Customer Reviews

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Information Revolution and Global Politics)

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4 star:		(1)
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This is a beautifully put together book in terms of brains, content, presentation, and coverage.

An edited work, with ten primary authors, it actually reflects the collaborative efforts of an international network of collaborators, and can safely be considered the seminal basic reference on this topic.

The first 150 pages include an introduction and six chapters, on measuring global internet filtering, the politics and mechanisms of
control, tools and technology for filtering, filtering and the international system, corporate filtering, and ethics. The rest of the book, 285 pages, is taken up by regional overviews and then country-specific summaries of filtering policy.

The motives for filtering are three: politics & power; social norms & morals, and security concerns.

Two types of filtering occur: announced, and disguised. Announced filters show a blocking page, unannounced filters pretend there was an error. Blocking anc be of entire sites, or specific pages identified by keywords.

The eye-opener for me was that filtering is not just on content, but on capability. Skype and Google Earth are two of the primary capabilities that are being denied to the people around the world by repressive ignorant governments who would rather have perpetual poverty than allow the people to leverage every aspect of the Internet including free global communications.

This is a first class intellectual, social, economic, and political contribution to the literature.

I recommend the following ten books along with this one:
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Web of Inclusion: Architecture for Building Great Organizations
The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable Future
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

This is essential reading for anyone studying the methods governments are using to stifle online speech and expression. The contributors provide a regional and country-by-country overview of the global state of online speech controls and discuss the long-term ramifications of increasing government filtering of online networks.

Even if you don't read the whole thing, this is a must-have title for your bookshelf since there is no other resource out there like this. And it should be required reading in every cyberlaw class in America. Importantly, it also contains a very helpful chapter on the mechanics of Net filtering for those not familiar with the technical issues in play here.

Very highly recommended.

Well written and straightforward account of exactly how governments, sometimes in collusion with private business, succeed in censoring information. From overt blocking to surreptitious intimidation, the authors investigate the status of online censorship the world over. I'm specifically interested in Egypt and was happy to see the author hit on most of the key points, though I think the sourcing could have been better. Definitely a worthy reference (though perhaps as an e-book with free updates since I'm sure things will change soon, given the surveys were conducted in 2006!).

Access Denied

Money wasted! - A lot useless BS.

Don't buy this book if you think you're going to learn anything about the massive spying that is taking place on American citizens by US corporations and organizations. It's my opinion from observations dating back to the 1980s, that the computer as we know it today is designed primarily as a "Information Pump" to observe the habits and mental processes of the average person for political gain and global objectives -- One World Government, if you will.

If you keep a firewall log, then you must know that there is massive intrusions to your privacy.

Access Denied is aptly named because you won't find anything of value concerning protecting your access and privacy. It would be interesting to see the privacy agreement that Microsoft Corp. signed with IBM in the early 1980s. When the IBM personal computer DOS, then later, Microsoft Windows was written by Bill Gates and company Americans were entering the information age in more ways than they could imagine. Why is that you ask? Because around this time you have the seminal beginnings of certain political/power groups taking over America by closely observing each citizen's thought process through computer technology.

With each new version of MS Windows, more people were using computers for Internet browsing as well as using e-mail. Now with Google, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites building profiles on each person and cross-referencing their IP address they know exactly who they are, what they like and what they think.

Americans are gladly sharing much of their personal information, pictures, videos and thoughts. It's quite obvious that most Americans are trusting individuals and would probably be in complete denial that their information could have much value to others. But from the viewpoint of these political groups(see below) -- they are sheep that don't understand the politics of power and just how easy it would be to steal the American dream.

For more information concerning the One World Government, try searhing Wikipedia for: Council on Foreign Relations.

To go into more detail about this line of thought for starters I would recommend try searching for the free PDF file download "None Dare Call it Conspiracy" by Gary Allen

Do yourself a favor see if you can locate a good firewall that will keep logs and block intrusions. There are professional firewalls out there that do this or you can make a search for a firewall named Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 5.0 This is the firewall that I use. Sygate was bought out and the original new versions and company are no longer in existence(perhaps it was too good). You need to make a search on the Internet for the old version 5.0 - don't use any version other than 5.0 Make sure to go to options(if you locate this firewall) and un-click the update button -- if you don't, you will get a modified firewall that is probably untrustworthy. Explore the options carefully and you will find that you can filter out a lot of undesirable intrusions.

I would recommend a few other things, the first has to do with your router/modem. Check to see if you can set the security access status to as high as possible as well as blocking all ports that are unnecessary.Check Wikipedia for "port numbers", then by using this list, block all unnecessary ports (ports that you don't use-which will be just about all of them)

Next download and start using the browser Firefox with the addition of NoScript. No script can be installed free-you can give a donation if you find it useful.

I hope this review will save somebody money and time.

As we have frequently observed, the impact of the Internet is highlighted for those of us who use it a great deal, when we are denied access to it.But as it has become more pervasive and the world more dependent upon it so has control of the information and services it carries become more critical to the governments of nation states. The result, the work Access Denied argues, is that the trend is markedly toward more filtering of the Internet at the state level, and the denial of access to content to increasingly more people. Moreover, it seems that the major obstacle to even more marked increases in filtering practices may be the current inability of many governments to afford to do so. Access Denied discusses the technology of filtering as well as the many legal issues involved, both in general terms in summative initial chapters, and country by country in voluminous regional overviews which fill well over half of the book. These include specific studies of forty countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

For a full review see Interface Volume 9 Issue 2.

This book whilst essential reading on the topic was consistently biased against the concept of filtering the internet from the outset. The authors didn't think to bother to make the case against filtering first and loaded the book with emotive language whenever they were reinforcing their position