The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed that international media will have "access to uncensored internet" during the 8-24 August sportsfest in Beijing and that TV transmission of the games will not be subject to a delay.

Verbruggen concluded: "BOCOG [The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad] is progressing well with all of its operations and we are confident that our Chinese friends will put on a great Games for the athletes of the world.

Network Solutions has suspended a Web site that a Dutch lawmaker was using to promote a yet-to-be-released film critical of Islam.

The 15-minute movie, called Fitna--an Arabic word that means "test of faith in times of trial"--describes Islam as "the enemy of freedom," according to comments made by Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker and the film's maker.

"In this situation with the dialogue that's happening throughout the world we've made the choice to suspend the site as of last night," Susan Wade, spokeswoman for Network Solutions, told the Associated Press.

Tools for removing DRM from iTunes-purchased songs (myFairTunes7, QtFairUse6) have been available from the Hymn Project Web site for some time.

But on the 20th Apple sent a Cease and Desist note to Hymn's ISP, forcing the site admins to remove all download links. It is speculated that this is due to a new tool being created (Requiem) that attacks Apple's FairPlay DRM through cryptographic means instead of by copying the unprotected music from memory while it is being played.

Apple may be on dangerous ground here, since those users might now start checking out competing services.

A global day of protest against the Church of Scientology organised by internet group "Anonymous" began today with demonstrations outside the church's Australian offices.

The protestors, who said they had worn masks to remain anonymous and prevent possible legal action or retribution from the church, chanted "Church on the left, cult on the right", "Religion is free" and "We want Xenu".

In a statement released this afternoon, the Church of Scientology's Oceania branch condemned the actions of Anonymous and described the group as "cyber-terrorists".

"Anonymous is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry," the statement said.

Anti-Scientology demonstrations in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide were promoted from a blog called "anonaustralia" which offered flyers people could download and print to hand out at the demonstration and suggested attendees wear masks.

The internet should not be used as a scapegoat for society's ills, said Vint Cerf, Google's net evangelist and a founding father of the network.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme he rejected calls for strict control of what is put online.

"Most of the content on the network is contributed by the users of the internet," he said. "So what we're seeing on the net is a reflection of the society we live in."

"Maybe it is important for us to look at that society and try to do something about what's happening, what we are seeing"

He added: "When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror."

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush.

Teachers have called for websites such as YouTube to be shut down as part of efforts to prevent pupils and staff being bullied.

Delegates at the conference of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) said bullying can continue outside school and work hours.

At the PAT annual conference in Harrogate, delegates heard that bullies have posted mobile phone videos on websites, showing teachers as well as pupils being attacked or humiliated.

They backed a motion demanding that such websites be closed down.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of the charity Beatbullying, rejected the idea of closing down websites.

She said: "Calls for social networking sites like YouTube to be closed because of cyberbullying are as intelligent as calls for schools to be closed because of bullying."

The Swedish Police just can't seem to leave The Pirate Bay at bay. It's been a year and two months since the worlds largest torrent tracker, The Pirate Bay, was originally raided and shut down by police, and now they're at it again, but with claims of child pornography. Brokep, over at The Pirate Bay (TPB), got a 'heads up' from a friend that the Swedish Police are going to put the site on its porn filter blacklist; this means anyone who tries to access the site from Sweden will get redirected to another site with a message explaining that they are not allowed to visit child pornography sites.

While in most countries the photo sharing site's "SafeSearch" function can be turned off by users interested in seeing all the photos available on Flickr, that option has been axed in Germany due to "stricter legislation and penalties in that country", parent company Yahoo! said in a statement.

The limitations were introduced because German law requires websites to verify that visitors are old enough to see potentially sensitive content, such as erotic photos.

Users are now calling for boycotts. One group, Against Censorship at the Flick, even created a pool of images that German users are not allowed to see.

A right-wing Hindu group has asked public Internet centres in India to partly block access to Orkut, and is making a software to monitor abusive communities on the popular social networking site operated by Google.

The student wing of the Shiv Sena party said many Indians use Orkut to bad-mouth religious groups and disturb communal harmony, and also spread misinformation about India.

"We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns," he said.

"Or else, we will have to do that job for them." Last week, dozens of Shiv Sena workers vandalised some Internet centres, saying they were not stopping their customers from accessing Orkut groups involved in sending hate messages.