It is a shame to say but some of the Internet censorship attempts by some of the states in the United States, are no better than what is found in a communist country like China.  While many politicians are simply attempting to ban online casinos, often for the sake of protecting their local gambling industry, they are too short sited to realize what a slippery slop it could be to start imposing any sort of blacklist regulations on the Internet.

While these local governments would start with online casinos and Internet gambling, the Chinese government is a prime example of how bad things could get if later down the road.

Chinese controls over the Internet are unprecedented and seemed to be getting more severe over time.  The Green Dam Youth program was a near miss that would have taken Chinese censorship on the Internet to an all new height.  It would have mandated that all personal computers sold on the Chinese market come equipped with a particular Internet filtering software that would be monitored and updated by the Chinese government.  Sure to be on the blacklist would have been online casinos, pornography and anything else the Chinese government found morally or politically objectionable.  This is a scary prospect coming from a country that is responsible for as much as 80 percent of the world’s computer manufacturing.

Even without the Green Dam project, Chinese controls were tightening its grip on the Internet.  Just last week, the Chinese Health Ministry ordered that only medical professionals have access to health related sites that focus on sexual topic matter.