“Internet blocking is a widespread phenomenon in Council of Europe member states”, says Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, in his latest Human Rights Comment published today.
“Its impact on freedom of expression was highlighted already in 2011, when the former UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, outlined in his annual report some of the ways in which states were increasingly censoring information online, notably through arbitrary blocking. In this report, blocking was defined as a set of “measures taken to prevent certain content from reaching an end-user”, which includes “preventing users from accessing specific websites, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, domain name extensions.”
