Literature in Berlin, May 1933Book censorship can be enacted at the national or sub-national level, and can carry legal penalties for their infraction. Books may also be challenged at a local, community level. As a result, books can be removed from schools or libraries, although these bans do not typically extend outside of that area. Throughout the Eastern Bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers. Cultural products there reflected the propaganda needs of the state. In 1973,
a military coup took power in Uruguay, and the new government practiced censorship. For example, writer
Eduardo Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee. His book
Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina.
Journalism Independent journalism did not exist in the
Soviet Union until
Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader. Gorbachev adopted
glasnost (openness), political reform aimed at reducing censorship; before glasnost all reporting was directed by the
Communist Party or related organizations.
Pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available only if they were published by
communist parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union., supporting the
Solidarity trade union by censoring a government-mandated
propaganda sectionIn the
Eastern Bloc during the
Cold War, possession and use of
copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder the production and distribution of
samizdat, illegal
self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by
Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the
KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad. In the U.S., under
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, the FCC has the power to prohibit the transmission of indecent material of
obscene material over broadcast. Critics of
campaign finance reform in the United States say this reform imposes widespread restrictions on political speech. newspaper, 1970According to Christian Mihr, executive director of
Reporters Without Borders, "censorship in Serbia is neither direct nor transparent, but is easy to prove." He writes that Serbian prime minister
Aleksandar Vučić has proved "very sensitive to criticism, even on critical questions," as was the case with Natalija Miletic, a correspondent for
Deutsche Welle Radio, who questioned him in Berlin about the media situation in Serbia and about allegations that some ministers in the Serbian government had plagiarized their diplomas, and who later received threats and offensive articles on the Serbian press. In July 2014, journalists associations were concerned about the freedom of the media in Serbia, in which Vučić came under criticism. In September 2015, five members of U.S. Congress informed U.S. vice president
Joseph Biden that Aleksandar's brother, Andrej Vučić, is leading a group responsible for deteriorating media freedom in
Serbia. Although the
Russian Constitution has an article expressly prohibiting
censorship, the Russian censorship apparatus
Roskomnadzor ordered the country's media to only use information from Russian state sources or face fines and blocks. In March 2022, Russian president
Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing
prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine or shutting their media outlet. In March 2022,
Novaya Gazeta suspended its print activities after receiving a second warning from
Roskomnadzor. As of December 2022, more than 4,000 people were prosecuted under "fake news" laws in connection with the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian opposition politician
Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for discussing the
Bucha massacre in Ukraine on a
YouTube stream.
Films Aside from the usual justifications of pornography and obscenity, some films are censored due to changing racial attitudes or
political correctness in order to avoid
ethnic stereotyping and/or ethnic offense, despite its historical or artistic value. One example is the still withdrawn "
Censored Eleven" series of animated cartoons, which may have been innocent then, but are "incorrect" now. Film censorship is carried out by various countries by censoring the producer or restricting a state citizen. For example, in China, the film industry censors
LGBT-related films. Filmmakers must resort to finding funds from international investors, such as the
Ford Foundation, and or produce through an independent film company. In Singapore, the Films Act originally banned the making, distribution and exhibition of "party political films", with punishment being a fine or imprisonment. It defines a "party political film" as any film or video :(a) which is an advertisement made by or on behalf of any political party in Singapore or any body whose objects relate wholly or mainly to politics in Singapore, or any branch of such party or body; or :(b) which is made by any person and directed towards any political end in Singapore In 2001, the short documentary called
A Vision of Persistence, on opposition politician
J. B. Jeyaretnam, was banned under this law. The makers of the documentary, all lecturers at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic, submitted written apologies, and withdrew the documentary from the 2001
Singapore International Film Festival. Another short documentary called
Singapore Rebel by
Martyn See, which documented
Singapore Democratic Party leader Dr
Chee Soon Juan's acts of civil disobedience, was banned from the 2005
Singapore International Film Festival. This law, is often disregarded when such political films are made supporting the ruling
People's Action Party (PAP).
Channel NewsAsia's documentary series on PAP ministers in 2005, for example, was not considered a party political film. Exceptions are also made for political films about other nations, such as
Michael Moore's 2004 documentary
Fahrenheit 911 about the U.S. In 2009, the law was amended to allow party political films as long as they were deemed factual and objective by a consultative committee.
Music Music censorship has been implemented by states, religions, educational systems, families, retailers, and
lobbying groups.
Maps Censorship of maps is often employed for military purposes. For example, the technique was used in former
East Germany, especially concerning the areas near the border with
West Germany, in order to make
defection attempts more difficult. Censorship of maps is also applied by
Google Maps, where certain areas are grayed or blacked out or are purposely left outdated with old imagery.
Art ", then displayed those banned works in the
Degenerate Art Exhibition|300x300px An example of art censorship was the Nazis' requirements of using art as propaganda. Art was only allowed to be used as a political instrument to control people and failure to act in accordance with the censors was punishable by law, even fatal. The
Degenerate Art Exhibition was a historical instance of this, the goal of which was to advertise Nazi values and slander others. Destroying or oppressing art is often seen as justifying its meaning even more.
Moath al-Alwi is a prisoners at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp who creates
model ships as an expression of art. Alwi does so with the few tools he has at his disposal such as dental floss and shampoo bottles, and he is also allowed to use a small pair of scissors with rounded edges. For some time, a few of Alwi's pieces, and some artworks of other Guantanamo prisoners, were on display at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York; by 2011, the military introduced a policy that disallowed artwork to leave the detention center. The artwork created by the prisoners became government property, which can be destroyed or disposed of in whatever way the government chooses. |left|230x230px A 1980 Israeli law forbade banned
artwork composed of the four colors of the
Palestinian flag, and Palestinians were arrested for displaying such artwork or even for carrying sliced
melons with the same pattern. Around 300 artists in Cuba are fighting for their artistic freedom due to new censorship rules Cuba's government has in place for artists. In December 2018, following the introduction of new rules that would ban music performances and artwork not authorized by the state,
performance artist
Tania Bruguera was detained upon arriving to Havana and released after four days.
Photography An example of "
sanitization" policies comes from the
Soviet Union under
Joseph Stalin, where publicly used photographs
were often altered to remove people whom Stalin had condemned to execution. Though past photographs may have been remembered or kept, this deliberate and systematic alteration to all of history in the public mind is seen as one of the central themes of
Stalinism and
totalitarianism. British photographer and visual artist
Graham Ovenden's photos and paintings were ordered to be destroyed by a London's magistrate court in 2015 for being "indecent" and their copies had been removed from the online
Tate Gallery. In 2006, a
National Geographic cover was censored by the
Nashravaran Journalistic Institute of Iran. The offending cover, a picture of an embracing couple, was hidden beneath a white sticker.
Pornography "Obscenity" in Canada, as defined in the landmark criminal case of
R v Butler), is censored, which is generally limited to
pornography and
child pornography depicting sexual violence, degradation, or dehumanization, in particular that which causes harm (as in
R v Labaye).
Internet Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on
the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of the government or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may engage in
self-censorship on their own or due to intimidation and fear. The issues associated with Internet censorship are similar to those for offline censorship of more traditional media. One difference is that national borders are more permeable online: residents of a country that bans certain information can find it on
websites hosted outside the country. Thus, censors must work to prevent access to information even though they lack physical or legal control over the websites themselves. This in turn requires the use of technical censorship methods that are unique to the Internet, such as site blocking and content filtering. (2018)''' Furthermore, the
Domain Name System (DNS) a critical component of the Internet is dominated by centralized and few entities. The most widely used
DNS root is administered by the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). As an administrator they have rights to shut down and seize
domain names when they deem necessary to do so and at most times the direction is from governments. This has been the case with
Wikileaks shutdowns and name seizure events such as the ones executed by the
National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) managed by the
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This makes it easy for internet censorship by authorities as they have control over what should or should not be on the Internet. Some activists and researchers have started opting for
alternative DNS roots, though the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) does not support these DNS root providers. Due to the underlying
distributed technology of the Internet, total censorship of information online is very difficult or impossible to achieve, unless the censor has total control over all Internet-connected computers, such as in
North Korea or
Cuba.
Pseudonymity and
data havens (such as
Freenet) protect
free speech using technologies that guarantee material cannot be removed and prevents the identification of authors. Technologically savvy users can often find ways to
access blocked content. Nevertheless, blocking remains an effective means of limiting access to sensitive information for most users when censors, such as those in China, are able to devote significant resources to building and maintaining a comprehensive censorship system. In Cuba, connection to the Internet is restricted and censored. Views about the feasibility and effectiveness of Internet censorship have evolved in parallel with the development of the Internet and censorship technologies: • A 1993
Time magazine article quotes computer scientist
John Gillmore, one of the founders of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, as saying "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." • In November 2007, "Father of the Internet"
Vint Cerf stated that he sees government control of the Internet failing because the
Web is almost entirely privately owned. • A report of research conducted in 2007 and published in 2009 by the
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at
Harvard University stated that: "We are confident that the [censorship circumvention] tool developers will for the most part keep ahead of the governments' blocking efforts", but also that "...we believe that less than two percent of all filtered Internet users use circumvention tools". • In contrast, a 2011 report by researchers at the
Oxford Internet Institute published by
UNESCO concludes "... the control of information on the Internet and Web is certainly feasible, and technological advances do not therefore guarantee greater freedom of speech." was conducted between 30 November 2009 and 7 February 2010. The head of the polling organization felt, overall, that the poll showed that: :Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the internet as their fundamental right. They think the web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it. The poll found that nearly four in five (78%) Internet users felt that the Internet had brought them greater freedom, that most Internet users (53%) felt that "the internet should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere", and almost four in five Internet users and non-users around the world felt that access to the Internet was a fundamental right (50% strongly agreed, 29% somewhat agreed, 9% somewhat disagreed, 6% strongly disagreed, and 6% gave no opinion).
Social media The rising use of social media in many nations has led to the emergence of citizens organizing protests through social media, sometimes called "
Twitter Revolutions". The most notable of these social media-led protests were the
Arab Spring uprisings, starting in 2010. In response to the use of social media in these protests, the Tunisian government began a hack of Tunisian citizens' Facebook accounts, and reports arose of accounts being deleted. Automated systems can be used to censor
social media posts, and therefore limit what citizens can say online. This most notably occurs in
China, where social media posts are automatically censored depending on content. In 2013, Harvard political science professor
Gary King led a study to determine what caused social media posts to be censored and found that posts mentioning the government were not more or less likely to be deleted if they were supportive or critical of the government. Posts mentioning collective action were more likely to be deleted than those that had not mentioned collective action. Currently, social media censorship appears primarily as a way to restrict Internet users' ability to organize protests. For the Chinese government, seeing citizens unhappy with local governance is beneficial as state and national leaders can replace unpopular officials. King and his researchers were able to predict when certain officials would be removed based on the number of unfavorable social media posts. Research has proved that criticism is tolerable on social media sites, therefore it is not censored unless it has a higher chance of collective action. It is not important whether the criticism is supportive or unsupportive of the states' leaders, the main priority of censoring certain social media posts is to make sure that no big actions are being made due to something that was said on the internet. Posts that challenge the Party's political leading role in the Chinese government are more likely to be censored due to the challenges it poses to the Chinese Communist Party. On the platform
TikTok, certain hashtags have been categorized by the platform's code and determines how viewers can or cannot interact with the content or hashtag specifically. Some
shadowbanned tags include: #
acab, #GayArab, #gej due to their referencing of certain social movements and
LGBTQ identity. As TikTok guidelines are becoming more localized around the world, some experts believe that this could result in more censorship than before.
Weather reports In the Stalinist Eastern Bloc, the weather forecasts were changed if they suggested that the sun might not shine on
May Day. For example, in the Japanese and
PAL Versions of
No More Heroes, blood splatter and gore is removed from the gameplay. Decapitation scenes are implied, but not shown. Scenes of missing body parts after having been cut off, are replaced with the same scene, but showing the body parts fully intact. ==Impact of surveillance==