Not all governments support democracy. Does this mean youy should not visit them? Of course not, but you'll find a close correlation between how these 45 countries deal with the Internet and how they feel about human rights, business travellers and tourists.

In fact, about 45 countries filter and/or block the Internet by:

1. Not allowing any Internet Service Providers (ISP) to operate within their boundaries,
2. Requiring their citizens to go through State owned ISP,
3. Requiring all ISPs to route traffic through State owned servers that have a filtering apparatus,
4. Prohibiting individuals to have Internet access, and
5. Requiring users to register with the State where their activities are monitored.

In 1999, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty printed an article "The 20 Enemies of the Internet that has an excellent summary. Here are the real enemies. Some like Iraq have changed, but this doesn't mean that some form of restriction is not operating. Just remember, you are not in the U.S. or the West.

1. Azerbaijan
2. Belarus
3. Burma
4. China*
5. Cuba*
6. Iran
7. Iraq (no longer on list)
8. Kazakhstan
9. Kirghizi
10. Libya
11. North Korea
12. Saudi Arabia
13. Sierra Leone
14. Sudan
15. Syria
16. Tajikistan
17. Turkmenistan
18. Tunisia
19. Uzbekistan
20. Vietnam

* The Carnegie Endowment's study in China and Cuba suggests that the Internet is not a viable threat to authoritarian rule.

More recently, BBC Online discussed the top 13 enemies of the Internet. Researchers from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society conducted a study on Worldwide Filtering of the Internet.

Companies and institutions also routinely block or filter Internet sites and information even in democratic countries. Here are some examples:

• Companies seek to improve employee productivity by restricting access to leisure sites or those associated with pornography,
• Companies monitor access to the Internet and their Intranets to protect commercial and sensitive information from getting into the hands of competitors or foreign governments, and

• Libraries and schools may seek to avoid exposing children to sexually-explicit content.