Reporters Without Borders Internet Annual Report 130
kratei writes "The BBC is running a report discussing the Reporters Without Borders internet annual report 2006. The RWB study details and decries the rising tide of net censorship and lays the blame squarely on the west as the source for the technology that allows repressive regimes to stifle freedom on the web." From the article: "China's success at censorship means it has effectively produced a "sanitised" version of the internet for its 130 million citizens that regularly go online. The wide-ranging scrutiny also means that it is the biggest jailer of so-called cyber dissidents. RSF estimates that 62 people in China have been jailed for what they said online. "
Proxies (Score:5, Interesting)
62 out of 130 million jailed? (Score:3, Interesting)
If this estimation is accurate, I would say it's pretty relaxing to surf and talk about things online in China.
Is the author implying that citizens in other countries will be left to talk about their countries freely with no serious consequences? These citizens might not be jailed as per Chinese standard, but to assume that they will not suffer in other ways from what they said is just as extreme.
Can China really shock us anymore? (Score:3, Interesting)
For anyone who has read 1984 though, it makes sense. The only way to control a mass ammount of people, the only way to subdue them and hold at bay their very rights to speech, it to keep them ignorant. If you can keep a people ignorant, they won't know any better and they certainly will not rise up against you. Like I said though, this isn't news. Because you can't spell NEWs without NEW.
Restricting the sale of equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
So this equipment is helping the cause of repressive regimes.
How difficult would it be to restrict the sale of this equipment, just like certain defense equipment?
Re:Censorship and the Web (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RSF isn't always right (Score:2, Interesting)
It is hypocritical to sit in the US and complain about censorship in China, when the US government controls the US media, controlling what they are allowed to print, discuss or even bring to people's attention.
Governments abusing the rights of their people, the rights that they themselves gave them is nothing new. Look at the US. Clinton has sex in the office, the nation throws a fit and tries to impeach him. Bush invades a country on false pretenses, outside of the UN laws, and no one says a damned thing.
When will people learn: No one on this planet, as a people, is any better than any other people? Individuals are the statistical outliers that should not color the world's opinion of a people.
Re:RSF isn't always right (Score:2, Interesting)
Clinton WAS impeached. He was impeached for lying under oath. It had nothing to with sex in the oval office. Lewinsky had nothing to do with the impeachment. As an aside, Clinton lost his law license in Arkansas for 5 years as well as a result of committing perjury.
Ignorance of this basic fact is not a good way to start a "thoughtful" post.
Second: The US gov't does not control the US media. I don't even know where to begin on this one.
Three: Bush did not invade under false pretenses. And these "UN laws" of which you speak: Numerous UN resolutions told Saddam to completely disarm and allow inspectors back in, or risk being invaded. If anything, Bush was upholding these "UN laws."
And finally: "ignorant, self-centered egotism"? I'll bet you were one of the first to complain about the "torture" at abu grahib. But why would anyone be upset by that? To be upset, you would need to be judging by civilized, western standards. And that is apparently nothing more than "ignorant, self-centered egotism."
To go a step further, and take the "each country's values must only be judged within that country" nonsense to its logical conclusion, we should be torturing people at abu grahib. Abu grahib is, after all, in a middle-eastern, Arab nation, where torture was widely practiced. Using your (and other poster's) logic, torture is ok to use as long as we use it there, because that's what people there had been living with before the US came in.
Also, notice how all human rights organizations judge nations on their human rights record? It's a civilized, western standard. We don't judge nations on how they compare to Iran or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. We judge based on the US, most of Europe, Australia.
-john
p.s. "Governments abusing the rights of their people, the rights that they themselves gave them is nothing new" ???? What are you saying here? People only have the rights the gov't gives them? No. People inherently have rights. The people give the government the right to do certain thing (keep the peace, etc). Regardless of the gov't, all people have the same basic rights. Those "ignorant, self-centered" egotistical rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Re:Proxies (Score:4, Interesting)
Many in the news forum often think the government ban is kind of a token effort. If they were really serious, they could have banned the encryption software usage and firewall all the non-web traffic ports for residential/net cafe users altogether (by letting the business run as usual, the disruption to economy should be minimal). The main intention is however preventing the crowd from accessing the information easily (eg no daily browsing of BBC) and makes unwanted news "unconfirmed".
I can observe some interesting patterns emerged from the forum during a couple of major events. 1) SARS 2) a large scale food poisoning event in one of the forum goer's univeristy. The info we got from the forum was first hand (at least half day faster than any mainland/overseas media). The first hand fact/rumour are then spread to friends and relatives over there by word-of-mouth/ SMS .