Yup, censorship is now a global trend. We shouldn't forget that it also happens in many Western countries such as Denmark, Finland, France, ... https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/world/
I don't understand what the "anomalies" this site detects in Denmark, Finland, and France represent, but the site itself says that they don't necessarily represent censorship and that it has only confirmed censorship in the following 12 countries: Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Greece, Sudan, Belgium, Cyprus and Korea.
Just FYI, Youtube is heavilly sensored in the Czech Republic (we have very strong laws against political extremism, like jail time for extreme right wing speech..). But I don't know of any actual domains that are blocked. The government doesn't need a great firewall to censor. They can simply slap a 2 year jail sentence on anyone who shares a right wing video and that's enough to get youtube to censor itself.
Edit: I mean extreme right wing, like KKK, nazi stuf ect.
The UK, France, Spain and possibly others have laws against "glorifying terrorism". In Germany, Nazi symbols and propaganda are banned. I don't necessarily agree with these laws, but this is quite different from blocking the entire Wikipedia.
Is there jail time for extreme left wing speech? Like Che Guevara, Mao, Hugo Chavez? Not arguing -- just genuinely curious how extremism is defined there.
You are very unlikely to go to jail for left wing speech. This isn't a matter of placement on a political spectrum though.
The law is as follow:
1) No Nazi symbolism outside of a historic context.
2) No inciting racial hatred.
3) No expression of hatred against a protected minority (the wealthy are not a protected minority).
These are very easy to prove, but none of them apply to normal left wingers. There are Islamist left wingers that fall into these categories because of their anti-semeticism or anti Christian sentiments.
4) No denying crimes against humanity.
This DOES apply to left wingers. If you deny Stalin's genocide against the Ukrainians that would be illegal. It also equally applies to holocaust deniers. I don't know how often it comes up though.
5) No speach which undermines democratic values and seeks to opress others.
I don't think that this is ever actually used. Though it might apply against left wingers.
One note on this: some elements of the extreme left-wing have in the past had tendencies toward antisemitism, which obviously fits into 2) and potentially 1). So that's one issue.
Yeah, but I don't think that anything of value is said by people who incite racial hatred or use Nazi symbols...
Denial of crimes against humanity, though, I see as a big mistake. I know, I know, we've all beaten the Holocaust to death... But when it comes to anti-capitalist and anti-comunist thinkers there is a great deal to talk about.
For example, anti-communists will tell you that Mao commit genocide during the great leap forward. Reasonable people disagree.
I, as an anti-capitalist, will tell you, that the quality of food sold in primarily black neighborhoods in the US is much lower than elsewhere in the country, that millions of blacks die as a result, and that this is an act of genocide against blacks. Obviously, a lot of white Americans would disagrees with me, and I think it would not be a good thing if they all went to jail for doing so...
I don't think that fits the legal definition of crimes against humanity, although there's admittedly a fine line between that and e.g. some of the famines in the USSR.
You are right that it the censorship is incomplete to the point of sillyness. It is TRIVIAL to find extremist content that isn't blocked. That doesn't mean that some videos are not blocked though.
I'm Greek and I have no idea of wikipedia (or other) kind of censorship by the Greek state. I know that the Greek mass media is tightly controlled by the Greek oligarchy and Greece is 88th in Freedom of Speech Index and falling - but their grip over the populace has been severely weakened the last 5 years.
I have no idea of internet state-level censorship though, are there any specific
That link says: blocking access due to copyright issues. Respectfully, I don't think you're doing justice to the Turkish freedom of speech issue of Wikipedia being blocked by bringing up The Pirate Bay.
> That link says: blocking access due to copyright issues. Respectfully, I don't think you're doing justice to the Turkish freedom of speech issue of Wikipedia being blocked by bringing up The Pirate Bay.
Can we both agree that both of these things shouldn't happen and ThePirateBay and Wikipedia shouldn't be censored by any country?
Sure, but there's a time and a place, if you know what I mean. One directly undermines access to information, whereas another has to do with copyright law.
I did not mean to compare the two cases at all and am sorry if it came out that way. I just wanted to answer the parent post on 'what the "anomalies" this site detects in Denmark, Finland, and France represent' by pointing out that TPB is blocked/censored in these countries. I only meant to point out one possible reason why the above site listed these countries.
Denmark censors a lot more than just TPB, though it is probably the one website that causes most people to circumvent the censorship.
In Denmark it all started out with blocking child porn sites, then it was expanded to copyright infringement, then it was expanded to companies operating illegally (counterfeit goods stores, illegal gambling, alternative medicine stores) and most recently the government started blocking "terror propaganda" [1] - which means they have begun censoring political speech.
This is in spite of a constitution forbidding censorship, with the counterpoint being that since it's technically private companies doing the censorship, it doesn't violate the constitution. Even though ISPs will be taken to court if they don't censor sites [2]
Sorry, but I did not intend to compare or conflate the two cases. I wanted to give an answer to the parent poster why those countries might be listed on the above site.
As far as I can tell from the linked site, it is only thepiratebay.org that is censored in Denmark, and I can confirm that this censorship is dependant on your internet provider.
My landline provider gives me access, but my mobile provider (TDC, same provider as the one tested on the linked site) does not give me access, saying that a court has banned access to the site, but not quoting any specific case.
I don't think this list is complete. Qatar comes to my mind, where while being there recently, I've had multiple instances where given sites were blocked - i.e. redirect to censor.qa and passing unique query parameters along w/ your IP address.
They're basing their results on measurements that anyone can make, if there are very few people who do these measurements in a certain country then most probably no censorship case may come.
You talk about Belgium, but the wikipedia doesn't (I read it from Belgium right now). Could you elaborate on this Belgium censorship information ? Thanks!
And if we look in particular at government censorship of Wikipedia or some articles in it we find quiet a few Western countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_censorship_of_Wikip...