With the aid of sophisticated software, government censorship of the Internet is spreading into a global phenomenon, with tech-savvy governments filtering forbidden themes from politics and human rights to sexuality and religion, according to a new academic survey of 40 countries. The IHT reports.

In the past five years, the practice has grown beyond a handful of countries, including Iran, China and Saudi Arabia, to 26 nations that block a wide range of topics as they adopt filtering techniques, according to an OpenNet Initiative report to be issued Friday in Oxford, England.

“It’s an alarming increase,” said Ron Deibert, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, one of four universities participating in the yearlong study along with Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. “Once the tools are in place, authorities realize that the Internet can be controlled. There used to be a myth that the Internet was immune to regulation. Now governments are realizing it’s actually the opposite.”