Slashdot Mirror
Web Censorship on the Increase
mid-devonian writes "Close on the heels of the temporary blocking of YouTube by a Turkish judge, a group of academics has published research showing that Web censorship is on the increase worldwide. As many as two dozen countries are blocking content using a variety of techniques. Distressingly, the most censor-heavy countries (which includes China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan) seem to be passing on their technologically sophisticated techniques to other areas of the world. 'New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China's block on Wikipedia or Pakistan's ban on Google's blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as 'keyword filtering', which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words.'"
Look into the freedom of speech (and press, and related) laws in the countries mentioned in TFA. Those are countries which prohibit (at least some forms of) government protesting, restrict television airwaves, and are generally unfriendly in the freedom of information department anyway. Why should the internet be any different?
Apparently, the government here is also known to block blogs and such that are critical of the king, as well as other sites that may be considered "unfriendly" to Morocco. However, in my surfing I have not come across any sites that have been blocked, but then again, I am mostly looking for news and information about other parts of the world, so I guess the sites I frequent aren't worth blocking.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Whenever I read words like "on the Increase" (as well as "corroded", "falling apart", "rapidly dwindling", etc.) I automatically wonder if I am being presented with "Saturday Night Live Syndrome", where people pull out the popular opinion that Saturday Night Live just isn't as good as it used to be.
The report seems to cover 13 countries, none of which are exactly bastions of civil liberties. Only Thailand and Turkey are countries that even have a medium record of civil rights. I think the fact that people in Uzbekistan can't access sites critical of their government is both one of the smaller concerns of both the internet, and of the civil rights of Uzbekistan's citizens.
If more countries that actually had long-standing traditions of free speech, or emerging traditions of free speech, were suffering censorship, that might be a story. But as it is, this hardly seems like dramatic news.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
What makes you think that the people of other countries define freedom in the same terms as the Shashdot Geek? Not all forms of censorship are driven from the top down.