Growing Internet isolation, censorship and control, also known as Internet censorship, are an unfortunate reality of many Internet service providers. This practice by Internet service providers is the result of a lack of knowledge of their clients by those who monitor Internet usage. The fact that Internet users are able to surf the Web freely without interference from Internet service providers is one thing, but becoming a part of the Internet censorship practices of Internet Service Providers or ISPs, is quite another.
The Internet is one of the most popular places to use the World Wide Web. There are literally millions of websites on the Internet today. Some of them are useful and some are not.
Certain individuals have legitimate businesses online, while others may not have. But when an individual goes to an Internet service provider’s website, whether that’s a government agency, a bank, a magazine, a bookstore or an individual’s personal site, they can be subject to Internet censorship practices.
What’s happening now is that Internet service providers have learned to put together “blocklists” to block sites that have been accused of copyright infringement. In this instance, the individual’s website may be blocked because the individual was accused of copyright infringement, or they may have been accused of violating intellectual property rights. Once a site has been banned by the ISP for blocking, it remains blocked by the ISP until the individual who had their website blocked removes it, which can take days or weeks, depending on how detailed the individual’s website is.
Another way that Internet censorship practices may be occurring is where the individual’s site is blocked in order to prevent it from being visited by children. Sometimes parents of young children make websites with inappropriate content for them and their children, thinking that there’s nothing that can be done about it. If a website can be blocked by the ISP, then the parent would not be able to control what a child sees on a child-oriented website.
While most Internet users are not bothered by the Internet censorship practices of other Internet users, there are individuals who do. These individuals will call on Internet service providers to allow them to visit a website. if Internet access is allowed to the site, even though it has been accused of copyright infringement or other copyright infringement.
Of course, most Internet service providers are not going to allow individuals to visit a website that is accused of copyright infringement or other infringements without a court order. When these types of individuals ask Internet service providers for a court order, their requests are often denied. This denial is not the fault of the ISPs, but rather, the fault of the individual making the complaint. For example, if the person calls from an office at a government agency like the Copyright Office, they are told that the only way that they can be sure that they can see the website in question is to go through the complaint process with the complaint.
The fact that most Internet service providers would not even consider granting the individual a court order shows that this type of request is not something that they consider to be necessary. This may be due to the fact that, in their eyes, there is no need to allow an individual to see the website in question, even if it has been accused of infringing upon copyrights, unless that website is a commercial enterprise, which could be found to be an invasion of privacy, especially in the case of a small business.
