The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has registered that in several countries in Asia and the Middle East, information is submitted to censorship by their governments. In some cases, the dictatorships or totalitarian regimes restrict the access to this media and impose prison penalties for uploading any “misleading” information to personal webpages. Here is a list of the 10 top countries where blogging activity is considered risky and in which you can get in serious trouble for doing so.
To most Turkmen the internet is a luxury due to its high cost, a strategy used by the government to dissuade people from using it. The only internet service provider is the government, and it blocks access to a lot of sites, while monitoring all the email accounts in Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Also, websites run by human rights organizations and news agencies are blocked, and any attempt to get around the censorship could lead to grave consequences.
The government of Vietnam asked Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to give out the information of all the bloggers that use their platforms. The Government has created an agency exclusively to monitor the content exposed on the internet, blocking websites critical to the Vietnamese government, expatriate political parties, and international human rights organizations, among others.
Tunisian internet service providers must report to the government the IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers on a regular basis, in order to keep them identified and under constant watch. All the traffic goes through a central net with which the government filters all content uploaded and monitors emails. Tunisia has also blocked thousands of websites (such as pornography, mail, search engine cached pages, online documents, conversion and translation services) and peer-to-peer and FTP transfer.
Any blogger who expresses any kind of anti-government feelings, or any kind of opinion that may “jeopardize national unity”, is arrested. Also sites that criticize the government are instantly blocked. The owners of Cyber Cafes are obligated to ask all of their customers for identification, leave a name registration and time of use, and report them to the authorities. In addition to filtering a wide range of Web content, the Syrian government monitors Internet use very closely and has detained citizens “for expressing their opinions or reporting information online.”
China has the most rigid censorship program in the world. It counts with providers of services that filter searches, block sites, erase any “inconvenient” content and monitor email traffic. China blocks or filters Internet content relating to Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, pornography, some international news sources and propaganda outlets, certain religious movements, and many blogging websites. Fortunately, Listverse is not on their banned list (though it may be after this list).
Bloggers that dare to criticize the government or any religious or political figure are detained and harassed. The government demands that anyone who has a blog or personal page must go register in the Ministry of Art and Culture. Government has filtered webpages with contents critical of the government, pornographic websites, political blogs and, especially recently, women’s rights websites, weblogs and online magazines.
Around 400,000 sites have been blocked, including any that board political, social or religious topics. According to a study carried out in 2004 by the OpenNet Initiative, Saudi Arabia has “the most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools.”
Cuba has the lowest ratio of computers per inhabitant in Latin America, and the lowest internet access ratio of all the Western hemisphere. Citizens have to use government controlled “access points”, where their activity is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering and browsing history checking. Only pro-government bloggers and government employees are allowed to upload content to the internet.
Censorship of printed and audiovisual media. There is minimal internet penetration in civil life and any that exists is heavily monitored by the government, which filters emails and blocks access to human rights groups and opposition groups sites.
Only a few hundred thousand citizens in North Korea, representing about 4% of the total population, have access to the Internet, which is heavily censored by the national government. The North Korean network is monitored heavily with only two websites being hosted under a domain name. All websites are under government control, as is all other media in North Korea. Naturally, blogging is not allowed and all content is uploaded or approved by the North Korean government.
It's lists like these that make me grateful that I don't live in North Korea
Holly crap! No freedom on the internet. geeez…
The U.S.A. is next. Read about the new bill COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act). It seeks to create blacklists which means America will be cut off from many sites.
Internet censorship is a b**** but there are solutions. People, well I know at least those in China are beginning to use VPNs. I currently use 12vpn and I can access anything as if I was surfing in the US. http://unblockfacebookinchina.info has more infomation about VPNs to unblock blocked sites from around the world.
Ahh i see. Nice idea though…
two stupid political people here in Romania,wanted also to censore how to communicate on the net..Olguta Vasilescu(woman)PSD party, and Silviu Prigoana(male)PDL party..!
I hear a lot of people presumably from america saying at least this doe not happen here, how about the internet gaming payment sites (and some of the actual gaming sites themselves) , worse than that the kentucky governer who snatched 200+ gaming sites even thought they were not registered in the US or aimed at US markets. Same from greece, Israel and france. It may not be human rights groups or freedom of speech but it is still heavy handed censorship.
We live in a sad, backwards world. Most people are still just sheep to the government.
Well it sucks for these people I probably couldn't live without it!! I love listverse!!:) it's super interesting!!! (interesante):)
Odd beans on that post G. Been taking meds yo?
Ah, it does work.
Im so happy my list made it!
Congrats!
Congo Rats!!!
good list
congrats
psychosurfer: I dont know what country you are from but i dont think it would be prejudiced to believe that you are either a European or American. May be you should type out a comment bearing keywords bomb, al qaeda, Allah hu Akbar and i guarantee that the post will come in focus of your country's intelligence agency. I am an Indian and Indians are supposed to "hate" the Chinese but even i know that the Chinese government only blocks out sensitive political content. If you really believe that the censorship paranoia is at the level bandied about in the western media, then the next time a journalist who has written about the government in negative light visits the country, he will be arrested on charges of treason.
p.s: Do you really believe that there is no censorship in your country?
The Da Vinci Code is NOT banned in India.It is available at all bookstores(at least in Mumbai).Please stop spreading unwanted rumours.
But yes Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is banned here,although you can get a pirated copy anywhere or just order it online
Not cool, man. NOT COOL at all! I'm just glad again, that I grew up in the Caribbean… Unlimited freedom… AAAAHHH…
My husband is from one of the countries on the list, and I have seen *****ography on his computer. We have also subscribed to translation services via the internet on his computer. I guess not all the sites are blocked. However, I do know that if any blogs say something negative about the president or government, it gets taken down.
The reason why these countries are corrupt.
It's amazing to realise just how much people in other countries are missing out on. Makes me feel grateful.
The fight here in England to try to keep the internet open and not under the control of the large corporations is ongoing. Thankfully we do not have a "firewall" yet but Im guessing our government dosent like us having this much freedom.
One thing that you have written about Iran is wrong. I'm from there. You don't have to go to Ministry for creating a blog and I personally use Facebook , Twitter , Youtube etc. By the way you can use VPN easily.
Hello,
Has your Business Reputation been attacked online? In todays business world, maintaining your Online Reputation is extremely important. We offer solutions to clean up any negative postings that may show up on a Google search and a preventative maintenance program to keep your Online Name and Image Clean.
I look forward to hearing from you and discussing our online reputation solutions.
Regards,
Steve Engle
The governments around the world are all the same. They all want the people to have as little freedom as possible without them knowing. Humans are a greedy species and I don't expect anything to change for a while. We independents will have to fight it.
I've no problem with this.
The whole world doesn't have turn into a copy of America.
If a country deems that some internet content is offensive to their culture, then so be it.
I love these annoying liberals who want the whole the damned world to be like San Fransisco.
Just another way to control the people of a nation. No wonder nobody wants to live in North Korea there *****s. Note: Not the people of North Korea, Just there ***** poor excuse for a government. Even though our government is pretty bad too….
Great List
@Armadillotron
“October 2nd, 2010 at 3:57 am
So The Satanic Verses and The Da Vinci Code (?) are banned in India? Just tells you about the country as a whole doesn`t it! Put us back in charge, that`s what I say. Do you think you`d have had this under British rule? Course not.”
If you think that You and yours can do anything,please remember that we have double the population of your country.If we follow you to your country,our students are talented enough to take all jobs from you and make most of you commit suicide due to unemployment.Also,our pet dogs are smarter than you and just so you know, Indians think of dogs as extremely stupid.I hope you got my point that you are dumber than a zombie.
On a lighter note, wouldn’t you hate the job of managing those databases and dealing with the red flags? Talk about time consuming.
Here’s the deal, you can take the internet away, you can take books away, and so forth, but there is one thing that has survived all this time: oral tradition… so as long as we can still speak (or find ways to speak privately) this might never die.
side note: Finally watched part of the planet of the apes series… lets all hope (apes aside) we never stop learning how to speak eh?
You forgot to add the United Kingdom to that list
China has also put a ban on movies which have time travel in them! :O
The Internet should be uncensored, period. Could someone define “suitable” and “unsuitable” please? This whole internet censorship thing is retarded and so is most controversy with it. Cyberbullying? If you’re getting harassed over the Internet, block the harassers or get the hell off. The Internet is a place where soccer moms, governments, and the like are supposed to keep their noses out!!
In Nanjing, Jiangsu right now, Listverse ain’t blocked
. Btw, if anyone is in China and wants to use FB or Youtube, DO NOT USE PROXYS, the working ones are runned by the chinese goverment or hackers hired by the chinese goverment.
Add Malaysia to the list, dammit. Some people somewhere are too busy sucking on lemons and being sour-pusses, when you’d think they’d find a proper job?
Name
Name
Name
Is this is bad? So my question is, uhm why is United States going this route too? they voting it jan 24 , 2012 if i am corrected, correct me if i am wrong, but word has it, USA is going this route too. it maybe simple at first but in the long run it’ll end up like those other country eventually. that how a lot of thing work.
Basic= unawareness
Long term=f..u..c…k..e..d…just like those countries.
MEXICO no se cree eso PERO CON nuestros politicos todo es posible AY RUMORES que piensa restringir varia informacion DE INTERNET ya que nuestros gobiernos LE TIENEN MIEDO A LA VERDAD npor eso hacen esas jaladaS PERO revolucionnn como¡¡¡¡¡ REEVOOLUUCIONNN
wow i live on a island and we could do whatever we want on the internet (what ever we want)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the United States, people are free to download *****ography depicting people under eighteen without fear of censorship, though they can plan on spending several-to many years in prison for having done so.
People who live in glass houses ought not to be throwing stones.
Yay, my country, Burma, is on the list!
It is sad the govt here bans even some harmless sites to them such as some magazine sites like cosmopolitan.com(it’s a funny thing menshealth.com is accessible though) and some weather forecast/news sites etc. But I’m hopeful that the future will be brighter.
I’m glad that blogging here is not restricted, as far as I know, like in Vietnam and Iran.
The funny thing, although very sad, is the ridiculously slow connection. You might have to wait the whole night to watch/download a five-minute video from Youtube, which was banned until a year ago. You should consider sleeping over at the internet cafe (by the way, don’t forget to bring mosquito net with u!) if u want to download some files of size 100kb or bigger. It takes about five-ten minutes for a simple page like google.com to appear on screen; Good bye, yahoo and bing, for your overly informative homepages do not cope well with Burmese connection. Emails can be slower than snailmail, and now Burmese connection is aiming to become the eighth wonder of the world. Email attachments can take days to upload. Welcome to our world!
So Turkmenistan monitor all the email accounts from the 3 largest providers on the planet – bull*****. They may monitor the email traffic from their country but I doubt they are monitoring every account in the world.
DAMN IT! thats why i couldnt use facebook …BUT WHY ONLY AT MY AUNTS HOUSE I COULD!??
hi!,I really like your writing very much! proportion we communicate more approximately your post on AOL? I need an expert on this area to unravel my problem. Maybe that’s you! Having a look forward to look you.