Geography, Laws, and the Internet 217
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."
China is firewalled (Score:4, Informative)
Some days, I try to get through to slashdot but I get a "Access to this page is denied" error on my screen.
Most people don't realise the extent of the firewall. 90% of the time, if I send an email to another country it doesn't arrive at the destination.
One time I even had an email message changed - I was simply stating that I was feeling a bit unhappy due to lack of money, and it changed to I was feeling unwell, but *because* of all the money flowing around the place I *was* happy.
Be thankfull for what you have !
All of China is not firewalled. (Score:2, Informative)
There are at this time two Chinas.
Re:Maginot Line (Score:3, Informative)
The Germans were able to simply drive past the end of the Maginot line by taking a detour around the north, because the French government of the time thought "hey, we can save some money here... we don't need to extend it any further noth because nobody is going to be able to drive through the marshy Ardennes flatland..."
The penny-pinching government got it wrong. The Germans drove through the Ardennes.
According to the French, the people have never been defeated by the enemy. They are simply let down by incompetent leaders or are sold-out by traitors.
The analogy with firewalling an entire country would be that as soon as one [individual|organisation] finds out just where the government-organised "protection" stops, it will be circumvented. And all those nasty outsiders will be ably to flood the region with their [propaganda|pr0n|advertising].
Re:China is firewalled (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, China does filter out sites, but that is the extent of it. I have never received any "access denied" error when visiting Slashdot, and I visit it every day, from Beijing no less, where the Communist Party's dictums are most readily observed.
True, China's connection to the outside world is slow and unreliable at times, but that's not selective by site - it's just poor network infrastructure.
Please don't spread FUD about China
My own personal opinion is that China's filtering policy is lame and misguided, but hey, this is their country, they can do what they want with it.
Re:All of China is not firewalled. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Maginot Line (Score:2, Informative)
Kinda like having that big-ass custom firewall set up on your box and then allowing telnet access to its root account, figuring nobody would ever guess the username root...
Re:That's fine.... (Score:1, Informative)
If you disagree, consider the following: If an international engineering firm was to break local regulations in a distant country, we would all accept that it had broken the law and should be prosecuted. The fact that the internet is involved does not alter the fact that Yahoo.fr (and by corporate liability, Yahoo.com as well) was also in breach of French law.