Filtering
A key aspect of control online is that states have defied the cyber-libertarians by asserting control over the online acts of their own citizens in their home state. The manner in which this control is exercised varies. Sometimes the law pressures citizens to refrain from performing a certain activity online, such as accessing or publishing certain material. Sometimes the state takes control into its own hands by erecting technological or other barriers within its confines to stop the flow of bits from one recipient to another. Increasingly, though, the state is turning to private parties to carry out the control online. Many times, those private parties are corporations chartered locally or individual citizens who live in that jurisdiction .
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The trend in Internet filtering is heading towards the states adopting filtering regimes. East Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and Central Asia are the states with the most extensive and excessive filtering practices. The Internet filtering is common in libraries and schools in the United States, child pornography filtering systems in Northern Europe, and the filtering of Nazi and Holocaust denial sites in France and Germany. According to their cultures and backgrounds, some nations have higher restriction on certain topics or issues.
“When states decide to filter the Internet, the approach generally involves establishing a phalanx of laws and technical measures to block their citizens from accessing or publishing information online.”
Most state-mandated filtering is effected by private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that offer Internet access to citizens under licenses to operate in that jurisdiction. These licenses tend to include requirements, explicit or implicit in nature, that the ISPs must implement filtering at the behest of the