Freedom House report on Internet Freedom 2015: Cuba passes Ethiopia, but remains "unfree"

Freedom House reported on 65 nations (88% of the world population) in their 2015 Freedom on the Net report, which came out this week. Cuba ranked 61st this year -- only four nations -- Ethiopia, Iran, Syria and China were less free than Cuba. The next lowest Latin American nation was Cuban ally Venezuela, which ranked 45th.

As you see below, the overall freedom index is composed of three sub-indices: obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights:

Cuba's rank improved slightly in each of the sub-indices and, with a total of 81, they moved from 62nd overall to 61st, passing Ethiopia.

Their absolute score on each sub-index also improved (lower scores are best).

While there was slight improvement, Cuba remains the only "not free" nation in the western hemisphere:

For my money, the best part of the Freedom House study is their detailed essays on the state of the Internet in each nation. These essays are organized around the three sub-indices and they are well referenced and go into some detail.

Here is the summary figure from the essay on Cuba:

You will find the essay on Cuba here. Check it out.

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Update 10/31/2015

In a post last year, I looked at the 2014 Freedom House report and several other documents to put the Cuban Internet in context. The one sentence summary is that the Cuban Internet lags far behind what one would expect from a nation with Cuba's economy and levels of health and education.