2010 Trend Watch Update: Global Internet Censorship

“At the beginning of this year EFF identified a dozen important
trends in law, technology and business that we thought would play a
significant role in shaping digital rights in 2010, with a promise
to revisit our predictions at the end of the year. Now, as 2010
comes to a close, we’re going through each of our predictions one
by one to see how accurate we were in our trend-spotting. Today,
we’re looking back on Trend #3, Global Internet Censorship, where
we predicted the following:

“For years, the obvious benefits of an uncensored Internet have
kept advocates of Net blocking on the defensive. But new filtering
initiatives in Australia and Europe combined with growing rhetoric
around child protection, cybersecurity and IP enforcement means
that blocking websites isn’t just for authoritarian regimes any
more.

“That’s not to say tyrants aren’t paying close attention to the
West’s new censors. When democratic governments complain about Iran
and China’s net policing in 2010, expect defenses of “we’re only
doing what everyone else does”.

“2010 will see the publication of Access Controlled, a new book
from the OpenNet Initiative chronicling the globalization of
Internet censorship; we’re excited to see it but concerned about
the ways restrictions in different countries reinforce each
other.”

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