A severed hand travels down a conveyor belt in a coal plant -- the pale, smooth skin of the hand half buried in shards of black coal. This macabre yet visually arresting scene sets the tone for "Black Coal, Thin Ice," a Chinese arthouse thriller that has achieved the miraculous triple whammy of winning over critics, captivating audiences, and pleasing the notorious Film Bureau censorship panel.

From the wild popularity of such shows as “24” with super-agent Jack Bauer out to save the world, to the popular sequels of the end-of-the-world “Transformers” movie, American television series and movies have always played well in China.

So held federal District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan in yesterday’s Zhang v. Baidu, Inc. An excerpt (one paragraph break added): In this suit, a group of New York residents who advocate for increased democracy in China sue one of China’s largest companies, Baidu, Inc…. Plaintiffs contend that Baidu, which operates an Internet search engine akin to Google, unlawfully blocks from its search results here in the United States articles and other information concerning “the Democracy movement in China” and related topics.

Turkey has blocked access to YouTube just hours after the leak of a recording allegedly depicting a security meeting on Syria. Google, YouTube's parent company, had previously refused government requests to remove other videos alleging government corruption. #TurkeyBlockedYouTube began trending immediately across the country, with many sharing screenshots.

As the Twitter wars rage in Turkey and rumors spread that the social-media site might give the Turkish authorities information on users, the website took time to reassure Turks that it would do no such thing, the Turkish media site Hurriyet reported on Monday.

If you’re reading this, you probably live in a country where the Internet provides a portal for the free exchange of ideas. But in many countries, believe it or not, what so many of us take for granted is unfathomable.  In others, it is a smoldering memory.

In an attempt to halt widespread allegations of corruption, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shuttered Twitter – but so ineffectively that the number of tweets sent in the country has remained unaffected.

Developing nations want the Internet to be free from censorship, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in Latin America. A new Pew Research Center survey reveals that six of the ten countries that feel the strongest about people having access to the Internet without government censorship hail from Latin America.