Censorship | featured news

The New York Times says access to its website is being blocked inside China after it published an investigation into wealth accumulated by relatives of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Government restrictions on the Internet have risen over the past year around the world as regimes use violence against bloggers and turn to censorship and arrest to squelch calls for reform, a new report from a U.S. advocacy group has found.

Myanmar abolished direct censorship of the media Monday in the most dramatic move yet toward allowing freedom of expression in the long-repressed nation. But related laws and practices that may lead to self-censorship raise doubt about how much will change.

China blocks access to the term "Shanghai Composite Index" on some of the country's most popular microblogging sites.

Democratic and Republican government officials warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted.

A Chinese musician famous for playing a two-stringed fiddle, a 1994 Hollywood drama about two prison inmates, a United Airlines flight bound for Washington and CNN -- what do they have in common?

Google says some blogs on Blogger, its blogging platform, will be blocked on a "per country basis," in order to comply with "removal request" laws of nations where freedom of speech is not cherished or allowed.

Twitter on Thursday announced that it is now able to block tweets that run afoul of certain countries' restrictions on speech, but that has prompted backlash from users who fear the micro-blogging service will honor takedown requests from repressive regimes.

Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose secret detention earlier this year stirred an international outcry, has been given two weeks to pay $2.4 million in back taxes and penalties, he said Tuesday.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that books are good for the soul. But for some, too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. What one person reads as vivid, poignant and moving, another sees as violent, perverse or politically dubious. Thus, book banning has existed from the beginning of time and a quick flick through any well-stocked bookshelf will reveal titles that, at one point or another, have been subject to censorship.
From tomes with obvious reason for censorship (American Psycho, for example) to unlikely banned texts (Black Beauty? Controversial?