Geography, Laws, and the Internet

Sara Chan writes: "This week's edition of The Economist has the cover story and lead editorial devoted to how geography affects the Internet after all. The whole of China is basically firewalled. In France, Yahoo! is appealing the court ruling that banned its selling Nazi memorabilia. In Iran, ISPs are required to block immoral sites. Each country wants to impose its own laws on others, of course without reciprocation. The editorial concludes thus: "The likely outcome is that, like shipping and aviation, the Internet will be subject to a patchwork of overlapping regulations, with local laws that respect local sensibilities, supplemented by higher-level rules governing cross-border transactions and international standards." Not all new, but worth pondering."

Re:China is firewalled

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps automatic censoring is the reason Chinese printed manuals sound so weird.

Re:China is firewalled

[David Kurtzberg]

All your packet are belong to us!

Re:China is firewalled

[Xoro]

I live in China, and the firewall is *very* obvious

I hear you can even see it from outer space.

Re:We need to respect local customs

[gunner800]

In 8 years in the Army I've been from Korea, to Saudi Arabia, Africa and Europe. Everywhere we went we were told by our chain of command to respect local laws and customs. I think we need to do that with the Interenet too.

I respect the lesson you learned in the Army, but those other cultures need to respect our laws and customs too when we aren't forcing them down their throats. If our customs dictate gigabytes of lesbian porn, so be it.

Re:China is firewalled

[tbo]

I think Canada must be firewalled, too. Every time I try to go to a page linked from Slashdot, I get a "server busy" error. Must be a conspiracy...

Maginot Line

[Reckless Visionary]

Keep in mind, the French were never that great at building impenetrable barriers.

If all the world leaders...

[sheck]

If all the world leaders were trapped on an inflatable life raft, how long would it take before they decided to cut it up and distribute the pieces amongst themselves?

Sheck

Re:China is firewalled

[Denito]

Wow, thats depressing, especially considering that message went through the Chinese 'everyone happy' Firewall(TM)

I wonder what this message said *before* it went through!
-D

Re:Maginot Line

[Glenda Slagg]

Indeed, I - or rather my boyfriend and I - had terrible trouble with one of their letters...