The tug-of-war on the Internet between censor and anti-censor technologies is intensifying. With an aim to raise awareness on Internet censorship and its circumvention, this paper and its companion Part II present a conceptual study of Internet censorship and anti-censorship. This first paper focuses on Internet censorship. It outlines an historical account of censorship through the lens of news coverage in the past decade, and presents a taxonomy of the principles, techniques, and technologies of Internet censorship. The interplay between social, political, and technological factors is presented to highlight the challenges in anti-censorship. Part II of the paper focuses on anti-censorship.

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This paper presents a conceptual study of Internet anti-censorship technologies. It begins with an overview of previous research on Internet anti-censorship systems and discusses their social, political and technological dimensions. Then for deployed Internet anti-censorship technologies, a taxonomy of their principles and techniques is presented, followed by a discussion of observed trends and implications. Based on the observations, the paper concludes with a discussion on the most critical design features to enable a successful and effective system.

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