censorship
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China says Android can stay, misses Google’s point
A Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesperson has today delivered a statement affirming China’s willingness to allow Android devices to operate within the country without restriction so long as they adhere to the nation’s laws. This means that whatever China’s response to Google no longer obeying its censorship edicts may be, it won’t be to disallow Android — which kind of makes sense considering the growing roster of OPhones out there, all running a remixed version of the dessert-loving mobile OS. Then again, Google’s latest power play was to hold back Android handsets from entering China, so we’re not entirely sure how much the Mountain View outfit cares about the Middle Kingdom’s apparent benevolence.
China says Android can stay, misses Google’s point originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not
It’d be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you’ll sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google’s speech-to-text engine — it replaces the notorious four-letter F and S words with a ‘####,’ which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD’s now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has a good reason for this:
We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.
Kudos for this consideration, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an on / off option — after all, it’s not like we’re asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we’ll promise to use a swear jar.
Google’s Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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IE security flaw exploited in recent Google attacks
IE security flaw exploited in recent Google attacks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google to stop censoring Chinese search results, will “review the feasibility” of Chinese business operations
Google’s been taking bad press about Chinese search result filtering for years, and now it looks like the company simply fed up: it’s going to stop filtering Google.cn and it may pull of out the country entirely. The move comes on the heels of coordinated attacks on Gmail, which Google says were aimed at accessing the accounts of prominent human rights activists — and Google also says that it’s not the only company suffering such attacks in China. Only two accounts are said to have been hacked, but many more have apparently been accessed by third parties using malware or phishing schemes to obtain passwords. Google also says that these attacks have forced it to reconsider “the feasibility of our business operations in China,” and that it’s going to take the next few weeks to talk to the Chinese government and figure out a way to operate an unfiltered search engine in a legal way, and if it can’t be done, it’ll close Google.cn and potentially leave China completely. A gutsy move, to be sure — but seriously, Google, what took you so long?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Google to stop censoring Chinese search results, will “review the feasibility” of Chinese business operations originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored
Microsoft promised us it would remove the silly content censorship from the Zune HD Twitter app ASAP, and here we are a day later with version 1.1, which lets you see all the schoolyard swears you could ever want. High five, assholes. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing a huge performance improvement: it’s a tiny bit snappier, but we’re still seeing unresponsive buttons, laggy scrolling, and random WiFi disconnects. On to version 1.2!
P.S.- Screenshot of the new non-censoring app in action after the break. Be careful, it could damage more delicate constitutions.
Continue reading Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored
Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Microsoft updating Zune HD Twitter to stop censoring tweets
Microsoft definitely copped some of Apple’s lame App Store antics with its tweet-censoring Zune HD Twitter app, so now it’s time for the infuriatingly vague PR-speak backtracking — Redmond just pinged us to say it’s “identified the issue” with the Twitter app and that a naughty words-enabling update is coming “as soon as possible.” That’s a pretty lame response, considering the “issue” is that the app is coded to actively censor tweets — not exactly an “oops” moment, you know?
Here’s the entire statement:
The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device; however these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state.
Flack silliness aside, it’s still the right step — let’s hope this update addresses the performance issues we noticed as well.
Microsoft updating Zune HD Twitter to stop censoring tweets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Amazon clarifies Kindle book-deletion policy, can still delete books
Amazon might have been extremely contrite about remotely deleting 1984 from Kindles, but a Jeff Bezos apology and an offer to restore the book doesn’t necessarily add up to a meaningful change in policy. As part of the settlement with that student who sued over the 1984 situation, Amazon’s had to clarify its remote-deletion guidelines, and they’re pretty much the same as ever: they’ll hit the kill switch if you ask for a refund or if your credit card is declined, if a judge orders them to, or if they need to protect the Kindle or the network from malware. Sounds simple, right?
Well, sort of — saying they’ll delete content at the behest of judicial or regulatory decree pretty much leaves the door open to exactly the same situation as the 1984 debacle, just a couple procedural steps down the line and with less blame placed on Amazon. If you’ll recall, 1984 was deleted after the publisher was sued for not having the proper rights, and Amazon took the proactive step of deleting the content — and although Amazon won’t do that on its own anymore, all it takes now is one strongly-worded motion before a sympathetic judge and we’re back at square one. That’s pretty troubling — no judge can order a physical bookseller to come into your house and retrieve a book they’ve sold you, and saying things are different for the Kindle raises some interesting questions about what Amazon thinks “ownership” means. We’ll see how this one plays out in practice, though — we’re hoping Amazon never has to pull that switch again.
Filed under: Handhelds
Amazon clarifies Kindle book-deletion policy, can still delete books originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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China backtracks, makes Green Dam ‘optional’
China’s efforts to preload the Green Dam censorware on all PCs in the country have been going pretty poorly so far, with accusations of software piracy and manufacturer displeasure causing delays. Now the government is backing down from that stance, stating that the original regulation wasn’t “expressed clearly, and gave everyone the impression that [Green Dam] was mandatory.” For home computers, that means the internet filtering software will likely continue to be bundled as an optional (and inactive) extra — something Acer, ASUS, Lenovo and Sony have been doing since early July — but if you’re at school, an internet cafe or some other public access point, expect to see Green Dam running, alive and well. Censorship is dead, long live censorship.
[Via CNET]
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
China backtracks, makes Green Dam ‘optional’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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