The Internet is not the same for everybody. Despite it's reputation as a borderless, global, connected, democratic network, access and content filtering based on national boarders has become the norm. The BBC, for example, filters content for copyright reasons to visitors accessing their website from outside of Great Britain. Much more serious, however, is the heavy political censorship happening in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. China, being the most extreme example, strictly censors political content on the web through the blocking of IP addresses and dynamic content filtering. With the support of western technology companies such as Cisco, Yahoo, and Google, The Golden Shield Project (sometimes referred to as the the Great Fire Wall of China) censors the web for China's 1.3 billion inhabitants. The Internet police in China is estimated to contain over 30,000 workers, and is responsible for blocking content such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, religion, and some international news.
