Global net censorship 'growing'
The level of state-led censorship of the net is growing around the world, a study of so-called internet filtering by the Open Net Initiative suggests.
The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering.
Websites and services such as Skype and Google Maps were blocked, it said.
Such “state-mandated net filtering” was only being carried out in “a couple” of states in 2002, one researcher said.
“In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25,” said John Palfrey, at Harvard Law School.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Global net censorship 'growing'.
The Open Net Initiative behind this study, incidentally, has some significant commentary about Internet use in Canada:
Though neither the United States nor Canada practices widespread technical Internet filtering at the state level, the Internet is far from “unregulated” in either state.1 Internet content restrictions take the form of extensive legal regulation, as well as technical regulation of content in specific contexts, such as libraries and schools in the United States. The pressure to regulate specific content online has been expressed in concerns related to four problems: child-protection and morality, national security, intellectual property, and computer security.