Archive for January, 2008
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Just thirteen complaints from newspaper readers who found a Ryanair ad offensive was enough for Britain's Advertising Standards Authority to demand the budget airline cease using the ad.
The ad features an adult dressed as a schoolgirl with the headline Hottest Back To School Fares. Offensive? C'mon, a trip to the ...
Posted in Advertising Censorship, International | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV will be released worldwide on April 29, but it's unknown if Rockstar/Take 2 had to tone down the Aussie version of the game to appease Australian censors. This addition to the series is classified as MA15+ for its strong violence, strong coarse language, and drug and ...
Posted in Game Censorship | 7 Comments »
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
Introducing an R18+ rating for games is a priority for Ron Curry, the newly appointed CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia. In an interview with The Age, Ron said that the association has not yet had the opportunity to meet with the Rudd Government to discuss the issue, ...
Posted in Game Censorship | 2 Comments »
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
Melbourne?s Deakin University is developing facial scanning hardware that could provide an immediate estimation of a computer user's age by examining facial features.
The researchers told News Ltd:
Automatic estimations of someone?s age could be used in software to stop young internet users accessing pornography, to provide an alternative to fingerprint scanning ...
Posted in Internet Censorship | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
Xinhua news agency revealed Wednesday that China shut down 44,000 web sites in 2007 as part their campaign to clean up the Internet. Authorities also arrested nearly 900 people as a result.
AFP says:
Another 1,911 people have received unspecified "penalties", the Xinhua news agency said, citing a statement from a ...
Posted in International, Internet Censorship | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Make sure your customers don't download music they shouldn't be, or risk jail and fines of up to 60k. That's the warning MIPI (pseudo cops/Music Industry Piracy Investigations) gave Aussie Internet cafe owners yesterday.
MIPI told SMH that "it will also consider civil action against internet cafes simply unaware their customers ...
Posted in Copyright | No Comments »
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
The Australian Family Association says the creators of a play that depicts Jesus as a gay man have committed "a big enough crime" by neglecting to treat Christianity and Christian believers with more sensitivity.
Corpus Christi, which is set to open at the New Theatre in Newtown on February 7, shows ...
Posted in Theatre Censorship | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
Remember that Yellow Pages? ad on tele lately where Crackers The Clown gets the living crap beaten out of him by a bunch of feral kids at a birthday party. Well, it's causing the clown community a whole lot of anguish.
So being clowns, they responded like only a clown would. ...
Posted in Advertising Censorship | No Comments »
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Jay Jays will remove the Little Loser line of clothes from their stores window displays and will not restock shirts that carry alcohol-related messages or sexual innuendos.
The removal comes after concerned parent groups and the Family First New Zealand lobby group demanded the shirts be removed from sale. Family First ...
Posted in Clothing Censorship, Parental outrage | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Stilgherrian's latest article in Crikey explains why Child Wise?s Bernadette McMenamin got hammered for her comments in The Australian: Geeks get angry when their knowledge isn?t respected. Too right. There's a little more to it though as Stil explains:
Two completely different problems are conflated. One, preventing distribution of already-illegal child ...
Posted in Censorship News Bites, Internet Censorship | No Comments »
