Chapter 14: Censorship on the WWW

In this chapter, we address censorship on the Internet and WWW. In particular, we introduce the topic in Section 14.1, address two technical approaches ”content blocking as well as content rating and self-determination ”in Sections 14.2 and Section 14.3, and draw some conclusions in Section 14.4. By doing so, we are going to stay on the technical side and not delve into the (sometimes heated) discussions about the political and legal justification for censorship on the Internet and WWW. These discussions are going on in almost every country that is connected (or is about to connect) to the Internet. You may refer to [1, 2] for a discussion about the legal considerations and implications of censorship.

14.1    Introduction

Nowadays, the Internet in general, and the WWW in particular, is often criticized for providing an information infrastructure that can also be (mis)used for the distribution of content that is illegal or offensive, such as propagandistic material from the radical left or right-wing, child-pornographic images and video sequences, instructions to build bombs or make drugs, and information for terrorists. Most people agree that the Internet should not provide support for the distribution of such content, and several proposals have been made to prevent the Internet from being (mis)used for these purposes. The proposals fall into two categories: on the one hand, there is content blocking, and on the other hand, there is content rating and self-determination.

• The idea of content blocking is to make ISPs ultimately responsible for the content they provide or make available and accessible to their subscribers.

• Contrary to that, the idea of content rating and self-determination is to make ISP subscribers responsible for the content they access. To make it possible for them to decide whether they want to access specific content, this content must be rated according to some known rating scheme.

In the case of content blocking, ISPs must find ways to cut off Internet and Web sites that provide or make available and accessible to their subscribers dubious content. Contrary to that, ISPs have no obligations in the case of content rating and self-determination. In this case, it is up to the content providers to have their content rated, and it is up to the Internet users and ISP subscribers to behave accordingly (e.g., to configure their browsers in a way that dubious content is not rendered). Consequently, the idea of content blocking is driven by the service providers, whereas the idea of content rating and self-determination is driven by the content providers and ISP subscribers.

In the following two sections we address the technologies that are used to implement content blocking as well as content rating and self-determination.