Web censorship spiralling out of control

According to a survey of 40 countries conducted by the Opennet Initiative, tech-savvy governments are filtering politics, human rights, sexuality, religion and mentioning the feet of Royalty.

While most people think that it is only the likes of Iran, China and Saudi Arabia who filter content, more than 26 nations routinely block a wide range of topics they don't like, the survey said.

One of the study's author's Ron Deibert, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said that once government's get into a habit of censoring the net, they just can't help themselves.

Instead of blocking static Web sites, they take down entire Internet-based applications like Youtube, Skype and Google Maps. They also are use furtive, just-in-time filtering to knock out the Web sites of political opposition groups during critical election periods.

China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Oman and Pakistan censor anything that moves or jiggles.

Vietnam and Uzbekistan censor local content while largely ignoring international Web sites. Middle Eastern countries are very concerned about international news. Iran blocks the Beeb site in case the glorious revolution is thwarted by repeated episodes of I am Sorry I will Read that Again.

Saudi Arabia is fixated on pornography and gambling. South Korea filters only North Korean sites. Jordan, Morocco and Singapore filter a handful of sites. Filtering does not happen in Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Hong Kong, Israel and Iraq.

In the United States and much of Europe filtering is focused primarily on copyright infringement, apparently.

More here. µ