Censorship of internet content is growing across the world. A survey by the Open Net Initiative (ONI) across 41 countries found that 25 applied content filtering to block access to particular websites.
Web applications such as Google Maps and Skype as well as "subversive" websites featured on content blocking lists. Five years ago only a "couple" of states were exercising similar controls, according to John Palfrey of Harvard Law School, one of the researchers who took part in the study.
"There has also been an increase in the scale, scope, and sophistication of internet filtering," he told the BBC.
"Few states are open about informing their citizens about internet controls. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered," Palfrey said, adding that filtering almost invariable happens "in the shadows".
See examples from Australia, Thailand and Denmark
Meanwhile in the European Parliament:
"Internet has to be free, but not regulation free"
Issues about limiting access to website are dealt with by national governments. There is not a European prescription on this matter. For example in France you cannot access a website that sells Nazis memorabilia; the French government decided that.
What we can do at European level is to make a general requirement for consumers to have information about sites that are restricted, so you as a consumer are entitled to know if a provider is limiting access to certain sites and for what reasons.
You might choose to have a service-limited package; nobody has ever suggested that we have a general rule that if you buy an electronic communications service package you will have access to everything. That's like saying that if you have a bookshop you are legally obliged to stock every book. (source)