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You can't do it in coffee shops if the government doesn't want you to, either.

The Soviets famously used to licence typewriters and mimeograph machines. What brought down the Soviet Union wasn't internal dissidence and samizdat, it was external propaganda and cultural missionary engineering.

Even if an ISP shuts you off you can always use FIDOnet, or some equivalent. If censorship were ever likely it wouldn't take long before Internet gateways and servers started appearing in foreign countries that couldn't be censored directly.

The Chinese have been having an interesting time trying to manage censorship. It sort of works, but it's a long way from being airtight.

A more significant problem on blogs is astro-turfing. If it's done skillfully enough it's far more dangerous and far more influential than sledge-hammer censorship.

The CIA are notorious for the tradmed equivalent of astro-turfing. It would be naive to expect that they're not ready to do the same on blogs.

dKos is already rife with it. As soon as people start getting too critical of Obama, up pops a testimonial to his ineffable awesomeness on the rec list.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Sep 14th, 2009 at 11:55:29 AM EST
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ThatBritGuy:
If censorship were ever likely it wouldn't take long before Internet gateways and servers started appearing in foreign countries that couldn't be censored directly.

The Pirate Bay has been taken down, blocked etc and proxies and gateways has popped up. So yes that is what happens.

ThatBritGuy:

The Chinese have been having an interesting time trying to manage censorship. It sort of works, but it's a long way from being airtight.

According to some persons in China - who shall remain anonymous - the real censorship is not in the technical blockade but in the knowledge that using proxies and such might put you on the radar of the security police. So you ask yourself if it is worth it.

I think that the main thrust of internet censorship in Europe is done threw IP-legislation. An early draft of IPRED 2 included a proposal to criminalise patent incursions and give it a maximum sentence of 4 years in prison. So is using a proxy worth it if the proxy technology might be patented?

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Sep 14th, 2009 at 05:20:38 PM EST
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