Net neutrality: is there a boy?

With the boom of political fascination, it suddenly began to seem that only in countries with totalitarian regimes and those close to it, did the authorities “tighten the screws”, restricting citizens' access to the Internet. But a study conducted last year by the Civil Society Development Foundation shows that, for one reason or another, the Internet is filtered by all countries, from the most developed and democratic, to the most closed and totalitarian. And Russia in this list is somewhere in the middle, in the category of "partially free countries."

And not only Cuba and Iran, completing the list, but also England and America, where the degree of freedom is quite high, also restrict access to the Internet. Just for different reasons and in different ways.

The reasons for blocking sites can be divided into several blocks.

Political. We will not discuss them here in detail - more or less everything is clear. This includes religious, political, ethnic, and cultural dissent.

Economic: sanctions against websites violating intellectual property rights. The ban also applies to the activity of file sharing, torrent trackers. In America, for example, the owners of such sites most often remove questionable files on demand - without waiting for peritonitis in the form of a court ban.
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This group also includes blocking foreign online casinos and betting sites. Moreover, in America, as a rule, they do not block the contents of such “foreigners”, but simply prohibit payment systems in the country to accept payments intended for them. That is, you can see the casino on the air, and you can not make a bet.

Another kind of blockade is “only for one’s own”. In this situation, only those who access the Internet from the USA’s IP addresses can watch American TV and listen to the radio. True, in defense of greedy states, it can be said that such restrictions are in effect in many countries, and guests from Israel can see the favorite Israeli TV series from America, too, and the video from the BBC website can be seen only by the British.

Social. For example, in England, porn sites are disabled by default. You can contact the provider and yourself personally to allow this section of the Internet. In America, they also tried to close sites of dubious “sexual” content. But under the hot hand, instead of 400 “children’s” and other forbidden porn sites, almost a million were covered up — everything, on the pages of which certain words and phrases were found. Including informational and other completely harmless sites. Of course, the ban had to be lifted.

In the same category, prohibitions against LGBT sites, sexual education and family planning, and resources about drugs and alcohol. Here, of course, Arab countries are leading, in which the types of permitted entertainment can be counted on fingers.

The fourth category of sites that fell out of favor are security threats. This is the infamous WikiLeaks , which they tried to cover up for giving away all the state secrets that came to hand. Sites of military and ideological opponents also fall into this category. For example, on news sites like kavkazcenter.com you can get far from every network.

And finally, social networks (including blogs) and search engines. It can also include online translators (which can be used as a web proxy), hacker sites, even video and photo hosting sites. Britain after the riots in 2011, tried to limit the communication of pogroms on Facebook and Twitter, but then refused these plans.

“In the free world, the Internet must be free and open.”

With such a call some time ago made the company Google and collected three million signatures. It turned out that not all users agree with the restrictions on freedom of information dictated by companies and state. organs. To circumvent site blocking, there are several solutions, one of which we make - Hola .

We are working on a program to "unlock" sites - regardless of who and for what reasons these sites are blocked. We believe that adults themselves will be able to decide what information (in the open spaces of the network) they (and their children) need and what not.

Our program is now in active development, we are trying to make it convenient and bug-free. You can help us with this if you report any problems that arise. The program is free and will always remain free for end users.

In the following posts we will talk more about blocking technology.