"State Administration for Radio, Film & Television said that TV dramas that involve characters traveling back in time “lack positive thoughts and meaning.” The guidelines discouraging this type of show said that some “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.”"

Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like. To put it in a more formal framework: not all social capital created by the Internet is bound to produce "social goods"; "social bads" are inevitable as well. The political scientist Robert Putnam, who was instrumental in promoting the notion of "social capital" in popular discourse, was not blind to such possibilities. In "Bowling Alone," his most famous book, he explicitly cautioned against the "kumbaya interpretation of social capital," stating that "networks…are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive."

"It is hard to imagine a better resurrection for a country that has been devastated by financial corruption than to turn facilitating transparency and justice into a business model."

"I'll give you an example: repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn't exist," Atkinson said on the air. "That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary."

This morning, AdelaideNow took great delight in posting a picture of Fornarino posing with a Mac and his young daughter. He's a second-year law student who moved to the area last year and "lives in a flat on Port Rd, about 500m from Mr. Atkinson's electorate office."

"Twitter is blocked in China, but yesterday the Chinese twitters made tag #GoogleCN climbed to the top ten of twitter's keywords. It is a bit touching, and a bit hopeful - A profitable, foreign company get this means filtering and block still not make Chinese people (at least some of them) losing their eyesight and judgment to what is good and what is bad.

However, they are losing, and may lose faster, along with the Cinternet's separation from the Internet. Here are the top 20 websites according to Alexa:"

"An anti-censorship group holding an event Sunday at the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, was disrupted by UN officials who demanded removal of a poster that mentioned Internet firewalls in China."

But the whole episode reminded me that, in spite of the Web's seemingly secure and consumer-friendly facade, there is still some Wild West left out there. And 4Chan is the OK Corral. So like a middle-aged Australian businessman going on walkabout, I decided to spend a couple of weeks embedded in this famously depraved, raucously fertile community.

"Anonymous Iran is a collaboration between The Pirate Bay — operators of the world’s largest torrent site, convicted in April of copyright infringement — and Anonymous, the prankster collective dedicated to exposing 'Scientology’s crimes.'"

"If you set your Google SafeSearch filter on "strict filtering" and search for clitoris, you get zero returns. But if you try a Google SafeSearch "strict filtering" search for penis, you get... 33,000,000 returns."

Mike Godwin (General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) provides an interesting afterword on the recent Internet Watch Foundation's blocking of a Wikipedia article.

"This is the entire N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton album edited down into just the "explicit" content."

"A heart-warming tale of same-sex love and parenting among New York penguins has topped the list of books most complained about in American libraries for the second year running."

"Wikileaks [wikileaks.org] is reporting that the Wikimedia Foundation [wikimedia.org] is suppressing a news item on Wikinews [wikinews.org] about Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. ... all of the above sites are managed using the MediaWiki [mediawiki.org] softwar

"Mr Sokolov described the photo as political provocation and said he was pulling it, together with 16 other works, from a show at Paris's Maison Rouge exhibition hall."

"...a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry has produced an exclusive study on the key mechanism of the Chinese official system of online censorship, surveillance and propaganda"

"A popular Spanish singer has been banned from performing in a [state-run] Caracas stadium over remarks he made about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."

Linden Labs on getafirstlife.com; "In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected."

"Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.”"

"Spain's High Court has ordered the seizure of all copies of a magazine that carried a cartoon of Crown Prince Felipe and his wife having sex."

"Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007"

"They closed my office door behind them, sat down, took out notepads and pens, and asked if I had a few minutes to speak with them about Tor."

"A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti- Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan."

"She had never seen it. She had no idea that had ever happened."