The internet in Libya

Libya is a country that is in the middle of some pretty dramatic changes. One of those is that the use of the internet will likely become more widespread. Until recently its use was very tightly controlled and as a result not all that widespread. What will happen in the future is anybodies guess but you have to assume that the internet will become more widely used in Libya.

The internet is not all that widely used in Libya, this should probably come as no surprise. As one of the most restrictive countries in the world the government really had no interest in providing the service. That being said in recent years they did remove the monopoly on providing internet service so there are a few companies that offer. The price of internet access is quite high and the service is not all that good however. Nevertheless the number of internet users in Libya has been increasing over the last few years and will likely continue to do so.

Like most countries that are ruled by a dictator free speech is not allowed in Libya which of course means that the internet is censored. In part this is done to because as a Muslim country a lot of what is online is not considered to be appropriate. However the main reason for the censorship is to prevent criticism of the government. The leaders consider that the internet can be a threat as the information can ultimately lead to a revolution which is indeed what happened in many Arab countries recently.

A telling example of just how much of a threat the internet can be to a dictator is that the when the protests in Libya started one of the first things the government did was to shut down the internet. This is a rather extreme form of censorship and ultimately service was restored but it remained very restricted. In the end this did not work and the government were indeed overthrown. It remains to be seen what is going to happen with the new government, although based on what has happened with the other Arab countries that have recently had revolutions it is unlikely that censorship is going anywhere.

The revolution in Libya is a good example of the problem that governments face when they try to censor the internet. The fears that lead them to censor the internet turned out to be real, it did lead to a revolution after all. However the attempt to censor the internet did not work. This does raise all kinds of questions about the future of internet censorship and how other governments are going to handle it. It has been pretty clearly demonstrated that no matter how hard you try it is not possible to complete censor the internet. It has also been shown that attempting to do so can lead to a revolution.