The action of preventing material that a party considers objectionable from circulating within a system of communication over which that party has some power. The Internet as a whole is not censored, but some parts of it come under varying degrees of control. A news server, for example, often is set to exclude any or all of the alt. newsgroups, such as alt.sex.* or alt.music.white-power, which are unmoderated and tend to be controversial. A moderated newsgroup or mailing list might be considered to be “censored” because the moderator will usually delete highly controversial and obscene content or content that is on a different topic from that followed by the newsgroup. Online services have identifiable owners, who often take some share of responsibility for what reaches their users’ computer screens. In some countries, censorship of certain political or cultural Web sites is a matter of national policy.
Suppression by authority of material considered immoral, heretical, subversive, libelous, damaging to state security, or otherwise offensive. It is generally more stringent under totalitarian or strongly religious regimes and in wartime.
Despite First Amendment protection of free speech, attempts at censorship are made by government agencies or groups; the question is often tested in the courts, especially with respect to sexually explicit material. Recently, efforts have been made to suppress certain pieces of music and works of art, on such grounds as racial harassment and social depravity.
In China 213 bc the first emperor Qin ordered that all books of history be destroyed so that he could not be criticized. A mid-18th-century emperor had 2,665 books destroyed whose content he disapproved of. In England under the Tudors and Stuarts, the crown claimed a monopoly on printing presses, and publication could be carried out only under license until 1695. The libel laws in Britain are more rigid than in France or the us, for example.
Censorship of plays in the uk by the Lord Chamberlain (under the Theatres Act 1843, a continuation of the Licensing Act 1737) ended in 1968.
1. The practice of suppressing publication or diffusion of certain kinds of information; usually effected by a government or an administration
2. The office or power of a censor