The Soft War on the Internet (English Listening Practice)

I am very lucky because I live in Britain and our Internet connection is relatively free of censorship. Do you know this word, ‘censorship’? It is the action of a government or organization that limits information.

Last year, I wrote about how much I hated the censorship of the Internet in Turkey. I think this is a very important issue so I wanted to show you a short video about it. Here are a few questions for you to read before you watch the video:

1. How many countries did Freedom House include in their ‘Internet Freedom’ report? 
2. When was this report released? 
3. How were the countries categorized? 
4. There were 3 categories for scoring ‘Internet Freedom’, what were they? 
5. What was the worst scoring country? 
6. What is the population of that country and how many people have broadband access there? 
7. What is the general speed of internet there? 
8. What is the ‘Soft War’? 
9. The Iranian Government wants to unplug its country from the internet... by when? 
10. What is a ‘dual internet structure’?

Okay, now here is the video:

Did you get all the answers? If not, try listening again. Answers are below but try listening at least one more time before you scroll down to read them.

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Okay, here are the answers:

1. 37 Countries
2. April 2011
3. Free, Partly Free, Not Free
4. Obstacles to Access, Limits on Content, Violation of User Rights
5. Iran
6. 73.2 Million & 560,000 Broadband Subscribers
7. 56K
8. ‘The Soft War’ is the Iranian government’s attack on the connection of government protestors, Internet users and international media.
9. Within the next two years (2013)
10. A ‘dual Internet structure’ is a system where a country has unrestricted access to the Internet, for tourists and government officials, and restricted access to the Internet for the normal citizens of the country.

Some of those answers were probably a bit difficult.  Here is a small activity to improve your listening.

Watch the video again and try to fill in these gaps.

• Many governments ____________ are locked in a fight with their citizens. 
• ...on a _________ of 0 to 100. 
• Most private ____________ only have 56k connections. 
• In June 2009, Iranians _____ __ the streets in protest of presidential election results. 
• Protestors relied ________ on the Internet... 
• With social media proving to be such a powerful revolutionary tool, it’s ___ ________ that the Iranian government... 
• ... only about 1000 individuals have direct access to the Internet, ___ _______ ___ the population has access to filtered content 
• Burma recently launched a intranet-like web portal that ____ ___ wean the public off popular websites... 
• With all this ____________, it’s hard to dispute that the war for Internet access is _____ __________. 

Here are the answers and a little bit of explanation about how you can use these phrases.

Enjoy!