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Censorship is Changing the Face of the Internet
Lucas123 writes "Amnesty International is warning that the Internet "could change beyond all recognition" because state-sponsored censorship has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments that apply mandated net filtering, and because companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have remained complicit, according to a BBC story. '"More and more governments are realising the utility of controlling what people see online and major internet companies, in an attempt to expand their markets, are colluding in these attempts,"' said Tim Hancock, Amnesty's campaign director."
Nothing to see here. Move along
Is there *REALLY* nothing here, or has this been (gasp!) censored?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Yay, I have a sig.
Yeah, according to the BBC report, censorship is spreading. According to my state-run newspaper, everything is just fine, and, wait a second, it says here I should just move right along.
-THE END-
Governments want control, businesses want money.
There's nothing loving, forgiving or compassionate about a committee with a purpose.
The only question is how to prevent them from killing our freedoms. Democracy hasn't seemed to work all that well lately, at least in a two party system.
I hope this turns out to be an informed debate. We have all watched this slow incursion. It is obviously in full swing in repressive socvieties such as China and Burma. But it seems that Government legislatos are also tempted the curb certain things. In Australia it is material that could be condidered "sedition" such as Islamist (as opposed to islamic) sites calling for an Australian Jihad. But always, underneath, we detect the temptation moving further into banning activist websites as "sedition".
Unfortunately, many of these conferences get hijacked by the shrill calls of alarmists, who have more believe than knowledge, and emotion over thought.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
If you don't want problems with censorship, net neutrality, etc... make your own internet. No one said you have to use the main domain name system which the rest of the internet uses. And no one said you have to communicate purely via TCP in traditional ways. Most of these censorship systems are bricks which are designed to restrict clueless users who don't know about tunneling traffic through various secure & anonymous means.
At the extreme end of the scale, a country could do censorship on a "white list" basis where all the sites available do not allow user-submitted content. Trying to access any other port/protocol/IPs not on the white list would result in an error. This is where the real problems occur, as it blocks out even the most tech-savvy hackers.
Corporations at one time tried to make money for their shareholders, then they began to realize that if they instead working on controlling the public, in what the public bought and thought, the money would come as a consequence.
.....
Governments have always worked on controlling the public, in what they thought and in some governments what they bought.
The difference is that corporations and governments are now vying for positions in how to best control the public. If a corporation allows the government to control it, it can get access to the population and thereby have some influence. If the corporation doesn't allow the government to control it, it will ether be shut down or shut out.
You can see this behavior in music, literature, web searches, museums, copyright, trademarks, patents and on and on and on.
As far as the public is concerned,
good luck
More and more governments are realising the utility of controlling what people see online and major internet companies, in an attempt to expand their markets, are colluding in these attempts,"
I don't think this is so much "changeing the face of the internet" as allowing the internet to grow into places where censorship has long been a part of life. The governments that are censoring are not comeing to any new realisations about controlling informantion, they are ust applying existing policies to a new medium. Any international companies that want to do business in those markets has a different set of rules there then they do in the US or UK. Internet based or not. This is not much different than when Nike started making shoes in China and there were outcries of the "inhuman sweatshops". It was crap pay by 1st world standards but a decent job in China at the time.
Yes censorship sucks, but there is a long list of things that suck in most countries that censor heavily. Would a lack of international companies in the PRC make it a better place to live? I don't think so.
We are all just people.
the Internet "could change beyond all recognition"
Compared to, say, when those very same totalitarian-type countries didn't have internet access at all? Compared to only a few years ago when it didn't exist at all? And, will China's internet censoring actually change it, beyond all recognition, for me? Will this article or the summary change the meaning of hyperbole beyond all recognition? Places like China have been lacking free speech since before the internet existed, and they still lack it. That China was a little slow applying their cultural norm to this newer tool isn't very shocking. What's terrible is that censorship IS their cultural norm. Change that, and little things like internet filtering, or centralized political control, etc., change right along with it. This is a symptom, not the problem.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I wonder if, at least in the United States, the internet and its "freedoms" are already too interlaced in people's lives for a censorship program to be successfully implemented now. What would happen if suddenly school students could not get reliable information on subjects like Guantanamo? Or, if John Q. Public can't get his free porno? Also, what would large media networks do--especially those with other outlets besides their website, such as television stations--if their content is censored online, but not elsewhere?
Even if it were more altruistic, like censorship of terrorist web pages or even malware sites, there would be a huge outcry from an otherwise free media.
I decided to stop stealing cynical quotes to use as a signature line.
"could change beyond all recognition"
As opposed to... What? Change is expected - along w/unrecognizable traits.
"Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have remained complicit"
'remained' - remained..? You mean like they haven't taken any time-outs yet...? Or, they get together in Bermuda twice a year to compare notes and plan how they will rule...?
The gentrification of the internet is always a concern, I suppose, but I am reminded of a phrase that was coined 'long about the first time such topics popped up - "The internet interprets restriction as an interruption and routes around it."
Seems to me that one of the basics of (pointed) redirection is blocking and/or interrupting - fine, bring it on.
Current technology and practice is what makes censorship possible. In an ideal world, the only thing a network snoop, be it ISP or government, should see is generic packets full of encrypted bits. They should not be able to examine TCP headers or the contents of packets.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How long till the economic value of censorship becomes fluid enough that the richer you are, the more access to useful content you get. Thats your little singularity and perfect storm of copyright and the like.
All hail our future knowledge changers.\
Now all we need is digital jesus.
I'd love for all online business to take some sort of libertarian stand against all the unconstitutional infringements that are out there, but I don't expect them to. As much as I want them to, they don't get to define the constitution to mean they can sell child porn or pot, or define the second amendment to mean they can sell me a nuclear device.
For good or for bad, the governments make the laws and if you don't obey their laws, the men with the guns come and shut you down.
Amnesty should have problems with governments that disobey their constitutional limits and the electorate that lets them get away with it. Don't expect google or ms is going to lead the revolution.
The key to preventing these kinds of issues is education. As others have pointed out, most filtering is only going to stop the casual user. If people realize that there are other ways to communicate freely, they will do so. Imagine sending thousands of OLPC's to China loaded up with Tor, SSL, and a healthy primer on network communication protocols. The "Great Firewall of China" starts looking like swiss cheese.
This seems like an interesting story, but it lacks the earthshaking importance of the "chairbot" article. Slashdot really needs to refocus it's priorities.
Why do they drag Google into this mess? I just did a search for a particular social taboo for some research I'm doing and the first thing that came up is dated April 4, 1999. No censorship here! No way! Those high profile cases plastered all over the news last summer did not happen at all according to google! Google is the answer! You get old out dated results for your research! Use it everyday!
Yes. It used to be this :-) now it's this :(
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
One giant piece of missing information is that all three internet giants refused the public Amnesty International debate. It's too bad they won't clarify their position as an aid to repressive governments. As the Register noted, "no news is good news" when you have something to hide. Because they refuse to meet their critics in the open, we are all left with speculation and stink. As all of us are dependent on these three companies to one extent or another, how censored is our own world view?
The answer is to help each other and report what you see. Alternatives, like Slashdot and blogs exist for this reason. The majority of us still get most of our "news" from "mainstream" sources but we don't have to. As long as the internet remains a free place we can inform each other of what's happening.
This is good news for small newspapers, if they take advantage of it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
according to the BBC report, censorship is spreading. According to my state-run newspaper, everything is just fine
The easiest way to lay an issue to rest is to raise it the wrong way. The victims correct your mistakes, congratulate themselves and move along none the wiser.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...censorship will make the internet only a little bit slower until there are enough TOR servers installed and everyone made the transition to TOR (Internet2.0).
Really, I like censorship since it will speed up the adaption of TOR.
Jack Thompson is my favorite game tester.
The RIAA will destroy bad music.
I love how crap lines up to great stuff. Just make sure you don't care about CNN style reporting which aims to make you sick of anger and resignating. Live isn't as bad. The political class is losing it's influlence the more people switch more tasks into virtual realities. Look at Second Life and think that 10 years in the future.
Society will change and the political class as we know it today will be the collateral damage.
End of Story.
SO IF YOU KNOW ABOUT CENSORSHIP ON THE INTERNET, yOU MUST BE JOKING..
YOU KNOW WHAT IS THAT EVERY PERSON YOU MEET ON THE INTERNET IS KIDNAPPED BY TROOPERS? THE GIRL YOU JUST hAVE MET, ADVICED ANoNYMOUSLY BY PHONE TO QUIT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS TO GO TO WORK AT YOUR CLIENT'S COMPUTER THE SAME mORNING THAT HIS nEIGHBOHOR WERE KILLED? OR HIS CHILDREN RAPED, OR HIS WIFE BEHEADED?
THEN YOU MIGHT KNOW wHAT IS A COMPUTER CRASHING EVERY SINGLE WEEK BY HACKER ATTACKS?
THAT'S WHAT POWER IS ABOUT... THAT'S WHAT CONTROL IS ABOUT... THAT'S WHAT INTELLIGENCE WIKI MEANS
THAT'S HELL.
Now let's guess again... How is the name of the world you live in?
?
My Oxford American Dictionary says that democracy is "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives" (or "a state governed in such a way"); and republic is "a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch."
Note, however, that dictionary definitions do not settle arguments. Meanings are determined by usage, and dictionaries are records of usage (and fallible ones). But, when all the media in your country routinely use the word democracy in a way that contradicts the rule you're stating there, well, it's your rule that's mistaken, not the people who use the word in violation of it. This is just Linguistics 101.
Are you adequate?
You remind me of a girl I used to date before I got married. She insisted that piercing the hell out of her body made her look more "attractive", and anyone who told her otherwise was automatically added to the "list of people who hate me".
Slashdot in weird mode...
However, blocking the Internet is very difficult. Anyone -- even a person with no technical knowledge -- can use a proxy server to bypass the blockage. Just pick a proxy server that anonymizes the user. Then, enter the URL of the "dangerous" site like, say, CNN. The proxy server will fetch the content of the site.
The only way for a brutal society like China to truly block the Internet is to sever the Chinese Internet from the rest of the global Internet.
Also, blocking radio news is difficult since these days, almost anyone can buy a shortwave radio for under $50. A shortwave radio enables you to listen to Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, etc.
The above observations lead to the interesting conclusion that most Russian citizens can still access fair and balanced news by (1) accessing Western web sites like CNN and Fox News and (2) tuning into Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Statistics indicate that about 20% of Russians have regular access to the Internet. The other 80% could easily buy a shortwave radio. I recommend a Panasonic one.
The main problem in Russia is not government control of the Russian radio and television stations. The main problem is that most Russians genuinely support Putin and his authoritarian polices.
Similar comments apply to mainland China. Most Chinese who study at American universities support the occupation and brutalization of Tibetans. The Chinese in the USA know the truth (from CNN, Fox News, etc.) but reject it. They prefer Chinese nationalism.
4/12 + 10/12 != 1
One can see how the whole Florida vote miscount "accident" can happen with this kind of New and Fuzzy Math.
Err, Americans DO NOT elect their president directly. Ever. They vote for the US Electoral College
g e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_Colle
Then these reps vote for the president. That is how you could get GW elected in 2000 will less than 50% popular vote. That's how he almost lost 2004 elections when he had way over 50% popular vote.
Electoral College also allows one to lose presidency even if most of the reps suppose to vote for him - they can just switch sides like already happened a number of times. Read the link.
I wish we could have riots in the US like they do in venezuela, after government shutdown of a major TV network.
It's quite simple, really. Face of the internet without censorship: :-)
Face of the internet with censorship: :-(
Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors.
You spelled Microsoft with a dollar sign, and you linked to Richard Stallman's "blog" ...
It did not take much to blow that little mind, did it AC? What sound does a pin head make when it breaks?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
no one said you have to communicate purely via TCP in traditional ways.
You can also use a string and two tin cans to talk to your neighbor, but only because you can tell them how to listen. The problem with inventing new ways to talk is that no one else knows about it. When everyone knows about it, the network's owner can block it and you and your leet friends are back to square one, just like the "clueless users" you deride.
The whole point of the internet is to pass information back and forth so no one has to be a "clueless user".
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I don't think this is so much "changeing the face of the internet" as allowing the internet to grow into places where censorship has long been a part of life. ... there is a long list of things that suck in most countries that censor heavily.
Don't you think that US companies have completely neutered the internet in China? That the same companies are busy planning the same thing for their own countries so that all of your future publications can be censored and participating in any way can be dangerous? That long list of things that suck is due, in part, to a complete control of information. Anywhere that happens, things get ugly but you never know just how ugly until it's your turn to have your organs harvested.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In his 1980 book "Inquest on an Organization Above all Suspicion: Amnesty International," French journalist Hughes Keraly exposed the truth regarding a left-wing bias that has always swirled around Amnesty International.
His exposure of communist infiltration, while no surprise, is sad given that Amnesty has, indeed, done significant work in exposing human rights abuses around the world.
Unfortunately, their work appears to have been tainted by an agenda that magnifies and in some cases manufactures the abuses of freedom-oriented regimes while minimizing and ignoring the abuses of the regimes of the totalitarian left.
This is instructive regarding the danger of placing monitoring responsibilities into the hands of a so-called "Non-Governmental Organization" (NGO) like Amnesty International, which affiliates with the United Nations.
This affiliation, in effect, grants this un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy an appearance of authority and legality.
Keraly, a sympathizer of Amnesty International at the time, went to Chile in 1979 to search for 10 men whom Amnesty had reported as having disappeared as a result of their opposition to the government of Gen. Agusto Pinochet.
To his astonishment, Keraly found all 10 men living openly and unmolested.
It is interesting to note that Amnesty had previously failed to investigate the activities of the Stalinist Allende regime, one of the most brutal in Latin American history.
Instead, Amnesty engaged in an unrelenting 20 year propaganda campaign against Pinochet, while he was struggling to restore democracy and prosperity to his grateful nation and while he defended his people against communist trained, armed, and supported militias as well as an influx of communist agitators from all over the world.
After making this startling discovery, Keraly proceeded to investigate Amnesty International headquarters in London where he discovered that Amnesty director Derek Roebuck was an active Communist.
In his study of thousands of files, he discovered such things as terrorists, working with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin listed as "victims of political oppression."
At the same time, Amnesty had done nothing to investigate the torture and concentration camps of the Soviet Union, Cambodia, or Cuba.
In fact, the "human rights" group had little to say at the time regarding leftist abuses occurring in the late 1970's.
This was a time when the world leftist behemoth was quite active in its policy of liquidation and support for international terrorism.
Amnesty International hasn't changed it stripes much in the ensuing decades with their support of such things as the Bolshevik inspired "U.N. Declaration of Human Rights," with its call for a transfer of capital from the productive western societies to third world dictators and its guarantee of the right to employment, a typical Stalinist idea.
Now they are championing the cause of Muslims who have experienced "discrimination" in the US since Sept. 11 and the al Quada prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Their website "In the Wake of September 11, 2001, Justice and Human Rights" is heavy with concern regarding "Upholding international human rights and humanitarian law as the US responds to the attacks" while it says nothing about the leftist Palestinian Authority and its terrorist offshoots.
As is par for the course, America is under the microscope while the politically oppressive but generally leftist Islamic world is ignored.
The vital lesson here is that un-elected bureaucracies, with outlets all over the world, cannot be trusted to investigate human rights abuses in any official capacity.
If they chose to present themselves as a private organization conducting atrocity propaganda to further the goals of the international left, which is world domination, than Amnesty International would at least be honest and acceptable as such.
The problem is when organizations such as Amnesty seek to pass themselves off as objective and even-handed while they use their quazi-public stature as a UN NGO to further an aura of authority.
This claim of authority is derived from communist sympathizers and from an international bureaucratic elite that also clearly skews left.
Power needs only complimentary information available. You do not motivate groups of people by exposing them to contradictory information. Corporations do it with advertising, parents do it with cautionary tales, religions do it with fear of lack of immortality, and governments do it with force. The real question is how to build an international darknet that is impossible to oversee, and can "route around" the damage.
Anti-Globalism
So if a country sue an US company for breaking their own local law, let us say by selling nazi memorabellia, the answer is "well swallow it, it is a free itnernet baby !", when pointed out that the company do business IN the country and thus should respect local law (whether that law is censuring free speech or not see nazi memorabelia above) we get the same answer. But when the country starts ENFORCING their local law by cutting down the pipe to the www there is again a scream of murder.
/. will never be satisfied until the US constitution and law apply everywhere in the world (*)... Maybe you should wake up and smell the fresh coffee in the morning, and realize that ONLY the local people in a country can fight the law of that country. Once you realized and accepted that and see the way the WWW is no local law can be applied, then The natural answer is a balkanisation or at least filtering of the internet. Just like there are frontier for a reason.
/. is not one person but a group of person. If you don't feel targeted by this post ignore it.
I take it that
And , oh by the way, when and where is the next "free speech zone" set up in 2008 ?
(*) Yes I know
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I've often thought about how obselete democracy is. Every four years,we get to put a cross on a piece of paper for some bloke I've never met, to represent me. Why do we still use this archaic system of governance we call democracy? Computer technology is such a powerful enabling technology that could revolutionise governance. Many fields (e.g. Banking) have been totally revolutionised by computerisation. We could have the same revolutionisation within governance, by applying our collective intellectual capital to governing a country.
What is possible today is a franchise based voting system based not on the old premis of land ownership, but on our participation in society. We could be rewarded for our qualifications, our age, our life experience, with voting points within our areas of expertise. We could continually vote within our fields of expertise on issues of governance, and be rewarded for this participation by having more voting points within our individual areas of expertise.
Participatory Governance is a totally feasable option today, which would prevent the type of misuse of power the parent article is about.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
ironically, i am reading this right now from the People's Republic of China where all BBC news sites are blocked so I can't RTFA! China also blocks wikipedia and the timecube site.
When is Beijing going to realize the truth about 4 simultaneous 4 corner days??!!
I love how they blame search engines for obeying the law. Like they have a choice somehow that they can continue operating in those countries if they choose to the 'right thing' and not censor. There's not a shred of blame laid on every single other type of media in those same countries, it's just the search engines that are at fault for censorship.
"But those media aren't on the internet!" No, but if the local newspapers didn't censor information, would the government even bother trying to censor Google? Not a chance.
It's nice to have a scapegoat for something that's screwed up when you can't blame the actual cause: The government demanding the censoring, in this case. Might as well get angry at the store clerk that won't sell your son the Mature-rated game because he's 8 years old. (Yes, I know people do that, and it's just as useless.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Behold, the face of the Internet. :D :x
Pre-censorship:
Post-censorship:
What we should do is encrypt the whole internet! Everything outside your router to the internet will be encoded so that only the reciving end will know what the data is. I shall call this, Encrypternet!
Which social taboo is that?
I don't really see this as causing any major issues. It definitely hinders the "free knowledge for all" aspects of the guiding spirit of the development of the internet in the 90's. There comes a point, though, at which too many people are exposed to things, and when left unchecked, entire societies are affected by internet content. This is not inherently bad, but as they say, information is power. Those who control the information have the power.
Now here's an interesting dillema... Do we give unrestricted access to the internet, allowing anyone, good or bad, to have access to this power? Or do we censor, and potentially block someone bad from controlling the public?
I suppose the old saying still holds true though... "Those who would sacrifice privacy for security deserve neither."
It really is a double edged blade, isn't it?
Democracy will never work well because everyone thinks they are getting a good deal, and so they vote for money to be funneled their way, e.g. "free" health care. And that's without even mentioning the special interests, which other people can't do much about because they are busy getting on with their own lives. Also, people want to lose responsibility, to become dependant on government. When the pensions schemes come crashing down, and socialised medicine fails even more, and education then people will wake up. Democracy tends toward socialism, interventionism etc, which are utterly flawed. Hopefully people notice that they are not getting a good deal that'll change.
Nobody with truly ingenius talent works for the govt, they are either hacks, show offs, or wannabee managers.
Look at history, rebels always win in the end, the govts and their cronies always end up being hanged/burned alive eventually - even if it takes 60 years, they are relegated to the
scum history pages and their name is as good as dirt and never used again. I see no one calling their sons Adolf for the next 1000 years.
Yes it can all be outsourced, but thats a big risk.. since hackers/freedom fighters can 'work for' these outsourced companies.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
If every office term was limited to ONE SITTING, thereby making it impossible for someone to 'play to the dumb people' to get elected again, but do the right thing
no matter if they disagree. You have one shot, make it good, prosper. Career politians are bad and wastefull because they just sponge of the system and get a 10x better
pension than the average dude because they claim they cant get a job after words but in truth they end up with 500k+ jobs and a 80k+ yearly pension!!! that is not even mean tested!!!
Thats criminal! Do a crap job for 10 years, and get 50 years of 80k/year. Wow! who wants to do a real job when you could be outsourced sacked, marginalized, be
a political power player, and retire in bliss mafia style.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Ya know, after Sept 11th, and seeing the Islamist forces, I was discussing that with a friend. However, it's not like Christian Europe of 500 years ago (1508? things were getting BETTER by then) more like Europe on 700 years ago.
I think that it's just a phase that religions go through around 1300 years of age, it's a growing pain. The Judeans and other Israelite tribes were united under King David and went off to slaughter their enemies, to the point that the prior king was deposed and the official reason is leniency towards enemies (read the Bible as a history book and not a religious book and you'll notice things that you don't otherwise). The Christians launched the crusades. And Islam is experimenting with fundamentalism/Islamism.
Howeever, if you look at the change in weaponry from ancient Israel -> Crusader Europe -> modern day, and you can see that the level of carnage that can be unleashed is more problematic. The Israelites could surround a city and demand it's surrender, the Crusaders could slowly burn the city down and chase down those fleeing a bit, but if Iran gets atomic weapons, we've entered a new world of religious warfare.
The face of the internet is a cute Zwinky or WeeMe saying "Yeah, lol, homewk sux."
Unfortunately, that's not always the face of the user.
Why is it everyone thinks the pinnacle of democracy and freedom of speech is an uncontrolled, unaudited system where predators, fraudsters and various crooks are allowed to operate anonymously? Isn't it time that us developed countries followed in on regulating on-line content? Right now, many small webshops fail to get any custom because of a lack of public confidence in eCommerce -- but everyone knows Amazon's OK so all the money goes there. In response, Amazon's marketplace opened up, and everyone opens their webshop through Amazon. Amazon gets a slice of everyone's pie.
I don't know about you lot, but I'd like a web where I could trust shops enough to give them my card details without going through a multinational monopoly as intermediary, and where my customers could trust me enough to do the same. I would also like to meet people on-line and not have to wonder whether they were foreign mafia agents looking for some dumb schmuck to rip off.
OK, so an abusive regime will abuse that power -- but given that they abuse their military and police to much more brutal effect, it's not really top of my list of crimes against humanity....
HAL.
PS. Have Amnesty ever spoken out against the BBFC?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I think it's strange how everybody blames Google for going along with the Chinese censorship instead of just saying no. They were just saying no for years and look what it got them: basically blocked from all of China. Having the state own the only ISP is sort of like having them own the only Radio and TV station. THEY get to decide what you see and what you hear, content providers in other parts of the world don't get a say. If you say stuff the government doesn't like, then they'll just cut you off from the country entirely (and even go so far as to jam your transmissions in cases like the Voice of America).
I read the internet for the articles.
Why does this seem to get zero press? I can only figure out what I read on wikipedia and their website, but it looks like a bonafide China-Style blocker.
Cleanfeed
At the moment, however, it does only block Child Pornography, Criminally Obscene (types of porn, i suspect) and "Incitement to Racial Hatred" content. These are noble goals (though I would not agree with enforcing them through a manditory content filter) but I'm certain that, once in place, the blocklist will expand significantly.
I'm not so much surprised that it happened, but surprised that it took as long as it did. Even in North America our media can take left/right wings slants to news from party influence. How much greater is that influence in non-democratic countries? And how much greater is their need to control what they're people see or hear?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Yeah, you've piqued our interest now. Out with it, man!
Yeah man, the system is like totally broken. It is like we don't have any freedom of speech any more. Damn that yeasty little cunt Bush. He is by far the worst mother fucking president ever to set his a clove footed hoof into the oval office. He is a worthless, pig shit, sheep fucking, donkey screwing, cow cunt licking, Nazi who eats babies and rapes more boys then a Catholic priest. How is it that we let these worthless, incompetent, corrupt tyrants that we call Democrats and Republicans steal away our freedom to criticize our piece of shit government without fear of retaliation!?
Where oh where has our freedom of speech gone! I might as well just go pack my bags and movie to Cuba and are not as evil as the the United $tate$ of America.
(this is +1 sarcastic for anyone who is extremely dense)
We still have all the freedom we need to change the government. Just because the voting masses are too stupid to vote for competent leaders doesn't mean that we are somehow victims of tyrants. There are real victims out there who suffer under governments where the leader truly is a dictator and can only be removed through force of arms. There are nations out there without a shred of free press or even a sliver of free political speech. The US is not one of those nations. For the US to change its government, it only needs to vote for someone else. Hell, you don't even need a majority of the population as only half the population votes anyways. Simply getting 1/4 of the population to vote in a new direction would boot the current people out of power. Any failure of government is our failure. We have been blessed with a free and open Republic that easily switches leaders with a minimal amount of corruption. Failure to use this free Republic to remove defective leaders with the ballot box is a failure not of Bush, Carl Rove, Dick Chaney, Kerry, Clinton (either of them), or any other politician. The failure is completely in the hands of the people of the US. The people have the tools to get the information they need if they want to bother to inform themselves, and they have a perfectly workable method of tossing leaders out of power and replacing them with competent ones. Failure to use the tools at hand is not proof that the tools of the Republic are broken, but proof that the people are broken.
If there is any failure in the system of the American Republic, it is that the system of government assumes that people are not lazy and apathetic idiots. The American Republic dumps all governmental power into the hands of the people and assumes they know what to do with it. If there is any failure of the American system, it is an overestimation of the competency of the general citizenry to make the minimal effort it takes to pick and vote for a decent leaders. There might be an excellent system out there that does not rely on a competent citizenry to choose leaders, but that system is not called a Democracy or Republic. We don't suffer from a lack of Democracy (or Republicanism, if you care to nitpick). We have it. We suffer from our own incompetence in using it.
Hell, I personally think that it is telling that one of the least truly democratic (i.e. majority rules) pieces of our government is one of the most celebrated. We celebrate the Bill of Rights as a document that actively fights the forces of democracy by laying out things that not even the stupid majority can take away from individuals. Isn't it a little bit telling that we appreciate the Bill of Rights for its LACK of democracy? Democracy is only the answer if the majority is competent and trustworthy. We don't suffer from a lack of democracy. We suffer from a lack of an incompetent citizenry. Sadly, Democracy is alive and well in the US.
Who says government is the only source of censorship?
/. have to pay Verizon for the right to show their website to Verizon's customers?
When will
That's not net neutrality, that's deregulation. That's not censorship, that's law enforcement.
What are we anti-capitalist, outlaws?
I dont like censorship of anything. I want to see what I want to see. Can we start like a parallel internet that the government can't control. A private internet or something like that.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
You know what I find to be scarier than the censorship of the internet in other countries, is the possibility that OUR information could be censored. We would be but pigs being led to the slaughter.
Coming to you live from another dimension.
they do such a good job at filtering the internet coming INTO their countries, why can't they turn it around and filter the JUNK (spam, phishing, scams, etc) going OUT?
(granted, the usa is the worldwide leader in spam production, but a lot of it does originate from places like china)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The same sound you make when shilling your own posts, I suppose.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=2763
The darknets are already there. Available for anyone who wants to use them.
The question is: will we be able to keep them going in such a repressive environment?
Not without strong cryptography as well as "traffic hiding" through various means. We have those tools right now, so I think the Darknets will live on and prosper. I2P and Freenet are good ver 1.0 examples....
No need to take it personally mate, it's just that you strike me as the classic "down with the system" teenager. Have a nice life.
Sorry, I replied to the wrong person.
Tunisia, the country that gave its old name to Africa, famous for his excellent olive oil, beautiful beaches and nice weather is one of the most evil censors in the world! The last breakthrough was censoring "Google cache"!! imagine yourself surfing with firefox and having a nice "Internet Explorer 404 not found" : the tunisian way to tell you that this site is censored!