Top 10 List of Worldwide Internet Censors

PreacherTom writes "Reports of internet censorship are nothing new and are quite expected from countries whose leadership depends on controlling the popular worldview. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris group that does advocacy work for press freedom, puts a number to the trend with a list of the countries that it says go the furthest to censor the Internet. Photos document the worldwide protests and continuing struggles. Not surprisingly, China is described as the pioneer of internet censors, dedicating more resources than any other country to restrict online freedoms." This week we also discussed the Reporters Without Borders' 13 Enemies of the Internet list.

Comments

China has the most????

[www.sorehands.com]

What they don't say is the amount per user. China has the greatest number of internet users, which would take more people to handle the internet censoring. If you only allow 3,000 people to access the internet it is very easy to limit them. When you have 200,000,000 people it take more -- especially when there are many people trying to hack through their blocks.

They forgot Denmark

[SlashGeO]

They forgot Denmark on that list. The danish courts have already started building the great firewall of Denmark. It's sad to see a country priding itself on their freedom of speech, allow private organisations to determine what the danish internet users should see or not see. I'm thinking of the IFPI vs Tele2 case in which the court decided that Tele2 should block access to the AllOfMp3 site. Mark my words... This is the beginning of the end of uncensored internet in Denmark. This is truly sad times.

Re:list composition

[gfxguy]

But Qatars not on the list, and has always been a step above the other muslim countries in the region as far as freedoms are concerned (even if that might not be saying much).

You might consider it inflamatory that he pointed it out (someone did), but that doesn't make it any less true, and it's certainly (IMO) an interesting point. As a previous poster pointed out, there's a lot of overlap with these countries and those that would like to wrest control of the internet away from the U.S.

One thing that does bother me is that pre-war Iraq probably wouldn't have been on this list, and yet we still have economic and political relations with China, Saudi Arabia, and a lot of other countries that we ought not be dealing with. This goes beyond and political divisiveness; both parties cow-tow to the nations that are precieved to bring us economic gain as if that's more important than human rights.