• BusinessWeek, Friday, November 10, 2006 12:30 PM

The Internet may be effective at spreading dissent, but how effective are the world's biggest Web censors? The Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders monitors Web censorship of countries like China, and in its latest report, the group published a list of the world's worst perpetrators.

Southeast Asian state Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, heads that list. Some 17,000 of the group's supporters believe this nation is most in need of Internet freedom. An oppressive military regime runs the country, and the people there have far fewer freedoms than the Chinese. China came in second, with 4,100 votes. The remaining nations, in order, were: Belarus, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Syria and Uzbekistan. And there are punishments in each country for Internet dissent. Who even knew there was Internet in some of these places?

Reporters Without Borders champions the cause because many of the journalists in these countries are themselves being censored or imprisoned. The group has cited the wrongful jailing of at least 61 "cyber-dissident" reporters, 52 of whom are currently in Chinese prisons.

Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »