Censorship is the control of what can be said, written or published in any way, either by formal government authority or by informal powers, and in all senses is an attempt to impose conformity on views and behaviour. Censorship has been the norm in most societies in most historical periods, and exists in at least marginal ways everywhere today. The two principal categories of censorship concern morality and politics. Religious censorship covers both categories. Blasphemy would be regarded as offensive to God and therefore immoral, while heresy is the preaching or following of an alternative interpretation to the prevailing religious doctrine; censorship, and indeed persecution, has been used widely to suppress both, in Christendom particularly during the Middle Ages and Reformation, when church and state functions were much closer. Religious movements are still influential in many countries in maintaining laws which purport to protect public morality, especially where sexual explicitness is involved.
Political censorship through the deliberate concealment of information must have existed in even the earliest political society. It became more significant, however, with the wider availability of the printed word, the ability of more people to read it and the extension of the franchise.
The development of a mass media has inevitably widened the possibilities for censorship. There is one area, national security, where all countries retain powers of censorship, through for example the British Official Secrets Act and its D Notice system, although in many instances such powers are used little outside times of national emergency or war. Censorship conflicts with some of the most vital values of liberal democracy, such as freedoms of speech and the press, but even the most liberal of states requires some control on what may be published, even if only because, for example, the rights to privacy and to not be libelled, and the need to prevent the dissemination of extreme views such as racial hatred, are also important. Censorship was prevalent under communist rule in the former Soviet bloc, where states attempted to control completely all publication. Not only national security matters and political dissent were subject to censorship, but even the simple reporting of basic news, an air disaster for example, was often forbidden. Just as the spread of printing and literacy made censorship politically necessary in non-democratic societies, so communications technology made it ultimately futile. Access to photocopiers and computers led to a flourishing underground press (samizdat in Russian), which could be curtailed but never completely suppressed. The rapid creation and increasing use of the internet has made all legal attempts to control broadcasting, even legitimate ones like the suppression of child pornography, virtually impossible in high-tech societies.
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