Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#1

Post by caludio » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 3:52 PM UTC

During my recent trip in Turkey, I've had the opportunity to first-hand experience what a "hard, in plain sight censorship" is. YouTube home page was showing a government's statement and Twitter was not even reachable. There are of course a lot of different kind of censorships (Italy is blocking thousands of websites for any reason a judge might think of, U.K. is censoring porn, and so on and so forth).

I'm not sure about the situation in the US (DMCA, COPPA, and the likes) but at this point I wonder: is there any place left on earth with no censorship and/or any filters at all? And if the answer is (most likely) "no", what can we deduce for the future to come on this matter?

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#2

Post by contingencies » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

Maybe Bhutan.

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#3

Post by dvcc » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

The US web is not really censored. DMCA is not censorship and COPPA is a violation of federal law for various reasons.

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#4

Post by alexchamberlain » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

You can turn it off in the UK; right?

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#5

Post by vezzy-fnord » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:48 PM UTC

I don't know if there's any place without de jure Internet censorship, but there are several places where there is de facto no Internet censorship.

Most of the Balkans fall under that.

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#6

Post by njs12345 » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:49 PM UTC

alexchamberlain wrote: post #4

You can turn it off in the UK; right?

There is a system you can't turn off, although you're unlikely to run into it from day to day usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#7

Post by jwr » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:50 PM UTC

Poland censors nothing. So far. There have been efforts to introduce censorship, so far effectively countered.

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#8

Post by lukasm » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:52 PM UTC

Monaco? Small islands like Jersey (UK)?

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#9

Post by nailer » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

Side note: I don't consider DMCA censorship - most of the time the content is available elsewhere, it's just that someone's nicked a copy from the original author (or whoever owns the rights).

If I send a takedown notice to someone who's ripped off an article from my blog, people can still read the article on my blog.

Re: Ask HN: is there still a country without web censorship?

#10

Post by scurvy » Mon, Mar 31, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

dvcc wrote: post #3

The US web is not really censored. DMCA is not censorship and COPPA is a violation of federal law for various reasons.

It is true that the US doesn't have a national framework for censoring the Internet. However, it does exist in patchwork form on an ISP level. Every major ISP censors and filters websites and IP's it deems to be harmful. A lot of times, there's confusion and a lot of innocent sites are caught up in the mix due to name based virtual hosting in webservers.

Some would argue that anti-spam blacklists and droplists are censorship, and pretty much every ISP uses those. I don't share that point of view, but there are those who would argue this.