Pakistan censors Google, YouTube and Yahoo for their anti-Islam content

Authorities blame online content providers for material that is offensive to Muslims and the Muslim religion. Anti-Islam links are blocked without blocking portals. Eight smaller websites are also attacked. “Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much . . . content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies,” Google spokesperson says.

Islamabad (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Pakistan has started to monitor the web for its blasphemous content. Internet giants like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Bing, Msnm and Hotmail have come under the scrutiny of Pakistani authorities for allowing online material that is offensive to Muslims and the Muslim religion.
Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said that under instructions from the Ministry of Information Technology, the Authority began monitoring and barring various sites as of 26 June, following a ruling by a judge in the city of Bahawalpur against YouTube and eight smaller websites deemed anti-Islam.

“If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website,” Mehran said.

Pakistan claims that it is monitoring the world wide web for national security reasons and that no major search engine will be censored.

Google spokesman Scott Rubin said the company intends to monitor how Pakistan's new policies affect access to its services, which include the world's most popular search engine and the most widely watched video site, YouTube.

“Google and YouTube are platforms for free expression, and we try to allow as much . . . content as possible on our services and still ensure that we enforce our policies,' Mr Rubin said.

Yahoo! also responded to Pakistan's actions, calling them disappointing. The company is “founded on the principle that access to information can improve people's lives,” a Yahoo! spokeswoman said.

So far, 17 sites deemed anti-Islam and blasphemous have been blocked, including IslamExposed.blogspot.com, a blog created through Google's own Blogger service. The site features postings with headlines such as 'Islam: The Ultimate Hypocrisy' and links to anti-Islam online petitions.

Back in May, a top court put a ban on Facebook amid anger over a webpage that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. However, many young Muslim users of the social networking site reacted negatively to the ban, which was lifted after two weeks.

The government and the courts of Pakistan base their decisions on the country’s so-called ‘Blasphemy law’, introduced 25 years ago by then strongman Zia-ul-Haq. The ‘law’ imposes respect for the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur‘an.

The Catholic Church has fought against the law for many years because it victimises Muslims as well as members of religious minorities.

Google Pac Man 30th Anniversary

Google Pac Man 30th Anniversary: Google has today, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s Japanese release. The doodle (Google’s term for its event and holiday-specific logos) is accessible on its main page and is a full 255-level game complete with a 256th level “kill screen,” just like the original coin-op.

The interactive doodle — a first for Google — is the brainchild of senior user experience designer Marcin Wichary, whose earliest exposure to Pac-Man came at age five while traveling across his native Poland with his father, a game technician, to repair arcade machines. Wichary worked with Google doodler (yes, it’s a real job) Ryan Germick to create the finished design.

So, for today at least, you can tell your boss: “I may be browsing the web and playing a game, but I’m also being part of something historic.”

گمنام انٹرنیٹ تبصروں پر پابندی پرغور

چینی حکام کا کہنا ہے کہ وہ گمنام افراد کی جانب سے انٹرنیٹ پر تبصرے بھیجنے پر پابندی لگانے کا ارادہ رکھتے ہیں۔

چین کے سٹیٹ کونسل انفارمیشن آفس کے ڈائریکٹر وانگ چین کے مطابق اس پابندی کی زد میں وہ بلیٹن بورڈ بھی آئیں گے جو عوامی بحث کا مرکز ہیں۔

وانگ چین کا کہنا تھا کہ بڑی نیوز ویب سائٹس اور بزنس پورٹل پہلے ہی اس قانون پر عمل کرتے ہیں کہ کسی گمنام فرد کا پیغام شائع نہیں کیا جائے گا۔

چین میں بلیٹن بورڈز کو مقامی مسائل اجاگر کرنے کے لیے استعمال کیا جا رہا ہے۔

خیال رہے کہ چین میں حکومت انٹرنیٹ کے استعمال کی سخت نگرانی کرتی ہے اور وہاں ٹوئٹر اور فیس بک جیسی سوشل نیٹ ورکنگ ویب سائٹس کے استعمال پر بھی پابندی لگائی جاتی رہی ہے۔

New Chrome browser fastest Google beta yet

The new beta of Chrome for Windows is nearly a fifth faster than its more stable sibling, but still lags behind speed leader Opera, benchmark tests show.

According to tests run by Computerworld, the Chrome beta, which Google launched yesterday, is the second fastest of the major Windows browsers. Chrome 5.0.375.29 also renders JavaScript about 17% faster than Chrome 4.1.249.1064, the current "stable" edition. Google simultaneously supports three lines of Chrome, ranked in descending order of stability as its stable, beta and dev channels.

But Opera Software's Opera 10.53 remains the king of JavaScript, with benchmark scores about 16% faster than those by the newest Chrome beta. The Norwegian browser first took the crown last February, when the browser debuted a new JavaScript engine dubbed Carakan, and surged past Apple's Safari for Windows and Chrome, the former No. 1 and No. 2 browsers.

Other browsers held their usual spots in the latest round of tests. Safari 4.0.5 was only slightly slower than the stable edition of Chrome, and so held down the No. 3 spot, while Mozilla's Firefox 3.6.3 was just over half as fast as Safari and Chrome. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), as usual, brought up the rear as the slowest of the five browsers in JavaScript rendering: IE8 was more than 12 times slower than Opera 10.53.

Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite in Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) three times for each browser, then averaged the scores to arrive at the final rankings.

On Tuesday, Google said the newest Chrome beta was 35% faster on the SunSpider tests than the beta of its earlier version 4.0 for Windows. Computerworldwasn't able to verify that claim -- Google updates its browser automatically, without user intervention, making it difficult to keep Chrome on a specific version -- but also tested the newest beta against the previous beta, marked as Chrome 5.0.342.8.

The update boosted Chrome's speed by 6% over that beta, which Google released in late March.

Other additions include support for several HTML5 features, such as geo-location and drag-and-drop; synchronization of browser settings to effectively "clone" Chrome on multiple machines; and the ability to use extensions when working in Chrome's "Incognito" private browsing mode.

This beta also introduces the integration of Adobe's Flash Player to Chrome's beta channel.

Google debuted built-in Flash in developer builds at the end of March, when it announced a partnership with Adobe, and said it was packaging Flash with Chrome downloads and would silently update the often-patched media player using the browser's background mechanism.

The move, Adobe said at the time, would keep Chrome users safer since they wouldn't have to remember to update or deal with update notifications.

Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta can be downloaded from Google's Web site for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

One in four countries block some Google services

Google's services are blocked or censored to some degree in one-fourth of the countries where it operates, the company said Monday.

"China is the most polarizing example, but it is not the only one. Google products -- from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs -- have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services," wrote Rachel Whetstone, Google's vice president of global communications and public affairs, on the company's European public policy blog.

"In addition, we regularly receive government requests to restrict or remove content from our properties," she wrote, adding that Google has argued to narrow the scope of such requests when it believes the request is "overly broad."

Google made headlines earlier this year, when executives announced plans to shut down a censored version of its search engine that it developed for the Chinese market. After failing to reach a compromise over censorship with the Chinese government, Google closed the censored search engine in March, redirecting traffic to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong

China has long had one of the most sophisticated programs designed to control Internet access for local users. Chinese laws require Internet companies that operate there to block or remove objectionable content, which includes pornography as well as information relating to human rights and other topics.

But China isn't the only country that wants to manage Internet content. For example, Australia is proceeding with plans to block access to Internet sites with material on sexual abuse of children and information that could be used to commit crimes, after tests showed blocking access to blacklisted sites didn't slow down Internet access for users.

Opponents have objected to the Australian plan, noting that the list of blocked sites includes links that extend beyond the intended scope. In addition, users are able to circumvent the blacklist to access these sites, just as Chinese users are able to circumvent censorship controls there.

Yahoo ,Google Criticize Australian Internet Filter

Internet giants Google and Yahoo have criticized Australia’s proposal for a mandatory Internet filter, calling it a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.
Their statements, among 174 comments from the public submitted to the Department of Communications on the filtering proposal, come amid a struggle between Google and China over censorship-free content.
Lucinda Barlow of Google Australia on Wednesday called the Internet blocking measures of Australia and China “apples and oranges” but said her company was deeply concerned about Australia’s proposal because of its mandatory and sweeping nature.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be constantly updated based on public complaints.
If adopted into law, the screening system would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world’s democracies, and the proposal has put the country on the Reporters Without Borders annual “Enemies of the Internet” list.
“Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide,” Google wrote in its submission, also suggesting the filter would slow browsing speeds.
The company said it already had its own filter to block child pornography.
“Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available — and we agree,” Google said. “But moving to a mandatory ISP level filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.”
Google’s Barlow told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the proposal raised the possibility of banning politically and socially controversial material and went beyond filters used in Germany and Canada, which block child pornography and, in Italy, gambling sites.
Yahoo made a similar contention, saying the filter would block many sites with controversial content — such as euthanasia discussion forums and gay and lesbian forums that discuss sexual experiences.
“There is enormous value in this content being available to encourage debate and inform opinion,” Yahoo said.
The filter would not block peer-to-peer file-sharing nor prevent predators approaching children in chat programs or social networking sites, and both Google and Yahoo backed a national campaign to educate parents and children about safe use of the Internet.
Comments on the proposal came from Australian telecommunication companies, lobby groups and individuals. Conroy said his department would take the comments into consideration before sending a proposal to Parliament later this year.
The discussion over Internet restrictions in Australia comes as Google is battling online censorship in China.
Google said last month it would stop censoring searches for the Chinese government, and this week began routing searches through Hong Kong. In response, the communist government has blocked people on the mainland from seeing search results or Web sites dealing with such forbidden topics as the pro-democracy movement.
David Vaile of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales said China and Australia had markedly different approaches to restricting the Internet.
“China’s filter is explicitly about discouraging access to and discussion of certain clearly political topics,” he said, while Australia’s filter would focus on specifically restricted material.
While some critics of Australia’s filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China, Vaile pointed out that the freedom-of-speech argument used by American companies follows a legal tradition that other countries do not necessarily share.
Yahoo and Google are accustomed to the protections of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and elevates it to a very high legal status, Vaile said.
“In Australia there is no equivalent,” Vaile said. “There is no law that says you’ve got free speech. Having a lack of any legal protection for free speech for any effective restraint on (filters) is something that’s worrying.”

Tracker:Facebook beats Google for visitors

SAN FRANCISCO : Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed.
Facebook’s homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.
The “important milestone,” as described by Hitwise director of research
Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 percent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.
By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine percent in the same time — although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.
Taken together, Facebook.com and Google.com amounted to 14 percent of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said.
Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.
In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail’s format.
Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.

China rejects claims of cyber attacks on Google

China has denied any state involvement in alleged cyber attacks on Google and accused the US of double standards.

A Chinese industry ministry spokesman told the state-run Xinhua news agency that claims that Beijing was behind recent cyber attacks were "groundless".
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked China to investigate claims by Google that it had been targeted by China-based hackers.
The US search giant has threatened to withdraw from China.
"The accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless. We [are] firmly opposed to that," the unnamed spokesman of China's ministry of industry and information technology told Xinhua.
"China's policy on internet safety is transparent and consistent," he added.
Separately, China's state-run China Daily newspaper said America's internet strategy was "to exploit its advantages in internet funds, technology and marketing and export its politics, commerce and culture to other nations for political, commercial and cultural interests of the world's only superpower".
It also described the US government as being hypocritical, saying the country's "certain government agencies" had reportedly illegally checked a massive number of personal e-mail accounts.

Clinton's speech

On Thursday, Mrs Clinton urged Beijing to investigate the alleged cyber attacks on Google.
"We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions," she said.
Mrs Clinton added that companies such as the US giant should refuse to support "politically motivated censorship".
Again in reference to China, she said that any country which restricted free access to information risked "walling themselves off from the progress of the next century".
Google said on 12 January that hackers had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, in a "highly sophisticated" attack.
The California-based company, which launched in China in 2006, said it would quit the country unless the government relaxed censorship.
On Tuesday, the Chinese government said Google and other foreign companies had to obey the country's laws and traditions.
The same day, Google said it was postponing the launch of two mobile phones in China.
When Google launched google.cn four years ago, it was criticised for agreeing to Beijing's demands to make certain search results off-limits - including those relating to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong.
China has more internet users, about 350 million, than any other country and provides a lucrative search-engine market worth an estimated $1bn (£618m) last year.
Google holds about a third of the country's search market, with Chinese rival Baidu having more than 60%.

گوگل لائبریری کیس: فیصلے میں تاخیر

انٹرنیٹ سائیٹ گوگل کی جانب سے دنیا کی سب سے بڑی ڈیجیٹل لائبریری بنانے کا منصوبہ جوں کا توں ہے کیونکہ امریکی جج نے اس کیس پر فوری فیصلہ نہیں دیا۔

عدالت میں اس منصوبے کے حق میں اور خلاف دلائل دینے کے بعد جج ڈینی چِن نے کہا کہ وہ تحریری فیصلہ دیں گے۔

اس منصوبے کے نقادوں کا کہنا ہے کہ گوگل کی امریکی پبلشرز اور مصنفوں کے ساتھ معاہدے سے گوگل کو آن لائن پر کتابوں کی فروخت پر اجارہ داری حاصل ہو جائے گی۔

ایک سو پچیس ملین ڈالر کے اس مقدمے میں جج چِن نے اب تک پانچ سو گزارشات پڑھی ہیں۔

پانچ سال سے گوگل اس معاہدے کو مکمل کرنے کی کوشش میں ہے اور کئی ماہ سے فریقین عوامی سطح پر اپنے اپنے دلائل پیش کر چکے ہیں۔

نیو یارک میں سماعت کے آغاز پر جج چِن نے کہا کہ ’میں اس تجسس کا خاتمہ کردوں کہ میں اس مقدمے کا فیصلہ آج نہیں کروں گا‘۔ ’معاملات کو سمجھنے کے لیے بہت سا مواد موجود ہے اور میرا ذہن کھلا ہے۔‘

دو ہزار چار میں جب گوگل نے اس منصوبے پر کام شروع کیا تو اس کا آتھرز گلڈ آف امریکہ اور ایسوسی ایشن آف امریکن پبلشرز کے ساتھ تنازعہ شروع ہو گیا۔

واضح رہے کہ امریکہ میں اجارہ داری کے خلاف تحقیقات کرنے والے حکام کتابوں کے جملہ حقوق کے مسئلے پر گوگل اور کتابوں کے پبلشرز کے ساتھ 125 ملین ڈالر کے معاہدے کی تحقیقات شروع کی تھیں۔

ان معاہدوں کے مطابق جملہ حقوق رکھنے والوں کو کچھ رقم ملے گی اور گوگل کو آن لائن پر کتابوں کی فروخت اور اشتہارات کا حصہ ملے گا۔

نیویارک کی ضلعی عدالت کو لکھے گئے ایک خط میں امریکی نائب اٹارنی جنرل ولیم کیوانا نے کہا تھا کہ اس معاہدے کے متعلق مزید انکوائری ہونی چاہیئے۔

کچھ افراد کا خیال ہے کہ اس معاہدے کے بعد گوگل آن لائن پر کتابیں بیچنے کا سب سے بڑا ذریعہ بن جائے گا۔

اکتوبر 2008 میں گوگل نے کتابوں کے ناشر اور مصنفوں کی تنظیم ’آتھرز گلڈ اینڈ دی ایسوسی ایشن آف امیریکن پبلیشرز‘ کے ساتھ یہ معاہدہ کیا تھا۔

گوگل کی نئی سوشل نیٹورکنگ سائٹ

گوگل نے’ بز‘ نامی ایک سوشل نیٹورکنگ سائٹ کا افتتاح کیا ہے۔

گوگل کی ای میل سروس ’جی میل‘ سے منسلک یہ سماجی نیٹورکنگ سائٹ فیس بُک اور ٹویٹر سے مقابلہ کرے گی۔ فیس بُک کی سائٹ سنہ دو ہزار چار میں شروع کی گئی تھی اور اب اس کو تقریباً چالیس کروڑ افراد استعمال کرتے ہیں اور یہ دنیا کی سب سے بڑی سوشل نیٹورکنگ سآئٹ ہے۔

توقع کی جا رہی ہے کہ جی میل استعمال کرنے والے تو ضرور ’بز‘ کا استعمال کرنا پسند کریں گے۔ اس وقت تقریباً سترہ کروڑ لوگ جی میل استعمال کرتے ہیں۔

صحافیوں کا کہنا ہے کہ یوں معلوم ہوتا ہے کہ اس سوشل نیٹورکنگ سائٹ کا افتتاح کر کے گوگل اس کوشیش میں ہے کہ انٹرنیٹ کی سماجی سرگرمیوں میں وہ فیس بک کا ڈٹ کر مقابلہ کر سکے۔