How the open net closed its doors (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Clark Boyd
Technology correspondent, in Boston

A new book details the extent to which countries across the globe are increasingly censoring online information they find strategically, politically or culturally threatening.

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering challenges the long-standing assumption that the internet is an unfettered space where citizens from around the world can freely communicate and mobilise. In fact, the book makes it clear that the scope, scale and sophistication of net censorship are growing.

"There's been a conventional wisdom or myth that the internet was immune from state regulation," says Ronald Deibert, one of the book's editors.

"What we're finding is that states that were taking a hands-off approach to the internet for many years are now finding ways to intervene at key internet choke points, and block access to information."

Mr. Deibert heads The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. The Lab, along with Harvard Law School, the University of Cambridge, and Oxford University, has spent the last five years testing internet access in some 40 countries.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7312327.stm

[BelgianMadCow]

1. Important, thank you. Bookmarked and kicked.

regards
bmc

[Jester Messiah]

2. Sad state of affairs.

They used to say "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." I blame the spammers for making that excellent statement false... it's been too profitable for too many to work out ways of suppressing information, because all too often that information contained scams or ads for cheap v14gra. Now the people whose interest it is to keep their people in the dark can leverage that work. My fear is that it won't be long before we get the mushroom treatment ourselves...