Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information--often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion--that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend.

Internet filtering takes place in at least forty states worldwide including many countries in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Related Internet content control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions.

Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.

Contributors:
Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva, Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, and Jonathan Zittrain

Customer Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary, Beautifully Put Together, Basic Reference
Comment: This is a beautifully put together book in terms of brains, content, presentation, and coverage.

An edited work, with ten primary authors, it actually reflects the collaborative efforts of an international network of collaborators, and can safely be considered the seminal basic reference on this topic.

The first 150 pages include an introduction and six chapters, on measuring global internet filtering, the politics and mechanisms of
control, tools and technology for filtering, filtering and the international system, corporate filtering, and ethics. The rest of the book, 285 pages, is taken up by regional overviews and then country-specific summaries of filtering policy.

The motives for filtering are three: politics & power; social norms & morals, and security concerns.

Two types of filtering occur: announced, and disguised. Announced filters show a blocking page, unannounced filters pretend there was an error. Blocking anc be of entire sites, or specific pages identified by keywords.

The eye-opener for me was that filtering is not just on content, but on capability. Skype and Google Earth are two of the primary capabilities that are being denied to the people around the world by repressive ignorant governments who would rather have perpetual poverty than allow the people to leverage every aspect of the Internet including free global communications.

This is a first class intellectual, social, economic, and political contribution to the literature.

I recommend the following ten books along with this one:
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Web of Inclusion: Architecture for Building Great Organizations
The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable Future
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

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