Censorship

The criminal probe into Apple's errant iPhone prototype is expected to broaden, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told CNET.

San Mateo County's investigation may expand beyond Gawker Media's Gizmodo, which acknowledged buying the prototype for $5,000, and the unknown person who sold it to the gadget blog, the source said. Police obtained a warrant to search a Gizmodo editor's home on Friday evening. CNET was the first to report an investigation was under way earlier that day.

One reason for an expanded investigation is obvious: law enforcement wants to learn who … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether minors have the right to buy violent video games in a case that tests whether computer software is guaranteed the same free speech protections as books, newspapers, and magazines.

On Monday, the justices agreed to review a California law that a federal appeals court struck down last year on the grounds that even children and teenagers enjoy free speech rights that are protected by the First Amendment. The case will be heard late this year or in early 2011.

California is one of a string of states that have enacted similar laws … Read more

A Web site promoting graphic videos of pit bulls fighting in Japan and hunting wild boar is shielded by the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

In a strongly worded 8-1 opinion, the court tossed out the criminal conviction of Robert Stevens, a documentary filmmaker in rural Virginia who sold books, videos, and equipment related to raising pit bulls through the now-defunct Pitbulllife.com site.

A 1999 federal law that Stevens was prosecuted under is "substantially overbroad, and therefore invalid under the First Amendment," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote … Read more

Google plans to publish data on the number of requests it receives from governments to either remove content or identify specific users.

Starting Tuesday, Google will host a page on its site that reveals the number of times a government has requested data on a specific user or asked Google to remove a piece of content from its network of sites, such as search, YouTube, or Blogger. The page will be updated every six months and the initial data covers requests sent to Google between July 2009 and December 2009, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said in a blog post.… Read more

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his retirement on Friday, is arguably the most liberal member of the court. What's less open to debate is that a pair of his opinions written over a decade ago outlined the legal environment that gave rise to today's Internet.

Amazon.com, Newegg.com, Overstock.com, and other major Internet retailers can trace much of their growth in the last decade to Stevens' 1992 opinion that said, unambiguously, that they cannot be required to collect sales taxes on out-of-state sales. That gave them a competitive advantage over traditional … Read more

A gritty video released by Wikileaks on Monday shows U.S. troops in Iraq destroying a vehicle that was preparing to rush a wounded Reuters journalist to the hospital.

The secret black-and-white video, recorded by at least one Apache helicopter that was shooting at a group of about a dozen people, appears to show the death of a Reuters photographer and his assistant, who were unarmed.

The U.S. Army had rejected Reuters' earlier requests, including ones made under the Freedom of Information Act, to disclose the July 2007 video. Government sources told both Reuters and the Associated Press on … Read more

Updated 10:37 a.m. with a Google statement that a change in its search parameters appears to have triggered the block of Google.com.hk. More details at the bottom. Updated again at 4:04 p.m. after Google revised its earlier statement, pointing the finger once again at China.

China appeared to up the ante Tuesday in its dispute over Google's refusal to censor Chinese-language search results, blocking mainland Chinese Internet users from using Google search for any query.

Several reports note that Chinese Internet users inside the Great Firewall of China are now unable to do … Read more

A Chinese government ministry ordered Chinese media companies to toe the government line this week in their reporting on Google's decision to move its search operations to Hong Kong.

The list of instructions, obtained by China Digital Times and published by The Washington Post, underscores the degree to which the Chinese government attempts to control the spread of information more than anything Google has ever said about search censorship. The list contains specific details on which types of stories can be published and asks media outlets in China to purge reader discussions from their pages that attack the government'… Read more

At least one company is ready to follow Google's stance on doing business in China: GoDaddy.

During a congressional hearing later today to discuss Internet freedom and China, GoDaddy executives plan to announce that they will stop registering domain names in China in response to a new government policy that requires extensive information about registrants, according to The Washington Post. Starting last December, individuals and businesses that wished to register a .cn domain name were being asked to submit a photograph of themselves as well as a serial number identifying their business license in China.

"This is the … Read more