Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Yes... but given this is the 10 millionth time someone has made this obvious joke it's still redundant regardless of what time it was posted at.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
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.
What country do you live in. Here in the USA we have a Republic.
Call me crazy {'cause I am...} but I'd always thought America was a "democratic republic"...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
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?
Places like China have been lacking free speech since before the internet existed, and they still lack it.
The article isn't talking about places like China. It is talking about the Chinese idea of blanket censorship spreading to other "free" western nations. It is scary. Here, in the land of tin men and wizards, there was a crazy religious nutter senator in the deep south who tried to impose a bill that would force ISPs to censor content that _he_ deemed to be filth. The bill actually got a lot of debate and IIRC was used as a bargaining tool for and against other legislation. As a result it did get a lot of support, specially from the think of the children brigade.
The idea of censorship for control is alarming and the fact that the Internet has become such a backbone of modern information gathering gives gumbiments the power to control what we (yes, you and me) can and can't see or even to poison what reliable information is out there. It's alarmist and it's paranoid, but it is possible and I guarantee they do think about it!
I drink to make other people interesting!
And the states that are censoring will have the truth used upon them in the suppository fashion.
Exactly. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are not the entire internet. There are other search engines, other portals, other content providers. Even if all the major players kowtow to repressive governments in order to do business in those countries, there will still be billions of groups and individuals who aren't motivated by greed and/or fear.
Keyword filtering can be defeated by SSL or by using alternate encodings (EG base64/rot13/etc content that gets transparently decoded via javascript on the client browser). DNS and IP level blocking can be defeated with proxies, remailers, IM bots, etc. People will always find a way around content blocks faster than those blocks can adapt.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?