Censorship: The Example of the PRC

• Chinese authorities wish to create a "monolithic Internet backbone, centrally administered, that minimizes the threat of the Internet's amoeba-like structure" and thereby control the "two things China's authoritarian government most dreads, political dissent and pornography" (WSJ (1996): A4)

• 30,0000 internet police

  • block access to sites that the government considers politically offensive,
  • monitor users who visit other politically sensitive sites, and
  • kill off discussion threads on Internet bulletin boards. Web users who try to reach censored sites "receive messages announcing a page is no longer accessible, or their computer screen may simply go blank, or they may be redirected to unrelated sites."
  • carry out personal surveillance of internet users at Cybercafes

• Users must identify themselves by their real names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers

• Filtering technology disables features of the Google by tapping "into snapshots of web pages stored on Google's servers . . . outside China."

• A Chinese company embeds in desktops filters that block 1000 banned words or phrases, such as "democracy," "sex," and names of political figures, in messaging among PCs and cellphones.

Censorship: The Example of the US

• State governments enforce their obscenity laws on those in other jurisdictions (basically for financial reasons — to establish legal jurisdiction, which enables them to collect taxes for online sales.)

• Commercial sites censor art photography, classifying it as pornography

• Use of datamining to locate child pornographers — and mistaken arrests ("brownies" example)

Of course, these attempts at thought control reveal the power of the internet, and it's not always for the good . . .

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