Web censorship spreads

So you say the United Nations should be responsible for control of the internet? That would be the same UN which includes countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Iran?

Oh wait…those countries (and a host of others) already censor the internet, don’t they?

A recent study by Harvard Law et al has found that many countries, including the above UN members, already practice web censorship. And guess what? The practice is growing. From the story:

A recent six-month investigation into whether 40 countries use censorship shows the practice is spreading, with new countries learning from experienced practitioners such as China and benefiting from technological improvements.

OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites.

The research found a trend towards censorship or, as John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, “a big trend in the reverse direction”, with many countries recently starting to adopt forms of online censorship.

Drudge is also reporting today that Russia’s Vladimir Putin just signed a decree to create a “super agency to regulate media and the Internet, sparking fears among Russian journalists of a bid to extend tight publishing controls to the relatively free Web.”

I just don’t see turning the keys to free internet expression over to a group numbering heavy practitioners of censorship among its members. Talk about turning the fox loose in the henhouse…