the technical filtering of foreign-hosted Web sites.
This is not surprising given the large proportion of
total Internet content hosted on local servers in
these regions. The targets of content restrictions
vary by country. Within this set, Australia is the
most aggressive toward combating obscene
content, while the United States goes to the
greatest effort to remove Web sites that are suspected of breaching copyright law. Germany and
France are the most vigorous in addressing
online hate speech.
Latin America generally shares the same
complement of targets and strategies as documented in Europe, the United States, Canada,
and Australia. However, the legal and administrative means for restricting access to content are
not as advanced in Latin America as they are in
these other countries and, therefore, the policy
and practice of Internet blocking and content
restrictions have not been applied as widely. As
the legal structures and technical tools are further
developed in the next several years, we may see
a marked change in content regulation in Latin
America.
Finally, sub-Saharan Africa has implemented the lowest level of regulatory restrictions on
content of any region to date. One country,
Ethiopia, has a systematic filtering regime, while
Uganda has one reported incidence of filtering.
In Africa the obstacles to viewing and posting
content online are based on infrastructure and
economics—few people have access to the
Internet. This region is another in which we
expect to see increased content regulation activity in the future, particularly as Internet access
expands.
In the regional overviews that follow, ONI
presents information on the current ways that
regions approach Internet filtering and content
restrictions. These summaries in turn provide a
context for the forty specific country summaries
addressed by ONI in this first report.
154
Regional Overviews
This is not surprising given the large proportion of
total Internet content hosted on local servers in
these regions. The targets of content restrictions
vary by country. Within this set, Australia is the
most aggressive toward combating obscene
content, while the United States goes to the
greatest effort to remove Web sites that are suspected of breaching copyright law. Germany and
France are the most vigorous in addressing
online hate speech.
Latin America generally shares the same
complement of targets and strategies as documented in Europe, the United States, Canada,
and Australia. However, the legal and administrative means for restricting access to content are
not as advanced in Latin America as they are in
these other countries and, therefore, the policy
and practice of Internet blocking and content
restrictions have not been applied as widely. As
the legal structures and technical tools are further
developed in the next several years, we may see
a marked change in content regulation in Latin
America.
Finally, sub-Saharan Africa has implemented the lowest level of regulatory restrictions on
content of any region to date. One country,
Ethiopia, has a systematic filtering regime, while
Uganda has one reported incidence of filtering.
In Africa the obstacles to viewing and posting
content online are based on infrastructure and
economics—few people have access to the
Internet. This region is another in which we
expect to see increased content regulation activity in the future, particularly as Internet access
expands.
In the regional overviews that follow, ONI
presents information on the current ways that
regions approach Internet filtering and content
restrictions. These summaries in turn provide a
context for the forty specific country summaries
addressed by ONI in this first report.
154
Regional Overviews