Internet Censorship Around The World.
Given the drive in the United States to censor Internet communications, what are other countries doing to censor their citizens, or protect free speech in their bits of cyberspace?
The Internet is growing into all sorts of faraway corners of the globe. In many countries, the Internet is still so new that censorship isn't an overt issue yet. In others, computer networking and e-mail aren't on the same level as they are in North America, East Asia, Europe, or even Chile or Turkey. In Sri Lanka, for example, e-mail is delivered through a uucp network over regular phone lines. When e-mail needs to be delivered to a site outside Sri Lanka, it has to go over an expensive long-distance call from Colombo to Stanford University in the U.S. Users are heavily discouraged from sending long or "frivolous" e-mail messages. Transferring any image, pornographic or not, would be a no-no. The cost keeps erotic digital images out of Sri Lanka, more than direct government interference.
Full Internet service has just opened to the public in Beijing, China. China Net is carrying a little over 1000 Usenet groups on its news server. A recent poster to Usenet from Beijing says that "some sensitive newsgroups are locked out".
Likewise in Malaysia, newsgroups that carry discussions or images that are against the law in Malaysia are not carried. According to Mohamed b. Awang-Lah, administrator at mimos.my, the government doesn't actively filter communications. A check of posts in soc.culture.malaysia shows that discussion in that group, at least, can be pretty free-ranging and colorful. Nevertheless, the Acceptible Use Policy at Jaring, the main Malaysian Internet backbone, states that "members shall not use Jaring network for any activities not allowed under any Law of Malaysia". Given that Malaysian censors are still deciding whether to allow the movie "Casper" into the country, the potential for censorship is high, but that potential hasn't been fully used yet on the Internet.
