I found this article to be extremely interesting so I thought I'd share:
“The Connection Has Been Reset”
It talks about some of the specific things Chinese authorities are doing to screen internet traffic coming into China and what the effects are on people. Towards the end there's also some stuff about censorship which is very interesting as well.
Megan
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Abhishek Reddy posted this at 20:46—14th May 2008.
He has: 3,284 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
A good article.
The point I found most interesting was that a small amount of external censorship drives most people to self-censorship. It takes only a partial, forced suppression of some free speech in a population, to totally eliminate freedom of speech therein. This is often forgotten in discussions underestimating threats to civil liberties, particularly in the West.
abhishek.geek.nz
JeevesBond posted this at 08:11—15th May 2008.
He has: 3,489 posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Well, I was going to launch off into some discussion about this, but am quite sure we would agree.
That is a good article. Very balanced and sensible, good that the author tries to understand it from the Chinese perspective, rather than going by Western measures of whether the firewall has been a success.
The e-mail from central government really reminded me of 1984 though. The fact that the Chinese aren't interested in these issues also re-affirms for me the impression that people really don't care about these issues. As long as you let them consume freely they won't complain.
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