More and more countries are censoring the Internet

[a] parliamentary commission approved a proposal Thursday allowing Turkey to block Web sites that are deemed insulting to the founder of modern Turkey.” Just two days ago, Thailand’s military-appointed government blocked access to on-line video-sharing Web site YouTube because of a YouTube video that mocked the country’s monarch (see Wednesday’s blog post). 

The International Herald Tribune reports that “[t]he United States may file a complaint at the World Trade Organization as early as next week over what it calls China’s piracy of copyrighted movies and books, according to four people briefed by the Bush administration.”

The Mercury News writes that “[r]esearchers at security company Kaspersky Lab have created the first virus designed to infect Apple’s portable media player.” However, “[t]he company said the software program, Podloso, ‘does not present a real threat; it simply demonstrates that it is theoretically possible to create malicious programs for such devices.’”

Downloadsquad has an interview with EMI Vice President Jeanne Meyer about EMI’s recent announcement that it will in the future sell digital downloads without DRM. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Sam Zell, who agreed to a takeover this week of Tribune Co.,” said on Thursday that “there needed to be ‘a new deal and new formulas’ between newspapers and Internet companies”, adding that Google would not be very profitable “if all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing.”