Reprinted from Some Old Dude:
China is so afraid of the internet that they have announced a plan to register all domain names. Those that aren’t registered will presumably not be accessible to Chinese web surfers.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China has issued new Internet regulations, including what appears to be an effort to create a “whitelist” of approved websites that could potentially place much of the Internet off-limits to Chinese readers.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered domain management institutions and internet service providers to tighten control over domain name registration, in a three-phase plan laid out on its website (www.miit.gov.cn) late on Sunday.
“Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred,” MIIT said, in an action plan to “further deepen” an ongoing anti-pornography campaign that has resulted in significant tightening of Chinese Internet controls.
They claim this is to control pornography, but regardless of the “official” reason, anyone who is even slightly aware of the behavior of the mainland Chinese government, knows that they want absolute control of what the Chinese people see, hear, or say.
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Iran has tried in vain to control access to the internet so they can control what the people hear, see, or say.
Two days ahead of a new round of planned protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Internet access in the nation’s capital is largely down, according to Agence France Presse.
Sources close to Iran’s technical services told AFP the cut was the result of “a decision by the authorities” rather than a technical breakdown, but telecommunications ministry officials were unavailable for comment.
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Russia has also tried to control the internet.
In January of 2000 then acting President Vladimir Putin put a law into effect that grants eight different security authorities direct access to all Internet transactions. Beside the domestic secret service FSB, other agencies given access to Internet monitoring include the tax police; the Interior Ministry; the border guard; the customs committee; the security agencies of the Kremlin, the president and parliament, as well as the foreign intelligence agency.
Now Russia wants to allow the use of Cyrillic for Web addresses. This seems fair enough but many people are so afraid of the Russian government and the FSB in particular they think that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet.
They fear greater isolation and the possible creation of an hermetic Web. What someone described as a cyber-ghetto.
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Vietnam extensively regulates Internet access to its citizens, using both legal and technical means. The collaborative project OpenNet Initiative classifies Vietnam’s level of online political censorship to be “pervasive” while Reporters without Borders considers Vietnam one of 15 “internet enemies”. While the government of Vietnam claims to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually-explicit content through its blocking efforts, much of the filtered sites contain politically or religiously sensitive materials that might undermine the Communist Party’s hold on power. Amnesty International reported many instances of Internet activists being arrested for their online activities.
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You may not think that this applies to you, here in the US you should consider the pervasive spying by the Government as well as the spying by communication companies on behalf of our government.
You also need to add the all inclusive record keeping by companies like Google to this equation.
Perhaps you should consider filtered search results, that supposedly help you by showing selected selected web pages rather than everything related to your search. –With the exclusion of most websites from your search results these companies control what you see, This is called censorship.
Considering our government’s ubiquitous spying, and their history of insidious relationships with the major ISPs, I would think that blocking certain material of domains would be irresistible.
The internet is still the wild west but it is rapidly being corralled by people who are afraid of anything they don’t understand. Or worse, anything that goes against their religious beliefs, their personal opinions, their moral standards, and their political ideology. –And we mustn’t forget those JR. J Edgars that would monitor and control us in the name of security.
Enjoy your freedom while you have it, because unless you’re one of the sheeple who are willing to let big brother make all your decisions for you, you will soon miss it.
