Web censorship spreading globally

OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, reports that Internet censorship is spreading rapidly, being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a wider range of online information and applications. OpenNet researchers repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites. Ten countries in particular were found to be “pervasive blockers”, regularly preventing their citizens from seeing a range of online material. These included China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan.

States attempt to control social networking

Several State legislatures are contemplating laws governing access to social networking sites. Illinois seems to be the first to actually introduce legislation, on February 9, 2007, in the form of S.B. 1682, the Social Networking Website Prohibition Act. This legislation would require public libraries to prohibit access to social networking sites (like MySpace) on all publicly accessible machines, including those used by adults. Connecticut followed closely, introducing legislation on March 7. Reportedly as many as 20 other states are considering similar legislation in an effort of achieve what Federal legislators were unable to do through the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) last year.