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Global Internet Censorship On the Rise
An anonymous reader writes "State-led internet censorship is on the rise around the world. According to a study conducted by the Open Net Initiative and reported by the BBC, some 25 of 41 countries surveyed were filtering at least some content. Skype and Google Maps were two of the most often-censored sites, according to the article. 'The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms. The report said: 'In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world.'"
Just because something has always happened, doesn't make it right.
The reason this is different is that we aren't talking about newspapers, or television, or whatever, we are talking about The Internet. The Internet belongs to the people, not to the government, or, as some would like to make it, to big business. It is Ours.
And we want it to stay that way.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
It's ironic that you wrote this just as I was writing the post below it about how some people's illusions are about to be shattered.
Please stop and think about this. Who owns the vast amounts of hardware infrastructure that have been created to support it? Who defines the standards and protocols on which it is based? How does an individual gain access to the Internet? If the Internet really belongs to the people, why do governments and commercial organisations dominate the answer to every one of those basic questions?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Nonsense! It's just as true as ever. What happened when Turkey blocked Youtube? Instructions were quickly posted on how to get around the block or download the offending clip from another site. What happened when the AACS owners tried to abuse the DMCA to stop the cracked key from being distributed? The key ended up on nearly every site on the Internets!
Even in highly oppressive regions like China, the users of the Internet are finding new and creative ways to circumvent the Great Firewall. Simply put, there is no way of stopping the information on the 'net. It's like the underground books that were distributed during Communism in Russia: They kept popping up no matter how much the Soviets tried to quash them.
Totalitarian governments (or even democratic/republic governments trying to suppress information) are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The only way to stop the flow of information is to yank the plug. But if they yank the plug or fail to install it in the first place, it's a guarantee that the country will collapse from a failure to be competitive in the Global market. So governments try and find a compromise by suppressing information on the Internet. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't really work all that well.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Look closer. We aren't exactly sending in the B-52s to airdrop loads of McMuffins, LOTR DVDs, sneakers, and twinkies onto the Noble Primitive Peoples who are Honoring the Sacred Traditions of Their Ancestors. It's a pull situation much more than a push. Western culture, simply put, is addictive.
It's the Noble Primitive leaders that don't like this, because the Sacred Traditions are invariably religious-authoritarian.
From over here we only hear about people bewailing Western culture, but we aren't hearing the real opinions of the Noble Primitive People themselves.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
There is another aspect to this - instead of blocking, some governments monitor. By monitoring, they can profile people who either openly oppose the regime du jour and then arrest/detain/harass as they wish.
Carnivore would be an example here. The new leaning on ISPs for user records. Requiring archiving of all activity. Or just silently copying and keywording all traffic.
In some ways, monitoring is more dangerous and insidious than censorship as it allows building cases against perceived "enemies" of the state.
Fair enough. However, in that case, I can't help noting that most things run "by the people" do have some degree of order associated with them, in the form of governments and legal systems. At least in principle, these represent the interests of the people as a whole; being run for the people does not imply anarchy.
Right now, it is precisely the lawless nature of the Internet (in that it is unreasonably difficult to enforce accepted laws there, even when pretty much everyone agrees they are reasonable laws) that leads to problems like spam, defamation, phishing expeditions, and all the other bad stuff that I'm sure everyone except those benefiting personally could happily live without.
My argument in discussions like this has often been that trying to protect the Internet in its current state is not the best way forward, because its current state is broken in some fundamental ways, and support from more traditional government and laws will help to combat some of that abuse. What we should be doing, IMHO, is campaigning for principles like freedom of information and due process to be considered as relevant for everyone on the Internet as they are in many countries already, so that whatever common system of regulation and government ultimately does come out of it, the fundamental principles are fair and reasonable.
There is no question in my mind that a completely open system like the Internet will come to be more regulated, whether everyone likes it or not, for the same reasons that societies have developed laws to preserve order. What concerns me is that along with that regulation should come the same protection of individual rights and freedoms that free societies have also developed to avoid their laws becoming too restrictive.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Indian women today are better off because General Napier had the gall to impose his culture on Indian men who thought it was perfectly natural to burn a wife alive when her husband died. Today, Indian women don't have to worry about being lit up like a firecracker because their husband bought the farm. How many normal Indian women would seriously say, "damn that British fascist for not allowing our men to incinerate perfectly healthy Indian women like they were kindlin?"
Part of the Western tradition is a belief that there is a natural law, and that this law dictates many things that other cultures don't respect. It is a religious belief in many respects, but it is the idea that there is a universal order that mandates liberty, accountability and peace, rather than subordination of the individual to the herd.
The world would be better off if American soldiers in Iraq strung up the men involved in honor killings from the nearest object capable of lynching a man, if it castrated and otherwise humiliated those who engage in female circumcision and if it did similar acts of "cultural imperialism." Why? Because no one ever gave these victims a choice whether or not they wanted to be oppressed, tormented, mutilated and murdered.
Please spare us your random, unsupported UN-bashing. Right now, under US leadership, (a) the censorship is widespread (as TFA demonstrates), and (b) the US-based authorities have demonstrated a willingness to impose their own values on others (the .xxx domain to give one obvious example). How exactly could having the Internet under UN control be worse on either count?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.
Cultures aren't some delicate flower than can be crushed when a more popular once rolls around. It's a dynamic thing. Cultures aren't equal and aren't universally valuable. They are secondary traits of large groups of people. They will naturally mutate and hcange over time, drawing bits of neigboring cultures and dominant cultures into themselves. Those that are dying should problably die. Some cultures are more productive, more robust, more attractive and it's up to those who exist within that culture to ensure it survives. Culture aren't human beings. They are body of ideas. They should have no rights.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
H
How 'bout you tell me why they shouldn't? Do you really think that Germany is a swarming mass of anti-Semitism, just waiting for a leader to come along and light the fire of the Fourth Reich? I would like to think that most Germans would be a tad offended by your implied sentiment - that if they heard a bit of Nazi propaganda, they'd start rounding up the Jews. We have Nazi propagandists here in America, and we don't censor them - we laugh at them (not that we're a shining beacon of freedom or anything ourselves; we just "get it" when it comes to political speech).
Let's try: Why should I give (fill in the blank) the right to be heard? Because it's a right - a fundamental right, just like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold those truths to be *self* evident - that means they don't need to be justified. If your "culture" disagrees, then your culture is wrong.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Are you suggesting that technical aptitude naturally disposes one towards wanting to keep information free?
The idea that intelligence disposes one towards protecting freedoms is silly to me. While I would like to believe that anyone intelligent takes my position - freedoms should be protected over security or power - I realize this view has little basis in history. While many of the most intelligent people have pushed in for freedom, I'm sure a much larger number through humanity's history have taken authoritarian stance.
Beyond that, the knowledge you speak of - the ability to completely block access to certain information - is a very technical type of knowledge. Does that technical aptitude have any relation to one's political alignment? I doubt it.
Don't get me wrong. It would be nice if there were a stance in these matters that was the indisputably more intelligent choice, and that technical aptitude always went hand-in-hand with that type of social intelligence. But I have a feeling that those with such technical aptitude are usually put to use by those with a greater social intelligence and that their political alignments have little to do with their smarts.