Globally, the average penetration rate is about 25%. One in four people are internet users, a number that has grown by almost 400% in the past decade. Africa and the Middle East are the fastest growing regions while North America is the slowest. This is because of the global digital divide between the rich and poor countries. Penetration rates in wealthy nations such as South Korea are already as high as 65% while in poor nations such as Bangladesh the rate is less than 1%. The main language of the internet is English, followed by Chinese and Spanish.
While nations such as Iceland do not censor the internet, some such as North Korea try to control as much of it as they possibly can. Methods of internet censorship include IP blocking, DNS filtering and redirection, URL filtering, packet filtering, connection reset, web feed blocking, and reverse surveillance. The effectiveness of these methods is questionable as users seem to find ways around them such as proxy servers. They heavy censoring nations do so for political reasons. Authoritarian regimes see the internet as a threat to their power. Burma and China are afraid free speech will turn the public against them so they censor things relating to democracy, freedom, and political blunders they may have made. Many other nations censor material such as child porn.
I believe that some nations will continue to heavily censor the internet because they feel they have to in order to survive. As long as those governments are in power, censorship will not go away. While I don’t like the idea of internet censorship, I don’t see anything wrong with censoring certain things such as child porn. The question is where to draw the line on censorship. Such a powerful tool can easily corrupt any government.
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