Protest against Internet censorship in Thailand. Photo courtesy of isriya on Flickr.

I wrote a post earlier this month about China blocking Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr and other social networking sites in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Last week, China took its Internet censorship regime even further, requiring computer manufacturers to pre-install filtering software on every computer sold in China.

(I helped put together an evaluation of the software, known as Green Dam, last week.)

Sadly, China is not alone in censoring the online information its citizens see. Though the Great Firewall may be the best-known example of Asian Internet filtering, other countries, from Myanmar to Vietnam, have also placed tight controls over online content.

Today the OpenNet Initiative released two new reports on Internet censorship, one on Asia and one on China. They’re planning to release more country-specific reports throughout the summer, but if you’re at all interested in the reasoning, justification and techniques behind government-headed Internet censorship, you should definitely check these out.