Post: #1

https://www.google.com/takeaction/

"There is a growing backlash on Internet freedom. Forty-two countries filter and censor content. In just the last two years, governments have enacted 19 new laws threatening online free expression."

Don't like when the governements want to put its snout into other peoples business!

Should we be concerned?

"Lifes about, shooting your load"

Post: #2

(12-02-2012 09:15 PM)RASER Wrote:  Should we be concerned?

Unless you have a website, not really. To the best of my knowledge, all of the current censorship methods are easily bypassed with, for example, a SOCKS proxy. Often it is enough to use a custom DNS, e.g. 8.8.8.8

If you, however, own content and like having new visitors, the results are much more grim. By my own generous estimation, some one-half percent of the population of the US alone has the knowledge to circumvent even the most basic sort of filter. Naively, you're looking at a 99% dropoff in new visitors if your website gets blocked.

Post: #3

The Internet will never be under threat.

Post: #4

(12-03-2012 10:43 AM)FretDancer Wrote:  The Internet will never be under threat.

Except in Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.

Post: #5

(12-02-2012 10:19 PM)storm Wrote:  

(12-02-2012 09:15 PM)RASER Wrote:  Should we be concerned?

Unless you have a website, not really. To the best of my knowledge, all of the current censorship methods are easily bypassed with, for example, a SOCKS proxy. Often it is enough to use a custom DNS, e.g. 8.8.8.8

If you, however, own content and like having new visitors, the results are much more grim. By my own generous estimation, some one-half percent of the population of the US alone has the knowledge to circumvent even the most basic sort of filter. Naively, you're looking at a 99% dropoff in new visitors if your website gets blocked.

Keep in mind that 8.8.8.8 is a DNS run by google. The Internet is much easier to censor than most people think. What happens is they decouple the link between a domain and the IP (when they can't take down the server). They can also make ISPs block access to certain IPs. It's east to get google to remove sites from its search results. This alone is enough to discourage the vast majority of people from ever seeing the site in question. This is being done in the UK for example. The infrastructure exists so then it's just a case of adding new sites to the blacklist as desired.

Sure there's always a way to circumvent cencorship for the most tech savvy but think about the population at large; it's a step in the wrong direction to hand this kind of power to countries that blatantly want to extend censorship.