The Australian government approved an amended copyright law late last year that made subtle changes to what types of sites ISPs can be ordered to be blocked by the courts, and the process by which that order is obtained. Essentially, the changes amounted to allowing blocking of sites with the primary "effect" being copyright infringement, rather than the primary "purpose", along with an expedited process for getting additional site-blocking orders for sites that set up mirror sites to route around the blocks.

Writer Gareth Roberts has been dropped from an upcoming Doctor Who anthology over "offensive" transphobic tweets, BBC Books has confirmed.

"It is impossible for a person to change their biological sex. I don't believe anybody is born in the wrong body," he said.

Ebury's decision to drop Roberts over his tweets, which it says conflicts with its "values as a publisher", has sparked debate on social media.

A startup is claiming to have signed age verification contracts with a host of smut site operators – and is hoping 40 per cent of Britons will display their privates to it in July.

The company has not responded to The Register's enquiries about its business model, given that its website boasts that it charges neither consumers or porn companies for its services.

With the British government seemingly hellbent on forcing Britons to compromise their privacy and personal data in order to access certain internet services used by many folk, whether or not they admit it, companies like these are going to be springing up everywhere.

And as if they were attempting to show just how absolutely insane the law would be for the internet, multiple European agencies (we can debate if they're "competent") decided to send over 500 totally bogus takedown demands to the Internet Archive last week, claiming it was hosting terrorist propaganda content.

Included in the list of takedown demands are a bunch of the Archive's "collection pages" including the entire Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts, it's collection of over 15 million freely downloadable texts, the famed Prelinger Archive of public domain films and the Archive's massive Grateful Dead collection. Oh yeah, also a page of CSPAN recordings.

One of the many concerns about the upload filters of the EU's Copyright Directive is that they could lead to censorship, even if that is not the intention. The problem is that once a filtering mechanism is in place to block unauthorized copies of materials, it is very hard to stop its scope being widened beyond copyright infringement.

Even though the report was paid for by the German public, obtained legally -- and can still be requested by anyone -- FragDenStaat is not allowed to distribute it. The Regional Court in Cologne has ruled that would be an infringement of the German State's copyright, and ordered it to be taken down.

The new policy, which will be officially implemented next week, highlights the malleable nature of Facebook’s policies, which govern the speech of more than 2 billion users worldwide.

Specifically, Facebook will now ban content that includes explicit praise, support, or representation of white nationalism or separatism.

The minister earlier called on social media giants to "purge" material promoting self-harm and suicide in the wake of links to a teenager's suicide.

Papyrus, a charity that works to prevent youth suicide, said it has been contacted by around 30 families in the past week who believe social media had a part to play in their children's suicides.

Mr Hancock said he was "horrified" to learn of Molly's death and feels "desperately concerned to ensure young people are protected".

Netflix has removed from its streaming service in Saudi Arabia an episode of a satirical comedy that was critical of the kingdom's rulers.

In the episode that was removed, Minhaj criticises Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.

In the episode, Minhaj also criticises Saudi involvement in the conflict in Yemen.

Parliament is considering reforming the GRA so that all that is required for a legal gender change is self-declaration. If you say you’re a woman, a man, or nonbinary, that’s what you are.

While reforming the law is largely, but not entirely, supported by trans people and their allies, supporters have faced fierce resistance from a number of feminists who are concerned that predatory males will use self-id to gain access to female-only spaces.

The police didn’t tell Linehan which specific tweets Harrop complained about, but shortly before the police visited Linehan’s house, Harrop had appeared in a televised debate with Posie Parker, a feminist writer who is opposed to changing the GRA.

After Linehan saw the debate, he posted a link to the video, tweeting, “Have a look at this again and ask yourself why Parker is banned from various platforms, while Harrop isn’t. Could it be anything to do with...male privilege? Could it have anything to do with men deciding what women are and are not allowed to say?” The next day, the police dropped in at his house.

Tumblr will permanently ban adult content from its platform on December 17th in a move that will eradicate porn-related communities on the platform and fundamentally alter how the service is used.

After December 17th, any explicit posts will be flagged and deleted by algorithms. For now, Tumblr is emailing users who have posted adult content flagged by algorithms and notifying them that their content will soon be hidden from view.

Under Oath, Tumblr has been cleaning up its platform more rapidly than it had done in previous years.