Accept no substitutes

Blogging around the Firewall of China

Slashdot points us to this story in The New Scientist about The blog revolution in sweeping across China.
This is a good follow up to the talk that I put together on International Internet Censorship about a week ago.
One person involved with a highly censored country wrote (and asked to remain anonymous) that:

so far seen no mention of the repercussions (prison – and we’re not talking about namby-pamby US prisons here! – torture, loss of job, harrassment) on people who might be using these methods (proxies, getting info in email, etc.) Westerners seem all gleeful about the technology, and seem totally innocent about the realities on the ground

This to me is the biggest problem. The “last mile” problem of Internet censorship. And I agree that we need to be very aware of the cost to those requesting and receiving banned information. Still, like Internet 2, we need to be finding as many ways as possible to workaround, confront and change the problem.

1 Comment

  1. Fons

    Please see also the positive side. Close to 111 million Chinese are online now and can explore their new freedom. The changes the internet is causing in China are sensational and the firewall is a mainly symbolic feature (although the few people that do get into problem, do have a problem of course)

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