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Censorship is Changing the Face of the Internet
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 06, 2007 08:42 PM
from the different-ideas-scare-me dept.
from the different-ideas-scare-me dept.
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."
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OMG! They got slashdot!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Is there *REALLY* nothing here, or has this been (gasp!) censored?
Re:OMG! They got slashdot!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
And the states that are censoring will have the truth used upon them in the suppository fashion.
Parent
Re:OMG! They got slashdot!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:OMG! They got slashdot!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a good idea.
Its enough for the major players to have a bad-enough label they can attach you (for the States for example, the terms "terrorist"/"terrorist simpatizer"/communist come to mind), so they can have the appearance of legality when censoring you. The appearance of legality matters a lot for governments that claim to represent the people.
By using spammer-like tactics, you'd just make it easier for them to place the "spammer" label on you (and easier for them to discredit your information by association which is an effective form of censorship in itself).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why would you think that?
It hasn't been happening so far. http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/ap_bias.h tml [projectcensored.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Internet is Part of a Tripod of Information (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [cnn.com]. 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.
Parent
Depends on who you hear it from. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes it does Re:Depends on who you hear it from. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Depends on who you hear it from. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only channels that will not be censored in such states are those that are too small or obscure to end up on the information departments' bulleted lists. Internet used to be one of these, but that time is fast coming to an end.
Parent
Who's surprised here? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes you think that? Did I miss a popular uprising that failed to affect the country?
Democracy is working just fine. If it seems like there's been little effect by the Nov 2006 elections, that's because only 4/12 of the federal democracy was up for review. Expect a stronger effect in 2008, when 10/12 will be up for review. And that 1/3 had more than a little effect, as the soon-to-pass immigration compromise underscores.
Parent
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What country do you live in. Here in the USA we have a Republic.
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Says who? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, it will be rather confusing when trying to compare what you call a democracy with what the rest of the world calls a democracy.
It would end up like the word "Football".
A US-English speaking person and a International-English speaking person uses the same word for two different concepts.
Since it doesn't have the same meaning in the US as in the rest of the world, they had to come up with the word "Soccer" to describe the international definition of "Football" and we had to come up with "American football" to describe their definition of "Football".
Parent
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:5, Informative)
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"...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who's surprised here? (Score:5, Interesting)
The two parties are working together to make sure no one else gets in and spoils their "party". For example, there is an excellent article [npr.org] describing how the presidential "debates" are controlled to prevent any other parties from gaining traction. They realized that Ross Perot got 90% of his support after the debates, so they created a system to prevent any other parties from being able to join by raising the bar high enough. The "Commission on Presidential Debates" which runs the debates, is totally run by the two parties. In the article, it quotes Walter Cronkite as calling the CPD an "unconscionable fraud".
The "debates" are also very carefully controlled (according to the article) of presenting the appearance of being a debate without actually being a debate, so as to pose no danger to the candidates, and so that important issues can be avoided.
Ron Paul, a current presidential candidate and member of the Republican party, said recently on the Daily Show that he is only a Republican because he couldn't get elected if he were a member of another party. He wrote an essay on how the two-party system disenfranchises voters [lewrockwell.com].
Parent
Democracy is an outdated concept (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Informed, hopefully (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, many of these conferences get hijacked by the shrill calls of alarmists, who have more believe than knowledge, and emotion over thought.
Re:Informed, hopefully (Score:4, Insightful)
Well it certainly doesn't seem to be censored from my computer. Search for any of those things on Google and you'll get a billion hits:
- First link on Google to "slaughterhouse animal abuse" [fortunecity.com] complete with nausiating pictures
- You are a bit ambiguous with your toxicity of water thing, but I found many sites dedicated to improving water quality. There are even Dr. Strangelove-esqe wackos talking about fluoride conspiracies.
- The very first result on Google when you search for "radioactive waste leaking into soil" is a PBS transcript [pbs.org] from 1998. If there is censorship in the US on this issue, then they have done a terrible job by leaving it up for 9 years.
I feel like I must have completely missed your point... what kind of internet censorship do we have in the US?Parent
Make your own internet (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's about control. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's why the corporations decided to buy the government. They picked the first choice and then infiltrated the government ... gradually a heirarchy -- an Oligarchy -- developed as people went back and forth between government and the private sector. The Oligarchy was forged as rich
Re:It's about control. (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to know why fascism (even if clothed in democracy) is on the rise? This is why.
There's nothing that brings in money more than a captive market, and the best way to ensure a captive market is via the force of law. Fascism is the merger of the corporation and the state, in such a way that the corporation appears to be a separate entity but really isn't. In a fascist state, the corporations are in primary control over the government.
Money is power. Guns are power. Control both and you control it all. Those who run the biggest corporations want that power, but also don't want to take the blame for the consequences of the use of that power. Control of a government gives them that isolation. That isolation is especially good in a pseudo-democratic society in which the population thinks it has some kind of control over who gets into office, and therefore doesn't think to blame anyone but themselves when those in office do the bidding of the corporations and not the voters.
Parent
more of the same (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No, it's distrubing. (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Beyond recognition? Compared to when? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Beyond recognition? Compared to when? (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Parent
Not in the United States... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Not in the United States... (Score:4, Interesting)
When anyone decides what can and cannot be said, everyone loses. I totally disagree with terrorism, and islamic jihad and all that crap. But I have to defend their right to say and believe in it.
Attack me, or my family and I'll kill them myself. But their crazy religion instructs them that we are evil and must be killed if their religion is to flourish. This is no different than the Catholic/Christian regimes of western Europe 500 years ago. It's the same damn thing. Do I agree with what they have to say? HELL NO. will I defend their right to say it? Yes.
Speech and action are very different things.
The freedom to speak, and the right to believe in even the most unpopular ideals is what made America great.
Unfortunately corporate sub-culture and sheep mentality is what is making America terrible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A belief in is
Re:Not in the United States... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Information Leakage (Score:3, Insightful)
Chairbot (Score:3, Insightful)
changing face of the internet (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
M$, Yahoo [and Google] won't talk about it. (Score:5, Informative)
One giant piece of missing information is that all three internet giants refused the public Amnesty International debate [slashdot.org]. 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 [stallman.org] 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.
Darknets needed (Score:4, Interesting)
You can never do anything right with /. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:How appropriate... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent