A Comparative Study of Internet Censorship

An anonymous reader suggests we visit the home of the watchdog group Global Integrity for a breakdown of online censorship: "Using data from the Global Integrity Index, we put a US court's recent order to block access to anti-corruption site Wikileaks.org into context. In summary: This is unheard of in the West, and has only been seen in a handful of the most repressive regimes. Good thing it doesn't work very well... The whole event seems to encapsulate the constant criticism of governance in the United States: that the government has been captured by corporate interests, and that the world-leading rule of law and technocratic mechanisms in place can be hijacked to serve as tools for narrow, wealthy interests."

Comments

Insular American Media

[jnelson4765]

Propaganda, ignorance, and no mass media reporting on how the rest of the world thinks. That's why the movie Sicko was such a huge shock to the American people - the vast majority of Americans have been fed nothing but negative propaganda about socialized medicine (circa 1950's anticommunist, with updated graphs), but never see any of the positive aspects, like not going bankrupt after breaking your leg.

I'm quite sure the Romans said the same thing until the day the Goths sacked Rome...

A couple of corrections...

[Jane Q. Public]

First, a "lowly" court judge in the United States CAN "make" law. If his/her decision is accepted as precedent (as it MUST, unless reason is later demonstrated to overturn it), then even a municipal judge can "change law". Further, it does not even have to be a judge. A jury can change law, and that decision too would have to be overturned by a higher court in order for that change to be invalidated. [http://www.fija.org/]

Second, the US *does* have laws regarding "hate speech" and other "hate crimes". They might typically be state laws rather than federal, but that does not negate the fact that they exist in much if not most of the United States. Having said that, I will add that I personally believe "hate crime" to be among the most ridiculous legal concepts so far devised by man.

Third, the United States has very strong libel laws. The difference is that unlike in many nations, libel must generally be proven before it can be punished. Also, libel against "public figures" is much harder to prove... but that is by design, and for very good reason. (In many other places, speech against politicians or other "public figures" is punished much more harshly than speech against other citizens. But that does not mean that libel laws do not exist in the US. They do... they are just fairer than most.)

And finally, the fact that it is worse elsewhere does NOT mean that it is good here. That is like saying to one man in line, "Look, you only got a broken finger! The next guy in line has a broken leg!"... and then using that to justify breaking fingers. Sorry, but it is not a valid argument.

Re:"World leading"?

[Tom]

whereas in, say, Germany, displaying any sort of Nazi symbolism is a good way to get hauled off to jail. Actually, it's a good way to get a lawsuit against you, with all the proper proceedings of a fair trial but that's beside the point. The point is that those laws were set up by the allied occupation forces after WW2. They're not really a german idea, though we've found them useful and decided to keep them. But saying the US is the champion of free speech and then using a contrast where it was them who caused that contrast to exist in the first place is a little cheap.