gained in popularity and new tools have made it easier to create and distribute it, filtering
regimes have pivoted to stop citizens from publishing undesirable thoughts, images, and
sounds, whether for a local or an international audience. The system that facilitates a state’s
Internet filtering can also be configured to enable the state to track citizens’ Web surfing or to
listen in on their conversations, whether lawful or unlawful.
A Tale of Many Internets
Tunisia is not a special case. More than three dozen states around the world now filter the
Internet. This book contains the results of the first systematic, academically rigorous global
study of all known state-mandated Internet filtering practices. Previously, the OpenNet Initiative and others have reported only anecdotally or sporadically on the scope of Internet filtering.
Our first goal in writing this book is to present the data from this global study, allowing others
to make use of it in their own empirical work, or to place it within a normative framework.
Second, in addition to state-by-state test results, we have commissioned a series of essays
analyzing these test results and related findings from a variety of perspectives—what this
emerging story means from the standpoint of technology, as a matter of international law, in
the context of corporate ethics, and for the vibrant activist and political communities that
increasingly rely upon Internet technologies as a productivity enhancer and essential communications tool.
For this first global study, we have sought to find those places in the world that practice
state-mandated technical filtering. The definition of what we are and are not covering here is
important to set forth at the outset: we seek to describe technical blockages of the free flow of
information across the Internet that states put in place or require others to institute. To determine where to test for such blockages, we have drawn upon our own technical probes and
forensic analyses of networks, published reports of others who track these matters, and credible unpublished reports that we received either through interviews or over the transom. Our
emphasis on state-mandated technical filtering underscores our own sense that ‘‘West Coast
Code,’’ in Lawrence Lessig’s terms (computer code), is more malleable, more subtle, more
effective in many contexts, and less easily noted, changed, or challenged than ‘‘East Coast
Code’’ (ordinary law and regulation), which is typically less opaque in its operation.
2 Straightforward state regulation of speech without technological components can, of course, result in
censorship; our work here is designed to focus on regulation that, when implemented through
code, seems more a force of nature than an exercise of political or physical power.
Thus it is entirely possible that a state that does not require or inspire technical filtering can
possess a set of regulations or social norms or market factors that render its information environment less free than a state with fairly extensive technical filtering. A rich and comprehensive picture of what a truly ‘‘free’’ or ‘‘open’’ information environment looks like can rely only
in part on conclusions about Internet filtering. The essays that accompany our presentation
2
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey
regimes have pivoted to stop citizens from publishing undesirable thoughts, images, and
sounds, whether for a local or an international audience. The system that facilitates a state’s
Internet filtering can also be configured to enable the state to track citizens’ Web surfing or to
listen in on their conversations, whether lawful or unlawful.
A Tale of Many Internets
Tunisia is not a special case. More than three dozen states around the world now filter the
Internet. This book contains the results of the first systematic, academically rigorous global
study of all known state-mandated Internet filtering practices. Previously, the OpenNet Initiative and others have reported only anecdotally or sporadically on the scope of Internet filtering.
Our first goal in writing this book is to present the data from this global study, allowing others
to make use of it in their own empirical work, or to place it within a normative framework.
Second, in addition to state-by-state test results, we have commissioned a series of essays
analyzing these test results and related findings from a variety of perspectives—what this
emerging story means from the standpoint of technology, as a matter of international law, in
the context of corporate ethics, and for the vibrant activist and political communities that
increasingly rely upon Internet technologies as a productivity enhancer and essential communications tool.
For this first global study, we have sought to find those places in the world that practice
state-mandated technical filtering. The definition of what we are and are not covering here is
important to set forth at the outset: we seek to describe technical blockages of the free flow of
information across the Internet that states put in place or require others to institute. To determine where to test for such blockages, we have drawn upon our own technical probes and
forensic analyses of networks, published reports of others who track these matters, and credible unpublished reports that we received either through interviews or over the transom. Our
emphasis on state-mandated technical filtering underscores our own sense that ‘‘West Coast
Code,’’ in Lawrence Lessig’s terms (computer code), is more malleable, more subtle, more
effective in many contexts, and less easily noted, changed, or challenged than ‘‘East Coast
Code’’ (ordinary law and regulation), which is typically less opaque in its operation.
2 Straightforward state regulation of speech without technological components can, of course, result in
censorship; our work here is designed to focus on regulation that, when implemented through
code, seems more a force of nature than an exercise of political or physical power.
Thus it is entirely possible that a state that does not require or inspire technical filtering can
possess a set of regulations or social norms or market factors that render its information environment less free than a state with fairly extensive technical filtering. A rich and comprehensive picture of what a truly ‘‘free’’ or ‘‘open’’ information environment looks like can rely only
in part on conclusions about Internet filtering. The essays that accompany our presentation
2
Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey