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Amnesty International Campaign Against Censorship  (View post)

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, July 20, 2006
17 years ago5,073 views

Go on you all! Sign that pledge...

Amit Agarwal [PersonRank 3]

17 years ago #

Philipp, yes the ban has been lifted in India and ISPs are now reversing the changes.

vikram [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

The official version is that the ban has been lifted. But it has been selectively lifted and the ISP's which can manage to impose the ban on select sub domains on blogspot allow access to other blogs, but as of right now, I am unable to access any blogs on blogspot. Surprisingly I am unable to access even Seth Godin's blog and several others.
vikram
[Signature removed.]

ShellehS [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

> the ban has been lifted in India

why not in china?

Aaron Bassett [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I am in complete support of removing censorship and allowing the free flow of information. But coming from N.Ireland I will not sign anything put forward by Amnesty International.
After the troubles in N.Ireland they planted trees for _some_ of the victims. I say some as they only planted trees for the terrorists and civilians killed – none for any of the police.

But back to the subject – as mentioned I would check with the copyright holder before mirroring anything. And to see for yourself how many pages are missing when searching google china there is this nice greasemonkey script:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4187

Personnaly I think they are fighting a losing battle as it is. There is no way they can filter out everything they dont want people seeing. If there was a filter capable of doing this without creating 'false positives' then spam wouldn't be an issue either ;)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

There are already many false positives in Google search results, but the Chinese gov't doesn't seem to care...
Take a look at some of the words on this list...
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-06-18-n85.html

Konstantin Barinov [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Why does it bother americans if somebody is censoring something in China? Filter yourself...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Konstantin...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Konstantin Barinov [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Philipp: You sure you understand emotions of chineese?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> You sure you understand emotions of chineese?

To the extent they're human like I am, yes. Do I fully understand Chinese culture? No. Do I think that's necessary to write about Amnesty International campaigns against censorship? No...

Konstantin Barinov [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

So, do one really need to worry about Chinese internet cesorship?

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

A bit off topic but still related...

Google Blogoscoped discusses a lot of censorhips of Countries. What about censorhips of companies, is that the same problem? Should it be seen different?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Can you explain what you mean with censorship of companies Art?

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

What I mean is I think there are more companies than countries that are blocking sites from the internet, that are filtering content on the internet or that are monitoring email from employees or other on their own network (that can or should be seen as a small part of the internet)?

e [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I've written a WordPress plugin to allow any WordPress user to stick Irrepressible fragments onto their blog. It can be downloaded from

http://www.piepalace.ca/blog/projects/irrepressiblefragment/

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Well, countries' governments work hand in hand with companies (often US ones) in their censorship efforts...

As for monitoring employees email how is that censorship? Isn't that more like a privacy breach?

Konstantin Barinov [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #


>As for monitoring employees email how is that censorship? Isn't that more like a privacy breach?

Philipp: Oh yes, sorry... US's dual standards. Aye-Aye!

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I do not mean companies in countries where censorship is a country-level issue. I mean in most of our countries where free speech is a basic right most of the companies are censoring the things you can see and read on the Internet too. Is that different than countries censoring? (I think that's the same...)

Monitoring e-mail is indeed a privacy breach, but by monitoring you can censor too. You could e.g. block all e-mails with certain words in it...

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Art-One, I don't think the reasoning behind companies banning access to certain websites is always due to censorship. For example, companies may block Google Blogoscoped so that their workers are more productive ;-) not because they want to censor the content. They may also stop downloading of media files in order to free up some bandwidth. In fact, I would guess most companies probably block access for the following reasons:

   – Productivity
   – Bandwidth
   – Security

I think that Internet access in the workplace is a privilege, not a right, so companies can basically do whatever they like to control what you can see.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Konstantin:
> >As for monitoring employees email how is that
> censorship? Isn't that more like a privacy breach?
>
> Philipp: Oh yes, sorry... US's dual standards. Aye-Aye!

Huh? How is differentiating between two different concepts – monitoring content, and blocking content – dual standard? I monitor my log files, so that's censorship...?

By the way, I'm *still* not from the US.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Tony
> I think that Internet access in the workplace is a privilege, not a right,

Depends on the laws, I guess... I mean laws make breaks obligatory, or toilets for disabled people, and so on, so the company then needs to create the infrastructure to support this...

But yes, there are different forms of blocking/ filtering/ censoring, and blocking sites at work is one form of it... whether or not it's justified is another question...

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Tony, I now all this and it's indeed a kind of theoritical discussion I make. E.g. you're reasons are probably also the reasons the Chinese government could use:

- Productivity: censorships filters out sites that could lead to unproductivity of the Chinese people. Productivity is good for the country.
- Bandwith: it's economical to use the bandwith for things that are suited for the improvement of the country. Don't waste bandwith to subversal stuff!
- Security: some sites could be dangerous for the country (in terms of dangerous ideas), it's good to block them too!

It's a good excercise to a think a bit further than our western nose. If you think companies can censor, why can't a country censor? And vice versa... I think it's a good philosophical exercise.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Art: The chinese are using "Computing as a tool for suppression." – The Golden Projects was concived in '99 and upto date still implemented and tweaked to maximise suppression using Computing as the technology.

One should not confuse this with office monitoring (that is random chking of emails and IP address) and censorship (blocking sites that are not office friendly).

The former method is to ensure that soverignity(?) of a nation is kept in tact and the later is a model which creates sustainable work practices...

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

/pd: you're right in your point of view, but my point is: Chinese (or any other censoring) governement does not see it like this. Further more is it not too easy to talk about 'sustainable work practices'?

Wouldn't it be sustainable if companies would be more liberal in allowing access to more sites?

Where are the limits in censoring access to information by companies? Should they filter snail mail too? By which rules? Is anything possible? Only for the own employees or also for contractors?

It's this brainstorming I'm interested in...

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

===>"not too easy to talk about 'sustainable work practices'?

correct, that is where the value prop's are created and thats why its difficult ..its about making money and making sure your employees are happy too!! :)-

==>"Wouldn't it be sustainable if companies would be more liberal in allowing access to more sites?"

Normally, there is a list that is maintain. There Black hole list is always enforced. Business do not need to permit sufing onto site's which are deemed to 'p0rn". For Eg. , A single Virus attck across an enterprise creates network chokepoints. which can bring the mail server down. Trust me the Lists are pretty Liberal.

===>"Where are the limits in censoring access to information by companies? ..Only for the own employees or also for contractors?"

In generic terms, employees and contractors are treated the same. Both have creditentals which are authenticated and passed thru. Its easier, this way (I think!)

However, I have seen areas of operations where NOC has complete control open ended networks.. and this becomes a "honeypot". Or even enforcement agencies which need this type of total access to track. In short, they are also companies..correct ??

The deliema is why should countries block certain content ? In short, thats a form of cyberwar fare!! At one time ,in the US, , "the Abu Gharib" [pictures which suddenly floated up ..], could not be seen within the .US zone.. why did this happen ? How did it happen ??

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

/pd thx for the reply. It's an interesting discussion indeed.

Concerning the black lists used by companies. I think you're thinking to much for real big companies that have very standardised ways to work with. They could maybe use a standardised black list. But I'm sure that there are a lot more companies that do it in an other way (not blocking at all -> oh those happy employees or blocking ad hoc). And it's this latter category that's very much to compare with the censoring countries.

As you mention, it's certainly not only those countries that are showing up frequently in this fora that are censoring but a lot more countries are without any doubt doing it... (And not only in Hollywood films.)

  

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Art : just sharing .. :)-

http://www.cpj.org/online_discussion/united_states.html

Art-One [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

/pd: it proves how difficult this discussion is. An important word in the text is "courage". Discussions in fora like this will empower that "courage".

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