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A brief review of a letter that 'some' Chinese netizens sent to Google and to the Chinese gov. The 'netizens' confirm that they "support necessary censorship of Internet content and communications", however, they give a few guidelines on how this censorship should be conducted.

For many Koreans, long proud of its status as one of the world's most wired countries, it is such an unpleasant turn of events that their country is suddenly being compared with less democratic countries such as China as one of the worst countries in terms of the Internet censorship.

Korean Netizens seek "Online asylum"

A 24 year-old netizen Wang Shuai was jailed for 8 days for posting pictures that mocked at illegal land requisition in Henan Ningbao county in 6 March. The issue has been exposed by local media and there is a strong public opining siding with Wang. However, Wang's family has already lost their land, and he will probably lose his job in face of the defamation charge by the government.

South Korea, the world's most wired country, has been listed as one of the few democracies where the Internet is "under surveillance" by the government. People have talked about protecting the rights of Netizens to criticize the government and the right to know. But ,so far, the goverment's effort to silence individuals who aired criticisms of government on the Internet seems more buzz than that.

Internet censorhip and interenet surveilance in South Korea have been very harsh in recent years; therefore, the freedom of speech and the public's right to know has been restricted. Internet surveilance has been less tolerant on not only violent and explicit content but also on the political issue-related online discussion. After the South Korean government has arrested the netizens for posting personal and critical views on the goverment, internet users in South korea are now silenced. South Korea is allegedly a "democratic country."

This article discusses how Michael McConnell (former director of national intelligence), has suggessted that "we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment - who did it, from where, why and what was the result - more manageable." Under the guise of protecting the state, it deems the "netizens," as possible enemies of the state.

The article looks at the growing global trend for net regulation. Our interest is where Australia, as a result of our drafted internet filtering system, fits in this global picture of regulation. Reporters Without Borders has drawn up lists which groups nations in terms of their level of regulation. Appropriately as a democracy Australia is not listed under "Enemies of the Internet" which names China, North Korea, Egypt and Cuba. Yet disconcertingly we are given the label of "Under Surveillance" which lists us alongside Turkey, Russia, South Korea and the UAE.