympic organizing committee representative as saying, "I believe you will be able to (access banned sites such as the BBC), but I can't give you a … Read more

RIAA: No need to force ISPs by law to monitor piracy

WASHINGTON--It's no secret that Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman despises piracy, and he's a vocal fan of proposed laws that would beef up penalties for copyright infringers.

But here's one area where he says the government need not intervene at this point: forcing Internet service providers to be more proactive in curbing pirated content on their networks.

"I don't think anyone here is trying to relegislate this issue," Sherman, said at an Internet policy conference here on Wednesday. "We're much more interested in finding a marketplace way of going … Read more

Verizon: We don't want to play copyright cop on our network

WASHINGTON--AT&T may be flirting with filters designed to ferret out pirated material on its network, but Verizon Communications isn't interested.

That's the message that company Executive Vice President Tom Tauke delivered during a luncheon discussion at an Internet policy conference here Wednesday.

It's not that Verizon doesn't believe that it's vitally important to protect intellectual property, said Tauke, who heads the company's public affairs, policy, and communications department. Rather, the company is concerned that inspecting individual packets, as rival AT&T is currently testing, poses potential dangers to consumer privacy and … Read more

Tribune employees can surf freely now

In a memo from the Tribune's owner Sam Zell, which was recently posted by Jim Romenesko at Poynter, Zell announced that employees at the company's newspapers would no longer be hindered by the internet filters that so many companies have implemented to prevent their workers from engaging in personal websurfing.

Zell writes, "I do not see how a member of the Fourth Estate, dedicated to protecting the First Amendment, can censor what its own employees and partners can see. I have instructed that all content filters be removed. You are now exposed to the dangers of You … Read more

BullGuard releases a free spam filter

On Wednesday, the Danish security company BullGuard announced it will offer its spam filter product as a free download. The BullGuard Spamfilter (download) integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail clients. It runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

The BullGuard product relies upon fellow users to identify spam; once e-mail is marked as spam, all other Spamfilter users will no longer receive that e-mail in their in-boxes. It will be available within the spam folder instead.

According to Google's Postini, 2007 saw record spam levels, with as much as 90 percent of all … Read more

Open sourcing the elimination of stupidity

Carrying the tag line "Because the internet needs prophylactics for memetically transmitted diseases," StupidFilter just launched to rid the world of inane comment spam, wasted messages on mailing lists, etc. I'm wondering if it will simply filter out my entire blog.... :-)

Here's the project's aim:

The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.… Read more

German cities ban dirty diesel

Cars without Diesel Particullate Filters (DPF) will be banned from entering German cities starting January 1, 2008.

It will be part of a system in which people will be required to have an inspection sticker on their windshield that signifies they have a DPF filter if it's an old diesel car, AutoBlog Green has reported. Those cars found in city centers without the sticker will be fined 40 euros and one point on their driver's license.

The local German authorities are offering a retrofit option for older cars, but it'll cost owners about 320 euros. Ford is … Read more

Congressman to Comcast: Stop interfering with BitTorrent

While a class action lawsuit is definitely one way to get Comcast to behave, another perhaps more productive way to do so is to have politicians step in and regulate.

On Tuesday, I discussed the issue of Comcast's anti-BitTorrent "network management" with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who is a strong supporter of consumer rights and has led the battle to undo the damage caused by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

He was named Politician of the Year for 2006 by Library Journal, largely due to his efforts to protect the fair-use doctrine and expand Internet … Read more