Info/Law

An official of China’s government claims “We don’t have restrictions at all” on the Internet. Similarly, humans have never landed on the moon, and I play center field for the Boston Red Sox.

Seriously, though, China has always been unusually reluctant to own up to its Internet censorship via filtering. The OpenNet Initiative has exhaustively documented, over a period of years, China’s filtering – there is, simply put, no doubt that China has the world’s most wide-reaching and effective Internet censorship regime. It’s more common for countries such as Vietnam (which filters a wide range of political and religious material) to claim they’re blocking “socially objectionable” material such as pornography, and to use that as a cover for political control. But for China to argue that its Net is unfettered is a remarkably audacious lie.

Here are links to ONI’s study on China’s filtering; ONI’s testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on the subject; and the original Berkman Center for Internet & Society research on China. Data doesn’t lie.

Filed under: Filtering, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society