The FCC's brand of puritanical justice may not be swift, but it is severe: this afternoon, the Guardians of Primetime Morality suggested $1.4 million in fines for ABC's transgressions against federal anti-sideboob statutes committed in a 2003 (!) episode of NYPD Blue that "dwelled" upon a "small portion of one side of [an actress's] breasts" in "shocking and titillating" fashion. (Also, an unacceptable display of partially revealed buttocks were mentioned.) ABC has already responded: "When the brief scene in question was telecast almost five years ago, this critically acclaimed drama had been on the air for a decade and the realistic nature of its story lines was well known to the viewing public," a nod to the series' envelope-pushing early days, when weekly scenes of a seminude Dennis Franz helped cement its hit status. [B&C]

Last year, China shuttered 44,000 websites and arrested 868 people as part of its campaign against Internet porn. The government employs tens of thousands to discover and censor such sites. Skeptical human rights groups call the project an effort to crack down on political dissidents ahead of the 2008 Olympics. The rest of us wonder: The Chinese government thinks it can shut down porn? [Sydney Morning Herald]

China has upped the ante on censorship, moving beyond the Great Firewall of China to mandate that all Internet video sites must be state-owned. Websites would then be required to follow the same censorship rules as television broadcasters and newspapers, which are already operated, and strictly regulated, by the state. The move is aimed at clearing up technical difficulties in regulating video on the Internet, an area that the Chinese government has sought to control but has been less effective at censoring than the standard Internet. However, plenty of ambiguities remain.

The decision by the Australian government to institute filtering of the Internet at the ISP level to protect children from pornography and violent websites is being received with anger and comparisons to the Great Firewall of China. Of course, these critics are ignoring reality.

The Middle Kingdom's net censors have finally patched up a great gaping hole in the Great Firewall of China, its not-so-effective Internet defense against the rest of the world's free press. It's now blocking all RSS feed traffic in an effort to stop the flow of information critical of the Chinese government. The Public Security Bureau has attempted to quash blogs and other forms of forbidden information ever since the great Chinese Internet surge in 2006. Of course, this ban will probably get swiftly dropped once China's intelligentsia discovers that RSS, besides being used for blog-headlines distribution, is also a vital tool for data transfer from Web-based applications. Photo by David Baron)

It's telling that seemingly the only thing worth discussing following last night's Emmys—an exercise in show business self-gratification only marginally more entertaining than watching a Lassie stand-in lick its genitals between camera set-ups—are the three words we weren't allowed to hear (to review: "screwing," "[shit]," and "goddamn") during the telecast.

We're still (pretty unsuccessfully) trying to shake off our Emmys hangover—drinking was really the only way to make it through all three-plus hours of last night's telecast without going insane from boredom—but we're now lucid enough to tackle the "mystery" of that trio of perplexing cuts (compiled in the above clip) from Ray Romano, Katherine "If You Call Me Hi-Jel I Will Fucking Cut You" Heigl, and Sally Field to the giant, profanity-erasing Sphere of Censorship hanging in the rafters of the Shrine.

The Internet Society of China forced blog service providers like Yahoo and MSN to sign a "self-disciplinary pact," says Reporters Without Borders. The pact requires blog hosts to "censor content and identify bloggers." Alas, it does not require bloggers to "add value." [Boing Boing]

Yahoo photo-sharing subsidy Flickr is unavailable in China due to a government-imposed block of the site. [Reuters]

NICK DOUGLAS — 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. Apparently that number (represented in hexadecimal here) is a key used to decrypt movies from DVDs. Because it helps bypass technological locks arguably meant to protect copyrighted information, publishing it may violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. It could definitely earn a takedown notice from a regulatory group. A user posted this number on Digg. The post rose to the front page on the social news site, whence it disappeared. So someone posted it again. That post earned a record-breaking 15,000+ diggs: that's 15,000 Digg users voting it up, one hundred times the diggs on a typical front-page post. And then it disappeared — utterly deleted. So why is this a big deal? See below.

Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.

In one of the sadder examples of sycophantic censorship, Adrants notes that Entertainment Weekly has bravely refused to run ads for coatier Cloudveil Mountain Works — meant to run during Sundance — that made almost undetectable fun of breast implants and scientology. These are not edgy, border-pushing ads, but apparently EW has no interest in even slightly offending the large-bosomed theta-fighting demographic. The injurious ads are after the jump; click to enlarge for the full horror.

Erwin Arnada, EIC of Playboy Indonesia, in happier times — last April to be exact, when Playboy Indonesia debuted. Unfortunately, The Man has cracked down on his mag, with Arnada on trial for publishing indecent material. To wit:

We noticed the above entry yesterday on Time Out New York's blog (yes, they have one); when we sent a link to a co-worker moments later, it was already gone, a victim, this mySpace posting seems to indicate, of a prudish sensibility that finds references to feminine hygiene shocking and in poor taste. Or else they just don't like waffles; it's hard to tell. We demand answers.

Madona has a heart of gold. If majority of people can keep house pets & treat them like family members, then what's wrong adopting Malawian boy, David Banda.

A Swede by the name of Jonathan Lundqvist returned from Iran last month with a bundle of National Geographics, Economists, and Wallpapers purchased from a newsstand near Tehran University. Though these and other Western mags are permitted, they're heavily censored — moreover, they're manually censored, by government readers who go through each copy and cover forbidden ladyparts with white stickers or black ink. Interestingly, news stories that show women with bare arms, knees, or cleavage generally just get a blocky white sticker, while fashion ads (like Uma Thurman above) get ink jobs that keep the clothes unobscured. Some ink gets more artfully applied than others; Uma almost looks like she's wearing a black top of some kind. After the jump, less fortunate girls just get slapped with chastity-protecting boob blobs. Lundqvist noted that the newsstand stocked several mag issues that were quite old (these photos are from Wallpaper, September 2005); one wonders what the turnaround is on hand-censoring. (The newsstand owner was also shocked that Lundqvist declined to purchase some un-censored fashion mags from "under the counter.")

After a complaint by just one viewer in Britain, Turner Broadcasting is now going through 1,500 Hanna-Barbera cartoons in order to remove scenes that glamorize smoking. That's all it takes! One huffy complaint and you too could have little pieces of history destroyed (paging Mel Gibson!). Apparently, when Fred Flintstone lights up his Marlboro Lights, tens of thousands of impressionable youth are prompted to dress like cavemen and grab some nicotine sticks — and that simply cannot stand. Along with the Flintstones, classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo will be similarly edited for offensive, smokey content. So are they just going to eliminate Shaggy altogether?

On Sunday, August 6, the Times Magazine published an article entitled, "Pop Goes Feminist," in which the word "bitch" is used about as frequently as it is amongst the girls of Laguna Beach. Most people hardly bat an eye at the word's usage, but not the publishers at Siman-James Press. In November 2005, the Times published two different articles pertaining to their author Jennifer Shahade's Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport, and also published one op-ed by Shahade herself; in all three instances, the paper refused to print the title of Shahade's book. So when "Pop Goes Feminist" contained 10 usages of "bitch," Simian-Press has resumed its bitching in a letter to the editor:

Don't ask us how we got it, or how many honkeys and limeys we had to kill for it, but after the jump is Verizon Wireless's list of inadmissable naughty words. Verizon content providers (including many online news and entertainment sources) are banned from using obvious words like "fuck" and its derivatives, a smattering of racial slurs, and "queer" and "lesbo" — always a perfect way to pick a fight with more audacious gay rights activists. Ahh, the freedom of communication under New Media.

As usual, fascist freedom-hating killjoys at the Humane Society are out to ruin everyone's good time by threatening to sue Amazon.com unless the online retailer ceases selling subscriptions to Gamecock and Feathered Warrior magazines. While mailing cockfighting magazines might technically violate the interstate commerce restrictions of the Animal Welfare Act, Amazon is taking a brave stand for free speech and violent poultry by defying the Humane Society and continuing to accept orders for the mags. Both cockfighting titles are also practically historical artifacts — Feathered Warrior's been published since 1903. And Gamecock has enjoyed an explosion in popularity due to the "bad" publicity, climbing to #105 in Amazon's rankings of over 17,000 available titles. Charming as these magazines are, we're willing to bet Amazon stocks other magazines which are even more objectionable. Send in your contenders (with Amazon links) to tips@gawker.com.