I have been teaching "Intellectual Property" (although I dislike the term) among other subjects at a Masters Degree in the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV (Spain) for over 5 years. Two weeks ago I was scheduled (invited by the ETSIA Student Union and Linux Users' Group for the celebration of "Culture Week") to give a conference in one of the university's buildings. During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works.

The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association "Promusicae" as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.

It is not so important that I lost my job even though my ratings from the student satisfaction questionnaire were the highest of the whole Program, and I never violated any rule, contract, or regulation. I don't even mind so much that I never received a direct phone call from anyone objecting to my ideas or procedures. What I regret the most is to have suffered CENSORSHIP inside my own university (in a European Union member state, of all places on earth), and as a result of pressures and threats coming from Collecting Societies and Recording and Movie Industries (on my website you have proof of all that).

In March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent that rescued the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena. U.S. commission on the incident produced a report which public version was censored for more than one third. Now Italian press is reporting that all confidential information in the report is available to the public, just by copying "hidden" text from the PDF and pasting it in a word processor (Italian). The uncensored report can now be directly downloaded (evil .DOC format, sorry)

Utah's governor has defied criticism from technology firms and free speech activists to sign into law a bill designed to protect children from Internet pornography.

ISPs in Utah have the option of blocking sites or providing customers with third=party filtering products unless they want to risk felony charges under the new law. The law states that: "Upon request by a consumer, a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry." Internet content providers that create or host data in Utah must properly rate the data or risk possible criminal charges.

Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union go further and warn the bill violates the US Constitution's First Amendment on free speech and the Commerce Clause. Six other states have had similar legislation ruled unconstitutional, resulting in huge legal bills for residents, Media Coalition director David Horowitz told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

In several US states, Imax cinemas - including some at science museums - are refusing to show movies that mention the subject or suggest that Earth's origins do not conform with biblical descriptions.

In most southern states, theatre officials found recent test screenings of several of these films triggered accusations from viewers that the films were blasphemous.

This point was emphasised by Bayley Silleck, who wrote and directed Cosmic Voyage. Many institutions across America were coming under pressure about issues relating to natural selection. 'They have to be extremely careful as to how they present anything relating to evolution,' he said.

Legislation that would allow people to automatically skip over objectionable content in movies viewed at home sailed through a key House subcommittee on Thursday and looks to be on the fast track.

The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property passed S167/HR357, known as the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, with little debate. The full Senate passed its identical bill on a voice vote on Feb. 1.

The legislation would essentially affirm the legality of software such as ClearPlay, which automatically edits supposedly objectionable scenes out of popular movie titles. Several DVD players now come ClearPlay-enabled and work with more than 1,000 movie titles.

"Just as the author of a book should not be able to force someone to read that book in any particular manner or order, a studio or director should not be able to force parents or their children to watch a movie in a particular way," said bill sponsor and subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).

"Try searching Google Images for abu ghraib, lynndie england, or Lynndie's boyfriend charles graner and note how you don't get any pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war. Now try it with some of their competitors, like AltaVista, Lycos, or Yahoo!. Google used to be able to find them, as is discussed in this AnandTech forum thread." I'm guesing that this is another case of our administration confusing "National Security" with "Politically Undesirable".

The ALA (American Library Association) recently published the new 100 most frequently banned books list of 2003. Of the banned books, Harry Potter was in the number 7th place in the most frequently banned. Also included were 'Where's Waldo' and 'The Giver' along with 'Goosebumps' and 'How to Eat Fried Worms.' These books were banned from various public institutions. This means that they were banned from various public libraries and public schools around the nation. (private schools, libraries, and institutions of higher learning don't count) The ALA encourages the people of the United States to fight against the book bans and read a banned book today!

British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy.

Known as Cleanfeed, the project has been developed in consultation with the Home Office and will go live by the end of the month, The Observer can reveal. Other major players in the internet market, such as Energis and Thus, which owns rival Demon Internet, are said to be preparing to block banned sites.

Blocking websites is highly controversial and until now has been associated only with oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and China, which have censored sites associated with dissidents. But many in the field of child protection believe that the explosion of paedophile sites justifies the crackdown.

Bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted, US Defence secretary has banned the use of cameraphones by US forces in Iraq. The Business quotes a source inside the Pentagon as saying that the United States suspects that a significant number of the digital photos and videos of prisoner abuse seeping out of Iraq were taken using cameraphones.

Although most cameraphones are configured to capture video snippets (circa 10 seconds long) so that they can be sent as multimedia messages (MMS), such handsets can also be set to video for as long as there is storage space left. Which, with SD/MMC cards for cameraphones reaching 128Mb, means hours rather than minutes.

Controversial director Michael Moore has said film studio Disney is refusing to release his new documentary, which heavily criticises President Bush.

But Disney has "officially decided to prohibit" Miramax from distributing the film, the director said on his website.

Fahrenheit 911 links Mr Bush with powerful families in Saudi Arabia, including that of Osama Bin Laden, and attacks his actions before and after 11 September.

Disney bought Miramax 10 years ago but retained the rights to block films it deemed against its interests, such as adult-rated films.

"But there's nothing they can do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer - because, after all, it is a free country."

But Zenia Mucha, a Disney spokesman, said: "We advised both [Moore's] agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed. That decision stands."