Chinese web users are demonstrating their ability to get around the automatic internet censorship of taboo words with a hilarious song about a battle between grass-mud horses ("fuck your mother") and river crabs (censors). The song has become so popular that grass-mud horse toys are being sold in shops and even intellectuals are using the fable as a metaphor for the subject. Read more and see the, frankly bizarre, video clip...

While it's considered "inappropriate" and "suppressive" by web users, a French internet piracy law is being hailed as a saviour for bruised CD producers. The proposed "creation and internet" law, which would allow the state to block web access to illegal downloaders, will be decided on by the French Assemblée today. Read more...

It's the biggest ever legal case against a file-sharing website. The three founders of The Pirate Bay, the world's biggest BitTorrent tracker, this week find themselves in front of a judge for making intellectual property available to the public. Fredrik Neij (alias TiAMO), Gottfrid Svartholm Warg (Anakata), and Peter Sunde (Brokep), made it possible for their 22 million users to locate and download music, films and videogames shared by the online community. Read more...

Relations between China and France have reached a new low as Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama approaches. So outraged are Chinese web users that they can't wait for the meeting on Saturday to express their indignation. Read more...

More than five million "immoral" websites have been banned by the Iranian government. We asked two of our Iranian observers how and why the censors are muscling in on the country's internet users. Read more...

One of our Observers for Russia alerted us to the closure of one of the country's oldest Internet service providers (ISPs), and the various rumours that have sprung up following the police intervention. Censorship of political opinion or censorship of child pornography? Read more...

Sixty years before its creation, Belgium's very own mad professor, Paul Otlet, envisaged a data exchange system that bore an uncanny resemblance to the internet. Read more...

Barack Obama "rickrolled".

A video of Barack Obama singing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” isn’t just funny, it’s part of an Internet prank phenomenon that’s sweeping the online world. Read more and watch the video...

Joining an online social network group is risky business in Egypt. Twenty-six people were rounded up and arrested at a gathering organised on Facebook on Wednesday. The internet activists were attending a peaceful meeting on a beach in Alexandria when they were detained unexpectantly. Read more...

Agence France Presse this afternoon released a dispatch about what they say is the personal website of Rodovan Karadzic. According to the site, the former Serbian leader spent his travelling in the name of health, and is now an advocate for alternative forms of medicine. A blogger explains why it could be fake. Read more...