Mapping Web 2.0 Censorship

[piccolomondo]

Author Sami Ben Gharbia created an interactive Google Maps mashup that provides an overview of online censorship efforts related to the social web and major web 2.0 websites. The Map uses data from the Open Net Initiative (ONI), Global Voices and the Global Voices Advocacy section.

Access Denied Map: Mapping Web 2.0 Censorship

Each marker on the map highlights the situation in a specific country that is barring access to major websites. Clicking on the marker opens an information window containing text, images or video describing the nature censorship and the efforts to combat it.


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Blocking of participative web and user-generated contents types



[source]

[piccolomondo]

Middle East countries are among the most zealous Internet censors

CAIRO, Egypt | In Iran, a large red icon pops up on computer screens. In Syria, there is a discreet note from the filter.

Other Arab nations display "blocked" in bold letters or issue "page not found" replies.

However the censors put it, the message is clear: You're not permitted to see this Web site.



Governments in the Middle East are stepping up a campaign of censorship and surveillance in an effort to prevent an estimated 33.5 million Internet users from viewing Web sites whose topics range from human rights to pornography. As a result, millions of Middle Easterners are finding it harder by the day to get to popular news and entertainment sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

Five of the world's top 13 Internet censors are in the Middle East, according to the most recent report from Reporters Without Borders, the journalism advocacy group that lobbies against Web censorship.

Only four Arab countries have little or no filtering: Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt — but Egypt is considering a law that would criminalize some online activity.

At the other end of the spectrum are Saudi Arabia and Syria, which human-rights groups consistently describe as the most hostile toward the Internet.

The rest of the region falls somewhere in between, with governments importing the latest technology to narrow the number of sites available to the public and drafting laws to curb online dissent.



The prohibitions have led to an explosion in circumventors — proxy servers that allow Internet users to bypass workplace or government filters. In cybercafes from Damascus to Dubai, patrons furtively browse blocked sites and swap Web addresses for the latest "proxies."

The most tech-savvy young Arabs and Iranians use new proxies every day,
trying to stay a step ahead of government censors.

In Iraq and the Palestinian territories, the Internet is policed mainly by the owners of Internet cafes and by Internet users themselves, according to monitoring groups. In both places, Islamist militants have attacked Internet cafes, accusing patrons of looking at pornography or chatting with members of the opposite sex.



More typical is the censorship that is spreading throughout Arab states in North Africa. Tunisian authorities block several sites, human-rights workers said, but they have also begun to hold the owners of Internet cafes liable if political activists use their establishments to post critical news about the government.



Iran's Shiite Muslim leadership is another zealous Internet censor. The government boasts of filtering 10 million "immoral" Web sites in addition to all the major social networking outfits and dozens of pages about religion or politics.

For the past year, according to human-rights groups, Iranian authorities also have zeroed in on online publications dealing with women's rights. Two prominent "cyber-feminists" were arrested in the last month on charges of distorting public opinion and drawing negative publicity to Iran through their Web postings.

Posted on Tue, Dec. 25, 2007
By HANNAH ALLAM
McClatchy Newspapers

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