Internet Regulation and Online Censorship

Abstract

This paper explores the development of Internet regulation policies worldwide since the birth of the World Wide Web, describes the advantages and disadvantages of the main filtering methods in use today, and presents two of the most important Internet Regulation Systems (IRS) implemented in authoritarian regimes and Western democracies around the globe. Moreover, the authors propose the conduction of well-designed surveys worldwide in order to measure Internet User's opinion and use such results as a starting point for developing a fair “Internet Regulation System” (fair IRS) in the future. Last, the authors introduce a new online tool for conducting related surveys, www.WebObserver.net project.