Throughout my typical day I get on the Internet multiple times a day. I check Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, my UTD email, and various other sites at my leisure. If this sounds like a normal occurrence for you too then we are both amazingly blessed. Thousands of people in countries around the world are restricted to their Internet usage via their government.
One such country is Burma. Only 1% of their population has private access to the Internet. This leaves 99% of Burma citizens to retreat to cyber cafes if they want to browse the web.
Problems with this limited access:
1. Time Is Limited
Who wants to spend a ton of time in a crowed, noisy cafe not to mention the cost factor..see next bullet point.
2. Cost
Since the government controls where the population can use the Internet they can also control the price of using it. In Burma if you want to simply check an email you must first pay a fee to be connected to the Internet and then another fee for every hour you spend on it after that.
3. Slower Connection
Even if you can make it through sitting in a crowded cafe and paying the hourly fees you still have to put up with a slow connection. There are only two Internet providers in Burma(Ministry of Post and Telcommunications(MPT) and Myanmar Teleport) and usually these are slow or not even up and working connections.
4. No Blogging
Being a blogger in Burma is near impossible. Not only do you have to hurdle time restraints, high prices, and a slow connection but 2 bloggers have been put in prison.
So if you can get on the Internet in your own home without being carted off to jail count your blessings. If you lived in Burma you would most likely be sitting in an Internet cafe right now reading this having to worry about how many hours you had been on and how much it was going to cost you all because of your governments restrictions.
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Thanks for the great post. Love the image, intro, and personalized touches. If you are going to cover a lot of points in one short post, the numbered list with bold headers is definitely the way to do it. The last point about bloggers is (for me) the most interesting. I would have liked to hear more about how the Burmese government restricts access (is it technical, legislative, or both?) and I also would be interested in the details of the bloggers who were imprisoned. If you linked to some outside sources and gave a few more details in your post, it might inspire more readers to become aware of the situation and learn more about it... and maybe even take action in writing about it on their own blogs. Basically, your number 4 point could be its own post. The first three points could be summarized in one or two sentences in your intro. That would let you get to the meat of the issue - the consequences of the censorship itself.
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