Today, news surfaced that the country is blocking access to websites that use HTTPS. That means that a number of popular, secure websites like Google, Gmail, Yahoo and even online banking sites are inaccessible. Anything based outside the country that uses a secure connection via HTTPS is blocked, according to news reports and a thread on Hacker News. Secure sites based within Iran are reportedly still accessible.

Meanwhile, developers and members of the Hacker News community are brainstorming ways to help Iranians get around the limitations. Some have suggested setting up Tor bridges for Web users in Iran, although that presents its own logistical issues.

These measures come just as the Iranian government begins to roll out longer-term plans to effectively strangle the Internet to death and create a new, state-sponsored Web for citizens of that country to use. The government is even requiring Internet cafe owners to videotape all patrons so that Web surfers can be more easily identified by authorities.

If news reports are accurate, Iranians could be facing a level of Web censorship that approaches that which exists in North Korea, where public access to the Internet we all know and love is barely existent. Whether or not Iranians, who have already had a taste of what the Web can do, will tolerate such restrictions without a struggle, remains to be seen.

That the Iranian government is clamping down on Internet access is hardly a surprise. In 2009, they saw firsthand the kind of unrest that emerge amidst a well-connected and dissatisfied citizenry. Since then, governments in nearby countries have been overthrown or otherwise challenged in the so-called Arab Spring.

But don't start your knee-jerking just yet (as so many did with Twitter's local compliance policy). This is a way around censorship. Would you rather Blogger and Twitter be blocked in some countries outright? As Google Operating System (the original purveyor of this fine story) points out, the content at the "blogspot.com" domain will continue to exist. "Content removed due to a specific country's law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD," Google explains in its support document.

There are still some questions here, as there were in Twitter's case. As Google says, a takedown request will only affect the content at the TLD of the country whose government requests the takedown. Does that mean users in that country will still be able to access content at other domains? Obviously, Google can't be straightforward about that if the answer is "yes," so the fact that it doesn't explicitly say "no" sounds good.

In fact, it makes clear that users can specifically request a particular country's version of a Blogger site by using a "No Country Redirect" URL. If you request http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr," it will go to the .com (U.S.) version of the site no matter what. It sets a short-term cookie to prevent the browser from redirecting that blog to a local domain. Whether that version will be accessible within a blacked-out country is unclear, so let's test it!

Better Than Nothing (And Then Some)

The idea of Web companies complying with censorship requests sounds icky. But too many people gave knee-jerk objections to Twitter's policy last week without considering what it actually does. Both Twitter and Google (at least with Blogger) have found ways around censoring this content altogether while still complying with local laws. The content isn't lost. It's still accessible outside of that area. Blogger sites may still be accessible within some blackout areas if users request a different domain.

The alternative, in some countries, would be to block the entire service. There's no way that's good for free speech. One could argue that doing business at all in a country that supports censorship is wrong for a communication company. But then put yourself in the local users' shoes and consider which alternative is preferable. The shame here is on the governments who censor their people, not on the companies sneaking free speech past them however they can.

What do you think of Blogger and Twitter's new censorship policies? Sound off in the comments.

Two and a half years later, Twitter remains blocked in China, though many people find ways to make use of it none the less. China isn't the only country that's related to Twitter's announcement last week that the social network will now selectively censor messages country-by-country when it receives "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity." Debate went on throughout the last week about the policy, but I think there are at least three big questions that remain unanswered.

"I understand why people are angry, but this does not, in my view, represent a sea change in Twitter's policies," blogs Jillian C. York, Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Twitter has previously taken down content-for DMCA requests, at least-and will no doubt continue to face requests in the future. I believe that the company is doing its best in a tough situation...and I'll be the first to raise hell if they screw up."

It's interesting to see York say she'll raise hell if the policy is misapplied and Ai Weiwei to say he'll go silent on the network if the policy is applied at all.

Three questions in particular remain in my mind.

How Will This Censorship Be Used?

What kinds of content will be censored with this new capability? What will governments around the world demand be removed from the site? Will it be things like the identities of people involved in court cases, as the UK's controversial Super Injunctions looked to ban on Twitter this Spring? That's information that has long been banned from newspapers. Would Twitter have co-operated with that kind of legal move if it was instructed to today?

Or will Tweet-zapping be called for in places like Syria, where users rallied under the hashtag #RamadanMassacre in August, to bring global awareness to the brutality of the Syrian government they protested? If told to do so by a government massacring its citizens in the streets, will Twitter render all people in that country unable to see messages of protest on its network? Will shouting into such an eerie silence change the way such Tweeting campaigns also engage with the outside world? I would think so.

At what point would such demands no longer be interpreted by Twitter as being "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity?" When the US State Department ruled a foreign government invalid, perhaps?

How Will Twitter Censorship Impact People Arrested for Their Tweets?

It is not unheard of for people around the world to be arrested for their Tweets. As Curt Hopkins reported on ReadWriteWeb in November, 2010:

Cheng Jianping has wound up in a Chinese 're-education camp' with a record-breaking five words on Twitter. Mocking nationalistic vandalism that flared up around a Chinese-Japanese dispute over the ownership of uninhabited islands, she retweeted another's message and added the ironic admonition, 'Charge, angry youth!'

Middle Eastern Tweeters have been arrested for quips mocking their ruling royal families.

Will the governments in question issue a take-down order to Twitter on their way to knock down the doors of the Tweeters in question? Or will they not bother?

Will people be arrested for messages that no one else in their country can even see anymore? How Orwellian.

Will This Reduce Conspiracy Theories About Twitter Censorship? Should It?

What's unique about Twitter's position, some people say, is not the censorship but the transparency about it. One might hope that if every instance of censorship is openly and loudly announced by Twitter, that critics who have long suspected Twitter was censoring conversation about topics of great importance to them might be less inclined to be suspicious.

In recent months some have worried that Twitter was systematically de-emphasizing discussion about the Occupy protests. In 2010, some of the first wide-spread concerns about Twitter censorship arose when the Israeli army clashed with a flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Palestinians despite an embargo.

Charles Arthur of the Guardian told the story as follows:

The attack by Israel on a flotilla of ships approaching Gaza has, as you'd expect, generated a huge response on social media - and of course Twitter, with its real-time content, was quick to react.

Many users began the morning by tagging their comments about it with "#flotilla" - a "hashtag" which gives a structure to a discussion or emerging event, as you can filter searches in applications such as Tweetdeck so that you only see those with that tag.

But at around 11am, as #flotilla began "trending" - rising to the topmost-used hashtags on the service - it seemed to vanish.

Was this censorship by Twitter?

Twitter Headquarters investigated why that happened and found that there was another event, elsewhere in the world, that was using the hashtag #flotilla as well, at the same time. Twitter's automated spam fighting software saw unrelated uses of the hashtag and zapped it from the Trending Topics list. Conspiracy resolved.

In all likelihood, critics will still suspect in many cases that Twitter is engaged in censorship even if the company doesn't take the steps for transparency that they have pledged to take. No one but perhaps some of the very deep pockets who have invested in Twitter is really evil, though, (not the employees) and so now under the new policy, the simplest explanation of why some communication is less visible on the network than expected will likely never be covert censorship.

It's a complicated situation, though. Much remains to be seen with regard to how the new "feature" will be used and what it will mean for people facing repression around the world. Twitter will no doubt face ongoing scrutiny for its practices, as all communication network infrastructure companies deserve.

Perhaps the biggest piece of confusion for people trying to make sense of yesterday's announcement is Twitter's inclusion of a link with instructions on how to change your country setting. The change would appear to at least temporarily allow some users to read messages banned in their country by overriding the IP-address detection mechanism Twitter uses to assign a country to a user.

But as one commenter noted last night, it seems as if "Twitter is trying to pull of a weird balancing act here. I don't know if they can."

We've asked Twitter for clarification and will update as soon as we hear back from them.

Update: "We use the IP address to identify a user's country, and give the user the option to correct his or her country in settings if our system has misidentified it," said Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson. "We also offer the option to set your country to 'worldwide' - which will show all public Tweets."

Twitter is trying to make it clear that it will only censor tweets if it receives "a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity."

There are other questions about the policy as well. For example, even though a blog post and support pages say these rules are being enacted so Twitter can continue to "make our services available to users everywhere," but Olson told us in an email Thursday "there are still countries to which we will not go."

Update: "We want to reach every person on the planet, and to make Twitter available to people everywhere as a service," Olson clarified on Friday. "The distinction is there are still countries to which Twitter will not operate in as a business."

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," the company said. "Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."

Update: In an email, Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson said the company was not backing off its commitment to free expression.

"Just to be clear, this is not a change in philosophy and there are still countries to which we will not go," Olson said. "We hold freedom of expression in high esteem and work hard not to remove Tweets."

The three major, U.S.-based social networks are all currently banned in China, a country analysts all agree is crucial for future growth. While Twitter's post did not specifically mention China, it clearly positions the company ahead of Facebook and Google+ in articulating a career policy for handling content that may rile Chinese government officials.

While the Great Firewall of China currently blocks most of China's 500 million Internet users from accessing the service, some tech-savvy Chinese citizens have managed to work around the firewall to access Twitter. It's not clear if Twitter's new policy will impact those users.

Twitter has previously been a stalwart in protecting free speech. In making today's announcement, Twitter even a year-old blog post in which it said it would allow tweets to continue flowing even as Arab Spring uprisings escalated in Egypt. "There are Tweets that we do remove, such as illegal Tweets and spam," the company said at the time. "However, we make efforts to keep these exceptions narrow so they may serve to prove a broader and more important rule--we strive not to remove Tweets on the basis of their content."

Update: "This launch gives us the ability, when we have to, in response to a valid legal request, withhold a Tweet in a specific country and to keep that Tweet visible for the rest of the world," Olson said Thursday. "Our policy in these cases is to 1) promptly notify the affected users, unless we are legally prohibited from doing so; 2) withhold the content in the required countries only, rather than worldwide; 3) clearly indicate to viewers that a Tweet or Account has been withheld, and 4) make available any requests to withhold content through our partnership with Chilling Effects."

And that's why Chinese New Year became the most micro-blogged event in history, with 481,207 messages posted in the first minute of the year on a Chinese, Twitter-like service, as well as 32,312 messages posted in a single second: well above Twitter's record of 25,088 tweets in a second. Still, many Chinese, both in China and abroad, are finding ways to use Twitter to talk free of government censorship.

While English-language users may lament the 140-character limit Twitter places on messages, users who tweet in character-based languages like Chinese are capable of recording whole paragraphs, according to Yaxue Cao, a writer who has been blogging about her experience on Twitter.

As reported by the New York Times, mainland Chinese users need to have enough technical know-how to circumvent the Great Firewall of China to use Twitter. That means conversations are more intimate, while also being more frank, than those on the government-monitored weibos. On Twitter, mainland Chinese Twitter users can interact with dissidents, including former student organizers who were exiled following the 1989 Tienanmen Square uprising.

"When one of them (@wurenhua) tweeted about his recent conversation with his 80-year-old mother over the phone and why the mother and son had avoided video chatting (so that they can hide sadness from each other), you get a glimpse of what this exile entails," Yaxue write on her blog.

The L.A. Times reports that Chinese Internet users praised American Internet users for taking action against their own government. Wen Yunchao, a prominent Chinese blogger and government critic who left the mainland for Hong Kong, says that China's Great Firewall, which was initially about stopping online piracy and pornography, quickly became about Internet censorship of websites and content. Critics of SOPA/PIPA say that it would, in effect, do the same thing to the Internet in America.

"In China, all the government decisions are done in a dark box," said Wen. "No one knows what's going on. There's never any legal reason cited. If these laws are passed in the U.S., every step of the way it will be more transparent. People can challenge it. There's no comparison when it comes to censorship in China and in the U.S."

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is delaying Tuesday's scheduled Senate vote on SOPA/PIPA. Reid still supports the anti-piracy bill, stating in a tweet that he does believe PROTECT IP raises "legitimate issues" regarding online counterfeiting and piracy.

China's History of Internet Censorship

China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Analysts believe that China's economy could overtake the U.S. by 2019. It is also one of the most highly censored countries in terms of the Internet. Political censorship, also known as the "Great Firewall of China," is built into every layer of China's Internet infrastructure.

China blocked access to social networks Facebook and Twitter after Chinese hackers attempted to steal Google's company code and hack into Gmail accounts. Google shutdown many of its mainland China operations shortly thereafter, routing many of its users to Hong Kong.

Google returned to China nearly two years after the censorship battle.

The country currently has 500 million Internet users.

AnchorFree, makers of the powerful Hotspot Shield application, are adding a new function to its offering today. When browsing the Web, Hotspot Shield will now alert users when a site they visit contains malware. It may seem a trivial update to for the malware-invincible iOS but there is more danger than meets the eye.

For those unfamiliar with Hotspot Shield, it is a service that can create a mobile virtual private network (VPN) from anywhere. The purpose of this is to encrypt a users browser activity with an HTTPS connection. In many countries, Hotspot Shield is used to get around censorship laws and blocked websites. For instance, Hotspot Shield made a name for itself in 2011 by allowing users to access restricted sites during the uprisings associated with the Arab Spring.

"AnchorFree is not about protecting your device, it is about protecting your browsing," Gorodyansky told ReadWriteWeb. "We protect all of your traffic, and we do it through the cloud."

The free version of Hotspot Shield protects users from 1.5 million malware threats. Users of Hotspot Shield Elite and mobile app (which is free with a monthly service charge) receive protection against an additional 1.5 million threats. Those include malware sites, malware-infected sites riddled with Trojans, phishing sites looking for user passwords as well as content farms and spam. When a user visits one of these types of sites through the browser, Hotspot Shield will alert the user to the danger and direct them away from the page (or allow them to click through if they are insistent).

Hotspot Shield has 10 million monthly users and is available on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or a PC. Gorodyansky said that the next launch set for AnchorFree will be to brand into the world of Android.

AnchorFree recognizes that there are many ways a user can come to harm on the Internet. Mobile malware is not just something found in third-party app stores or from time to time in the Android Market. The fundamental basis of smartphones are that they are devices that can access the Web. The beauty and power of the Web is that it knows few restrictions. AnchorFree not only wants to allow users to break through those restrictions, but also protect them against the inevitable dangers that is inherent with that freedom.

Nevertheless, the WSJ reports that Google is hiring more engineers, salespeople and product managers and building new consumer Web services. As China's mobile market booms, Google is pushing Android there, and opening a Chinese Android Market for mobile apps is one of the top priorities.

Google's trouble in China all started in 2010, when it claimed that Chinese hackers had attempted to break into its services and committed malware attacks on Gmail accounts. Prior to that day, Google willingly censored its services at the government's request. But after tracing these attacks to China, and probably to official agents, Google said it was "no longer willing to continue censoring" its results.

China thought those allegations were "irresponsible." It led to some tough talk, but it took a while for Google to work up the courage to leave the mainland. The redirect to Hong Kong was an imperfect solution, since the government's filters caused frequent disruptions.

Changing Its Tune

Google's business is ads, and there are apparently just too many eyeballs in China for Google to give them up on principle. The WSJ reports that Google is working on commerce services and product search that will not require official censorship.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin grew up in the Soviet Union, and at the time of the censorship row, he told the WSJ that China's repression reminded him of that past. "I see the same earmarks of totalitarianism," Brin said, "and I find that personally quite troubling."

"Pragmatic" Reasons

But now, two years later, China has 500 million Internet users, more than twice as many as the U.S. As Google Asia executive Daniel Alegre told the WSJ, Google is changing its tune on China for "pragmatic" reasons.

Nearly 60% of Chinese smartphones run Android, but they don't have official Google services on board. That's a massive install base just lying there dormant, not even able to access the Android Market for apps. However, assuming Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility clears, Google will be making money on much of the hardware, anyway.

There is a lot that may be wrong with SOPA, but putting the power to censor the Internet into the hands of the government is chief among citizens' concerns. The law would force Internet Service Providers and search engines to cut off access to infringing sites as well as give the government the ability to stop payment to those sites. How would SOPA work? What do you need to know about the bill heading into 2012? We take a deep dive into everything you need to know below.

SOPA (bill text) sets up a variety of ways for the U.S. government to block sites that are seen to be infringing on intellectual property. The bill is tailored towards the entertainment industry to protect movie studios, TV networks and record labels from having foreign websites illegally copying and distributing copyrighted works.

Along with the Protect IP Act of 2011, here are the ways the U.S. government can enforce the proposed laws.

1. Force ISPs to block access to Domain Name System servers to infringing foreign sites. Here is the pertinent portion of Section 102 of SOPA: A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name's Internet Protocol address.

2. Force search providers to make such sites that have been flagged as infringing undiscoverable.
Prevent the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct hypertext link.

3. Force payments processors to shut down the ability for infringing sites to make money.
Suspend its service from completing payment transactions involving customers located within the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and the payment account.

4. Force Internet advertisers to cease doing business with an infringing site.
Prevent its service from providing advertisements to or relating to the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order or a portion of such site specified in the order.

Who would be affected by these mandates from the Attorney General? Foremost, Google. Items 2-4 would directly relate to properties owned or maintained by the search giant. Google is the largest search provider on the planet and has the largest Internet advertising business. It also acts in conjunction with payment processors for its Google Checkout application.

PayPal would also have to comply with notices to cease payments. As would VISA, MasterCard, American Express and other payment processors. Both Visa and MasterCard are on record for supporting SOPA.

Most of the ISPs are onboard with SOPA, including ComCast. That creates an interesting scenario as ComCast also owns NBC. If the power to block infringing sites is left with the ISPs, who is to tell them that they cannot block content that is perceived to be competing with its own?

Who Supports SOPA?

Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: Smith's office wrote the bill and he is the primary sponsor.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.
Rep. Mel Watts, ranking member of the subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee. Watts was the congressman that made the comments about not understanding how the Internet works.
Rep. Howard Berman, member subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.

In addition to those four members of the House Judiciary, the Recording Industry Association of America, Most Picture Association of America, most of Hollywood and its various labor organizations (like the Directors Guild), support SOPA.

Gizmodo published the full list of companies that have signed on for support of SOPA. GoDaddy.com is a prominent name as it is a company with its fundamental nature tied to DNS. Prominent names include: Comcast, ABC, ESPN, CBS, Teamsters, Major League Baseball, Sony, Time Warner, Viacom and Warner Music.

Who Is Against SOPA?

Almost all of the major tech corporations are against SOPA. TechCrunch came up with a list of 40 companies that are opposing the bill and the companies that we would think would oppose it are present.

That includes:

Facebook, Google, eBay/PayPal, Foursquare, Kaspersky, Reddit, Mozilla, Tumblr, Twitter, Yahoo, Scribd, Quora, Github, Square, AOL.

In terms of politicos, the only major GOP presidential candidate to touch on the issue is Rep. Michelle Bachmann.

Here are the other major opponents:
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman on Oversight and Government reform and also on the House Judiciary Committee. He is the most prominent opponent and frequently tweets about SOPA/PIPA on his Twitter account.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, member House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, member subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet of the House judiciary committee.
Rep. Jared Polis, the new "champion of the Internet." Polis is the Judiciary Committee member who made several proposed changes to SOPA to make a court order necessary to take down a website.
Rep. Mike Honda, aligned himself with Bachmann on SOPA and has been involved in technology legislation for more than a decade.

The top four representatives listed were the individuals responsible for the markups in the SOPA bill that brought two days of debate to the committee. Essentially, the proposed amendments acted as a filibuster (an intentional delay of vote caused by prolonged political debate) that caused the Judiciary Committee to postpone the debate until the next Congressional session.

Prominent think tank, The Heritage Foundation has come out against SOPA. This is significant as it has deep ties to the GOP and most of the representatives pushing for SOPA are Republicans.

What Are The Next Steps?

SOPA needs to make it out of the Congressional committee. This is likely to happen, according to Government 2.0 correspondent Alex Howard of O'Reilly Media (and sometimes ReadWriteWeb contributor). The next step will be on the House floor where all it needs is majority to make it through to the Senate. That will likely take until the middle of the spring and will give people a chance to complain to their Senators about the bill.

The key for SOPA will be to see if the Senate passes it with a 60-40 majority. If the Senate does pass SOPA by a two-thirds majority (67 votes), President Obama cannot veto the bill, which he would likely do in an election year where much of his campaign will be Internet focused.

Update 2:28 p.m. EST Dec. 23: This article has been corrected from its original version to note that 67 votes (not 60) are needed for a presidential override.

PIPA comes up for debate on the Senate floor on the first day of the 2012 session, January 24th. The battle lines for PIPA will determine much of what subsequently happens to SOPA. Senator Harry Reid is going to introduce the bill to the Senate. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has promised to block it and filibuster the bill when it reaches debate.

Who & What To Watch

On the other hand, there are the major networks. All of the TV networks are supporters of the bill. How will they choose to cover the bill? Will they give it the same due diligence as other bills?

Who To Follow?

We will do our best at ReadWriteWeb to stay abreast of what is happening with SOPA and PIPA. The tech news team at Politico (@morningtech) is probably the best sourced in the industry. CNET and The Hill are both on top of SOPA as well. Howard (@digiphile) at O'Reilly has published one of the best primers of SOPA on the Web and is always in touch with what is happening in government technology circles.

We will be monitoring SOPA and deconstructing its consequences for the next several months. For instance, there are significant costs to SOPA, both for the startup ecosystem, the entertainment industry, regulatory bodies and individual citizens. There are significant cybersecurity risks to be considered as well. Stay tuned at ReadWriteWeb as we follow what could be one of the biggest stories that affects the Web in the last 10 years.

The Twitter accounts of many of Chávez's critics have suddenly begun spewing pro-Chávez, anti-opposition propaganda. More recently, the tack the hackers have taken has begun to show more subtlety.

Anyone who has followed Chávez's activities regarding free speech here on ReadWriteWeb (to say nothing of the view from the ground) will know he has consistently employed his control of the laws and the bully pulpit of the presidency to stifle dissent.

Chávez is particularly enthusiastic in his hatred of Twitter, given its widespread use by opposition politicians, critics and civil society workers in Venezuela. He has described Twitter as a "battle trench because it is bringing a current of conspiracy." This hasn't stopped him from eventually starting his own Twitter account.

Chávez's rhetoric, and his workaday efforts to silence his opposition should surprise nobody at this point. But what Toro wrote about was a step further.

"After Milagros Socorro, the editor of the opposition news site CodigoVenezuela.com, had her account hacked, she received an anonymous email from a sympathizer working inside the Ministry of Science and Technology. It said that an entire floor of the ministry, staffed largely by Cubans, was devoted to tracking and hacking into opposition activists' online activities."

Chávez has declared "the Internet cannot be free." He may have meant in Venezuela, as long as he is in power.

Mansoor was charged in April with a very popular "crime" among the tyrannies that crack down on difference of opinion: "insult." In this case, insulting the U.A.E.'s leadership; specifically, the Vice President of Abu Dhabi.

Others sentenced, according to Agence France Presse, were Nasser bin Gaith, a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi branch of the Sorbonne University, activists Fahid Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq. They were also convicted with insulting the country's leadership, as well as "calling for a boycott of September's Federal National Council elections and... anti-government demonstrations."

The trial took five months, according to Reuters.

International human rights groups condemned the kangaroo court. Among other things, the "crime" of insult is not recognized as such by most countries. The sentences are clearly disproportionate (precedent for the law they were convicted under treated the crimes as misdemeanours) and used by a frightened oligarchy who fear their loss of privilege, despite the country being only lightly touched by the Arab Spring that has swept through the region.

Supporters have taken to Twitter to register their opinions on the "U.A.E. 5," as they are called, with the hashtag #uae5.

Other sources: TNW

For those of you that are interested, these cases all cite a landmark decision Tinker v. Des Moines, where public schools are allowed to regulate speech that materially interferes or disrupts the learning environment. Back in the tumultuous 60s, students wore armbands to school and Tinker was adjudicated on that activity. But now the courts have to deal with the Internets, and activities that don't physically take place on a school's campus.

Topping off this week in school censorship news is the action of the administration of the Southern Illinois University at Carbdondale (SUIC) surrounding a labor dispute. A Facebook page that was until now open for comments about the situation had comments critical of the university removed, along with other comments that contained obscene language. Eventually, the only content left on the page were official university messages. Rod Sievers, a university employee being quoted here, said "a certain level of debate would have been permitted but because some of it was rude, profane, name-calling, we just couldn't keep up with it."

With the removal of the comments, the students created their own Facebook page here. Does a Facebook Wall constitute a public forum, or is it private even if it is controlled by a publicly funded entity such as SUIC? There have been no suits filed as yet about this action by SUIC.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Siri, Pour Me a Beer!

The Beeri story captivated many of our readers (and our writers). The folks at RedPepper hit a home run when they automated the beer pouring process in such a fun, if messy, way.

The comments had several readers reminiscing of the good ole' nerdy days in college, when they used the burgeoning internet to automate other potent potables.

Google Denies Requests To Remove Videos of Police Brutality [UPDATED]

In their continued efforts at transparency, Google announced it had turned down requests from law enforcement to remove videos that show alleged police brutality or misconduct. This comes not long after the search giant handed over the IP info and contact list of a WikiLeaks volunteer to the U.S. government. Whether their response in both cases was correct or incorrect was the subject of several of your comments.

ReadWriteWeb Meetups Around the World

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"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."

"The whole world is watching," as protesters around the country have reminded officials since they first began to occupy Wall Street. With this week's escalations, now would not be a good time for Google to engage in censorship. The wording of its notice about denying the removal requests is encouraging, but it's carefully chosen to suit a particular situation.

Google complies with 93% of U.S. removal requests. It has decided that the best course of action is to maintain transparency and respond on a case-by-case basis. That transparency has upset governments, and the refusal to censor police brutality videos surely made some city officials unhappy.

But Google's record is spotty. Just this month, it handed over a WikiLeaks volunteer's Gmail data to the U.S. government, which used an old and controversial law to request it without a warrant from a judge. Google is pushing for updated laws that better reflect the media of today, but in the meantime, its record on upholding free speech is touch-and-go. Google has done the right thing with these police takedown requests, but the world should keep watching.

What do you think Google's responsibilities are regarding government requests?