Effective Censorship
EFF’s co-founder John Gilmore talks to CIOL, a tech publisher in India, about the latest India blocks. One particularly interesting quote from the article:
Do you think, as a trend, Internet censorship is increasing over the past few years?
People who wish to control what other people are allowed to read or think have not given up those wishes. I think that Internet censorship is increasing, but I think it is increasing less than the growth of the Internet. Thus, the Internet is pulling ahead of the censors despite their efforts.
I think there are many folks who disagree, finding that the Great Firewall in China is doing quite an effective job of filtering. As Nart Villeneuve of Citizen Lab said recently:
Filtering does not have to be technically foolproof, the reality is that *most* people won’t even try to access banned content let alone attempt to circumvent filtering.
That is, imperfect “leaky” censorship is still very effective at restricting general access to critical content.
In terms of user experience, the circumvention tools often require some tech knowhow to install and maintain. Even those with the best tools need to go through the hassle of firing up the resources in each particular instance of blocking. Even then, there is often a big performance hit in response time or download speed. Each obstable dissuades another set of folks, to the point where even with the clear technical means to avoid a block, the user has lost interest or determines it’s not worth the effort. (It is the tech equivalent of demoralizing the opponent.)
It is perhaps a bitter compliment, but the GFW has scaled up quite well so far.
technorati tags:china, censorship, blocking, internet, eff, gilmore
May 15th, 2008 06:02
“*most* people won’t even try to access banned content let alone attempt to circumvent filtering” I think that this complements the concept of self-censorship to a certain extend. In a censored read write web, people will soon begin to stop attempting to read and write anything they know or feel will be filtered out - especially if there are heavy consequences involved. What is the point?
Even if the growth of the Internet surpasses the growth of censors, in a country where strict filters are constantly in place, I would believe that it is impossible for the internet to have grown much at all.