The Great Firewall of China, Continued

rcs1000 writes "Slate (no longer owned by Microsoft, and therefore an acceptable place to find stories...) has a terrific article on The Filtered Future and how China's censorship is changing - for the worse - the Internet. The piece makes a few points: firstly, China is really trying (largely succefully) to seperate its Internet from the rest of the World; secondly, it may be possible to use technology to circumvent restrictions, but that makes them no less onoreous; thirdly, the sheer invisibility of the restrictions makes them worse (when Google doesn't even show up articles about democracy, that's no good thing); and finally, some Western companies are actively co-operating with the Chinese government in their censorship. Is this the beginning of the end for the global, unregulated, uncensored, Internet?"

Comments

Stop blaming companies

[R.D.Olivaw]

Companies are there to make money not for moral or social values. I'm not saying that's a good thing but that's how the system works. If there is money to be made in China, they will play by their rules to get it.
If you think they should act otherwise, then you should get your government to make rules about that banning the companies from bending to Chinese will.

Well...

[mtrisk]

How long until they put up their own root servers? (ChinaNet, as someone mentioned in the earlier /. story.)

Still, you have to hand it to them

[typical]

Despite all this, you really have to hand it to the Chinese government. Consider that:

* There is a legitimate concern that people reading articles critical of the government will cause enough upset to collapse the government.

* The number of people involved that you are trying to black out information to number in the billions.

* You can successfully convince a majority of these billions of people that it is in their own best interest to give up their own ability to decide what to read or say.

I mean, yes, it's distasteful and all that, but beautifully executed. I don't think *I* could sucker 1.3 billion people, no matter how hard I tried.

Actually, I was pretty impressed that they managed to push through their one-child policy as well -- that had to be a hell of a tough sell.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Not the "end", a continuation

[varjag]

It isn't in the declaration of human rights, but Internet is a natural part of what we consider free speech rights. Places that censor the Internet usually do the same with newspapers, TV broadcasts, books, they imprison and execute dissidents.

I live in Belarus, a place gradually moving from moderate dictatorship to totalitarism. We have all the censorship in traditional media, and now there are moves to control the net access as well: forums impose self-censorship in fear of being shut down, gay sites get blocked, and opposition resources abroad suppressed during large political events.

So I beg to disagree. Unless you don't give a damn about Human Rights in general, Internet censorhip is ammoral and harmful.

A picture is worth a 1000 words

[usurper_ii]

A picture is worth a 1000 words

...and a few chuckles

Re:Okay, blame companies - but do it intelligently

[Bimo_Dude]

Taking this another step further... IIRC, companies actually have more rights than people, especially given their lobbying power and financial influence over politicians.

Also, from what I understand, France has a law that holds executives personally responsible for the wrongdoings of their companies - this was enacted after the Elf scandal. We should do the same thing here, as well as suspend (or revoke in really egregious cases) the company's privilege to do business.

Re:Companies in prison.

[dual_boot_brain]

The idea will not work. Corporations are not people, they are vampires. You cannot really kill them becasue they are not really alive. When you suspend the corporations activities, the stock will plummet as investors get out. When the price gets low enough, the board will use their own personal funds to buy up enough of the discounted stock to get control of the corporation at which point they will sell the assets of the corporation to the highest bidder or sell them at a discount to the new corporation they have formed which will in turn rename itself to the old corporations name. Both the equity holders (shareholders) and the debt holders (banks and other creditors) are SOL unless they are secured debt holders. The board either makes out like bandits, because after they control all of the stock and sell all of the assets as long as they comply with the rules for declaring dividends, they decalre a one-time bagillion dollar dividend to themselves or the keep on doing what they have been doing under either a new name or the same name. It is difficult to properly punish a non-entity.