Daily Archives: September 2, 2014

LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD) expanded into China this year, adopting policies in line with the countrys censorship rules. Now, the worlds largest professional social-networking company is saying it may have gone too far.

When a LinkedIn user in China shares a post deemed to be in conflict with the governments rules, the company blocks the content not only in China but around the world. While LinkedIns goal is to protect members against how their content might be shared and noticed by the government, the practice may end up stifling Chinese users seeking to spread messages outside their country.

We do want to get this right, and we are strongly considering changing our policy so that content from our Chinese members that is not allowed in China will still be viewed globally, Hani Durzy, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn, said yesterday.

LinkedIns dilemma underscores the difficulty of doing business in a country with stringent censorship rules, where few other U.S. technology companies have succeeded. Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. social-networking services are blocked in China, though Facebook is slowly expanding its advertising business there after signing a lease in central Beijing, people familiar with the matter have said.

Other social-media companies have struggled with certain countries seeking to block content on their sites, and sometimes the entire site. Twitter was blocked earlier this year in Turkey in response to leaks targeting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogans government amid a corruption probe. Twitter has also been blocked at times in North Korea, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt. For most countries, Twitters policy is to remove content only in the country where it is illegal.

LinkedIn is notifying people when content thats deemed inappropriate by the Chinese government is blocked. Marketplace journalist Rob Schmitz wrote a story about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprisings and later got an e-mail from the company saying his story would not be seen by LinkedIn members in China, and that content posted from China will be blocked globally to protect the safety of our members that live in China, Schmitz wrote recently.

The Chinese website for LinkedIn was rolled out in February to provide a localized service after more than a decade of having only an English-language site there.

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIns chief executive officer, said in a blog post in the same month that LinkedIn supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship.

At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIns absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others on our global platform, thereby limiting the ability of individual Chinese citizens to pursue and realize the economic opportunities, dreams and rights most important to them, Weiner said in the post.

China is now LinkedIns fastest growing major market for new members, the CEO said on a conference call on July 31. While hes hes pleased with the results thus far, there are certainly going to be challenges ahead, Weiner said.

See more here:
LinkedIn Reviewing China Censorship Policy

Married actors Todd Weeks and Kate Blumberg rehearse a scene from "Kingdom City" at La Jolla Playhouse.

In 1953, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible a story set amid the 17th-century Salem witch trials as a response to attacks on intellectual freedom under the guise of rooting out Communism.

In 2006, a school district in Fulton, Mo., canceled a planned production of the Miller play which had long since become a classic and a staple of student reading lists because of worries over a plot thread of an extramarital affair.

Sheri Wilner. David Brooks

Controversies over banned school productions, of course, have been around forever, and they continue today, sometimes involving even innocuous-seeming shows: Witness the recent dust-up in Pennsylvania over a canceled staging of the comedy Monty Pythons Spamalot, apparently because of a scene in which two men discover their love for each other.

But the Missouri cancellation, which earned press in The New York Times and elsewhere, felt particularly alarming because it was The Crucible it was the irony of a play that was written to condemn censorship (itself) being censored, says playwright Sheri Wilner.

And because its such an esteemed work, adds Wilner, if a play such as that was up for debate, then really all of literature felt up for debate.

The event prompted Wilner to write her own play one thats about to receive its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse.

Kingdom City, which begins performances today, was born partly out of anger, but also out of fear, says Wilner, who has been working on the piece for some seven years.

Yet while her play takes a critical look at censorship, Wilner also says its meant to be much more than a polemic.

Continue reading here:
'Kingdom' explores dramatic censorship

Your Alpha Doggs editor is Bob Brown, Network World Online Executive Editor, News.

Georgia Tech researchers are seeking the assistance of website operators to help better understand which sites are being censored and then figure out how to get around such restricted access by examining the data collected.

The open source Encore[Enabling Lightweight Measurements of Censorship with Cross-Origin Requests]tool involves website operators installing a single line of code onto their sites, and that in turn will allow the researchers to determine whether visitors to these sites are blocked from visiting other sites around the world known to be censored. The researchers are hoping to enlist a mix of small and big websites, and currently it is running on about 10 of them.

The code works in the background after a page is loaded and Georgia Techs team claims the tool wont slow performance for end users or websites, nor does it track browsing behavior.

+Also on NetworkWorld: 13 of today's Coolest Network Research Projects +

"Web censorship is a growing problem affecting users in an increasing number of countries," said Sam Burnett, the Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate who leads the project, in a statement. "Collecting accurate data about what sites and services are censored will help educate users about its effects and shape future Internet policy discussions surrounding Internet regulation and control."

(Burnetts adviser is Nick Feamster, whose Internet censorship research weve written about in the past. I exchanged email with Feamster to gain additional insight into this new research.)

End users wont even know the baseline data measurement is taking place, which of course when youre talking about censorship and privacy, can be a sticky subject. Facebook learned that recently when disclosures erupted regarding its controversial secret study of users moods. The Georgia Tech researchers in an FAQ say their tool can indicate to users that their browsers are conducting measurements, and that users can opt out.

"Nothing would pop up [in an end user's browser] but a webmaster has an option to make the measurements known/visible," Feamster says.

"They also assure potential Encore users that the list of censored sites compiled by Herdict does not include pornographic ones, so an end users browser wont be directed to such sites in the name of research.

Read more here:
Open source tool could sniff out most heavily censored websites

In the name of the kids.

Paging #Freethenipple! Boobie Trap, the breast-themed bar the Cut visited last month, is getting complaints from neighbors and local government officials, reports DNAinfo.

Brooklyn AssemblymemberMaritza Davila has raised concerns about the bars proximity to an elementary school, and the large windows that allow passing neighborhood children to revel in the boob-centric decorations, as passing neighborhood children are wont to do.

But remember, the bar sounds racier than it actually it is. Sure, the bar has a huge neon sign that says fuck off, various representations of breasts on the ceiling, bar, tables, and chairs, and boob coloring-book pages but the overall effect is kitschy, not smutty. (Though we can see how the kids might be confused about the coloring books and crayons.)

Owner Kristen North, her business partner, and Davila will meet soon; but until a compromise can be reached, North has covered the neon sign with a curtain. She has no plans to censor the boob dcor just yet.

First Instagram, now a local watering hole. Is nowhere in this world safe for breasts?

Excerpt from:
Bushwicks Boob-Themed Bar Threatened With Censorship