Internet censorship worldwide

It probably won't come as a huge shock to many people to learn which countries are the most likely to censor access to the internet. When it comes to access to political information the leaders are largely the countries that do not have democracies and in which the rulers need to limit access to outside information to keep the people under control. This would include countries like China, Iran and Myanmar. The number of countries that censor the internet for political information are fairly small as many of the countries that have dictators also have very limited internet service anyway.

A far more common type of internet censorship is of the social kind. This would be to censor sites that are considered to be harmful to the populace. This is by far the most common in Islamic countries. Not all of them censor the internet but the more conservative countries like Saudi Arabia do. In this case the sites that are censored are ones that show pornography or which promote homosexuality. In some of these cases sites that promote religions other than Islam are also censored.

A worrying trend is that the number of countries that are censoring the internet is rising. In part this is because more and more countries are gaining internet access and their governments are having to deal with it. However it is not just the countries with dictators trying to hold on to power or religious leaders trying to protect the people that censor the internet. There is a surprising amount of internet censorship that goes on in countries that are generally considered to be democratic and free. This is an area where censorship has really increased in recent years and it is something that people should be concerned about, although few actually are.

In most cases when a democratic country wants to censor the internet they do it by passing laws that the majority of people can support and then extending them. The United States is a perfect example of this. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks it was easy to get support to censor websites that belonged to terrorist groups. However those laws are now being used to censor a lot or sites that clearly have no connection to terrorism. This was demonstrated by their recent raids on gambling sites which were shut down using the laws that were intended to protect America from terrorism.

The reality is that it is likely that censorship of the internet is likely to get far worse rather than better. All governments, including democratic ones want to have control over their citizens. They have clearly figured out that they can control their access to information on the internet and that it benefits them to do it. Unless the people are able to stand up to the government and demand changes it is likely that there will be more censorship in the future.