Monthly Archives: April 2014

Film Director #39;s Criticism of Censorship Wins Resonance
Follow us on TWITTER: http://twitter.com/cnforbiddennews Like us on FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/chinaforbiddennews At a panel held in the 4th Beijing I...

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Film Director's Criticism of Censorship Wins Resonance - Video

BEIRUT: Censorship has no place in the Lebanese cultural milieu, Culture Minister Raymond Areiji told The Daily Star Monday. I am against any censorship on cultural events, and I mean movies, songs or anything else. In a country where politicians can say everything they want, insulting each other and harming national unity, it is not logical or healthy to have censorship on cultural products.

Controversial scenes in Western movies should no longer be edited out for Lebanese audiences, he added. Its been done for 30 years. But today when you cut a scene, you can find it immediately on YouTube. And when you cut a scene, you make people want to watch it even more. You emphasize it in a way the director didnt intend.

Reassessing censorship in the cultural sphere is just one of many projects Areiji hopes to tackle before a new president is elected and his mandate expires.

The Zghorta native revealed that his ministry was working on an ambitious new website that would feature more than 1,000 works by Lebanese grand masters.

These works are all held in the three official palaces to which the public have little access, he said. In collaboration with ALBA [Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts] were creating a virtual museum where we can expose our collection.

Areiji is applying his 25-year career in law to his new post as minister. The cultural arena lacks a clear and modern legal framework, he said.

Im working on a new law for the protection of archaeological sites, he explained, and many other regulations that are lacking in this ministry.

As Lebanon has no dedicated Antiquities Ministry, questions of archaeology and preservation fall under Areijis mandate. Arbitrating between developers seeking to build glossy high-rises and conservationists hoping to protect ancient ruins has been one of the main issues his ministry faces, he said.

His predecessor, Gaby Layoun, sided with construction companies in a series of hotly disputed cases and drew particularly sharp criticism when he permitted the destruction of a Roman Hippodrome to make way for an exclusive new development.

We must find a balance between protecting our heritage and progress in the economy and real estate sectors, Areiji said.

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Culture minister tackles censorship, smuggling

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-04-28 20:22:39 +0200

China has long had one of the most pervasive online censorship systems in the world.

The country's infamous "Great Firewall" blocks access to numerous Western websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and The New York Times. But China also has laws that force Chinese companies and social networks to apply censorship within their own services.

On Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like service that boasts almost 300 million users, hundreds of posts get censored every day. The social network has a sophisticated system that automatically censors certain keywords ("June 4 massacre," referring to the Tiananmen Square protests, is blocked), and a team of in-house censors manually monitors other accounts and messages to catch whatever escapes the automated system.

Censorship on Sina Weibo is not only effective, it's lightning quick. Researchers last year found that some posts, or "Weibos," would be deleted as quickly as five minutes after being posted.

A secretive group of online activists called GreatFire has been monitoring Chinese online censorship for three years. GreatFire's three collaborators track blocked websites and collect censored posts on Weibo, which they then publish on FreeWeibo.com.

Now, the GreatFire activists are launching an app that they believe will make the Great Firewall of China and its mighty censorship powers obsolete, thanks to a relatively new approach called "collateral freedom."

The Android app, also called FreeWeibo, allows users to read posts that are deleted from Sina Weibo, giving Chinese netizens a chance to see what their government censors, and what their fellow countrymen are really talking about.

The activists believe that the way they designed the app makes it impossible to be blocked which they hope will show others an effective way to circumvent Chinese Internet restrictions, furthering their goal of ending online censorship in China.

"Since the founding of our organization, I don't think we've come as close to achieving that goal as we are about to with the release of [the FreeWeibo] Android app. Because it's really changing the rules of the game," says a GreatFire founder who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith, in an interview via encrypted phone with Mashable.

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Can an Android App Defeat China's Internet Censors?