Google’s battle with the Chinese government has been brewing for some time now but it appears as if it’s finally come to a head.

Since they first came onto the scene in China, Google’s position in the communist country has been tenuous at best. For a company who’s mantra has been “do no evil,” censoring search results in order to hide and cover up dissension within the country seems to be pretty, well, against code. If you aren’t aware, China’s Internet policy is among the most strict in the world. The government actively filters out content which it doesn’t want its citizens to see online. That includes dissenting comments, protest movements, blogs, and, as far as I know, anything that’s overly critical of the Chinese government. (I’m probably blocked now, too!)

Even worse, Google has recently uncovered an enormous string of hacking attempts and successes on a number of its services—namely, Gmail—which it traced back to the Chinese government. According to Google, it was the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists which were the target and these accounts, it says, were routinely accessed by government officials in a kind of cyber-espionage.

Up until now though, Google has been pretty complicit. There have been ups and downs between China and Google and much, much, global criticism leveled against the search engine giant, but for the most part Google has gone along with the government’s Internet policies. The government hacking was the crack that broke the dam though, and today came the flood.

Beginning this afternoon, all traffic to the China search engine page, says Google, is now being redirected to their unfiltered servers in Hong Kong. Here’s a snippet of the press release,

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from [Hong Kong] is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.

What’s more, Google has set up this page to monitor exactly what the Chinese government is blocking access to. That means if China decides to block Google’s new unfiltered searches, the world will find out.

It seems like Google is finally taking serious steps towards a sensible Internet policy in China.

Invictus is a movie about the end of apartheid in South Africa and the early part of the presidency of Nelson Mandela, disguised as a sports film. It’s interesting and engaging and Morgan Freeman’s portrayal of Nelson Mandela would’ve easily won an Oscar if he were not pitted against Jeff Bridge’s inspiring performance in Crazy Heart.

The first thing that surprised me about Invictus is that it was directed by Clint Eastwood. I didn’t know that going in, didn’t notice that while I was watching, and was surprised only to learn it later. It didn’t feel like an Eastwood film, not in the least, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just didn’t have the tone of the movies he usually makes. It’s a good movie, but not the kind of cinema that we’re used to from Eastwood. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s missing, but I can try.

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The Pacific is the newest venture from the Spielberg/Hanks team that brought us the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan and the Golden Globe-winning Band of Brothers mini-series. With a resume like that, expectations for the pair’s new mini-series were understandably through the roof and buzz surrounding their new production began, in earnest, a full four years ago.

The Pacific began airing last Sunday on HBO. It’s a ten-part mini-series which will air in installments until May 16th. Like Band of Brothers, The Pacific seems to be based around the actual stories of World War II veterans but instead of focusing the action around the European theatre of war our characters find themselves in, unsurprisingly, the Pacific. The American war with the Japanese.

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Even if you only have a pedestrian interest in copyright law or the Internet this is a very enjoyable read. Heck, even if you’re only a casual YouTube user, you’ll probably get a kick out of it. It’s YouTube’s opening briefs in the lawsuit that Viacom has brought against them.

Viacom is suing YouTube for not removing copyrighted videos from its website, videos that Viacom held the copyright to. It sounds straight forward enough except for a couple of important factors. First, under international copyright laws it’s the responsibility of the copyright owner (Viacom) to notify YouTube of infractions—not YouTube’s responsibility to remove videos of its own volition. And second, as it turns out, Viacom filed this suit all the while uploading its own videos to YouTube surreptitiously.

Here’s what YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine had to say,

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom.

And as if that wasn’t enough, YouTube alleges that some of the videos included in Viacom’s lawsuit against them were actually uploaded by the company itself,

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

The waters get exceptionally muddied at this point and you really have to wonder what Viacom was thinking. Remember, this was a company that tried several times to buy YouTube.

As clear as the result may seem, from the outset, it’ll be an interesting case to follow.

The brief goes on to explain that now, in the 21st century, most media corporations are working with YouTube and even finding monetary value in putting their clips up online. Of course. I guess, ever the evolution of technology marches on. But there’s a big difference between fighting against an emerging media platform and sneaking your videos up on there, and then suing over them.

God Help the Girl is the latest project from Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch. If you haven’t heard the full story behind the group, allow me. God Help the Girl is essentially the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t come out yet. According to Murdoch, he’s had the idea for this film for some time and on the heels of Belle & Sebastian’s last record, The Life Pursuit, he began placing ads for female singers to join him on the project. After scouring applications and deciding on a final line-up, God Help the Girl went into the studio to record. The result, along with an EP titled Stills, was this full-length self-titled record. The film, according to Murdoch, is still in the works but until  then we have this album and, in a word, it’s absolutely charming. I guess that’s two words.

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I’m going to go ahead and skip the recap elements of this week’s review and get straight to the analysis, there’s a lot to go over. As always, I’ll bury any spoilers after the break.

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I’m personally quite pleased at the result of this scholarly study published in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday.

It finds that while Wikipedia is indeed used by the majority of college/university students, its use is restricted to only the beginning and very beginning of the research stage, and only for initial information. I know, in the past, I’ve read studies purporting the high use of Wikipedia among post-secondary studies with fear and trepidation. Are people really relying on an online encyclopedia that anybody can edit for their research? It was a bit unnerving. But, thanks to some deeper digging, the results are far more soothing.

And it’s true, if you think about it. Personally, I used Wikipedia for every term paper I ever wrote but at the most basic level—and that’s what this study shows. You hit the lowest common denominator, Wikipedia, to get just the basic facts. You know that they’re possibly riddled with inaccuracies and bias but you get the basics, you get a jumping off point, and then hit the hard stuff from there. It makes sense, and it’s good research methods. Of course, if the article you’re reading is wholly inaccurate than perhaps your jumping point might not give you the best footing but other studies have shown that, on the whole, Wikipedia is pretty accurate after all.