Twitter posted a handy FAQ about their new “country withheld content” guidelines. In it, it lays out what the format of censored tweets and accounts will look like. The policy seems to affect countries that have rules about offensive content like the example of pro-Nazi tweets in Germany. Even in those cases, Twitter will inform users that the tweet has been censored instead of removing it with no explanation.

The final part of the FAQ is where things get interesting. In the section titled, “How do you know where I am? What is Twitter has misidentified my country?,” they say that your IP address is what determines your country. You can, however, change your country if Twitter gets it wrong.

The Next Web is reporting that changing the country in your account settings to a “free” country like the U.S. or U.K. will bypass the censorship tool. Users were able to select worldwide to bypass the the censoring, but it reverts back to your IP selected country when chosen now.

As you can see here, I have changed my country to the U.K. and Twitter does not change my country back to the U.S. even though it did when I tried changing it to Worldwide.

It remains to be seen if Twitter will change this loophole. The Next Web speculates that Twitter is well aware of this loophole, but is letting it slide to allow Twitter to remain the tool of change in many countries where it was used in revolutions last year.

At this moment China’s Internet users cannot view YouTube. The Chinese government claims that it had nothing to do with the outage but its timing with the airing of footage on YouTube of detained Tibetan protesters being beaten seems a bit more than a coincidence to the rest of the thinking world.

Google’s take on this is

Google spokesman Scott Rubin told InternetNews.com that it is still working to bring its video-sharing site back online and identify the cause of the outage.

The Internet News article goes into the specifics of this incident very well. Some highlights include:

• According to the Global Network Initiative at least a dozen countries with less than pristine human rights records have blocked YouTube access since 2007

• The Chinese government calls the videos fraudulent and does not say that the outage is due to government activity

• The CTA (Central Tibetan Administration) is accused of a propaganda campaign that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising

All of this interesting in the context of how most of us view the Internet. With Internet access comes the freedom to do and please with it however you want. I can watch videos and interviews that are anti US government all day long if I choose to waste my time doing that. How many more police brutality videos can you see as well. No one is stopping us from doing any of this. What’s China afraid of? Is it fearful that the rest of the world will discover their human rights violations? News alert – That cat’s been out of the bag for a long time.

So back to the Internet marketing part of this. It ties back to us ever being able to truly engage in Internet commerce with a country that will shut down access to whatever it is threatened by. Do we want to do business with them? Of course, for many the allure of a billion or so potential customers may override any human rights concerns. Many companies (US government included) still do business with countries that are blatantly in violation of human rights.

So does this even mean anything at all to the rest of the world? If Google and YouTube can’t work in China will Google just abandon their efforts there? Not likely. There are too many people there.

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According to a Reuters article, Dmitry Medvedev said, "There is news from the main channels, regional channels, there is news from foreign channels and finally there is news produced, so to say, on media sites which hold opposition views against the authorities.  They can post all their clips and all their speeches there, generally they say unpleasant things about the authorities."

Medvedev then continued, "This guarantees the independence of the mass media, in my opinion."

Medvedev’s statement came less than a month after his official website launched, and even closer to reports highlighting the size of Russia’s online population and advertising market.  The timing of these things could be coincidental, but if they’re not, we’re looking at an encouraging growth trend in a rather huge country.

On the other hand, some less than encouraging events have also taken place; towards the end of January, there were reports of Russian journalists being beaten and an opposition website being shut down.

As stated in this post about the internet tax, the law prohibits state and local government from taxing internet access. It doesn’t address charging sales tax on the internet sales. States that already had Internet access taxes before the ban are Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin (according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.)

The bill did include a small change, leaving options for providers to tax “home page electronic mail and instant messaging (including voice–and video–capable electronic mail and instant messaging), video clips, and personal electronic storage capacity, that are provided independently or not packaged with Internet access.” That infers they’d like the option to tax other services, but not individual emails sent or instant messaging. In general Republicans wanted a permanent moratorium and Democrats wanted to keep options open for the future but both parties are in strong favor of a ban – it’s just the length or permanency that’s debated.

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"[T]wo of the most essential pillars that prop up totalitarian regimes are the secret police and propaganda," Smith said. "Yet for the sake of market share and profits, leading U.S. companies like Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft have compromised both the integrity of their product and their duties as responsible corporate citizens.

"They have aided and abetted the Chinese regime to prop up both of these pillars, propagating the message of the dictatorship unabated and supporting the secret police in a myriad of ways, including surveillance and invasion of privacy, in order to effectuate the massive crackdown on its citizens."

According to the Congressman, China has jailed 49 cyberdissidents and 32 journalists for posting criticisms of the government online. Smith also wags his finger at Cisco for providing the technology to create China’s Great Firewall.

Recently, eBay-owned Skype was accused of rerouting dissidents from its US-based site to a hosted site where conversations could be monitored.

The bill’s passing from committee comes just days after the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a measure to immunize telecommunications companies against lawsuits for helping the US government spy on their customers.

Will the Global Online Freedom Act apply to companies cooperating with the US government, then? Or will telecoms continue to enjoy a special place in the pockets hearts of Congressional leaders?

You Didn’t Read This In The Newspaper

People may have a good idea of when the city plans to tear up the local roads or hold a school board meeting from reading the paper. There are broader issues in the world, of course, and the retreat by newsprint has opened up the door for controversial stories to reach people through the Internet.

Even so, many are missing out on topics they probably ought to consider. Project Censored at California’s Sonoma State University turned up its latest annual list of the top 25 stories censored by the major media outlets.

Habeas corpus concerns rated the top of the Project Censored list. Articles criticizing the Military Commissions Act, like ones at CommonDreams and ConsortiumNews, contend citizens are as subject as non-citizens to losing rights to a fair trial.

Then there is story number two, regarding the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. Toward Freedom cited Vermont Senator Pat Leahy as finding the Act encourages the sitting President to declare martial law. Here’s a paragraph that ties story 1 and 2 together:

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”

The obvious place for such debate should be on the broader public stage. Neither of these Acts have been perpetrated by fringe groups, regardless of one’s political feelings; they have been passed by Congress and signed into law. But they aren’t being discussed or investigated rigorously; only online do these matters receive further scrutiny.

Project Censored comprises 25 stories, worthy of people reviewing them and asking questions. California Senator Dianne Feinstein won’t enjoy story number 23, suggesting a massive conflict of interest regarding her Iraq votes and her husband’s firms receiving billions in military construction contracts.

News isn’t supposed to be relentlessly positive, and we aren’t saying that it is. The printing presses and talking heads of major media don’t need to be relentlessly silent, though.

Engadet - "If you’re into DRM-free music, you have a reason to get pretty excited today."

Om Malik @ GigaOM – "Bottom line: 26 out of 50. I am not ready to write Amazon off just yet. We might have a worthy competitor…"

David Card of Jupiter Research - "Amazon’s 2.3 million song catalog is fairly crippled…But pretty soon, consumers will see the fruit of competition based on pricing, merchandising, packaging, user experience, editorial, knowledge of consumer habits, etc., etc., instead of on random acts of technology…The game just got a lot more interesting.

Hypebot Comment by Bruce Warila - "Is Amazon going to make the pie bigger or divide it? I am doubtful that the paid download market is going to keep growing…:  (more great comments from Hypebot readers here.)

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This is the talk where Schmidt suggested Google will “probably” bid on the 700MHz spectrum when the auction takes place. We’ll be surprised if they don’t participate, either as a bidder or in partnership with one or more entities.

A video of his presentation opens with an introduction that references Schmidt’s history with Sun and Novell, two companies that have fallen into corners of the tech industry where they once held dominant positions. Fortunately for the CEO, Larry Page and Sergey Brin rescued Schmidt from Utah to helm the pre-IPO search engine.

The blog summarized the essential points Schmidt wanted to make about the Internet and freedom, noble aspirations to be certain:

First, he said we need to defend freedom of speech as more speech comes online

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/schmidt-talks-freedom-china-still-out-of-luck-2007-08/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/google-vs-ebay-round-6-2007-06 http://www.webpronews.com/google-vs-ebay-round-6-2007-06#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:36:25 +0000 Jordan McCollum http://www.webpronews.com/?p=38527 Here’s the blow-by-blow so far:

2006: eBay owns PayPal. Google starts Google Checkout (June 2006). eBay bans Google Checkout (July 2006).

]]> Here’s the blow-by-blow so far:

2006: eBay owns PayPal. Google starts Google Checkout (June 2006). eBay bans Google Checkout (July 2006).

June 6, 2007: eBay announces they’re going after the online auction for radio ad space, too.

June 11, 2007: Google Checkout says they’re organizing a “Freedom Party” at eBay Live! in Boston. They claim to be celebrating freedom at the site of the Boston Tea Party with lots of free stuff. It was supposed to be on Flag Day, after all. Nobody falls for it: we all know you’re tacitly protesting eBay’s Checkout ban.

June 12, 2007: eBay pulls its PPC ads in the US. All of them. It’s “an experiment” to see how they’ll do without PPC. Nobody falls for it: we all know you’re putting the squeeze on Google. People who are so tired of seeing PPC ads for “used underwear” and “dead fish” from eBay rejoice.

June 13, 2007: Google crumbles like a cookie over the approximate 2% of their revenue that eBay’s ads represent.. They say, “After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference.” Nobody buys that either. Fear spreads–will eBay bring the ads back?

June 14, 2007: eBay says its traffic has increased. I attribute this to recent headlines. Oh, and um, the fact that they’re already one of the top most trafficked sites in the world. Hitwise says eBay’s traffic from Google has dropped 7%.

June 18, 2007: Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Meanwhile, at several points on this time line, eBay and Google sign agreements to prove that they’re friends. Should they stop pretending already or can we all just get along? They are still partners outside the US.

And of course, we have to wonder why it took so long for the Google Checkout/eBay PayPal competition to come to a head, and whether eBay will keep its ads offline for good.

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