[governance] USPTO blocks web access to "Political/Activist Groups" including KEI, ACLU, EFF, Public Citizen, Redstate, DailyKos

Sat Sep 22 00:56:53 EDT 2012

>
> Snip
>

James Tyre:

>  How any of the blacklisted sites could be found to be terrorist sites is
> incomprehensible.  This was never supposed to be a pretty standard filter.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> Incidentally, the filter is the handiwork of Blue Coat, which did such a
> marvelous job of promoting free expression on the Internet in Syria, among
> other places, see, e.g.,
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/blue-coat-acknowledges-syrian-government-use-its-products
> ****
>
> **
>
What is also worrying is that here you have both US and Syria using the
same contractor, in this case Blue Coat to  or "filter" to block access.

We are seeing the trends in both developed democracies and countries where
democracy is still a challenge that freedom of expression.

Today I was visiting the USPTO, for a high level meeting on global
> negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine. The meeting
> was held in the Stockholm Room, on the 2nd floor of the USPTO library, at
> the main USPTO building at 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA. The USPTO
> also uses these meeting rooms for its Global Intellectual Property Academy
> (GIPA). The USPTO offers free Wifi for the visitors. But when I tried to
> login to http://keionline.org, I received this message:****
>
> Access Denied (content_filter_denied) ****
>
> Your request was denied because this URL contains content that is
> categorized as: "Political/Activist Groups" which is blocked by USPTO
> policy. If you believe the categorization is inaccurate, please contact the
> USPTO Service Desk and request a manual review of the URL.****
>
> For assistance, contact USPTO OCIO IT Service Desk. (io-proxy4)****
>
> We checked and found that the USPTO blocks access to a number of groups
> that have followed SOPA and the TPP intellectual property negotiations,
> particularly those critical of the USPTO positions on intellectual property
> issues. Among the NGOs that were blocked were aclu.org, cdt.org,
> citizen.org, eff.org, healthgap.org, keionline.org and publicknowledge.org.
> Among the sites NOT BLOCKED were the industry lobby groups BSA, MPPA, RIIA,
> and PhRMA. ****
>
> The USPTO also selectively blocks certain blogs and new sites, including,
> for example, dailykos.coms, firedoglake.com, redstate.org,
> rushlimbaugh.com and talkingpointsmemo.com., ****
>
> Here are examples of what the USPTO blocks, and does not block. ****
>
> *Blocked NGOs*****
>
> aclu.org
> cdt.org
> citizen.org
> eff.org
> healthgap.org
> keionline.org
> publicknowledge.org ****
>
> *NGOs that are NOT blocked*****
>
> bsa.org
> creativecommons.org
> iipa.com
> iipi.org
> ipi.org
> mpaa.org
> PhRMA.org
> pubpat.org
> RIIA.Org
> stockholm-network.org ****
>
> *Blocked Blogs and news outlets*****
>
> dailykos.coms
> firedoglake.com
> redstate.org
> rushlimbaugh.com
> talkingpointsmemo.com ****
>
> *Blogs and new outlets that are NOT blocked *****
>
> 71patent.blogspot.com
> aljazeera.com
> boingboing.net
> dailycaller.com
> democracynow.org
> drudgereport.com
> groklaw.net
> huffingtonpost.com
> ip-watch.org
> itcblog.com
> lessig.org
> michaelgeist.ca
> nationalreview.com
> spicyipindia.blogspot.com
> techdirt.com
> washingtonmonthly.com ****
>
>    - James Love's blog <http://keionline.org/blog/jamie> ****
>    - Add new comment<http://keionline.org/comment/reply/1548#comment-form>
>    ****
>    - Printer-friendly version <http://keionline.org/print/1548> ****
>    - Send by email <http://keionline.org/printmail/1548> ****
>
> *Cause of foul up <http://keionline.org/node/1548#comment-7970>*
>
> Submitted by Anonymous dude or dudess on 19. September 2012 - 12:02. ****
>
> 'Ex-Patent Examiner here. If this was anything other than a contractor
> foul-up, I'll eat my hat. There were a dozen instances where I'd need to
> call the help desk to access a website that would enable me to do my job.'
> If true, this means no one at USPTO tried to access those sites and asked
> for the filter to be removed since it was implemented.****
>
>    - reply <http://keionline.org/comment/reply/1548/7970> ****
>
>
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Twitter: @SalanietaT
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