I'm not sure about the situation in the US (DMCA, COPPA, and the likes) but at this point I wonder: is there any place left on earth with no censorship and/or any filters at all? And if the answer is (most likely) "no", what can we deduce for the future to come on this matter?
If I send a takedown notice to someone who's ripped off an article from my blog, people can still read the article on my blog.
As is often the case with censorship, what happens "most of the time" is not the concern - it's the rest.
The DMCA isn't exclusively a tool of censorship, but no effective tool of censorship is. For it to survive as an effective tool, it has to provide some value in other ways.
There are laws and tools built exclusively to censor web content all around the world. That's what OP is referring to as "hard, plain sight censorship." How are tools & laws like the ones used by N. Korea, Iran, and a variety of other autocratic regimes[1] not "effective tools"? What value does something like China's "Great Firewall"[2] provide other than censorship?
Seems to be a big difference between those and the DMCA.
[1] http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/what-next...
Some would argue that anti-spam blacklists and droplists are censorship, and pretty much every ISP uses those. I don't share that point of view, but there are those who would argue this.
Could you provide any more information on ISPs blocking content?
I don't have any love for North American ISPs, but I loathe FUD.
The first is that web censorship (as opposed to just plain old regular censorship) requires filtering or interfering with the end-to-end principle. In this case, the U.S isn't really censored (although we had a close call with SOPA / PIPA). The DMCA and COPPA don't affect the end-to-end principle or block content -- they only threaten penalties on various people on the edges of the network.
The second way to think about this is to say that threatening penalties on people for what they say IS Internet Censorship. The question now isn't about "web censorship" per se, but really about whether said country has any restrictions on speech that can be applied to speech online. And if you take a very strict view of free speech rights, I'm pretty dubious you'll find any country that fits the bill (except perhaps some tiny nation with almost no laws to begin with).
Varying levels of "speech" you'd need to permit to be completely "censorship" free:
* Spammy advertisements
* Infringement of any and all IP rights
* Hate speech
* Threats
* Cyberbullying and other intentional inflictions of emotional distress
* Publication of private data
* (Re)-distribution of child porn
Most of the Balkans fall under that.
I feel like this is the general situation on countries where you "don't" have internet censorsihip, you don't, today.
Generally it's considered to be a restriction on freedom of expression by a system of legal authority. Generally it is not thought to include matters of private choice and contracts, even if the sanctity of those contracts are enforced by the system of authority.
The U.S. has a system of law that permits people to control the distribution of their expressions. Tool can decide they don't want their music distributed by iTunes, and the government will enforce that decision. But it's not censorship because iTunes is not expressing any original thought by selling digital copies of Tool's albums. And Tool themselves are free to post their own music online with no restriction.
The amount of expertise in this country is shamefully low[1].
[1]: Citation needed, but my experience with "technical high ups" would indicate so.
Over the years there was this notion that US is a role model of democracy and freedom which is a joke especially in a context of recent news.
That said, it is not a battle that is completely over.
Yes, they use IP's. They don't do URL-level filtering. They use IP's.