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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.
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
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.
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.
This seems like an interesting story, but it lacks the earthshaking importance of the "chairbot" article. Slashdot really needs to refocus it's priorities.
Now all we need to do is find neo!
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.
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?
I can agree there would appear to be an amount of hypocrisy here.
A distinction should be made between what is real and what is communicated. Smoking marijuana may be illegal for example, but talking about smoking marijuana should not be illegal. In fact censoring this discussion would just make it more difficult for law enforcement to catch people. The same with breaking any other law, if you force the discussion underground, then it becomes harder to control, and more difficult to understand the sub-culture or personality types that get involved in unlawful or deviant activities. With respect to law enforcement, they would be breaking Sun Tzu's maxim of "know thy enemy". Censorship is happening to a large degree in many Western countries with regards to sex, drugs, gambling, terrorism, and so-called "hate" crimes (I have yet to understand how governments think they can control an emotion). People in the West should not be preaching to other countries about censorship until they stop censoring their own people. Unless they stop this hypocrisy, then their arguments are meaningless.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Look at history, rebels always win in the end
Meet the Diggers, the Albigensians, the Luddites, the Branch Davidians, the Tupac Amaristus, the Paris Communards....
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.
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.
Damn straight, and may I say I'm glad I live in the Confederate States of America!
Chris Mattern