Today Internet is the most essential part of our life. It is the best medium to communicate and share information with people from around the world and gives a person an endless supply of knowledge and entertainment. The Internet first started being developed in the late 1960's with the start of ARPANET and transmitted its first message on Friday, October 29, 1969. In 1993, the Internet experienced one of its largest growths to date and today is accessible by people all over the world. The Internet contains billions of web pages created by people and companies from around the world, making it a limitless place to locate information and entertainment. The Internet also has thousands of services that help make life more convenient. The Internet is the world's largest network because it is a collection of computers and servers that are connected to each other using routers and switches around the world. The Internet works the same way a network would in a home or office just with millions of more computers and other routers and switches.

 

Although the Internet is one of man's greatest creations, it also has many disadvantages. Anyone who has spent time on the Internet has encountered trolls or abusive people. With the highly-social nature of the modern Internet, the instances of cyberbullying are sadly not uncommon. Through the Internet, it's also easier for stalkers to find personal information about someone or use online services to help them find information about someone. Hidden places on the Internet and the deep web can also be a place for criminals to conduct business without as much fear of being caught. A global audience also gives criminals more ways to solicit their goods.

Not only that, the Internet makes it much easier for those who prey on others to find people to exploit. It is also full of sites that contain adult material that can be easily accessed by minors or accidentally viewed by those who don't want to see that type of material.

Because of these abuses of the Internet, some countries have started to block the freedom of the Internet. They applied censorship on the Internet. Internet censorship means Government telling its citizens which information they allowed or not allowed to read. It’s a direct contradiction with freedom of speech, and therefore not compatible with democracy. Internet censorship includes blocking pirate / pornographic / hate speech / whistleblower / political sites.

Here is the list of some countries which has blocked the limitless accessing power of the Internet -

Turkey

Turkey is a functioning democracy, a fact which makes its total blockage of social media all the more concerning. Turkey's banning of social media is not a constantly enforced law. Instead, Turkey selectively enforces bans of social media based upon the current environment. Turkey selectively enforces bans of social media based upon the current environment. The latest social media ban, which is starting to be lifted, was put in place after a Marxist terrorist organization that held hostage a state prosecutor started to distribute images of the crisis online. The hostage situation ended with the death of the prosecutor. Turkey's government said that the republishing of the image was akin to supporting terrorism and that, as social media did not limit the distribution of the image, the sites had to be shuttered. Turkey previously banned Twitter in the face of government corruption scandals.

Russia

In Russia, Internet censorship is enforced through the Russian Internet Restriction Bill, which was passed in 2012. This federal law gives the government the right to block sites that advocate drug abuse, child pornography, extremism, suicide or any other information that the government believes is detrimental to the well-being of its citizens.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has an effective and efficient system for Internet censorship. It not only blocks anything that’s considered “immoral” under Islamic laws but also political content that agitates against the royal family or its policies.

Iran

Iran has one of the highest levels of Internet censorship in the world. As you would expect from the Islamic Republic, pornographic content is completely banned. Along with it, other contents that fit into categories such as art, news, and society are also censored heavily.

Vietnam

Vietnam’s communist regime ensures that no anti-government or anti-communist content is ever read or watched by any of its residents. Still, it bans social media users and bloggers from gathering any information about government websites or authorities.

Cuba

Cuba has the lowest ratio of computers per inhabitant in Latin America, and the lowest internet access ratio of all the Western hemisphere. Citizens have to use government-controlled "access points", where their activity is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering, and browsing history checking. The government cites its citizens' access to internet services are limited due to high costs and the American embargo

China

China ranked as the third most restrictive country in the world when it comes to internet access, after Iran and Cuba. China is the country where ordinary people are not allowed to use the internet at all. The Chinese central government has two main ways of controlling what its citizens see on the web: the Great Firewall, as it is called by foreigners, which is a system of limiting access to foreign websites which started in the late 1990s, and the Golden Shield, a system for domestic surveillance set up in 1998 by the Ministry of Public Security. Separate government departments, along with local and provincial administrations, also have their own monitoring systems. China began by blocking a list of foreign websites, including Voice of America, human-rights organizations and some foreign newspapers. They can also block particular terms when they are used in search queries or instant messages. But Google is not blocked entirely; instead, users who search for banned keywords are blocked from Google for 90 seconds, though other websites remain available.

Germany

In Germany, websites are filtered to control the spread of hate speech, defamation, and incitements to violence. In 2017, the German government passed a law that forced Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to remove hate speech within 24 hours of its posting, or face a fine of $57 million.

Belarus

The Belarus government has moved to second- and third-generation controls to manage its national information space. Control over the Internet is centralized with the government-owned Beltelecom managing the country’s Internet gateway. Regulation is heavy with strong state involvement in the telecommunications and media market. Most users who post online media practice a degree of self-censorship prompted by fears of regulatory prosecution. The president has established a strong and elaborate information security policy and has declared his intention to exercise strict control over the Internet under the pretext of national security.

Qatar

Qatar is the second most connected country in the Arab region, but Internet users have heavily censored access to the Internet. Qatar filters pornography, political criticism of Gulf countries, gay and lesbian content, sexual health resources, dating and escort services, and privacy and circumvention tools.

Syria

Syria has banned websites for political reasons and arrested people accessing them. In addition to filtering a wide range of Web content, the Syrian government monitors Internet use very closely and has detained citizens for expressing their opinions or reporting information online. Vague and broadly worded laws invite government abuse and have prompted Internet users to engage in self-censoring and self-monitoring to avoid the state's ambiguous grounds for arrest.

Burma

Burma, as you’d expect, are also incredibly strict with all emails filtered by authorities. This is to prevent access to sites that promote and expose human rights or anti-government sentiment.

 

 

The restriction over the Internet is increasing by the day in some other countries also which want to have a tight grip over what their respective residents watch or read on the Internet.