Talk:Censorship by country

Discussion at Talk:Censorship in Denmark
The discussion is related to censorship and child pornography, and I'm trying to kickstart the discussion on that rather obscure page by recruiting some people interested in the subject here on this talkpage. Please participate on Talk:Censorship in Denmark. Or flame me right here if you think that fishing for comments in this manner is inappropriate ;-) - Lilac Soul (talk • contribs • count) 18:46, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Should recently deleted text about Ireland be restored?
The following information was removed from the Ireland entry by Glic16 at 12:13 on 15 June with the summary "removing inaccurate information on censorship in ireland":
 * ... but there are wide-ranging laws allowing censorship including films, advertisements, newspapers, magazines, terrorism, and pornography.

But the article Censorship in the Republic of Ireland contains the following statement:
 * Ireland rarely exercises censorship though the state retains wide-ranging laws which allow for it, including specific laws covering films, advertisements, newspapers and magazines, as well as terrorism and pornography.

And this is part of Freedom of speech by country:
 * Freedom of speech is protected by Article 40.6.1 of the Irish constitution. However the article qualifies this right, providing that it may not be used to undermine "public order or morality or the authority of the State". Furthermore, the constitution explicitly requires that the publication of "blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter" be a criminal offence, leading the government to pass a new blasphemy law on 8 July 2009.


 * The scope of the protection afforded by this Article has been interpreted restrictively by the judiciary, largely as a result of the wording of the Article, which qualifies the right before articulating it.

So, should the deleted text be restored here or not? Jeff Ogden (talk) 19:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ Having received no responses in a month and a half, I went ahead and restored the deleted text using slightly different wording and added a ref. Jeff Ogden (talk) 21:55, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Which map?
Please see and comment on the discussion at Talk:Internet censorship by country#Which_map? about what version of the Internet censorship map should be used in this and several other Wikipedia articles. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:11, 12 March 2012 (UTC)


 * ✅ - Earlier today I switched to an updated map, see Talk page. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 02:39, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Color in Tables
The near-black shadings make the numbers of those less-than-free nearly impossible to read without highlighting with the cursor. Could they be changed into something readable, or does the fact that this is an article about censorship supercede that? 199.20.68.40 (talk) 18:12, 17 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what colors are "near black" and so am unsure what should be changed. Could you be more specific? Do others see this problem? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:31, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Inaccuracy of Iceland
http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spegillinn (in Icelandic) states that one issue of a parody newsletter was banned for blasphemy. While rare (truthfully I think it is the lone infringement on free speech), the statement that Iceland has no banned books is not entirely accurate. I read the other day that a copy is kept under lock and key at the National Archives. Nobody is allowed to see it. An article (again: in Icelandic) about the affair: http://www.vantru.is/2011/06/15/09.00/

And then also: Porn is banned by law.


 * In the table it says "effectively means that there are no banned books and similar material" so it it not completely ruling out censorship. Can I interest you in creating a Censorship in Iceland article? That is where the details that you mention should be added. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Not really no. It would be an interesting piece thou, journalism is under attack by the oligarchs through the courts. The ECHR has handed down scathing verdicts against the judiciary in recent years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arnisig (talk • contribs) 07:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * There is already a Censorship section in the Internet in Iceland article. That section could be expanded in place or used as the base for a new Internet censorship in Iceland article. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Australia
Is this page still being maintained? The page is showing no evidence of filtering in Oz, whereas the ONI says


 * "Australia maintains some of the most restrictive Internet policies of any Western country and over the past two years has taken steps toward a nationwide mandatory Internet filtering scheme."

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the formatting of that chart? Random name (talk) 12:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, the article is being maintained.


 * The ONI spreadsheet from 1 November 2012 says that they found "no evidence" of Internet filtering in Australia when they last tested in 2009. And that is what the table in the article shows. I'm not sure why there is a mismatch between the classifications from the spreadsheet and the text from ONI. Perhaps things have changed since 2009. Perhaps they have "taken steps toward", but not yet implemented "a nationwide mandatory Internet filtering scheme". Perhaps the "filtering" isn't implemented through technical filtering, but rather by "take down" requests issued by the regulator ACMA. Or perhaps the main target of filtering in Australia is child pornography, which due to legal concerns, is something for which ONI does not test.


 * ❌. In any case I don't think there is anything in this article related ONI's classifications for Australia that we can change until/unless ONI updates its filtering classifications.


 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * There is considerable information on this topic in the article Internet censorship in Australia.


 * ONI doesn't have a country profile for Australia, but Australia is covered in the Regional Overview for Australia and New Zealand. That overview is from 2010 and concludes:
 * The Australian government has instituted a strict takedown regime for offensive content, and various states and territories have made distribution of such content a criminal offense. The government is pursuing voluntary programs to increase home filtration of the Internet, and Australia’s evolving hate speech, copyright, defamation, and security policies offer further justification for restricting Internet content. A countrywide ISP-level filtering scheme is currently being tested. Overall, however, Australia’s Internet censorship regime is strikingly severe relative to both its neighbor and similar Western states, and it is helping to push the normative boundaries of filtering for an industrialized democratic state. It is not, however, at the level of the most repressive regimes that the OpenNet Initiative has studied.


 * Australia is on RWB's list of Countries Under Surveillance, but this isn't shown in the table. I'm not sure why, but I'll fix it. Eritrea and Sri Lanka are on the Countries Under Surveillance too, but not shown in the table. I'll fix those also.


 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅. I added Australia, Eritrea, and Sri Lanka to the RWB List of Countries Under Surveillance. It looks like I introduced these mistakes back on 10 February 2013 when I was updating the RWB Press Freedom Index scores. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

This list should only depict censorship
I propose that the "Internet lists" column be removed from this list. Reporters Without Borders (RWB) 'enemies of the internet' and 'countries under surveillance' designations have no relevance in deciding whether content in a country is being censored. Censorship is clearly and narrowly defined as the blocking of information. These RWB lists neither imply nor indicate that the countries in question block significant amounts of content, and do not belong in an article titled "Censorship by country". Mamyles (talk) 17:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I will be making this change in a few days, since there are no objections. Please speak up if you have an opinion on the matter. Mamyles (talk) 15:06, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
 * This change has been made on Template:Censorship-table and Censorship by country. A graphically inclined user should also make the changes on Internet Censorship World Map to accurately reflect Internet Censorship in the world. Another map can be created for surveillance, if editors of that article feel it is desired. Please feel free to comment on these changes here. Keep in mind that my rational is that these lists show surveillance, not censorship, and as such should be removed from this list. Mamyles (talk) 19:23, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the Internet Censorship and Surveillance World Map requires an update because of this change. See the map's talk page on the Commons for a discussion. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 13:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note that I have replied to you in the thread that you linked. Mamyles (talk) 14:32, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Reopening the "Internet lists" discussion
I wasn't doing much work on Wikipedia last September and October and I missed the discussion about deleting the "Internet lists" column from the table that makes up the bulk of this article. I want to reopen that discussion now and suggest that the "Internet list" column be restored.

User:Mamyles said that the rational for deleting the Internet lists column was "that these lists show surveillance, not censorship". I don't think that that statement is true. There were four lists included in the column:
 * (i) RWB's Internet Enemies list;
 * (ii) RWB's Under Surveillance list (under surveillance by RWB);
 * (iii) RWB's State Enemies of the Internet list, and
 * (iv) the countries at risk list from the Freedom on the Net report by Freedom House.

Only the RWB State Enemies of the Internet list focuses primarily on surveillance. The other three lists each focus on several things, including: censorship, surveillance, and access. And while it will vary by country, censorship is a primary focus for all three lists.

I think including these lists in the "Internet lists" column is a valuable addition to the article and allows readers to easily see how the countries are rated by different organizations. I would like to see the "Internet lists" column restored. I do not see any harm that is done by including the lists in the Censorship by country table.

I do think that we should expand descriptions of the lists in the article so readers will have a better idea of what each list covers. We should probably expand the descriptions for the Freedom House Freedom of the Press report and the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index too.

If others think it would be helpful, we could consider renaming this article to "Censorship, surveillance, and Freedom of the Press by country" or some similar name that better describes the full scope of the article.
 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 01:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The concern with including these lists is that it incorrectly portrays some first-world countries as conducting censorship. Surveillance and censorship are entirely different, and that these lists take into account surveillance is misleading to readers of articles dedicated to censorship. Readers would come to an article like Internet censorship, see this map, and then think that countries like USA and United Kingdom were censoring the internet, when in fact they are on the map only for surveillance concerns.
 * We should have a list for surveillance, and a list for censorship. Just as they are two different articles, Internet surveillance and Internet censorship, the lists and maps should also be different. Readers of Internet censorship and Censorship deserve a list and map that depicts censorship across the world.
 * As such, I think that renaming this list to include surveillance would be a step backward. It would be better to create a new list that shows what countries conduct surveillance, leaving this to only cover censorship. Mamyles (talk) 15:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm getting confused. Are we talking about a map or are we talking about a column in a table in this article? The map I assume you are talking about is File:Internet Censorship and Surveillance World Map.svg. That map is not based on this article, but on a different article, Internet censorship and surveillance by country. There is no map that summarizes this article. Restoring or removing the "Internet lists" column from this article has no effect on the map. I think we'd be better off limiting our discussion to improving this article and leaving discussion of other articles or maps to other talk pages.
 * I agree that censorship and surveillance are different. But they are also related. For example there is already a section on Surveillance as an aid to censorship in the Censorship article. This is similar to censorship and Freedom of the Press, which are different, but also related. For me the key to avoiding confusion is not to delete information because it isn't purely about censorship. Rather, I think the solution is to carefully label and describe the information, so that readers can understand what the information is about and then draw their own conclusions. I think we can and should do a better job of labeling and describing the information in this article. I'd like to restore the Internet lists column and work to improve the labels and descriptions and possibly the file name.
 * You said that the lists and maps for censorship and surveillance should be different. I don't really disagree with that, but I am worried that we won't be able to find appropriate "pure" sources to use to create the separate articles and maps without resorting to doing WP:Original research. And OR is something that we are required to avoid. In addition, while I don't think that any of the current sources used in this article were ever completely and purely about censorship, in the past they were more focused on censorship than they are now. So we have to ask why in more recent times the authors of those sources made the decisions to include more about other issues beyond pure censorship? And the related question, do the authors of those sources know something that we don't and will we be missing some important aspects of the discussion if we do not look at censorship more broadly and include some of those same issues in Wikipedia articles such as this one?
 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC).


 * Something else to consider is how this article is perceived by readers from non-western or non-first world countries. If we are not careful, it could be viewed that we included the "Internet lists" information until those lists began to show the United States in a negative light and when that happened we deleted the list information as a way to hide the negative information about the U.S. and other western and first-world countries. It doesn't matter if this is or isn't the motive for the change, what matters is now people perceive the change. The way to avoid that perception is to include the Internet lists and related information somewhere, if not in this article, then in some other, possibly new, article of equal prominence. If the solution is to create a new article, then I'd push to keep the Internet lists information in this article until the new article has been created. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 12:48, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't worry about such a perception - anyone who reads enough to understand the difference between censorship and surveillance would understand why they were removed, given this article's current scope.
 * This list's scope could be expanded without getting too lengthy or complex. However, we should be sure to then specify which columns refer to internet censorship, internet surveillance, and/or freedom of the press. Some countries may lack all three concepts, but they are distinct freedoms in which a country can have different levels of.
 * I keep mentioning the map, which was previously associated with this list (at least according to the file description and apparent classifications), because I am significantly concerned that the inclusion of File:Internet Censorship and Surveillance World Map.svg on articles isolating a single one of these concepts is misleading. Most readers won't look at this list - it's the derivative works, that are placed prominently on other articles, that we should put the most effort into making accurate. We already have a map that isolates freedom of the press, we need one that isolates surveillance and another that isolates censorship, if at all possible. The ONI classifications look adequate for censorship, even if they don't rate all countries, and could serve the purpose well. I understand that ONI is discontinuing research, but their work is current as of now and will remain a reliable source for years to come. Mamyles (talk) 14:32, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

(tab reset) The ONI data isn't as up-to-date as you might think. The testing that some of the classifications are based on goes back to 2007. ONI's most recent testing was done in 2012. Here is the breakdown: 3 in 2007, 10 in 2008, 37 in 2009, 3 in 2010, 15 in 2011, and 6 in 2012. For a total of 74 countries. It will be interesting to see what the expected ONI update in early 2015 changes with respect to how current the data is.

You might take a look at the Freedom on the Net (FOTN) reports from Freedom House. The 2014 report covers 65 countries. The reports include scores and rankings. There is a consolidated score, but there are also three individual scores. The individual scores cover:
 * Obstacles to Access—including infrastructural and economic barriers to access; governmental efforts to block specific applications or technologies; legal and ownership control over internet and mobile phone access providers.
 * Limits on Content—including filtering and blocking of websites; other forms of censorship and self-censorship; manipulation of content; the diversity of online news media; and usage of digital media for social and political activism.
 * Violations of User Rights—including legal protections and restrictions on online activity; surveillance and limits on privacy; and repercussions for online activity, such as legal prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, or other forms of harassment.

It might be possible to deal with just the more purely Internet censorship issues by using the FOTN scores for "limits on content" for most countries and the ONI classifications for countries that aren't covered by FOTN.

And for a treatment of censorship in general the FOTN-Limits on Content, ONI classifications, and the two Press Freedom reports might be used together.
 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:34, 24 April 2015 (UTC).

One of the sources for this article going away, what should be done?
In an 18 December 2014 announcement the OpenNet Initiative said that: After a decade of collaboration in the study and documentation of Internet filtering and control mechanisms around the world, the OpenNet Initiative partners will no longer carry out research under the ONI banner. The [ONI] website, including all reports and data, will be maintained indefinitely to allow continued public access to our entire archive of published work and data.

The ONI website also stated that ONI's summarized global Internet filtering data will be updated in early 2015.


 * Note: The ONI website no longer says anything about an update in 2015. Their summarized global Internet filtering data was last updated on September 20, 2013. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 14:07, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Because ONI will be updating their summarized global Internet filtering data, we have a bit of time to figure out what, if anything, we want to do about replacing the ONI classifications in this article. But it would be good to start developing a plan now. Suggestions?

One possibility for the future is to add rankings from the Freedom on the Net report by Freedom House. The FOTN report covers 65 countries. Would this be a good approach? The FOTN report does not deal with Internet censorship exclusively, but Internet censorship is included as one of the issues that is covered. I don't see that as a problem, but others may. I'm comfortable using a report such as FOTN, as long as it is clear what sources are being used and it is clear what the rankings or classifications from the sources are based upon (censorship, surveillance, access, ...).

Are there other sources that classify or rank countries by their level of Internet censorship or by the level of censorship in general that we should be considering?

There is a similar discussion over at Talk:Internet censorship and surveillance by country, since that article has similar issues.


 * --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 19:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Things to consider
This article is a great start. However, it has some obvious shortcomings. We need a way to consider things like the beeping out of words and blurring of body parts as in USA media, the illegality of words (or perhaps taboo words), and one sided media as in Sweden. I don't have the right solution right now but I hope someone else does. NumericalWarfare (talk) 07:04, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Per WP:V, we need to limit ourselves to reliable sources. Unfortunately, sources that compile information on these topics are always biased and pursuing a political agenda. I doubt we'll find a list about only censorship that calls out Western countries, but if someone does please mention it. Mamyles (talk) 14:18, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

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Edit Table
Does anyone know how to edit some parts of a table? I'm trying to edit a part of it so that one of the numbers gets changed from 84.99 to 85.00. Please help fix this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.187.114.4 (talk) 17:45, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * ✅ I made this change. The "Key" and other aspects of the table use the "Censorship table" template, so that is where the edit needed to be made. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 18:20, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Inaccuracy of Nepal
The map incorrectly shows Nepal red as YouTube being blocked which it isn't. Don't know based on what someone did that. 204.77.151.204 (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi. Your IP seems to show that you are in Albany, NY, US, so I'm not sure how you'd know. Please give a RELIABLE source, and then I will change the page contents.  EGL 1234 05:11, 23 March 2021 (UTC)