Censorship

The full story and background

The internet is often seen as the borderless, global, everybody connecting, democratic network. But in fact the internet is not the same for everybody, not talking about the people without access. State borders and filtering depending on the country you are living in has become standard in the recent years. In example: Due to copyright issues certain music or TV cast services are only available for the country they are broadcasted in. Have you ever tried to watch BBC HD content not surfing from Great Britain or listening to Pandora music outside of US? But this trivial compared to certain countries in the world who pratice heavy political internet censorship.

States like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Vietnam, Tunesia and in big scale China do strict political internet censorship by blocking IP adresses and by dynamic content filters. User in these countries are not able to access regime critical information. Especially China blocking off 1,3 billion inhabitants censors the internet with the support of western technology companies as Cisco, Yahoo or Google. (### citation needed) The Golden Shield Project (sometimes referred to as the the Great Fire Wall of China), censors content primarily by blocking IP addresses. The Internet police in China is estimated to contain over 30,000 workers, and is responsible for blocking content such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, religion, and some international news.Just try yourself and see what it is like to surf the web from China.

More information on internet censorship at

http://opennet.net

http://www.internetfreedom.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship