
Western internet censorship: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? - vaksel
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Western_internet_censorship:_The_beginning_of_the_end_or_the_end_of_the_beginning%3F
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andreyf
I'm not sure if blocking a specific URL is the solution... it seems trivial to
mirror content on the internet, and so any attempt to block specific content
can't be accomplished via black-listing specific URL's... but even if real
filtering of data were technologically feasible, it's completely defeated by
end-to-end encryption like SSL, which could easily become standard if ISP's
start inspecting your packets for "black-listed material".

So moral issues aside, this is a huge waste of effort no matter which way you
turn it.

~~~
Herring
Good luck mirroring youtube, or all of the thousands of pages on the list. And
you're out of luck if mirroring defeats the purpose of your site (eg gambling
sites & that dentist site).

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epall
This just sounds to me like the next step in a game of cat-and-mouse. What
innovative technology can we geeks develop to circumvent these censorship
systems?

~~~
Celcius
We don't have to innovate anything, we already have VPNs. As long as the
content exists on the Internet, one can asume that you will be able to access
it from somewhere so the only action you need to take is route your traffic to
that place before accessing the content.

With Tor it is so easy to go around these things that you install a program
and push a button to have your trafic bypass any and all national filters, if
only more people dared to put up servers so Tor wasn't so extremely slow.

~~~
baltoo
> You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem

\- Edward's law

The problem, I think, is precisely the one you highlight:

> If only more people dared to put up servers

"Society" can make it so that it's "dangerous" (for given values) and, more
importantly, uninteresting (for the masses) to use the new tech, and thus it
remains a non-solved problem, which could herald a bleaker future.

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fearfull
To the best of my knowledge I am not behind some censoring scheme, here in the
UK my ISP is very liberal (did not block Wikipedia in the child pornography
scandal) however I am unable to access wikileaks.org or mirrors they all time-
out. I am slightly worried by this... please tell me wikileaks.org is down?

~~~
bwillard
<http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/wikileaks.org>

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Raphael_Amiard
Well, without wanting to throw myself into sarcasm, because my english skills
won't be good enough, i found that really scary to say the least. Maybe
someone can provide us some historical background about censorship ?

One side of me feels like, it seems OBVIOUS that this kind of things
(censorship) have been going on since a very long time, and that we may not be
living the worse moment of human history concerning that matter.

But on the other hand, i can't help but feel like the power to punish people
trying to circumvent censorship has never been so great and ubiquitous.

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tpyo
It's really ironic that Wikileaks.org is down...

~~~
tomjen
It wasn't down for me. You are sure you aren't behind some censorship system.

~~~
sho
It's a sickening feeling that we ever have to consider this possibility.

I'm in Australia. I tried to look at wikileaks last night, it was "down" - the
first thing that came to mind was being blocked. It was only after I asked
some overseas friends on IM that I knew it was actually _down_ down.

It's just like a free trip to China! I loved playing the "will this web site
load" game there too - now I can play it at home!

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phil_collins
More like the beginning of the beginning.

