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

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.