We've seen so many states with grandstanding politicians trying to ban the sale of certain video games to kids -- despite the fact that every single law that's been passed along those lines in the US has been thrown out as unconstitutional. In the end, politicians know this -- yet they still keep pushing for such laws, so that, come election time, they can make a false claim in their campaign ads about how they "protected the children." The truth is, all they really did, was waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit that was a clear loss from the beginning. That's why it's great to finally see one state at least investigate the issue a bit, with a Pennsylvania task force quite clearly telling state legislators that such a video game sales law is a bad idea. Instead, the task force suggests that, if the legislature really wants to do something, it could fund more research into the impact of video games on kids, or more reasonably, it could fund more educational programs, to discuss the impact of video games. So, now the question is whether or not politicians in Pennsylvania will heed this advice... or if they'll still push forward on a plan to waste taxpayer money?

You may recall that BT was one of the bigger supporters of Phorm, the controversial clickstream tracking system that would allow ISPs like BT to insert their own behaviorally targeted ads into your web surfing. The company held extensive trials with the system, without letting users know that their clickstream data was being sold to advertisers in order to do more targeted advertising. Now that UK officials have decided that Phorm is legal, if clearly explained to consumers, BT has chosen a funny way to make sure there's clarity around the system. Slashdot points out that BT has apparently banned discussion of Phorm on its forums and erased earlier forum discussions about the technology. How's that for openness?

Is it really so hard to allow open discussion on such a topic? If BT believes that it's reasonable to use the technology, then why not explain why clearly, responding to the critics? The only reason to erase these discussions is if BT knows that what's it's doing is highly questionable, and BT would rather not have to explain itself.

We've written an awful lot about the rise of political blogging in Malaysia. The government there has had something of a love-hate affair with blogs for quite some time, starting with a plan to force blogs to register, to later telling various candidates for government they were requiring them to blog, to having a special agency set up to respond to bloggers. More recently, though, things have taken a very negative turn, as various opposition party bloggers were able to use their blog popularity to catapult themselves into office, the ruling party began cracking down, even sentencing leading bloggers to jail.

The good news on that front, however, is that a court has decided that the arrest was illegal and the blogger is to be freed. Though, you get the feeling that the government will continue to try to punish him.

In the meantime, one of the most interesting political bloggers in Malaysia may be the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who apparently championed many of the free speech restrictions that allow the crackdowns. We had mentioned his embrace of blogging about a year and a half ago, and now the NY Times has written up a more detailed article, claiming that now that he's no longer in power, he's had quite a change of heart concerning restrictions on freedom of the press. Of course, much of it seems to come off as whining that people won't listen to him any more:

"Where is the press freedom? Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!"

While it is a good thing that he's realized how problematic free speech restrictions are, there is a bit of karmic justice in having him find himself stymied by rules that he championed and used to his own advantage when in power.

It would appear that the Turkish government and courts are a bit trigger happy when it comes to flat-out banning websites for almost no reason at all. In the past, we've reported on Turkish bans on YouTube, Slide, Wordpress.com and Google Groups. Now, via Slashdot, we see that a Turkish court has banned all of Google's Blogger service including all of the blogs hosted at blogspot.com. Unlike the bans of the other sites, which happened after people who were offended by content found on each complained, it appears that the Blogger ban was due to a Turkish TV service, Digiturk, which was upset that some Blogger users were posting links to unauthorized streams of Turkish football matches.

Yes, you read that correctly. Because a few bloggers had linked to (not even hosted) some unauthorized streams of a sporting event, Digiturk was able to ban all of Blogger. At this point, you have to wonder why Turkey allows the internet at all.

At last count, at least 10 states had passed laws banning the sale or rental of violent video games to children, and every single one of them has been thrown out as unconstitutional. At this point, any state that passes such a law is knowingly throwing away taxpayer money to defend the law in court -- and, for the most part they're doing it to pander to the electorate, so they can talk about how they "protected the children" despite more and more evidence that violent video games aren't a threat to kids.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all of these state laws is the one in California, where our governor starred in numerous violent films. Yet, Schwarzenegger has been at the forefront of supporting this law. After a lower court followed all those other states in throwing out the law as unconstitutional, the Schwarzenegger administration quickly appealed, and the new case is set to begin this week, with most noting that it's unlikely that California will somehow buck the trend and get the law approved. Instead, we get a waste of taxpayer money (in a state that's going bankrupt) so that an action hero of a ton of violent films can claim he's "protecting the children" from viewing a little show violence.

We've been trying to follow the situation with the government crackdown on opposition bloggers in Malaysia, and with different stories coming out every day, it got a little confusing. So when we wrote about a blogger being released following a public outcry, it was actually a different blogger than the original one we had reported as arrested. It now turns out that the original blogger has actually been immediately sentenced to two years in jail without any trial -- and those two years can be extended indefinitely at will by the government. As for the other blogger who was released, apparently that's just a temporary thing, as he's still facing charges as well. Apparently, the ruling party seems to think that by jailing opposition bloggers it will shut them up. This wouldn't be the first time that the government underestimated the response to trying to silence critical bloggers.

It's hard to figure out what the government of Malaysia is thinking in its ongoing trouble in dealing with critical bloggers (some of whom were so powerful that they got elected). Last week, we noted that one of the more popular bloggers, whose blog had been ordered blocked by ISPs was arrested, just as the block on his blog was removed. Not surprisingly, the arrest led to a public outcry, and the government has now relented and freed the blogger, who quickly posted an anti-government rant on his blog, promising not to back down. The whole thing makes you wonder how tone deaf the leading party politicians in Malaysia are that they didn't expect this to happen. Arresting an opposition blogger was bound to create further outcry, and this move only helped legitimize the points he's been making. You would think that at least someone in the ruling party would have been savvy enough to recognize that this was inevitable.

It appears that Google's YouTube subsidiary is caving to various government pressure concerning whatever videos the government doesn't like. This started a while back when Google gave in to pressure from Thailand's government to ban videos that made fun of the country's king. But, now the pace is ramping up. Last week, Google gave in to Senator Lieberman, agreeing to ban videos from terrorists, and the latest is giving in to pressure from the UK government to ban videos that show weapons used to intimidate people. Now, YouTube has always banned hate speech or threatening videos, so this new ban seems to go above and beyond that -- including videos that show weapons being used to intimidate that aren't threatening videos themselves. That seems pretty pointless again. The same videos will quickly appear on other sites, and rather than using YouTube as a way to track down anyone who might be breaking the law, Google is helping the UK government put their head in the sand and pretend no one ever is filmed doing anything bad with weapons.

We've seen plenty of stories of silly politicians trying to ban access to social networks in high schools, but in colleges especially things like Facebook are basically the way students communicate with each other. So it's rather surprising to find out (via Michael Geist) that Concordia University has banned access to Facebook on any computer connected to the university network via a wired connection. If you're using WiFi, the university allows it. First of all, that seems like a really strange split. Why should it matter whether the connection is wired or wireless? Even odder is the explanation for this:

The university has decided to implement these restrictions because of concerns that the continuing reliability of the Concordia network could be compromised because of spam, viruses and leaks of confidential information related to Facebook use.

There are spam, viruses and leaks of confidential info all over the internet. So why ban Facebook? And those same issues face wireless users as well as wired users. The whole thing sounds like someone who was very confused overreacted to something in the wrong way.

While Disney is quite often painted as the leader of the pack when it comes to ridiculous and draconian copyright-related proposals, much of that can be attributed to former CEO Michael Eisner, who helped push for the Bono Copyright Extension Act to "protect" Mickey Mouse. Eisner, famously, loves to talk about the history of intellectual property law -- though, he's almost entirely wrong, attributing much of copyright law to Abraham Lincoln, who had nothing to do with it. After Eisner left, Robert Iger took over, and for a while, it seemed as if he might actually understand that he needed to learn how to embrace new technologies and not treat users as criminals.

Apparently Iger doesn't fully believe that, though. Joining with previous statements made by the folks in charge of NBC Universal and Viacom, Iger was recently in London saying that ISPs should ban users who are caught downloading unauthorized material. While UK ISPs have agreed to send out industry warning letters, so far they've resisted banning users from the internet. Iger, however, thinks that's not enough:

"We are simply asking for people who are downloading illegal files to get a warning initially then to get their service cut off."

He then falsely suggests that ISPs are effectively relying on their content to be effective. This is the lie that Big Content likes to tell itself. That it's really Hollywood content that gets people online, rather than communication tools or other content. But to Iger, the internet's main purpose is apparently to distribute Disney's content:

"Most distribution businesses succeed because they have a distribution process in place. They also have product. We contribute to that mightily. It is a joint partnership."

No, actually, it's not a partnership. Disney's using the internet as a platform because that's what customers demand. If Disney doesn't like it, it's free not to bother -- but everyone knows that wouldn't make much sense. And, then, of course, Iger (the same guy who said the entertainment industry should recognize that file sharing was just customers showing content companies what they wanted) falsely equates copyright infringement to "stealing." So much for Disney taking the high road.