Is Your Internet Access Censored or Restricted?

Greetings all,

I have noticed in several threads of late, ATS posters not being able to see Internet sites because of government blackouts and regulations. It seems unfathomable that Canada cannot access The Daily Show and China, could not access youtube because of a temporary restriction. How many of you out there are restricted and what countries are you in? I think this may be a serious problem worth quantifying and qualifying. Are there threads any of you are aware of dealing with this global censor issue and understanding how deep the varying degrees of restrictions go?

It concerns me because the internet has connected people, thoughts and ideas across borders. It has created intellectual relationships through discussion and time. The type of censorship in varying degrees which becomes apparent in threads because posters can't see what other posters have internet access to is concerning at a minimum.

I wonder if most of us don't realize how restricted we could very well be? How many of us rely on search engines to find our information? How scrubbed are these search engines? Is controversial information which sheds light on corruption, collusion, conspiracy and monopoly being buried and removed? It appears so based on thread after thread we read where one of us posts that the information is now only available in cache and has been removed. How systemic is this cover-up?

If any of you are willing to lend your time, talent and expertise; I believe many of us would benefit from a look at this problem specifically. Who is blocked and where are you in general? What accesses and what information areas are being censored or scrubbed? When is this happening? Why would this be done specifically....is there a visible agenda? How are they doing this - who are the players and what are their methods?

When knowledge, information and communication are restricted individuals are more reliant on TPTB to determine our views, opinions and personal actions. That...is dangerous.

Thanks for any help in understanding this issue....that divides us.

Peace

[edit on 14-3-2009 by DancedWithWolves]

Pretty soon, Im not too sure of the date, many of the Irish ISP's will be censoring/blocking torrent/sharing sites in order to stop illegal downloading and copyright theft.

Other than that, which they justify as crime prevention, nothing else is being censored.

reply to post by Dermo


Its not even really good justification but rather a weak cop-out. There are plenty of legitimate torrent uses which will be hindered by blanket filtering of torrent traffic by ISPs. I use bittorrent to get updates for games I play as well as pull down whole new images of Linux distributions, both of which while 100% legal will be negatively impacted by the stupidity of ISPs who seem to be unable to employ real world logic.

Originally posted by Helig

I get what you are saying..

But I can relate to the idea because I run an Independent record label that has been raped in returns since digital sharing got big... people seem to prefer to rob you and inhibit your ability to create and release music instead of pay 99c per track off almost any download site on the net. The same goes for the small independent software developers and a myriad of other things.

I dont think anything should ever be censored (except for child porn etc) but people should also have the decency to pay a minimum amount for a digital product. This is the mindset behind it the censoring... and also the fact that the major labels sued the main Irish ISP for allowing so much illegal sharing/downloading.

Obviously this is unfair for people who put these sites to good use.

I think this has more to do with international IP law than with censorship. Lots of fantastic program(me)s which blow the roof off of TPTB come out of Canada. YouTube videos are blocked in several European countries, including Germany and Sweden.

China, on the other hand, you can't give the full benefit of the doubt, although they are becoming increasingly capitalist, so for them it could simply be an issue of IP law as well.

Originally posted by vcwxvwligen
I think this has more to do with international IP law than with censorship. Lots of fantastic program(me)s which blow the roof off of TPTB come out of Canada. YouTube videos are blocked in several European countries, including Germany and Sweden.

Proof please, for Sweden.

I tend to have access through proxy-servers. Where not only is what I view censored, but heavily controlled by what is wanted to be seen.
With whomever has the most aggressive form of advertisement redirect having control.

My ISP, local, tends to lend to this greatly. I don't feel it a cover-up, grand schema. Just where so many have had great life dis/interruption due to certain facts/truths becoming highly known. When so many, have had their darkest secrets become known, I must retire to the vague and general unknown...

The funny thing is, no matter how they block, people will be able to find a way around. It may take years, but they'll find a way- no code is EVER perfect.

I hope I didn't just break the TOS, because undoubtedly even discussing getting around censoring is illegal in the countries that have it. Oh well.

I had a quick look at my farther's computer yesterday... He had very slow net access through MS internet explorer - so then I tried firefox, in comparison it was flying but within 2 hours it was very slow, I only tried to view normal news sites etc. Bit defender didn't bring up anything and I can get another computer running just fine on the same IP.

I was thinking of just re installing XP (he won't ever use Linux ) but now you mention about net access being restricted I have noticed a few little things - relying on Google could be part of it, google is fantastic but throw the other search engines a bone every now and then!

Originally posted by Copernicus

Originally posted by vcwxvwligen
I think this has more to do with international IP law than with censorship. Lots of fantastic program(me)s which blow the roof off of TPTB come out of Canada. YouTube videos are blocked in several European countries, including Germany and Sweden.

Proof please, for Sweden.

When you try to view certain videos from a Swedish IP address, there's an error message in Swedish that says that the video is unavailable in your land (country?). In English, it says that it's unavailable in your "domain."

Morning all.

Telus here in western canada has censored the news groups by not allowing any binary downloads. This includes all legal binary groups as well. Of course that is easily solved by signing up with a "news group" provider.

I have seen here in the Central U.S that when you go to sites that is political and not a main stream site our Ip is changed and all drops offline.
At first I thought this was random but after keeping a log for a few months I have seen this getting worse.

Now this may just be a random issue that I am equating with the ISP limiting what and where I go.
But I am going to keep trying to log what happens, and I think if others around the country do this we will start to see patterns forming.

Good subject OP.

I have also noticed and many are not aware of this, is that the Internet carriers are limiting Bandwidth uses, the user will not be aware of this until they sign a contract for say like a 2 year contract thinking they are going to get full unlimited usage. I was so limited on my usage I could not watch a video online without reaching my monthly limit.

It was a Satellite carrier and I canceled it. What I think they are trying to do is heard everyone to ADSL connections(better price) thru phone lines, THEN slap the censorship on everyone.

Does this sound Logical to anyone.

It might not be censorship but what cable service providers is doing should be illegal. Slowing down your internet connection because you might be sharing files.

reply to post by pornanist


I was paying $69 for a month of service and that the agreement was unlimited usage, for 2 years I had all kinds of speed, no problems. one month last year on the 3rd of that month I was contacted by that IP carrier and that my Internet speed was reduced, I did a test and found out download speed was around 15 kb/s and just going to a site would be like 5 minutes to load, if I even connected at all. now i am getting 3 megs at just 19.95 a month.

But not to get off the subject at hand, I've read somewhere here on ATS about a internet building that homeland security was building to screen the internet just like the building in California.

It’s possible that as they do start censoring it will be then that we see small revolts within the uk and us. As they start to remove information that they prefer you not to see this will no doubt have enough impact to cause small local uprisings.

But it won’t last long before most people forget what they learned and most will not care as new internet activities take front stage.

As is now with the MSM internet debates will be highly orchestrated.

I have noticed, that whenever I review all the favourites [bookmarks] I have horded over the years, it’s always the, what I call x-files links, that disappear or lead to 404's.

No coincidence

As for the music industry and bit torrent I think they are like politicians, they have forgotten who pays who. It may be true that they have lost money since the internet came about, but it may just be that people have found other stuff to spend their money on and found entertaining themselves is cheaper.

Not yet, but in China and Australia it already is.