The origins of Internet Censorship

It all began in the USA

Internet censorship is the control of what can be accessed, published or viewed on the internet. According to National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), The first country which passed the first Federal law on internet censorship was the USA. These are some of the laws that concern with internet censorship:

1996: Communications Decency Act (CDA)
1998: Child Online Protection Act (COPA)
1998: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
2000: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
2000: Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)
2008: Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA)
2016: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

After a year, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down most of the CDA is an unconstitutional restriction on internet speech. Pay attention that some laws are crucial for society such as laws regarding the children and their safety. These were just the laws that have passed in the senate. But there are many proposed federal legislations that have not become law including:

Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA)
Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act
Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA)
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA)
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)
USITC Site Blocking

Even back in 2008, the popular social networking website MySpace agreed to work with the attorney generals of 49 states plus the District of Columbia to come up with a plan to combat material considered harmful minors, including pornography, harassment, bullying, and identity theft to better educate parents and schools about potential threats online and to work with law enforcement officials and to develop new technology for age and identity verification on social networking websites.

Censorship by institutions and companies

Companies may intentionally choose to restrict the content they make available or permit others to make available on the internet. Companies may be encouraged by government pressure or required by court order to remove or restrict internet access to content that is judged to be obscene (including child pornography), harmful to children, defamatory, pose a threat to national security, promote illegal activities such as gambling, prostitution, theft of intellectual property, hate speech and inciting violence.

Public and private companies which provide internet access for their employees or customers would sometimes limit the access in an effort to ensure it’s used only for the purposes of the organization.

Schools, libraries, telecommunications and internet service companies and military are some the examples of this. There are many cases that schools and libraries limit the students access to the internet.

YouTube

YouTube Terms of Service include the statements: “YouTube reserves the right to decide whether Content violates these Terms of Service for reasons other than copyright infringement, such as, but not limited to, pornography, obscenity, or excessive length. YouTube may at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, remove such Content and/or terminate a user’s account for submitting such material in violation of these Terms of Service”, “YouTube will remove all Content if properly notified that such Content infringes on another’s intellectual property rights”, and “YouTube reserves the right to remove Content without prior notice”

Facebook

Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities says: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence”, “You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory”, “We can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement”, and “If you are located in a country embargoed by the United States, or are on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals you will not engage in commercial activities on Facebook (such as advertising or payments) or operate a Platform application or website.”

Apple

According to the definition of internet censorship, what Apple is doing to Iranian users is some form of internet censorship by a company. Apple has been removing Iranian apps from App Store and rejecting new updates from them. The company doesn’t allow the 7 million Iranians who have iPhones to update their apps and it’s restricting Iranian developers by saying: “We are unable to include your app, [App’s name] on the App Store. Under the U.S. sanctions regulations, the App Store cannot host, distribute, or do business with apps or developers connected to certain U.S. embargoed countries.”

Military

In October 2009, military blogger C.J. Grisham was temporarily pressured by his superiors at Redstone Arsenal to close his blog, A Soldier’s Perspective, after complaining about local public school officials pushing a mandatory school uniform program without parental consent. In case of the telecommunication companies, In 2007, Verizon attempted to block the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America from using their text messaging services to speak to their supporters.

Wikileaks

In February 2008, the Bank Julius Baer vs. WikiLeaks lawsuit prompted the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to issue a permanent injunction against WikiLeaks’ domain name registrar. The result was that WikiLeaks could not be accessed through its web address. This elicited accusations of censorship and resulted in the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepping up to defend WikiLeaks. After a later hearing, the injunction was lifted.