Google announced that the number of content removal requests submitted by governments have spiked in the first half of the year. From January through June 2012, there were there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content, almost double the previous six-month period. Here is the chart showing the recent spike in content removal requests: From January to June 2012, the following countries made the most requests to remove content: Turkey (501) United States (273) Germany (247) Brazil (191) United Kingdom (97) Gover [...]

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Twitter is changing how it handles legal requests against individual tweets that violate copyright. Rather than remove the tweets altogether, Twitter will now hide the tweets and show a message alerting readers that the original tweet is being withheld. GigaOm first reported the news on Sunday, following a tweet from Jeremy Kessel, Twitter's manager of legal policy. Kessel linked to the new policy in Twitter's help center, which reads as follows: In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withhe [...]

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Earlier this year, Twitter added the ability to block Twitter accounts and tweets by a country-by-country basis, in case it needed to respond to legal requests. Nine months later, the company has done this for the first time, for a hate group based in Germany. The Financial Times spotted the action and reported it in a blog post today. The story come out of information Twitter sent to Chilling Effects last month, part of Twitter's mechanism for being transparent about censorship requests. The Chilling Effects filing reveals that a Germany ministry (the Ministry of the Interior for Lower [...]

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Until now, Twitter's not had the ability to censor certain tweets or accounts, to prevent them from being seen -- if legally required -- by users in particular countries. That's now changed, though Twitter stresses that it hasn't yet used this new ability and that should it have to, anything withheld will be disclosed. Twitter has shared the news on its blog, saying: As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are simi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Legal