Slashdot Mirror
New "Iron Curtain" for Russian Internet
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, points out a story about the Russian government's interest in expanding anti-extremism laws to include the blocking of websites and ISPs. The laws would match those already in use for the country's print media. Russian internet users may soon be forced to deal with the same issues facing Chinese citizens. Quoting:
"An official at the Russian prosecutor's general office, Vyacheslav Sizov, told the Russian-language newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that any web site that is determined to host what he terms 'extremist material' would be blocked from being accessible from within the Russian Federation. Given the Putin government's history with the media, 'extremist material' may be very broadly interpreted as any content unfriendly to the interests of the Russian government."
Just a few days ago there was a story here about new Russian law requiring Wi-Fi registration. It turn out they would require registration of commercial and non-standard equipment. Earlier there was a story about creating an isolated Russian Internet. It turned out they just want to use Cyrillic letters in domain names. There were many stories like this before and each time they were twisted to cause cries about dictator Putin and slavish Russians. Are these posted by "message force multipliers"?
It is easy to tailor ones argument over issues as open ended as this one. If you have an end in mind, you can certainly reach it through a variety of logical routes such as the "free press" indoctrinating the masses. Of course the free press is going to do this. People do not watch the news to not believe it in ANY country. They take bits and pieces of it, some people take more than others.
I strongly believe that while one can turn on the television and be disheartened by Faux news, the fact that information is out there that is readily available sets America apart from countries such as Russia and China. None of us can really relate to how life must be in a country such as N. Korea. Drawing parallels from these countries to America is a bit cynical, no? Is it not belittling the extreme censorship they endure?
You cant expect the masses to get it, thats why they have their title as the masses. While one could argue that the masses control who gets elected, I think it is just as easy to argue that the masses do not know what they are getting in a representative.
Long gone are the days where candidates actually take meaningful stances on issues. Even campaign promises can quickly be broken due to "unexpected" budget cuts.
I believe our founding fathers were quite familiar with this idea, and hence decided that we should not govern our selves directly, since we clearly do not know what is best for us.
Now whether the people making the decisions in America... that is a whole different nut to crack...
Ironically enough, most western mass media plays along by creating an image of Russia that has little in common with what is actually happening here. Not saying the western mass media is to blame, but it's most certainly a factor.
On a brighter note, it's not all that bad as it may seem. These tricks 'only' work with the generally badly educated population, and lack of a proverbial 'middle class' which is about the worst thing about today's Russia. If said middle class will develop and achieve a certain threshold, the process will become irreversible and no iron curtain policies will be sustainable.
Let me restate: the way I understand it, having a sizable middle class is not compatible with any iron curtain policies whatsoever. And as a middle class is like a pre-requisite to be able to compete in today's globalized world, I hope these attempts at creating an informational shield are just convulsions of the old system where people would just blindly believe what their government tells them to.
go to some of those places with low prison populations, rampant crime and corruption, and ask some residents there what they think about the discrepancy. i don't think you fill find patriotic pride in their response. i think you will find that people living in places with low prison populations and huge corruption would love to see some more american style prison population levels
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Internet as it stands causes governments, regardless of party, left/right leaning, democratic, heriditary, authoritarian, fascist, or progressive, way more problems than it solves.
1. It makes many laws nearly impossible to enforce on people in your country (the various laws in France banning Holocaust denial, globalised P2P in less RIAA/MPAA friendly countries).
2. It makes it easier for corporations and other employers to provide services and product in your country while employing few if any of your citizens.
3. It creates a tax-gathering nightmare for revenue officials.
4. It provides free and open access for foreigners who are inclined to break your laws, and exploit and defraud your citizens. Commercially operated botnets and the total hijacking of e-mail for spam, protected with a wink and a nod by corrupt officials and organized crime sponsors are just the start.
5. Foreign militaries, paramilitaries, intelligence agencies, and terrorist groups have a direct, hard to trace, and nearly impossible to stop communications line into your country, on top of a map to attack your critical network infrastructure (and physical infrastructure too, if you're like the US and are stupid enough to connect power plant control systems directly to the Internet).
6. Critical Internet infrastructure, and new development is often at the whim of an unfriendly or hostile government. (though this government is generally the US in just about every case, with its control of ICANN)
Again, this is governments. The people don't like a lot of the negatives too, and that means that in general they are going to be pleased if action to cut off "bad actors" from flooding their inboxes with spam, or stopping the US government from controlling the DNS system, or the Chinese military from attacking their country, or Russian hackers taking their entire country offline if they do something that Russia doesn't particularly like. The fact that it gives governments nothing but nightmares is eventually going to create a lot of little internets, with countrycountry access governed by treaty. The Wile West was tamed a long time ago, and the Internet will be as well, just like every other frontier. You've just got to create a new one.