Internet censorship grows worldwide: study

[Nikki Stone1]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070518/tc_afp/internetcensorship_070518164906

Internet censorship grows worldwide: study
Fri May 18, 1:12 PM ET
LONDON (AFP) - Internet censorship is growing worldwide, with 26 out of 40 countries blocking or filtering political or social content, a study reported Friday. The survey carried out by experts at four leading universities found that people in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were often denied access to information about politics, sexuality, culture or religion.

Conducting the first of what is planned to become an annual survey, the experts at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Toronto found that the approach varied according to the country. For example, South Korea heavily censored only one topic, North Korea, while Iran, China and Saudi Arabia blocked both a wide range of topics and a great deal of content related to those topics.

The experts with the OpenNet Initiative, who carried out their research last year, listed six countries as "pervasive" filterers of political information: Myanmar, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam...

...The survey said the United States and European countries did not come in for testing, as the filtering practices were better understood than in other parts of the world.


(Notice that our own military's censorship did not make the study.)