YouTube filed suit Monday against a Russian law that lets government regulators take a website offline or block content without a trial if it's considered harmful to children.

The lawsuit comes after Russian regulators blocked a video titled "Video lesson on how to cut your veins =D," in which a young woman demonstrates how to fake cutting your wrists. The Russian officials argued the video was glorifying suicide and thus was illegal under the new law, reported the Wall Street Journal

The ongoing copyright arms race between content owners and internet users has taken a new turn. Israeli firm Hola! has recently launched a suite of products that are variously designed to bypass geoblocking and accelerate internet-access speeds.

Hola! is comprised of several products:

• Browser extensions which work on Windows and Mac with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. These plugins only bypass geoblocking.
• Client software for Windows which functions as web accelerator, geoblock bypass, and censorship bypass service.
• An Android app which operates as a web accelerator only.

Well...almost. The FCC is considering plans to set-up free, high-speed public Wi-Fi in both major metropolitan areas, and rural areas. Though it would take several years to implement, this proposal could go a long way to bringing the United States up to speed with the rest of the developed world, when it comes to broadband access, speed, and price. Currently, the United States ranks 16th in the world in these areas. Microsoft and Google are two major proponents of the plan.

The long term ban on user access to YouTube is currently in force in 5 countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Turkmenistan, with Egypt the latest in a long line of other countries to face more temporary censorship. As a powerful vehicle for social, political and economic advocacy, YouTube has made an enemy of many governments who seek to limit exposure to the content that it carries. Although the main reasons for the current long term censorship of the whole site are based on political or religious doctrine, short lived boycotts have also occurred because of contentious or potentially inflammatory videos that have been uploaded or because of the threat of anti-establishment user generated video content.

In this post we'll take a look at some of the reasons why the permanent bans are in place but first let's catch up with the current situation regarding Egypt.

Malware that disables computers and demands that hefty cash payments be paid to purported law-enforcement agencies before the machines are restored is extorting as much as $5 million from end-user victims, researchers said.

The estimate, contained in a report published on Thursday by researchers from antivirus provider Symantec, is being fueled by the mushrooming growth of so-called ransomware. Once infected, computers become unusable and often display logos of local law-enforcement agencies, along with warnings that the user has violated statutes involving child pornography or other serious offenses. The warnings then offer to unlock the computers if users pay a fine as high as $200 within 72 hours.