Real Censorship

Excellent site.

It really gives a good glance at the state of censorship on the web. There are a lot of gaps, all of the blank countries makes it look like there is a lot of data that they still need to gather but it seems pretty neutral in terms of who is getting the finger pointed at.

I will say that they are very absolute in terms of mentioning any form of stopping traffic. I am an enthusiastic supporter of free speech on the Internet but I also want some level of protection for my children when they are on publicly supplied computers. I know that all filtering mechanisms are flawed but I am sure that most library's and universities would be willing to turn off the filter if someone is doing research on breast cancer or even something that might be questionable provided they are an adult. Also I am not aware of any coordinated effort in the US or Canada to actively block sites unless it involves minors.

I also noticed that political hacking seemed to be counted as censorship in some instances but not others. I would like to see the criteria that was used to elevate it to the level of mention. There were certainly instances within the US of attacks on sites specifically because of what they said. These instances include attacks on political sites that were not mentioned. Perhaps it would be best to focus on government initiated censorship unless the attacks are particularly egregious.

It is striking how significant the documented censorship is in some countries.

All in all an interesting site.