Google Earth may receive another regional ban after the Singapore authorities revealed that Google's downloadable mapping application infringes the Singapore Land Authority copyright. The report was published by SinGeo on April 1st so we're not sure if this is only an April Fool's Day prank or real news.

"There's a rumor flying around the Singapore blogosphere that the Government is about to ban the download and use of Google Earth, following a dispute between the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and Google over copyright issues. The dispute centers over SLA's allegation that the satellite images available in Google Earth are direct copies of real geographic features in Singapore and infringe SLA's copyright," it is mentioned in the report.

Although we really don't know if it's fake or real, this is not the first time when Google Earth may be banned in a certain country due to the imagery offered to its users. For example, some governments criticized the Mountain View company for showing too many details and for publishing pictures which may help malicious people in their attempts.

And yes, Google Earth was quite useful for terrorists and other extremists who attempted to organize attacks because it was able to provide a huge amount of information. For instance, the first case was reported one year ago when terrorists who wanted to assault the UK troops in Basra used photos provided by Google Earth to locate them.

A few months ago, it was reported that other extremists prepared an attack over the JFK International Airport but, fortunately, the US authorities managed to stop them before something dangerous occurred. The investigations revealed that the terrorists were using, once again, Google's mapping service to obtain information about the airport.