Internet tools filtering

ONI Blog: UK Government Drops Plans to Ban Social Media
Plans to censor the UK Internet amid recent riots have been dropped. As reported last month, Prime Minister David Cameron proposed a ban on social media in light of the unrest that swept over England in early August. In a...
ONI Blog: Netherlands becoming the first European country to adopt net neutrality
The Dutch parliament has discussed an amendment to the telecommunications law that would ban network operators from discriminating against specific services or applications. If it is enacted, the Netherlands would become the second country worldwide to put net neutrality into law. The ...
Report: West Censoring East: The Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors, 2010-2011
March 2011 Authored by Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York. To view this bulletin as a PDF, click here. Executive Summary The OpenNet Initiative has documented network filtering of the Internet by national governments in over forty countries worldwide. Countries use this network filtering...
ONI Blog: Tunisia Shuts Off Internet Filter
Following a speech in which Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stated that all censorship of the internet and traditional media will be halted, Tunisia appears to have shut off its Internet filtering system. At around 9:45pm local time, Tunisian news...
ONI Blog: Amazon’s Kindle Bypasses the Great Firewall of China
The South China Morning Post recently reported that Kindle users can access banned websites in mainland China from the device. With Amazon’s electronic book gadget, Kindle users can now visit Facebook and Twitter, both currently blocked by the Chinese government....
ONI Blog: Sex-Positive vb.ly Taken Down by Libyan Domain Provider
URL shortening website vb.ly has been disabled by Libyan authorities after domain registry NIC.ly (also known as Lybia Spider) ruled that it had violated its terms and conditions. Headed by Ben Metcalfe and Violet Blue since August 2009,...
ONI Blog: A Moment in Time: A Very Short History of Content Regulation
Renata Uitz of Central European University welcomes Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center and the OpenNet Initiative. "A bunch of smart people invented the internet," says Faris, highlighting the wonderful ways in which the Internet brought millions of people together.  "People...
ONI Blog: Afghanistan begins Internet filtering with Gmail, Facebook
Afghanistan has followed up on its promise to begin filtering the Internet: the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports the country is now blocking Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube and a host of sites related to alcohol, gambling and sex. In March, the...
ONI Blog: YouTube Censored: A Recent History
ONI invites visitors to check out our newest social media map: a four-year history of YouTube censorship around the world. As one of the world’s most popular websites, YouTube has become a hugely popular venue for social media, and a powerful...
Report: Sex, Social Mores, and Keyword Filtering: Microsoft Bing in the "Arabian Countries"
To view this bulletin as a PDF, click here. Overview Microsoft recently added a new layer of complexity to the ongoing debate regarding the filtering and censorship practices of U.S. search engines via its own search engine, Bing. ONI testing reveals liberal...