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.'"

Comments

Re:Big deal

[eln]

Yah, but this is the Internet. It's Censorship 2.0!

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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?

I always said it would become a weapon of tyranny

[gelfling]

It's axiomatic that the web will eventually become a weapon of tyranny. Through selective censorship and the general sense that it's so unreliable from an accuracy perspective and therefore easy to manipulate and spin, the web will be used for agendas and the geek era will be over.

Re:Big deal

[AKAImBatman]

What worries me is that the "Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it" axiom might be becoming less true.

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. ;-)

Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out...

[inviolet]

It is important to note that the social norms of many cultures are not compatible with western ideals. This causes conflict when the west tries to use its power (economic and military) to force its ideals on the rest of the world. The irony is that one of the most powerful ideas expressed by the US constitution that has been adopted by the western world is the concept of freedom of choice (association, religion, expression are all choices we make). By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.

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.

It Isn't Just Censorship - Monitoring Is Also Huge

[NeverVotedBush]

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.

Don't agree!

[PontifexPrimus]

I must respectfully disagree. I'm a German, and Germany has placed considerably limits on so-called "free speech"; and I'm fine with that. Why should I give holocaust deniers and nazi propagandist the right to be heard? And please don't trot out the old canard of "they'll be after your free speech next" - those limits have been in place since about 1946, and I don't know of any case when they were abused to censor other political speech. Feel free to enlighten me with examples to the contrary.