Several Sites Shut Down. What Happens With the Web?

Imaginary conversation between two guys. A: Dude, check my site, here's the link! B: What site, dude? A: This site! B: Page cannot be displayed. A: Oh, the authorities shut it down...

In the recent period, several countries have decided to shut down multiple websites but the authorities avoided to provide the reasons for the blocking. It all started in China but it seems like Kazakhstan did the same and according to Reuters, it shut down no less than four websites. It seems like all the pages belonged to the opposition and as some of the owners sustain, they were blocked because they published private telephone conversations of several government officials.

Reuters reported that kub.kz, geo.kz, zona.net and inkar.info were all blocked on Tuesday and it looks like they are still unavailable because all I get is a 'Server not found' error.

"The situation with the four sites points directly at the violation of people's constitutional rights," the blocked website owners said for Reuters. "It is clear that whoever ordered them to be blocked did not think much about the legality of their actions. They were most likely driven by political considerations."

What's more interesting is that the country's Internet users were pretty annoyed by the decision, considering it to be an infringement of the online freedom. "Are they completely mad? You can't stamp out freedom!" a blogger wrote on his website according to the same source mentioned above.

As I said, the censorship was started in China, a country which bans all the websites publishing offensive material for the authorities. Moreover, some of the Internet consumers were sent to prison because the government managed to identify them after secret information was published on the web, revealing country's sensitive details. As you might have heard, Yahoo was involved into this matter, because it contributed with private information about the user.