For a long time, the dominant conversation around internet censorship has focused on two of the practice’s giants: Iran and China.
Arguably owners of the most sophisticated filtering methods, the criticism levied against these two countries has been deserved. And yet, the focus on them has largely been at the exclusion of other countries that also censor the web to varying degrees – including an increasing number of democracies.
Filtering at the government or ISP level is costly, yet can be easily circumvented with minimal tech savvy, using widely available proxy tools.
Most problematically, setting a precedent of blocking websites simply makes it that much easier for a government or ISP to extend filtering as they wish.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201162411435684939.html