About 400 Websites Were Blocked in Venezuela

 

Main Internet service providers (ISP) in Venezuela blocked a list of news media, critical blogs and black market dollars websites.

The most famous of the blocked web pages is that of NTN 24, a Colombian news channel. The page was blocked by Cantv, the main, government-controlled ISP. The page is also blocked by Movistar, Digitel, Inter and Supercable.

In general blocks are imposed by an oversight agency, the National Council for Telecommunications. They have done this using the Statute of Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Electronic Media. This law has been considered, since its approval in 2004 (and its extension to Internet in 2009) as a censorship mechanism. Forty-two pages are being simultaneously blocked by all large Venezuelan Internet Service Providers, due to demands of Nicolas Maduro’s administration.

“Criteria for blocking websites seem to correspond to Venezuelan political specificity,”

an IPYS official said. However, the study made clear it didn’t observe any other Internet censorship mechanisms (besides DNS blocking). There have been no IP-based blocks, content based or key words blocks, nor any other content alteration.