Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult
An anonymous reader writes "BBC reports that despite incredible efforts by the Chinese government, online dissent and distribution of censored information continues and even influences government policies."
Reminds me of back when most of my friends in highscool had two floppy disks with them at all times. One to disable netnanny, one to put it back. Oh the good ol' days.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Maybe they should start working on propaganda - China rules and the rest of the world sucks. Non-Chinese news sources are fallacious and biased against China, that sort of thing. I've been kicking around the idea of fascism in our post-industrial world, but as yet I've not come up with an idea that would truly work. A closed media system is impossible to achieve, esp. in a country as large as China.
This is all, of course, for fun; the intellectual exercise is more interesting to me than applying my ideas to reality.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Well, I suppose one of the things you could do is let companies like IBM know you aren't happy doing business with someone providing censorship technologies to China.
At least it's a start.
Then maybe put up a Freenet node.
KFG
Does anyone know if Slashdot is blocked or at all censored in China? A huge variety of news goes through here, as well as new technology (some of which could even prove helpful in evading the various filters...)
When I worked at GTE the company got the contract to lay the fiber optic cable around the border of China and put in the network centers that setup a ring around China. Total control of all the traffic in and out of the country, or so they hoped. A career limiting move came when I wrote Chuck Lee, CEO of GTE, and said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology. But Bean Counters only care about profit and damn the people that get get screwed over in the process.
As a side note, I knew a lad working near me from China who had been at Tianamen Square the day before and then the day after the massacre happened. When he saw what the army had done to their own people he went home, packed and left for Hong Kong and then to the US.
Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.
Too lazy to create a sig...
No, you are supporting a country in transition (remember censorship doesn't have to be 'paid' for). If you don't buy Chinese, will the country change (compare the present leadership to the Shanghai Brigage 10 years ago or that of the Great Leap Forward when China was under sanction, if you think they are the same you are believing a fallacy)?
Likewise if you think a government will change into a lets-hug-each-other one from a totalitarian one over night (or even in 20 years) you are seriously deluded. Change takes time to feed through, or else there is volatile coup after volatile coup and everyone gets screwed (or nuked).
Not that I say you should buy Chinese specially, but denying buying Chinese for some up-in-the-clouds-political-fairyland ideology is madness. Global trade is great for sharing wealth and generating more wealth (read wealth as standard of living) amongst nations, and in terms of the trickle-down effect China is doing damn well compared to any other country's development (eg Agricultural Land Rights, mobility of labour and class, etc).
But if you would prefer to condemn the worker to starve as a serf on a farm rather than work in a factory getting a better standard of living for themselves and their family that is up to you.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Agreed. I mean, what kind of "government of the people" would make it illegal to distribute information on, for instance, how to watch a movie?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
In one sense you're right, but the definition of child porn varies wildly, even within a single legal structure.
So wildly that "child porn" has no real meaning. Hell, just "child" is a major issue of debate. And to the extent that it is universally illegal is due mostly to an American promotion, with the usual strong arm tactics, to create a universal condemnation, not due to any cultural aversion in and of itself.
Governments tend to do things for purely politica reasons, and right now, in the world scheme of things, it's politically advantageous to adopt certain tenets of American Puritanism.
Note that Japan has a long history of prostitution as not only a cultural norm, but in some respects a respected profession. Now it is illegal.
But not because the Japanese themselves really see anything innately wrong with it. It's politics.
KFG
Try controlling radio frequencies never mind speficially laying pipe for conventional net access.
Jonathanjk.com
I don't think they have changed that much from the "bad ol' days"
They haven't changed at all, and it's best not to forget that. There's really no way to resolve the issue. If you really want to be proactive about it the only thing you can do is take what they give away for free and use it for your benefit while not actually providing them with direct profit; and letting them know you're doing it.
Not, I'll note, in the sense of a boycott. Just out of a real sense of personal ethics. Then even if it has no ultimate effect you still "win."
Ghandi repeatedly tried to point out that nonviolence wasn't a political technique. It was a personal way of life.
KFG
If rulers take too much grain,
people rapidly starve.
If rulers take too much freedom,
people easily rebel.
If rulers take too much happiness,
people gladly die.
By not interfering the sage improves the people's lives.
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Yes, it likely would have helped the US free slaves faster. In fact, a simple embargo of US farm products from the South would have very likely removed the economic incentive for slavery, and as it was primarily an economic institution, it would no longer have made sense for it to exist.
As to the question of economic strength today, I don't know. But the economy would likely not have been one of slavery for nearly as long as it was.