The worst part of it is they use “Western” tactics and technology to do this and although its a conservative Islamic nation doing this it could happen anywhere.
This is exactly the same technology and tactics used to stop people misusing the internet in their workplaces. just that it is applied at the points where ISPs get their traffic into the country.
By limiting the broadband speed Iran can still do a lot of commercial business over the internet but the people can’t get at anything controversial.
the commercial world is also trying to change the way the internet works so big companies who own network infrastructure can charge extra for priority traffic such as streaming media and by splitting this traffic apart with identifiers it can also be filtered from the network by organisations who want to censor it.
increasingly, there is money to be made from selling “family friendly” and “business friendly” internet connections that filter out the more extreme parts of the internet.
Most of the routers sold for your home internet connection have the facility to implement censorship software but not all ISPs do it (although even British ISPS are offering it now as “parental protection”)
And in most countries now there are a limited number of points where the entire countries internet traffic goes through where anything can be filtered…
Everything is monitored anyway, and In about 5 or 10 years if not sooner internet censorship will become more prevalent in Western countries. All the govts need to do is say to people like Murdoch who are taking over the internet “you comply with our national rules or your site and its adverts will not get through” and the commercial businesses will comply as they don’t want to lose their “reach”.
I don’t think entire sites will be censored in the West unless they are extreme porn or advocating violent criminal or terrorist activity – but you will increasingly see stuff being selectively filtered from each country according to their laws…
