Syrian users of Facebook said on Friday the authorities had blocked access to the social network Web site as part of a crackdown on political activism on the Internet.

"Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned," women's rights advocate Dania al-Sharif told Reuters.

"They cut off communications between us and the outside world. We are used to this behavior from our government," said Mais al-Sharbaji, who set up a Facebook group for amateur Syrian photographers.

There was no comment form the government, which has intensified a campaign against bloggers, virtual opinion forums and independent media sites in recent months.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Malaysian online political commentators have formed a group to protect bloggers' interests after two of them were sued by a newspaper with close government ties.

The National Alliance of Bloggers' main goal is to "protect bloggers," and to try to get the government to see their point of view and why they have made certain postings, the new group's president, Ahirudin Attan, wrote on his popular blog "Rocky's Bru."

The alliance was formed late Thursday, Ahirudin wrote.

About 50 of Malaysia's popular online personalities held a meeting and decided to start the organization because a few bloggers were being "demonized again and again" by the government, Ahirudin said.

"When certain quarters in government become hostile towards bloggers, I believe they mean to aim their hostility at a small group of bloggers or online writers whose views and takes of current affairs they fear," Ahirudin wrote.

The court order was issued yesterday and most internet users logging onto the site in Turkey are met with a holding page with a Turkish message, which translates as: "Access to this site has been denied by court order ! ..."

Greek and Turkish YouTube users have been trading video insults over the past few months, attracting much coverage in the Turkish press. Greek videos reportedly accused the founding president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, of homosexuality; a Turkish user responded by calling Greece the birthplace of homosexuality.

It is illegal to criticise either Ataturk or Turkishness in Turkey and the prosecutor's office in Istanbul acted despite YouTube's agreement to take down the offending videos.

The video is ugly. It insults the founder of the Republic. Like it or not, Atatürk is a sacred figure for most of Turkish citizens. And an insulting video would trigger such a popular reaction. However, would it be necessary to legally stop the access to Youtube? In Brazil, a legal step was taken recently. But compared to this one, it is a minor intervention. In terms of net regulation, Turkey is now in league with China, Iran and some other countries in the same line....

forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com) is categorized as (Personal Pages) ALL SITES YOU VISIT ARE LOGGED AND FILED.

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

FeedBurner, which powers hundreds of thousands of blog, podcast and mainstream news feeds (including this one), is apparently being blocked by Chinese authorities. Here is a Yoda-esque loose English language translation of William Long's original post. William even used a proxy server to verify that the issue is with the Chinese, not FeedBurner. His subscriber count dropped from over a thousand readers to zero overnight.

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the sudden disappearance on 28 July of two blogs by leading Tibetan poet Woeser (also known as Oser and, in Chinese, Wei Se). They were shut down by the websites that hosted them - Tibetcul.net, a Tibetan cultural portal, and Daqi.com, a local blog platform - presumably on government orders amid a continuing wave of online censorship in China.

"We are appalled by the closure of Woeser's blogs and we call for them to be reopened," the press freedom organisation said. "As her poetry is banned in China, these blogs were the only way she had left to express herself. Their disappearance shows how the Chinese authorities go out of their way to limit Tibetan culture to folklore for tourists."

Reporters Without Borders added: "Political control of the Chinese Internet is becoming more and more strict. The Chinese search engines recently updated their word filters while chat forums have been closed on government orders. We again appeal to the Chinese authorities to respect freedom of expression, a right guaranteed under their constitution."

Reports have come in from a number of cites around the country that the entire Blogspot domain is blocked in its entirety. Just recently only three days back, specifically on the 3rd of May, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had lifted the entire ban, allowing all internet users unrestricted surfing to the 10 millions websites hosted on the blogspot.com domain. It appears as if the three day relief was just to appease the United Nations in its annual 3rd of May celebrations for the Freedom of Press.

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) had initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting approximately upwards of ten million blogs globally. We strongly oppose this blanket ban on any website, and ask the world to join hands to peacefully protest the censorship of the internet.

China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States with more than 110 million users. A survey by Chinese search engine Baidu.com put the current number of blog, or Web log, sites at 36.82 million which are kept by 16 million people, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

The number of Chinese bloggers is expected to hit 60 million by the end of this year, Xinhua said, quoting a report on China's media industry by the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Zhang Xiaorong, strategy development director of "Bokee", which was set up in 2002 and claims the biggest share of China's blogging market, said his company adds about 100,000 blogs a day.

"The expected 60 million bloggers would account for more than half of China's 110 million netizens," Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying.

We've received a number of reports today that users in China can't get access to the Technorati site. Of course, we're taking these reports very seriously, and we're trying to get more accurate information. We'll let you know when we know more.

It was disorienting for someone used to these services but I find it hard to get worked up about it. Applications such as Wikipedia and Blogspot are growing into such a strong force that they will enter China, inevitably. I predict there will even be Chinese competitors (not just translated versions). And then, we who may now gloat on our access to Technorati, Wikipedia and Blogspot, will find that the last laugh will be on us.

Milk Pig, another blog reported to have been disappereared, is also back in action. Both Massage Milk and Milk Pig are hosted on Yculblog.com. However the third blog mentioned in yesterday's Danwei report, Pro State in Flames is still not functioning.

Hmm.

Bloggers in Pakistan became first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot.

One of the blocked sites is hosted on Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site.

The Pakistan bloggers found their blogs blocked, even though their blogs are not connected with the cartoons.

They say they have still been able to edit and update their blogs, but not able to read them.

The Redmond software company, which operates a popular blogging technology called MSN Spaces, said Tuesday that the changes will include efforts to make the banned content available to users elsewhere in the world even if Microsoft decides it has a legal duty to block it in a particular country.

The company also pledged to provide users with a clear notice that it has shut down a Web site because it received a legally binding notice that the material violates local laws. Previously, it has simply said the content was unavailable.

Microsoft has said that it 'will remove access to blog content only when it receives a legally binding notice from the government indicating that the material violates local laws, or if the content violates MSN's terms of use'.

The Chinese agencies will have to first find offending content, and then send Microsoft a separate letter for each instance it finds, putting the onus, and the overhead for content blocking, on Chinese officials.

If the Chinese agencies decide that, in doing this, Microsoft is failing to adequately block the content it doesn't want available it could shut Microsoft's MSN Spaces blog service down.

Although MSN Spaces is not controlled by Microsoft's Chinese operation, Microsoft has said the blocking of the blog is in line with its policy of complying with "global and local laws, norms and industry practices".

China is the second-largest internet market after the US and Microsoft is one of the leading western IT companies operating in China.

Last autumn Yahoo gave information about journalist Shi Tao's personal e-mail account to Beijing. The regime later jailed him for 10 years on charges of divulging state secrets.

For the past couple of years, Li has kept a blog--written under the pen name Muzi Mei--that has chronicled everything from her penchant for orgies and Internet dating to her skepticism toward marriage when it means staying faithful to one man. This fall the Beijing resident posted a recording of her own lovemaking sounds that would make Paris Hilton blush. More than 50,000 people simultaneously tried to download the 25-minute podcast, crashing the host server. Despite government attempts to censor it, the sex diary is so popular that Li's pen name is intermittently the most searched keyword on China's top search engine. "I express my freedom through sex," says Li, unapologetically. "It's my life, and I can do what I want."

Muzi Mei, real name Li Li, rose to a brief far-reaching notoriety in the last few months of 2003. Writing from south China's Guangzhou city, she kept a blog where she described sexual encounters with various men, including a well-known rock musician.

AP reports that **** Cheney was not the anonymous source who told Bob Woodward Valerie Plame's identity, according to an anonymous source. Jeez, those guys sure can keep a secret. Now.

Of course, some are saying that the anonymous source ruling out Cheney is Woodward himself. He didn't want to be named as the source because then the information wouldn't be credible.

Mr Yi, who is a teacher at Chengdu university, has recently posted on controversial subjects such as a campaign by peasants in Guangdong province to remove a village chief they believed to be corrupt. His blog was closed down on the orders of China's Internet surveillance bureau.

Press freedom organisation Reporters without Borders has condemned the closure in a press release. "We call for the immediate reopening of this blog and we point out that the Chinese constitution is supposed to guarantee free expression," it said.

"In a country where self-censorship reigns, we should salute the courage of the few bloggers like Wang who dare to publicly protest against government bans."

Wangyi, an anti-government Chinese intellectual, currently uses the blog as his microphone to broadcast the dissidence and fight for the independence of justice. The blog is currently not accessible. It's possible to get around this problem by reading search engines' cached versions. Search for Wang Yi's Microphone in Chinese.

Students at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta appear to be heeding a directive from the principal, the Rev. Kieran McHugh, to remove personal postings about the school or themselves from Web sites like myspace.com or xanga.com, even if they were posted from the students' home computers.

Officials with the Diocese of Paterson say the directive is a matter of safety, not censorship. But constitutional experts say the case raises interesting questions about the intersection of free speech and voluntary agreements with private institutions.

Frank Askin, director of Rutgers University's Constitutional Law Clinic, said the case could be an interesting free speech test if someone took it to court.

"They are a private school, and they can have whatever rules they want," he said. "But students do have rights in this matter, especially in New Jersey. Under our state's constitution, private entities that exercise some kind of dominion over people have to respect their free speech rights."

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Both Blogcn and Bokee have filtering systems that prevent users from writing about taboo topics. A Blogcn user, for instance, who tries to write "Falun Gong" will find the term converted to gibberish on screen. If a forbidden phrase makes it past the filter, the company might get a call from the police demanding that the offending post be removed. "We can immediately fix it," says Hu, who adds that he has gotten only "four or five" such calls in the past two years. It's not just Chinese companies that cooperate with the censors. A joint venture operated in China by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN blocks words such as "democracy" in the subject lines of blogs on its site. Microsoft says it simply is complying with Chinese laws and norms. And China's censors can intercept traffic from overseas services such as the one that hosts Muzi Mei's blog. For instance, San Francisco-based Six Apart, which is home to some Chinese-language blogs, has been blocked from the mainland twice. "China would be an opportunity for us if a Western company could go in and have a dialogue, but right now that's not the case," says Anil Dash, a Six Apart vice-president.