Anyone who tries to access YouTube at school is aware that the internet can be censored. One can define censorship as suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.
Internet censorship is prevalent in countries with communism or other forms of domineering governments. China is known to have the most sophisticated censorship system in the world. In addition to the Great Wall of China, it is known to also be the home to the Great Firewall of China. Instead of blocking domains (.com or .us) or types of websites (pro-democratic), the Chinese block key words (censorship, for one). They spend an enormous amount of resources and manpower to monitor its 220 million Internet users.
Tiananmen Square was home to a large protest in Beijing, China in 1989. In this infamous event, the Chinese police brutally stomped out protests using guns and force. If you search “Tiananmen Square” Google (US domain), the results of the search are “Tiananmen Square Protests” and “Tiananmen Square Massacre.” However, if you use the Chinese search engine, Baidu, the results have no evidence of the protest anywhere. Picture results include flowers and sunsets. If you search too long for related events, you will be kicked out of the system and will not be able reconnect for about an hour. A generation from now, probably not a single Chinese individual will have knowledge of the event.
Here in the US, we have mild instances of known censorship. In a series of letters from the state of Minnesota to ISP’s regarding online gambling, Minnesota said to “block access to these sites located within Minnesota,” and that the sites are “systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information.” Although this obviously prohibits online gambling, the statement is vague enough to be used to block other information that restricts more than users want.
Of course, we will never be able to determine the extent of censorship, as the information we are getting might be censored.
Here is a list of the top ten most censored countries, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists Report 2010.
The Top 10 Most Censored Countries
Following is an alternate list of the top ten countries censoring the internet by dailybits.com in 2008.
Submitted by Field Reporter Anshuman Dewangan
