Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Five characteristics of the Internet make censorship more difficult:
1.
Unlike traditional one-to-many broadcast media, the Internet supports many-to-many
communications.
While it is relatively easy for a government to shut down a newspaper or a radio
station, it is very difficult for a government to prevent an idea from being published
on the Internet, where millions of people have the ability to post Web pages.
2.
The Internet is dynamic.
Millions of new computers are being connected to the Internet each year.
3.
The Internet is huge.
There is simply no way for a team of human censors to keep track of everything
that is posted on the Web. While automated tools are available, they are fallible.
Hence any attempt to control access to material stored on the Internet cannot be
100 percent effective.
4.
The Internet is global.
National governments have limited authority to restrict activities happening outside
their borders.
5.
It is hard to distinguish between children and adults on the Internet.
How can an “adult” Web site verify the age of someone attempting to enter the site?
Despite the difficulties facing those who would seek to censor Internet content, studies
reveal that governments around the globe are in fact limiting access to the Internet in a
variety of ways [41].
One approach is to make the Internet virtually inaccessible. The governments of
Cuba and North Korea make it difficult for ordinary citizens to use the Internet to
communicate with the rest of the world [42, 43].
In other countries, Internet access is easier but still carefully controlled. Saudi Ara-
bians gained access to the Internet in 1999, after the government installed a centralized
control center outside Riyadh. Virtually all Internet traffic flows through this control
center, which blocks pornography sites, gambling sites, and many other pages deemed
to be offensive to Islam or the government of Saudi Arabia [44]. Blocked sites and pages
are from such diverse categories as Christian evangelism, women's health and sexuality
issues, music and movies, gay rights, Middle Eastern politics, and information about
ways to circumvent Web filtering.
The Chinese government has blocked access to the Internet during times of social
unrest. For example, in July 2009, China responded to ethnic riots in the autonomous
region of Xinjiang by turning off Internet service to the entire region for ten months
[45, 46].
China has also built one of the world's most sophisticated Web filtering systems
[47]. The Great Firewall of China prevents Chinese citizens from accessing certain In-
