Global Internet Censorship

Last week I reported on the censorship of Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira on the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr. Sadly, I must continue my reporting of censorship and the internet, having seen a study reported in several locations towards the end of last week.

The Open Net Initiative conducted a survey recently involving thousands of websites across 120 internet service providers (ISP’s) in 41 countries, and determined that the amount of internet censorship has gone up a staggering 1250%. Among the top aspects of the internet to be blocked, Skype (the online telephonic service) and Google Maps were often found to be blocked.

Since the study was done back in 2002, where only two countries were found to have ‘state-mandated net filtering’, 25 countries now find themselves limited to internet access. And this is not ISP’s blocking sites that compete with their products, but rather governmental legislation to squash the freedom of their citizens.

And while some ‘states’ in Europe and the US were not involved in the study (due to private sector monitoring rather than governmental), some of the results are quite surprising. Countries you would expect to be found on a list like this are prominent; Iran, China, the UAE; but India and Ethiopia also manage to make the list.

I would love to see what a comprehensive study would show, including some of the more western countries. Whether the US, England or Australia suffer from any censorship would be an interesting factoid to look at. For the moment though, we can only hope that some form of internet revolution can bring about change in the 25 countries listed.

Posted by Josh Hill