Internet censorship

Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship.

One difference is that national borders are more permeable online: residents of a country that bans certain information can find it on websites hosted outside the country. Conversely, attempts by one government to prevent its citizens from seeing certain material can have the effect of restricting foreigners, because the government may take action against Internet sites anywhere in the world, if they host objectionable material.

Total censorship of information on the Internet, however, is very difficult (or impossible) to achieve due to the underlying distributed technology of the Internet. Pseudonymity and data havens (such as Freenet) allow unconditional free speech, as the technology guarantees that material cannot be removed and the author of any information is impossible to link to a physical identity or organization.

Implemented or mandated by governments

Pervasive

While there is no universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes "pervasive censorship", organizations such as Reporters without Borders and the Open Net Initiative identify some nations as practicing extreme levels of Internet censorship. Such nations often censor political content and may retaliate with measures such as imprisonment against citizens who violate the censorship.

• People's Republic of China

Main article: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China blocks or filters Internet contents relating to Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, pornography, some international news sources (such as the BBC), certain religious movements (such as Falun Gong), many blogging websites, and Wikipedia. Some 52 cyber dissidents are reportedly imprisoned in China for their online postings.

• Vietnam

The main networks in Vietnam prevent access to websites critical of the Vietnamese government, expatriate political parties, and international human rights organizations, among others. Online police reportedly monitor Internet cafes and cyber dissidents have been imprisoned for advocating democracy.

• Iran

Internet censorship in Iran is delegated to ISPs who attempt to filter contents critical of the government, homosexual websites, women's rights websites, and blogs. Iranian bloggers have been imprisoned for their Internet activities by the Iranian government. Most recently, the Iranian government has blocked access to video-upload sites such as YouTube.com

• Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan prevents access to websites regarding banned Islamic movements, independent media, NGOs, and material critical of the government's human rights violations. Some Internet cafes in the capital have posted warnings that users will be fined for viewing pornographic websites or website containing banned political material.

• Tunisia

Tunisia has blocked thousands of websites (such as pornography, mail, search engine cached pages, online documents conversion and translation services) and peer-to-peer and FTP transfer. This filtering is performed using a transparent proxy and port blocking. Cyber dissidents including pro-democracy lawyer Mohammed Abbou have been jailed by the Tunisian government for their online activities.

• Turkey

Turkey prevents access to websites and blogs critical of the government. On March 6, 2007, the government of Turkey blocked access to the video-upload site; YouTube.com, with the following statement on the website; "Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court."

• Syria

Syria has banned websites for political reasons and arrested people accessing them.

• Myanmar

Myanmar has banned the websites of political opposition groups, sites relating to human rights, and organizations promoting democracy in Myanmar.

• Maldives

Maldives filters opposition websites and has imprisoned cyber dissidents.

• Cuba

Cuba has the lowest Latin America ratio of computers per inhabitant and also the lowest internet access. Citizens have to use government controlled "access points", where their activity is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering and navigation history checking. According to the government, access to internet services by the Cuban population are limited due to high costs and the American embargo, but there are reports concerning the will of the government to control access to uncensored information both from and to the outer world.

• North Korea

Only a few thousand citizens in North Korea, a tiny minority of the total population, have access to the Internet, which is heavily censored by the national government.

Substantial

• Brazil

A judicial order by legal counselor Lincon Antônio Andrade Moura denied the access of all YouTube's IPs because of a Daniela Cicarelli video hosted on YouTube.

• South Korea

South Korea has banned at least 31 pro-North Korea websites through the use of IP blocking.

• Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia directs all international Internet traffic through a proxy farm located in King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology. Content filter is implemented there, based on software by Secure Computing. Additionally, a number of sites are blocked according to two lists maintained by the Internet Services Unit (ISU) [1]: one containing "immoral" (mostly pornographic) sites, the other based on directions from a security committee run by the Ministry of Interior (including sites critical of the Saudi government). An interesting feature of this system is that citizens are encouraged to actively report "immoral" sites for blocking, using a provided Web form. The legal basis for contents filtering is the resolution by Council of Ministers dated 12 February 2001 [2]. According to a study carried out in 2004 by the OpenNet Initiative: The most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools.[3]

See report by Harvard University's Law School on Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia.

• United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates forcibly censors the Internet using Secure Computing's solution. The nation's sole ISP Etisalat bans pornography, politically sensitive material, and anything against the moral values of the UAE.

• Yemen

Yemen's two ISPs block access to contents falling under the categories of gambling, adult contents, and sex education as well as material seeking to convert Muslims to other religions.

Nominal/Watchlist

• Canada

"Project Cleanfeed Canada" - Run by Cybertip.ca and modeled after a similar program in the United Kingdom, Canada's largest ISPs (which includes Rogers and Bell Canada) are blocking access to hundreds of child pornography sites from abroad as of November 2006. Cybertip.ca now decides which websites Canadians can access. Some are calling it "The Great Firewall of Canada". Opponents may refer to section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that everyone has the right of "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication".

• United States

The United States of America enacted in 1996 the Communications Decency Act, which severely restricted online speech that could potentially be seen by a minor – which, it was argued, was most of online speech. Free speech advocates, however, managed to have most of the act overturned by the courts. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act criminalizes the discussion and dissemination of technology that could be used to circumvent copyright protection mechanisms, and makes it easier to act against alleged copyright infringement on the Internet. Many school districts in the United States frequently censor material deemed inappropriate for the school setting. In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act [CIPA] which requires schools and public libraries receiving federal funding to install internet filters or blocking software.[4] Congress is also considering legislation to require schools and libraries to block access to social networking websites, The Deleting Online Predators Act. Opponents of Internet censorship argue that the free speech provisions of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bars the government from any law or regulation that censors the Internet. However, the June 2003 case US v. ALA found CIPA constitutional.

A January 4, 2007 restraining order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein forbade a large number of activists in the psychiatric survivors movement from posting links on their websites to ostensibly leaked documents which purportedly show that Eli Lilly and Company intentionally withheld information as to the lethal side-effects of Zyprexa. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently appealing this prior restraint on the right to link to and post documents, claiming that citizen-journalists should have the same First Amendment rights as major media outlets [5].

• India

Main article: Internet censorship in India

As of July 2006 the Indian government has directed ISPs to block seventeen websites, including some hosted on the Geocities, Blogspot and Typepad domains. Initial implementation difficulties led to these domains being blocked entirely. Access to sites on these domains other than the specifically banned ones was restored by most ISPs after about a week. The first documented incident of Internet censorship in India was the Yahoo! Groups ban of 23 September 2003. Kynhun, a Yahoo! group linked to the outlawed "Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council", a minor separatist group, was ordered banned by the Department of Telecommunications. Difficulties in implementing the ban by the ISP's ultimately led to all Yahoo! groups being banned for a period of about two weeks.

• Brazil

In Brazil, the state of São Paulo was the first state to enact an act requiring cybercafés to keep a user's list with address, full name, date of birth, phone number, and an identity card number. [6]

A law project made by Senator Eduardo Azeredo said that all Internet traffic must be recorded and maintained for 5 years and all people that want access the Internet by any way must show his IDs and give personal information, like address, telephone number, RG and CPF. The law project also prohibits all methods of Internet anonymity and proxying, and creates technological difficulty and barriers. It also prohibits the possession, transport or giving away without authorization data or information that came from any communication device or computing system. More information can be found (in Portuguese) at OpenBrasil [7].

• Russia

Russia pressured Lithuania into shutting down the Kavkaz-Center website, a site that reports on the Second Chechen War.

• United Kingdom

United Kingdom, the new Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker set a deadline of the end of 2007 for all ISPs to implement a "Cleanfeed"-style network level contents blocking platform. Currently, the only web sites ISPs are expected to block access to are sites the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as containing images of child abuse. However such a platform is capable of blocking access to any web site added to the list (at least, to the extent that the implementation is effective), making it a simple matter to change this policy in future. The Home Office has previously indicated that it has considered requiring ISPs to block access to articles on the web deemed to be "glorifying terrorism", within the meaning of the new Terrorism Act 2006. [8] (See Censorship in the United Kingdom, Internet censorship.)

• Australia

Main article: Internet censorship in Australia

• Pakistan

Main article: Internet censorship in Pakistan

Pakistan has blocked access to websites critical of the government. Currently, the government has blocked blogs hosted on Blogspot.com. A ban on pornographic websites has also been enacted.

• Morocco

As of March 2006, Morrocco had blocked access to many blogging sites, such as LiveJournal. Reporters Without Borders says that Morocco now censors all political websites advocating Western Sahara's independence.

• Denmark

Denmark's biggest Internet service provider TDC A/S launched a DNS-based child pornography filter on October 18, 2005 in cooperation with the state police department and Save the Children, a charity organisation. Since then, all major providers have joined and as of May 2006, 98% of the Danish Internet users are restricted by the filter. The filter caused some controversy in march 2006, when a legal sexsite named bizar.dk was caught in the filter, sparking discussion about the reliability, accuracy and credibility of the filter.

• Norway

Norway's major Internet service providers have a DNS filter which blocks access to sites authorities claim are known to provide child pornography, similar to Denmark's filter.

• Sweden

Sweden's major Internet service providers have a DNS filter which blocks access to sites authorities claim are known to provide child pornography, similar to Denmark's filter.

• Finland

Finland's major Internet service providers decided on November 22, 2006 to begin filtering child pornography, however, the filter is not yet implemented. The blacklist is provided by Finnish police and filtering is probably URI based like the United Kingdom's Cleanfeed.

• France

French courts demanded Yahoo! block Nazi material in the case LICRA vs. Yahoo. The case is currently on appeal for an en banc rehearing.

• Singapore

In Singapore, three people were arrested and charged with sedition for posting racist comments on the Internet, of which two have been sentenced to imprisonment.

• Thailand

Significant efforts have been made in Thailand to oppose sites that are representing illegal activities. Activities such as gambling, drug usage and pornography are strictly banned, using DNS control in Thailand and, more effectively, a transparent proxy. This makes the website appear to be inaccessible. Also, the government has banned sites that discuss circumventing Internet censorship.

• Italy

Italy bans the use of foreign bookmakers over the Internet by mandating certain edits to DNS host files of Italian ISPs.[9] [10]

By online communities

Forums and chatrooms frequently have moderators, who will edit or remove material against the rules of that community. The scope of these rules varies from community to community - some will want material to be suitable for a specific audience, whilst others only require discussions to be kept within the law. Many USENET groups are unmoderated.

Commonly targeted websites

• Pornographic, Pedophile-related, and other morally objectionable websites — particularly in religious countries and in institutional settings such as schools
• MySpace — particularly in the Middle East
• Wikipedia — particularly in mainland China
• Political blogs and websites
• Nazi and similar websites — particularly in France and Germany
• Religious websites
• Google
• Censorship-circumvention websites

Circumvention

Proxy websites

Proxy websites are often the simplest and fastest way to access banned websites in censored nations. Such websites work by being themselves un-banned but capable of displaying banned material within them. This is usually accomplished by entering a URL address which the proxy website will fetch and display. There is also a main stream of distributors who create large masses of proxy sites. They are most closely affiliated with peacefire.

JAP

JAP primarily is a strong, free and open source anonymizer software available for all operating systems. Since 2004, it also includes a blocking resistance functionality that allows users to circumvent the blocking of the underlying anonymity service AN.ON by accessing it via other users of the software (forwarding client).

The addresses of JAP users that provide a forwarding server can be retrieved by getting contact to AN.ON's InfoService network, either automatically or, if this network is blocked, too, by writing an e-mail to one of these InfoServices. The JAP software automatically decrypts the answer after the user did a CAPTCHA. The developers are currently planning to integrate additional and even stronger blocking resistance functions.

Psiphon

Psiphon software allows users in nations with censored Internet such as China to accessed banned websites like Wikipedia. "We're aiming at giving people access to sites like Wikipedia," a free, user-maintained online encyclopedia, and other information and news sources, Michael Hull, psiphon's lead engineer, told CBC News Online.

Sneakernets

Sneakernet is a term used to describe the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically carrying data on storage media from one place to another. A sneakernet can move data regardless of network restrictions simply by not using the network at all.

The charity relief organization Information Without Borders is attempting to implement a sneakernet routing protocol for providing cheap Internet access to developing and post-conflict regions using donated PDAs and mobile phones, and also for providing free and open Internet access to repressive regimes that restrict free expression by limiting access..

See also

• Censorware, see Content-control software
• Content-control software
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• International Freedom of Expression eXchange — monitors Internet censorship worldwide
• Tunisia Monitoring Group
• Geolocation
• Computer surveillance
• Jingjing and Chacha
• Irrepressible.info
• Scieno Sitter

External links

News reports

• FORBIDDEN .....A discussion on right to information and policy surrounding it in India, The Yahoo Group ban of Sep 2003 IndoSec, 1 March 2006

Campaigns against

• irrepressible.info Amnesty International campaign to combat Internet repression
• Electronic Frontier Foundation - Blue Ribbon Campaign campaign for freedom of speech online
• BooYahoo! boycott campaign against Yahoo! in response to the company's Internet repression in China

Circumvention resources

• Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents Reporters without Borders guide on Internet anonymity, censorship circumvention, and blogging
• Wikibooks:Bypassing Internet Censorship (step-by-step instructions)
• Psiphon software that is installed on a computer in a non-censored country to allow unhindered access to selected users in censored countries
• Tor anonymity network capable of bypassing Internet censorship, slow but very secure
• Template:Dmoz