here is a link to rep. louise slaughter D new york rules committee ranking member. she is trying stop the net neutrality. while americans are debating which is better and worse -democrats or republicans, liberals or conservatives they are slowing taking away our rights. stop voting for the republicrats. here is the link
While there is no universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes "pervasive censorship", organization Reporters without Borders (RSF) maintains an internet enemy list[2] while the OpenNet Initiative categorizes some nations as practicing extreme levels of Internet censorship; Such nations often censor political content and may retaliate against citizens who violate the censorship with measures such as imprisonment;
Cuba
Cuba is on ONI's watchlist and on RSF's internet enemy list; Cuba has the lowest Latin America ratio of computers per inhabitant, and the lowest internet access ratio of all the Western hemisphere;[3] 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;[4] The Cuban government continues to imprison independent journalists for contributing reports through the Internet to web sites outside of Cuba[5]
Iran
Main article: Internet censorship in Iran
Iran is in ONI's pervasive category and on RSF's internet enemy list; Iran Internet censorship is delegated to ISPs who attempt to filter contents critical of the government, pornographic websites, political blogs, and especially recently women's rights websites, weblogs, and online magazines;[1] [6] Iranian bloggers have been imprisoned for their Internet activities by the Iranian government;[7] Most recently, the Iranian government has blocked access to video-upload sites such as YouTube;com;[8]
Maldives
Maldives is not categorized by ONI and RSF removed it from its internet enemy list in 2006; Maldives filters[citation needed] opposition websites and had imprisoned cyber dissidents in 2004 and 2005, all since released;[9][10]
Myanmar
Main article: Internet in Myanmar
Burma (also known as Myanmar) is in ONI's pervasive category and on RSF's internet enemy list; Burma has banned the websites of political opposition groups, sites relating to human rights, and organizations promoting democracy in Burma;[1] During the 2007 anti-government protests, Burma completely shut down all internet links from its country;[11]
North Korea
North Korea is not categorized by ONI but is on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[12]
People's Republic of China
Main article: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; China blocks or filters Internet content 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 VOA), certain religious movements (such as Falun Gong and the Roman Catholic Church), and many blogging websites; Some 52 cyber dissidents are reportedly imprisoned in China for their online postings;[13] Note: In the past week China has said it will allow access to many parts of the US Wikipedia; However, due to the signifigant media coverage, international pressure and the conflicts within the Chineese government, in recent years many websites have been blocked or unblocked many times and available in different locations from different ISPs; Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions do not censor materials from internet;[citation needed]
Syria
Syria is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; Syria has banned websites for political reasons and arrested people accessing them;[1][14]
Tunisia
Main article: Internet censorship in Tunisia
Tunisia is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[15]
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; Uzbekistan prevents access to websites regarding banned Islamic movements, independent media, NGOs, and material critical of the government's human rights violations;[1] Some Internet cafes in the capital have posted warnings that users will be fined for viewing pornographic websites or website containing banned political material;[16]
Vietnam
Main article: Internet censorship in Vietnam
Vietnam is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; The main networks in Vietnam prevent access to websites critical of the Vietnamese government, expatriate political parties, and international human rights organizations, among others;[1] Online police reportedly monitor Internet cafes and cyber dissidents have been imprisoned for advocating democracy;[17]
Substantial
South Korea
South Korea is in ONI's substantial category but is not on RSF's internet enemy list; South Korea's internet censorship policy is highly political and particularly strong toward suppressing anonymosity in the Korean internet; In 2007, numerous bloggers were censored and their posts deleted by police for expressing criticism of, or even support for, presidential candidates; This even lead to some bloggers being arrested by the police; [18] Subsequently in 2008, just before a new presidential election, a new law legislation that required requiring all major internet portal sites to require identity verification of their users, was put into effect; This applies to all users who add any publicly viewable content; For example, to post a comment on a news article, a user registration and citizen identity number verification is required; For foreigners who do not have such numbers, a copy of passport must be faxed and verified; Although this law was initially met with public outcry, as of 2008, most of the major portals, including Daum, Naver, Nate, and Yahoo Korea, enforce such verification before the user can post any material that is publicly viewable;
Also, South Korea has banned at least 31 sites considered sympathetic to North Korea through the use of IP blocking;[1]
Furthermore, search engines are required to verify age for some keywords deemed inappropriate for minors; For such keywords, age verification using national identity number is required; For foreigners, a copy of passport must be faxed to verify the age; As of 2008, practically all large search engine companies in Korea have complied with this legislation as well, including foreign-owned companies (e;g; Google Korea and Yahoo Korea);
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is in ONI's substantial category and is on RSF's internet enemy list; Saudi Arabia directs all international Internet traffic through a proxy farm located in King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology; Content filtering is implemented there, based on software by Secure Computing;[19] Additionally, a number of sites are blocked according to two lists maintained by the Internet Services Unit (ISU):[20] 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 content-filtering is the resolution by Council of Ministers dated 12 February 2001;[21] 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;[19]
See the report by Harvard University's Law School on Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia;
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates is in ONI's substantial category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; The United Arab Emirates forcibly censors the Internet using Secure Computing's solution; The nation's ISPs Etisalat and du(telco) ban pornography, politically sensitive material, and anything against the moral values of the UAE; They both block Skype as well;
Yemen
Yemen is in ONI's substantial category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[1]
Nominal
Australia
Main article: Internet censorship in Australia
Australia is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list;
An opt-out filter is in the process of being implemented, this system will block content that is deemed illegal or inappropriate;[22]
Brazil
Brazil is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; A judicial order by judge Ênio Santarelli Zulianio forbade access to a YouTube video depicting Brazilian model and TV host Daniela Cicarelli performing sexual acts on a beach in Cádiz, Spain; With the widespread circumvention of YouTube policy by video uploaders, two Internet providers - Telefonica and Brasil Telecom - denied all YouTube access to customers - although it was still possible to access YouTube with the aid of proxies; Four days after Brasil Telecom blocked YouTube, judge Zulianio ordered the reestablishment of free YouTube browsing, maintaining that only the Cicarelli video was to be restricted; Cicarelli later was denied the right to keep the video off the Internet by higher courts;
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;[23]
Canada
Canada is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; In a few cases, information which the government is actively attempting to keep out of Canadian broadcast and print media (such as names of young offenders or information on criminal trials subject to publication bans) is available to Canadian users via Internet from sites hosted outside Canada;
Denmark
Denmark is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[24] The filter caused some controversy in March 2006, when a legal sex site named Bizar;dk was caught in the filter, sparking discussion about the reliability, accuracy and credibility of the filter;[25] Also, as of October 18, 2005, TDC A/S has blocked access to AllOfMP3;com, a popular MP3 download site, through DNS filtering;[26]
February 4, 2008 a Danish court has ordered the Danish ISP Tele2 to shutdown access to the filesharing site thepiratebay;org for all its Danish users;[27]
Fiji
Fiji is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; In May 2007 it was reported that the military in Fiji had blocked access to blogs critical of the regime;[28]
Finland
Finland is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Following a "voluntary law" [29] enacted by Finnish parliament in 2007-01-01, most of the Finland's major Internet service providers decided on November 22, 2006 to begin filtering child pornography and first ISPs started filtering on January 2008; The blacklist is provided by Finnish police and should contain only foreign sites; Technically filtering was planned to be URI based like the United Kingdom's Cleanfeed, but so far implementations have been DNS based;
A majority of these censored Internet sites, however, are actually not censored by the Finnish ISPs due to actual child pornography, but due to "normal" adult pornography instead, including images of interracial and homosexual sex; Most of the known sites are also located in EU or United States where child pornography is strictly illegal anyway; Two-thirds of the Finnish internet censorship list of the filtered domains can currently be seen on lapsiporno;info,[30] the homepage of Matti Nikki, a Finnish activist criticizing Internet censorship in the European Union and especially in Finland; On February 12th 2008, Nikki's page was also added to National Bureau of Investigation's blacklist (Wikinews article);
More recently, a government-sponsored report has considered establishing similar filtering in order to curb online gambling;[31]
France
France is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; French courts demanded Yahoo! block Nazi material in the case LICRA vs; Yahoo; The case is currently[citation needed] on appeal for an en banc rehearing; France is at point to promote the Hadopi law to filter the Internet in its territory;
India
Main article: Internet censorship in India
India is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[32][33] Access to sites on these domains other than the specifically banned ones was restored by most ISPs after about a week;[34] 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;
Recently, Indian law enforcement has entered an agreement with the popular social networking site Orkut to track down what it deems defamatory content which, in their example, includes content critical of Bal Thackeray;[35]
Israel
Israel is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; The religious parties in Israel proposed and internet censorship legislation would only allow access to adult-content Internet sites for users who identify themselves as adults and request not to be subject to filtering; In 27/02/2008 the law passed in its first of three votes required;[36]
Italy
Italy is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Italy bans the use of foreign bookmakers over the Internet by mandating certain edits to DNS host files of Italian ISPs;[37][38]
Morocco
Main article: Internet censorship in Morocco
Morocco is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; As of March 2006, Morocco 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; Google Earth has also been added to the list of censored websites in Morocco; In 2007 Morocco's main telecommunication operator Maroc Telecom also censored YouTube for nearly a month, without giving any reason for that;[citation needed]
Netherlands
Since 2007 in the Netherlands one major ISP, UPC, blocks access on DNS level to sites authorities claim are known to provide child pornography; In the second quarter of 2008 all other Dutch ISP's have agreed with Ernst Hirsch Ballin of the Ministry of Justice to also block all the sites that are on the list; The blacklist is compiled by the National Police Forces (KLPD) [39]; Ernst Hirsch Ballin has said [40] that at the moment 150 websites are blocked; It contains no websites that are hosted in EU countries and they are checked once every 2 months by Productteam Bestrijding Kinderpornografie;
Norway
Norway is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Norway's major Internet service providers have a DNS filter which blocks access to sites authorities claim are known to provide child pornography,[41] similar to Denmark's filter; A partial sample of the Norwegian internet censorship list can be seen at a Finnish site criticizing internet censorship;
Pakistan
Main article: Internet censorship in Pakistan
Pakistan is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Pakistan has blocked access to websites critical of the government; Currently[citation needed], the government has blocked blogs hosted on Blogspot;com; A ban on pornographic websites has also been enacted;[citation needed]
Russia
Russia is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Russia pressured Lithuania into shutting down the Kavkaz-Center website, a site that hosts videos on attacks on Russian forces in Chechnya, and reports on the Second Chechen War from a Chechen separatist perspective;[1] In February 2008, it became known that six Russian internet providers with ties to the government were blocking access to an opposition aggregate news site; After this became public, the biggest of these companies dropped the block and explained that it was "testing content filters"; The other five blocks remain in place; [42]
In 2007 a lawsuit against Savva Terentiev, a musician from Syktyvkar, was started because of a commentary in a LiveJournal blog, in which he sharply criticised local police forces; He was accused of "provoking antagonism between social groups"; Although several philological expert examinations of the text denied this accusations, arguing that this was just a relational expression, the lawsuit is still not closed; [43]
Singapore
Singapore is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[citation needed]
Sweden
Sweden is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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; A partial sample of the Swedish internet censorship list can be seen at a Finnish site criticizing internet censorship; The Swedish police are responsible for updating this list of forbidden Internet sites; On July 6, Swedish police said that there is material with child pornography available on torrents linked to from the torrent tracker site Pirate bay and said it would be included in the list of forbidden Internet sites; This, however, did not happen as the police claimed the illegal material had been removed from the site; Police though never specified even to TPB what the illegal content was; This came with criticism and accusations that the intended Pirate Bay censorship was political in nature, as Pirate Bay has been an embarrassing site for the Swedish government;
Thailand
Main article: Internet censorship in Thailand
Thailand is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; 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;[citation needed]
Turkey
Turkey is not categorized by ONI and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; Actually there is a governmental association recently established just for controlling and banning internet sites;[citation needed] As it is governmental association it has power to ban internet sites without prior court judgement (as it was); Although there are no specific laws for Internet censorship in Turkish Penal Code, 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;"[44] The ban was met with widespread protests and lifted two days later; Youtube has banned in Turkey again in 12;03;2008 with decision no 2008/251, but has since been lifted;
Hundreds of web sites not as popular as Youtube are still banned in Turkey, including all subdomains and the main domain of the widely popular wordpress;com web site; Wordpress is banned in Turkey since August 2007; Some other prominent web sites previously banned by court orders in Turkey include Google Groups, GeoCities and Alibaba;
According the 5651st law of Turkish Penal Code, directing people to suicide, sexual abuse of children, advertising drugs, pornography, prostitution, insulting and gambling web sites are forbidden; Turkish Telecommute Foundation has a reporting [45] website;
United Kingdom
Main article: Internet Censorship in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom is in ONI's watchlist and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; British Telecommunications passes internet traffic through a service called Cleanfeed which uses data provided by the Internet Watch Foundation to identify pages believed to contain indecent photographs of children;[46][47] When such a page is found, the system creates a 'URL not found page' error rather than deliver the actual page or a warning page;
In 2003, after the murder of Jane Longhurst by a man who claimed to have an obsession with Internet pornography,[48] the family campaigned to tighten laws regarding pornography on the Internet and have gained support such that possession may become illegal;[49] What the Government has termed "extreme pornography" could now become illegal to possess;[49][50] The government has begun to crack down on sites depicting rape, strangulation, torture and necrophilia;[51][52]
In Scotland, 2004, a committee of Members of the Scottish Parliament has backed a call to ban adult pornography as the Equal Opportunities Committee supported a petition claiming links between porn and sexual crimes and violence against women and children;[53] A spokeswoman said "While we have no plans to legislate we will, of course, continue to monitor the situation;"
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 content-blocking platform; Currently,[citation needed] 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;[54]
United States of America
Main article: Internet censorship in the United States
The United States of America is in ONI's nominal category and is not on RSF's internet enemy list; The United States 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;[55] 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;[56]
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 appealed this as prior restraint on the right to link to and post documents, saying that citizen-journalists should have the same First Amendment rights as major media outlets;[57] It was later held that the judgement was unenforcable, though First Amendment claims were rejected;[58] In March 2008, library employee Brenda Biesterfeld was fired from her job after she alerted police over a man who was then arrested for allegedly viewing child pornography on a computer in the local library; However, County officials claimed that her firing had nothing to do with her report to police; [59] wake up sheeple!
