(14 Jan 2021) Twitter last week permanently suspended the account of Sci-Hub, the website that has posted millions of freely accessible copies of scientific articles pirated from subscription journals. Twitter said Sci-Hub had violated its policy against promoting “counterfeit goods,” according to Sci-Hub’s founder, Alexandra Elbakyan. The notification came shortly after a 6 January court…
Taiwan’s government plans to amend legislation to make it clear that companies must apply for approval before publishing books associated with the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army. (28 Dec 2020) Taiwan’s government plans to regulate China’s state-affiliated publications by requiring local publishers to seek approval if they wish to bring these publications…
(1 August 2018) Renowned Hong Kong author Dung Kai-cheung has penned a satirical post asking the authorities to withdraw his 2014 “author of the year” title after Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s latest novel was classified as “indecent” by the city’s Obscene Articles Tribunal. Killing Commendatore, published in 2017, was put into the second tier of…
(25 July 2018) The latest novel from Haruki Murakami, Japan’s most celebrated literary export, has fallen foul of censors in Hong Kong, where it was ruled to be indecent by a tribunal and removed from display at a book fair. Hong Kong’s Obscene Articles Tribunal announced last week that the Chinese-language edition of Murakami’s Kishidancho…
(27 June 2018) The Hong Kong government has been accused of moving several LGBTQIA-themed children’s books out of public view in the city’s public libraries, following complaints by an anti-gay group, reports the Standard. The Hong Kong government’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) confirmed some titles have been moved to a closed location where…
(27 November 2017) Reacting to reports of out-in-the-open porn viewing, public sex, drug use and theft at city libraries, a pair of City Council leaders is proposing to tighten the rules at these sanctuaries for children, the elderly and book nerds. “I know that taxpayers in the city do not intend for their money to…
(4 August 2014, Singapore) The National Library Board (NLB) will keep separate the team that selects books for acquisition, and the team that reviews the books, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said in Parliament recently as reported by The Straits Times. Dr. Yaacob was speaking in the aftermath of the National Library Board’s banning of three children’s…
(19 November 2013) Swinburne University of Technology Library has given us a reason to be in Melbourne in the coming weeks: the 17th Japanese Film Festival. The library blog draws our attention to Library Wars, a blockbuster in which “The Library Defence Force is a team of trained and armed Librarians who risk their lives…
Google thinks it’s important to shine a light on how government actions could affect its users. When Google first launched the Transparency Report in early 2010, there wasn’t much data out there about how governments sometimes hamper the free flow of information on the web. Google took first step toward greater transparency by disclosing the…