The OpenNet Initiative exposes censorship

Those of us living in China are well aware of the Internet censorship that is pervasive here. Websites and information are blocked for political, social and nationalistic reasons. The blog you are reading, for example, is blocked in China and cannot be viewed here without the use of an Internet proxy.

I recently came across a website that both tests whether individual websites are blocked by a country and keeps a watch on the general censorship situation worldwide. The OpenNet Initiative is a joint effort by several Canadian, American and British universities to monitor nation's efforts to control information distribution.

The OpenNet Initiative has several interesting maps on their site which show the degrees of censorship around the world. China is one of a handfull of nations that enforce "pervasive" Internet filtering or censorship.