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tcd004 writes "Kate Palmer writes in Foreign Policy Magazine that an international black market for Internet access has arisen in many authoritarian countries who keep their populations offline. Savvy black marketers in cybercafes, universities, private homes, and elsewhere are exploiting technological loopholes to circumvent government filters and charge fees for access. According to OpenNet Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks banned sites, visiting a single website in Saudi Arabia can cost anywhere from $26 to $67. And as censorship spreads, the prices are only going up." It's just a few paragraphs, but thought provoking.
First posts will be harder to attain without this service.
I'm in the wrong business!
Better than Flickr - Manage, Share, Archive
In a sad way it really demonstrates how things we take for given are not all that given.
I used to run my high-school's firewall, back in 1994... Students paid me top dollar to gain access to then blacklisted sites... What a sweet deal that was... :) Especially since I maintained the blacklist of sites.. :)
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
According to OpenNet Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks banned sites, visiting a single website in Saudi Arabia can cost anywhere from $26 to $67
I wonder if the price is because of the cost of the connection (probobly a satellite phone), or something else.... What do you guys think?
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
How else could someone have a black market for Internet Site access? In our day and age, information should florish, not be stifled by fearful governments.
...we have a black market in any molecules that might cause enjoyment.
Or are you just being sarcastic?
They're charging that much because the websites are banned/filtered by the government/ISPs. The 'contrabandwidth' specialists bypass those bans and filters on internet connections and sell usage. That is why the prices are so high; they can charge that much because there's really no other way to gain access to these banned/filtered websites (unless you bypass them yourself).
Whenever there is a need, a supply will arise, regardless of any other factors. When gas/food/etc was rationed in WWII, black markets rose to fulfill the demand. That can also be applied to the sex industry in SE Asia, but I digress...
Question is, though, is visiting 'banned' websites worth the cash, or is it just for 'thrill' value? I don't think I'd pay $26 just to get to Maddox's site, despite it's inherent awesomeness.
How backward ? Yes, indeed try to travel to Cuba then...
MP3 Search Engine
I wonder how much it costs to read Slashdot in Saudi Arabia...
And suddenly, a Slashdot addiction seems to be a much more costly habit than a smoking addiction...
Exactly. When something is "banned", we have criminal activity,i.e. making money off giving the public whatever was "banned". Good example was alcohol prohibition in the USA.
I can just picture geeks driving around in red 70's Dodge Chargers shouting "Yaaahoooo" and "Yeehaaaaa" as we jump over ravines to bring data to the censored masses.
Table-ized A.I.
If these governments have nothing to hide...they shouldn't fear people visiting those sites.
Personally, I find this encouraging.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
visiting a single website in Saudi Arabia can cost anywhere from $26 to $67.
Man, those are some savvy black marketers!
Seriously, though, can you imagine paying $67 and getting redirected to Goatse?
There are techniques by which anyone can bypass government control of the Internet. Consider the following. A Tibetan uses a cell phone to call into an internet service provider (ISP) in Australia. Radio Free Asia subsidizes all such accounts so that they are essentially free.
The cell phone then becomes a 56K modem. It is not fast but will do the job. The Tibetan can then freely and daily e-mail reports about Chinese brutality in and around Tibet. Moreoever, the Tibetan can receive factual information about the outside world. After all, both CNN and FoxNews have web sites.
Doesn't that always determine the price in illicit markets?
In a market, import duties encourage smuggling, since the artificial State imposes cost makes it possible to provide a given good at a significantly cheaper rate simply by avoiding customs.
Censorship is an attempt by the State to prevent the import of information. In an exact parallel, this encourages the smuggling of information, since there is censorship by no means eliminates demand; it merely restricts supply and so drives up prices.
The article implies that Internet access is expensive in authoritarian countries because of the rates being charged by black access groups.
In fact, it is a testimoney to the power of supply and demand that it is *possible* to obtain access *despite* all attempts by the State to prevent this.
--
Toby
In short, we can all look forward to a future where freedom isn't a right.
It's a service that's offered, for a price.
May the Maths Be with you!
Press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start
From A website that promotes democracy in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Diplomat Defects to France Saturday, 19 March 2005 Washington DC - A Saudi diplomat defected to France Thursday, according to the diplomat who issued a statement on the first anniversary of the reformers arrest last year. Ahmed Bin Jaza Al-Shaikh, the second secretary at the Saudi Mission to the United Nations in Geneva told the Saudi Institute from Paris he defected to protest the Saudi government oppressive polices against reformers and democratic activists. Al-Shaikh called for a fully elected parliament with real powers in order to curb massive official corruption and to ensure the human rights f the population, and their rights for free expression.
There is always place for black market in every country. Whenever something is illegal, it will be on the black market.
Examples:
-Prostitution - most of the world (well, exept for Amsterdam, and p0rn)
-Drugs - most of the world (well, exept for Amsterdam)
-[Insert illegal things here (exept Amsterdam)]
So... in conclusion. Go to Amsterdam.
No sig for now.
why shouldn't it work for bandwidth?
Wanna keep prices up? Just make it illegal!
Say it ain' So! You mean one of our biggest "allies" and the country with whom the current powers that be have massive financial ties isn't a shining beacon of democracy like Iraq?
You see that was Iraq's problem wasn't it? They wouldn't act like good 'lil Arabs like the Saudis do, and trade with GWB and his oil soaked family. Guess we showed them.
Sincerly,
The last "real" Conservative
It's supposed to cost a buck-oh-five, not twenty six dollars! Inflation sucks.
It's funny how we're supposedly bringing freedom to the middle east, when one of our biggest "allies" is a nation so opressive that they lock girls in a burning school to prevent them from being seen without a burqa. The saudi government is much worse in many ways than Saddam Hussein's, yet we are not starting any wars for a "regime change" there? Saudi Arabia is openly hostile to our allies, treats their citizens worse than Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro, and publically criticizes both democracy and the US government and people. Not only do we not detest them, but the Bush family is friends with the oppressive house of Saud.
I fail to see how anyone can believe that this administration's goals are anything but getting Bush's friends richer.
... wanna buy a byte? Brand new....
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Check out some of the wildly political investing he does. Interesting approach, with his humaitarian organizations providing carrots and his hedge funds acting as sticks; he both encourages freedoms in countries proactively, and devistates countries that refuse them (on the grounds that he sees oppressive regimes as bad investments)
We on the other hand, dont get to pay a small sum to visit our favorite sites, they just get destroyed by the government, so I dont see what all the hype is about.
Also, the heavy sensorship in schools and colleges and monitoring of internet access by ISPs.
Thank god for freenet.
...would there be any potential legal implication to my supporting a black market overseas...
;)
IIRC, export laws pertain to data as well. This means that if you export data to countries listed on your own countries "embargo list" (specifically, the U.S. has a trade embargo on any country it doesn't like) you may be held in violation. (Typically I would say this is software capable of high-encryption, such as Windows NT/2000/XP with high encryption pack etc etc).
Just make sure it's encrypted so they can't read it.
IANAL, but I would be worried about this aspect if I lived in the US. Read your EULA for further details, it's in there.
I am in Canada, and I don't think we have too many countries on our embargo list, so I'm not too worried...but still.
Inject.
I remember one of my classes on the middle east- the professor asked for a show of hand as to how many people would be willing to trade civil liberites for cash. More then half the class seemed willing to make the bargin. He then pointed out that this was the trade-off that Saudi-Arabia represented. He also noted that students from other middle eastern countries usually tried to stay in the US, but that the students from Saudi Arabia tended to go back.
I suspect a large number, if not a majority of US citizens would be willing to make a similarly lucrative trade off in exchange for allowing an absolute monoarchy, in a way the house of saud is the ultimate example of free market goverment, they have bought their power.
I for one don't waste any effort hating this goverment, nor do I feel espically sorry for its citizens. I suspect that most could leave if it really bothered them.
When I was working in Riyadh the compound where I Lived had two internet access routes. The first was available to all residents regardless of nationality and went via the government censored route. So, the only sites reachable were those which had been passed by the Saudi censor.
The other route was only available to non Muslims was via satellite and was totally uncensored. It was very illegal but we made sure that it was kept quiet and for the 18 months I was there the service was splendid.
From my experience you have to actually live in the place to understand the paranoia of the Censor. In the branch of Safeway that I regulrarly visited there were plenty of womens magazines that carried no censorship whereas any picture of a women in a magazine or paper that was aimed at men was heavily censored with the black felt tip pen.
just my 0.02riyals worth
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
FreeNet nodes can - and often do - contain generally unacceptable content such as images of child pornography. It's not an acceptable solution for most people.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Does anyone have "The List"??? I'd like to see it. Is it typically "freedom fighter" type sites/blogs? Free-radical sites? Anti-Saudi sites? Or just trash?
What does one's browser display if one attempts access to a blacklisted site? Does the national intelligence agency then start investigating you for suspicion/conspiracy of treason/other capital law violation?
I want to know if my geocities page is listed. >:D
Inject.
Just think, Slashdot editors - someone somewhere paid $67 for a dupe!
I lived in the Middle East for a very long time before moving out west. I recall that back in 1996 when the Internet started to get a hold of more pro-Western nations (Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar) that there was an outcry from the conservative, fundamentalist population. After 20 years of censoring Israeli and Jewish pictures from encyclopedias in local bookstores and pixelating television broadcasts containing PG kisses, they were appalled that the Internet gave access to such decadent material.
Since the only ISPs were the government-run telcos (Batelco, Etisalat, Qatar Telecom) censorship was rather easy to push. Websites that promoted blasphemy, Israel, anarchy, porn, warez, etc. were banned; sometimes hastily. The ignorant admins at these ISPs used a list of keywords to censor URLs due to the exponential increase in pornography. In fact, because of its very name, Hotmail.com was banned in 3 of those countrie for almost 2 months until they realized its innocence. Similarly, sites such as Whitehouse.com were made available for diplomatic content (for some time) but access was denied to Hotbot.com because it was too lewd.
The fines for visiting offensive material and / or finding ways around the filters ranged from about US$10 to ~$200. Of course, in '96 the ISPs charged about US$1.50 for each hour spent online. With that kind of sticker price and the reasonable likelihood of surfing onto banned websites accidentally, some kids started making international calls to ISPs in India and Egypt to get around the limitations. The ones who couldn't dish out the bucks stuck with private BBSs. It would have been possible to make quite a bit of money by meeting the demands of the people, but the risks (especially under Sharia law) are not to be taken lightly.
The Salesman: Hey, bud.
Ernie: Who me?
The Salesman: SHHHHHH!
Ernie: (whispering) Who me?
The Salesman: Riiiiiiiight!
How would you like to buy a baud?
Ernie: Ah!
The Salesman: It'll cost you just a nickel
Ernie: A nickel?
The Salesman: SHHHHHH!
Ernie: (whispering) A nickel?
The Salesman: Riiiiiiiight!
Professor Diebert taught one of my classes at the University of Toronto. He's not the executive director of ONI. Not sure about the rest of the article, but if they can't get that right... Visit http://citizenlab.org/ for more.
To bypass censorship and get around a restrictive firewall blocking you from browsing certain web sites all you need is a shell account that is accessable via ssh on a machine that has a free and open connection. This could be another machine that you own, a friend's machine or even an account rented from an ISP. An example ISP offering shell accounts would be Panix. I'll use them for the rest of this example as I have a shell account with them and hence can easily test the example setup.
All you need to do is make use of dynamic port forwarding to simulate a SOCKS proxy. Here is how you would do it.
- Make a ssh connection to the remote machine using dynamic port forwarding. (If the standard ssh port [22] is blocked then some accounts, such as Panix, will allow a ssh connection on another port, such as 80 or 443). For example, on a Windows machine I could connect to Panix by entering the following on the command line:
- In a browser that supports SOCKS proxies, go into the proxy configuration page and specify localhost and the port you dynamically port forwarded (in this example 4096). All traffic is now routed through Panix.
Once you have this setup you can also configure any other internet application that supports SOCKS proxies to route their traffic through your secure link (e.g. instant messaging with GAIM).putty -ssh -D 4096 -P 80 shell.panix.com
In case you are not familiar with Putty* and its command line options I will break that down for you:
-ssh Use the ssh protocol -D 4096 Use dynamic port forwarding with 4096 as that port. (You could use any port number you like that is not already in use on your machine). -P 80 Connect to the server on port 80 (this part may not be needed or your remote machine may not support it) shell.panix.com The server you are connecting to. In this example the panix shell server.Note 1: You can also use the Putty graphical user interface. You do not need to use the command line! Once you have started Putty you can get to the port forwarding section via Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels. Then type 4096 (or any other suitable port number) in the Source Port box, click the Dynamic radio box and click the Add button.
Note 2: If you are using Linux or MacOS/X you could use OpenSSH as follows: ssh -D 4096 -p 80 shell.panix.com
For example, in Firefox you can access the proxy settings here: Tools -> Options -> General -> Connections Settings. Then select the radio button for Manual proxy configuration. In SOCKS Host enter: localhost and in Port enter: 4096
*Putty is a free/open source telnet/ssh client for Windows. Here is the home page. All of the above can also be configured by the Putty GUI and saved as a 'session' if you prefer.
The parent poster is referring to the Konami Code, a famous cheat code used in many Konami games.
The inclusion of "select" by the parent means that he is starting a two person game (iirc).
I'm currently visiting Saudi Arabia. Been here a few days and noticed that the internet is blocked by a proxy-server (proxy-dsl.nesma.net.sa:8080 to be exact) Just got past the thing a couple of hours ago with a little help of some googleing ;)
It isn't hard if you got some computer skills and some know-how of proxys. Maybe should start up an internet café :)
I use a program called HTTPort (the homepage to the program is, ofcourse, banned by the proxy) and connect to one of the thousands public proxy-server around, maybe I should sell the idea to some pr0n-craving guys over here!
Now back to some "illegal sites" just for the fun of it, solong suckers!!
Anytime a government bans a product or a service that people want, it sets off an inevitable chain reaction:
1. A black market immediately springs up to service the demand
2. The government tries to "get tough" with the black market
3. The price for the goods and services on the black market increase
4. People resort to crime to pay for ever-increasing black market prices
5. Life gets a little bit worse for just about everybody
And the cycle continues. This vicious cycle is true with failed government attempts to stop people from wanting drugs, tobacco, guns, speech, communication...
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Put down that book on "Aliens on Earth" and educate yourself sailor.
Tortured by "holy men"? What utter rubbish. Yes they are a strange people (who isn't to us!) - but let's keep from making sweeping statements.
As I recall, "colored folks" were disappearing not too long ago in our Great South only to be found "tortured" or "beaten to death".
import duties encourage smuggling
What? Without import duties, smuggling wouldn't exist, because you can bring with you whatever. You could say that it is the "import duties" that encourage smuggling, because it wouldn't be smuggling without the duties, but I believe it would benefit the discussion if we didn't consider the amount of goods smuggled, but the amount of goods transported across a border - including smuggling.
Then we can agree that less transportation occurs with import taxes than without, even if you include the smuggling.
Then we can conclude that often (but not always) import taxes work as intended for a protectionist government.
Censorship and import tax aren't equal (jeez, imagine I would ever have to make this point). Import tax isn't a way to diminish people's rights, it is a way of protecting your own businesses from businesses in countries with lower costs. It is an artificial defence from a (admittedly rather brutal) free market. Norway, which has a higher living standard and more well-spread wealth than most countries, has higher prices as well. Without any income taxes, no-one would buy anything in Norway - cars, agricultural products, ships or anything else. That would render most of our industries broke. I can't quite see why avoiding that is such a terrible abuse of power from the norwegian government.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Nope, the US is only (that I know of) Western country that restricts where its citizens can travel, and fines/jails those that do so anyways. Parent post needs to learn more about the freakin' outside world.
Why a troll? Who would angrily respond to my original post? It's obvious the story doesn't provoke any new thoughts, it just goes along with the Slashdot groupthink.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
1. Censor all internet access ...
2. Open up an underground internet cafe.
4. Profit!
I agree. But if I'm going to be running a FreeNet node on MY connection, I should reserve the right to police it and actively filter out that crap. Manually if need be.
Life is not for the lazy.
> Then we can agree that less transportation occurs
> with import taxes than without, even if you
> include the smuggling.
Noooo...this isn't auxiomatic because it's an indirect connection and it is concieveable that circumstances could be such that the relationship you describe doesn't occur.
What import duties do is raise the price of a good and this in turn reduces consumption - but this is only true if there is competition in the market for the given good.
When there is competition in the market for a given good, the price of that good is the lowest the producers can bear. Any taxation falls properly upon the consumers, not the producers, since it must be passed on; if it were not, the producers would make less than the lowest they could bear and they would go out of business, one way or another.
If the given good is subject to a monopoly, the price will be the highest the richest buyers can bear (rather than the lowest the producers can bear) and import duty in that case will actually fall properly upon the home producer, rather than the consumer, since prices cannot rise any more.
> Then we can conclude that often (but not always)
> import taxes work as intended for a
> protectionist government.
As intended? what is the intention?
Import taxes are in fact completely counterproductive. By raising the price of a good, they increase the cost of producing all other goods which depend upon that good. Those people involved in the production of the protected good think they are richer - they sell their products for a higher price and so have more money in their pocket - but their *real* wealth is lower, because despite having more money, the cost of everything they buy has risen by an equal amount (or in fact a greater amount, as producers tend to over-increase prices when they have the opportunity to do so).
> Censorship and import tax aren't equal (jeez,
> imagine I would ever have to make this point)
The point you are refuting is not the point I have made, which is why you rightly can't imagine ever having to refute.
I made an analogy between censorship of information and import tax; if you make something hard to get, you raise its price by restricting its supply.
> Without any income taxes
Did you mean import taxes?
--
Toby
Conclusion: communes work well when they are small enough. Rule of thumb based on extended visits: communes where every member has personal contact with the current leader, and where the leader is replaceable, work well. The further removed the least prominent members are from the leaders - the more dicatorial and cult-like the commune becomes. Cuba is way past my "works well" limit. Counter-example: small cults with very charismatic leaders (e.g. Jim Jones, Heaven's gate) (although they also fail the "replaceable" test).
One Christian group in Vermont that I spent 2 weeks with had a leader who declared himself (while I was there!) an "Apostle" whose authority cannot be questioned of removed. Fortunately, the group was under oversight by an international board with members from every subscribing commune. The "Apostle" was removed.
Interestingly, while every group I visited was a "commune" in the sense that all property was legally owned by the corporate entity, a huge part of what made them tick was "ownership" of a different sort. The head chemist at the Vermont group (in charge of making soap and perfumes) was so excited about his products and workmanship that he "owned" his unique position in the commune. One of the things the "Apostle" talked about doing was switching around jobs so that everyone would learn "humility". Kind of reminded me of the part in the Communist Manefesto were everone is supposed to be able to do anyone elses job.
This is where I began to see that there is a big difference between "commune" and "Communism". Classic Communism as a political philosophy is bunk. However you handle production and distribution of goods, every person is unique, and brings unique gifts and talents to an organisation. A political philosophy that tries to make everyone interchangeable is just another means of oppression. Capitalism becomes oppressive in the same way when it tries to make every employee an interchangeable cog in the machine.
If you don't know your dope, then KNOW YOUR DOPE DEALER.
jhw
Append 'for the internet' to points 1-5, then
1.5 Observe the increasing demand for the internet
and
6. Profit!
I must say this is the most insightful post I've read in slashdot regarding my country. In a few lines, GNUALMAFUERTE summarized what would take me several pages to say, and he did it better than I could ever have. The only disagreement I might have is the 'Please stop watching the CNN', wich I'd either change to 'Please, stop watching US news' or better yet, 'Please, watch US news, but don't take everything you see/hear/read there as truth, specially if it is related to Cuba'. It's true that Cuba is far from perfect right now, but I can't really blame Castro for that until I'm certain that the U.S. has nothing to do with that - and they [us goverment] refuse to prove it. Just as an example of how... biased is american media when it comes to my country, take this paragraph from the article: In Cuba, where Fidel Castro presides over one of the world's most technologically repressive regimes, the Communist government limits Internet access both by making the Web prohibitively expensive Prohibitevely expensive - true and by blocking unsuitable material (roughly defined as any site that doesn't promote Cuban tourism). blocking unsuitable material - False. I'm yet to find a webpage I cannot access (including american news sources, porn or anti-comunist sites - and I've been trying to find a blocked website!). Certainly, not 'any site that doesn't promote Cuban tourism'. Only a small minority of state officials are allowed limited Internet access. And, I'm not a state official, I'm just a regular student. (I'm not denying that access to the net is *really* restricted, but not nearly as restricted as the media claims).
Ok, in all of my years of surfing the web and usenet for pornography, I really cannot say that I've ever run across child porn.
Is there really *that much* of it out there or are "the children" being used against us once again? Scare tactics? Hrm.
I know Pete Townshend found some, but he was obviously looking for it and knew exactly where to go.
You are under arrest for casting aspersions on a loved US ally in the war on terrorism and all around good guys with lots of oil. Expect a visit from Homeland Security.
I read the article about search engines in censorship-happy Germany agreeing to filter "harmful-to-minors" content before the government gets involved. Remember, in Germany one can be imprisoned for merely questioning the "six million" figure. And some people call it a democracy?!
It's much easier than that. Any sort of VPN will work fine - for example, SSH port forwarding.
... I'm not entirely sure I'd want to be doing it as a native Chinese resident. Being the guy who always encrypts his traffic might not be the smartest thing in the world over there. Perhaps that's unreasonably paranoid.
A workmate spent a year in China, and did this routinely so he could access non-filtered searches. He also used our IMAP and SMTP server over an SSH tunnel, since his ISP didn't even _provide_ an SMTP server. Apparently "email" is hotmail.com in China.
While all this worked fine
There is always place for black market in every country. Whenever something is illegal, it will be on the black market. Examples:
-Prostitution - most of the world (well, exept for Amsterdam, and p0rn)
-Drugs - most of the world (well, exept for Amsterdam)
-[Insert illegal things here (exept Amsterdam)]
I believe that in Amsterdam, the black market is illegal.
--
"But in Soviet Russia, illegal is the black market." -- Master Yoda
I've always thought it would be cool to invent a super tough computer system, sort of a tablet PC, and drop them from an airplane by the hundreds. They'd be solar powered, water and dirt proof, crush proof, have a satellite/modem/vhf/uwb/whatever-the-hell-works link for Internet access (it's only purpose).
Make it as basic as possible so anyone could use it and be able to communicate and not be shut off from the world. People could email each other, IM, view uncensored news...be free.
Knowledge is power.
Carrier pigeons ....
... ** )
....
( ** All your pigeons are belong to us
On the other hand (with the bird flu and the lousy carrier-pigeon bandwidth), maybe this ain't such a good idea
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Cuba is not growing because of the US. Cuba could be trading with EU, China, AU, Japan, or any other nation. the US alone will not make or break the Cuban ecconomy. In fact, it's that socialistic pig named Fidel that is fucking it all up.
Fidel HATES capitolism. But to his credit, he is rather mentally ill (yes, I've watched an interview of him on CNN). To give you an example, he stated about how much progress mankind has achived by storing so much information on CDROMs. He says this level of progress is a perfect example of how the human race is failing and should never have been done. I SWARE TO GOD!!! He's a fucking nut case!
Life is not for the lazy.
i m egyptian not a saudi.
i have used cyber cafes in saudi arabia.
i kinda like not having ads, popups or otherwise, of "meet your mate" and "grow your dick" style on my browser. right now i use firefox with adblock for the same effect. but i got to do it manually, this is like automatic.
the kids find it hard to browse porn sites: i like the (conservative) idea that kids get introduced to NORMAL sex thru their parents
and the clincher: there is a site one can go to add a new porn site to the proxy ban list: the list is BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE and sorry i dont have the url any more.
in conclusion sites like cnn is available and foxnews (unfortunately) too while victoria's secret isnt
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
one solution to balance the right of expression and responsible publication (no its not a new name for censorship )would be to allow free nodes to assist information flow in non libertarian regimes/states can be achieved .here's how
A)))))no full real time browsing but conditoninal browsing/uploading of rich graphics .but total unrestricted text based flow .Image access to be allowed to sites yet,in a non real time request based manner .This can be executed through a semi strict filter policy (allow news aggregating sites mail lists ,egroups ,email sites ).Graphics access to be allowed after passing through the filter policy and requests.
i KNOW This implies
1. reduced access experience ,but hey my political rights (right to information )are more important than the pleasure/gratification kind of rights .which means educationand expresion facilitation instead absolutle browsing.In places like china mynmar west asia etc ,it would be a step forward in fact a boon .
2.It takes care of any adverse liability of the proxy manager/owner even if the filters can be bypassed .For it goes to show the effort in being a resonsible proxy service,this would be a effective disclaimer for the needs of law .
B))))))
A more effective method may be to have a self imposed censhorship body regulating such free nodes but that means a lot of money ,prohibitive to any amatuer or non commercial efforts of assitance .
about censor ship ,man there can be no unlimited rights on earth ,that amounts to laissez faire ,no no too dangerous ...
that free speech is now considered contraband to be bought and sold like drugs and weapons. It definitely sheds new light on we can now call the censorship industry.
What?
In fact, it is a testimoney to the power of supply and demand that it is *possible* to obtain access *despite* all attempts by the State to prevent this.
In light of the potential cash flows involved, maybe the state isn't really trying to prevent it. Maybe the cash flow from other contraband is flattening out, so they need fresh blood so to speak, a new source of revenue. For the profiteers, this is fantastic. Customs doesn't have dogs that sniff out illegal info...yet. Maybe the whole purpose of this censorship is not to stop the flow of info, but to make it expensive and profitable. The information exporting coutries can set up some cartels, just like petroleum.
What?