Can the government censor the Internet?

Can the government censor the Internet?

  • Yes

    Votes: 22 57.9%

  • No

    Votes: 16 42.1%
  • Total voters
    38
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Sure.

Make it illegal to own an ISP in a country and you've censored the crap out of it.
 
Rob_TID said:
Sure.

Make it illegal to own an ISP in a country and you've censored the crap out of it.
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That would allow you to block access to specific websites but not to specific content.

m0rtal said:
All you need to do is look at China.
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The Chinese people have been actively bypassing filters since the filters were first introduced. There is a huge underground network of proxies that make it possible to browse blocked content. Obviously it's still illegal, but it doesn't seem to be effective.

Deliguy said:
certainly, but if they do some other country will gladly capitalize. Open internet in Uganda!
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Could you elaborate please?
 
stanley said:
The Chinese people have been actively bypassing filters since the filters were first introduced. There is a huge underground network of proxies that make it possible to browse blocked content. Obviously it's still illegal, but it doesn't seem to be effective.
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Seems you are referring to 100% censorship. In that case no it can't be done IMO. People will always find a way around things, it's human nature.

On a side note though, even though they are bypassing filters it's still technically censored. Yes, obviously not very effectively but laws against murder and drugs aren't exactly very effective either. A better example would be marijuana. :rasta:

Sure the laws are a deterrent but people still break them. Now, if you were to get the electric chair for using proxies that might deter 95%+ of people. Shit that would suck large.

You could also review every website manually courtesy of your tax dollars.
 
Well... Here's the thing...

I think it's possible to censor the world wide web (www). But I think the concept of the internet is fairly likely to never get censored and/or shut down. I mean... Really, the technology that powers the web is like 30 years old now (at least the fundamentals are). So, if the US government, for instance, decides to start somehow censoring the net, suddenly graynets seem pretty appealing.

I guess the bigger issue is WHY would the web start getting censored? I mean, China censors the web because they don't want their people to learn about things before the chinese information office gets a chance to spin things their way. In the US, about the only thing that's truly censored is pedophile porn, and I think we can pretty much all agree that's a pretty good thing.
 
Like DaveEMG said, even if they did, the huge network of people like us would still want our internet. I'm sure people would just create their own net.
Phone lines, Sat, RF, we could still use existing things to interlink, and if 5-10 million people were to pitch in, I think we could still somewhat keep it up.

If it wasn't worldwide, yea, proxies.
:)
 
Do you guys know that the N S A snags some traffic that runs through a few nodes? Not a lot but I think they are trying to figure out if they can do this in a large scale.

Lame pricks. I think AT and T is helping them. AT and T is really a pushover for the government. First phone records and now this.
 
remember when they tried to pass legislation back when the internet first started becoming popular to put a estamp tax on emails? rotfl. that was hilarious. i could just see the IT guys at the irs office's face...umm i don't think thats entirely possible. Why? well umm. its not really "mail" per say. :)
 
God. Imagine a tax on emails.
Even if it was 1cent per 100 emails, I remember reading somewhere that around 171 bil. emails are sent per day.
That would be what, like 17.1 Million dollars a day?
Good god.

I wish I had the power to tax people. lol
 
I voted yes... cuz most people are sheep...

there will always be a handful that can and will subvert the system, making total and complete censorship nearly impossible... but for the MAJORITY of surfers, if there was some kind of global or multi-national cooperation to censor certain things, I think most people would never catch on to it...
 
stanley said:
The Chinese people have been actively bypassing filters since the filters were first introduced. There is a huge underground network of proxies that make it possible to browse blocked content. Obviously it's still illegal, but it doesn't seem to be effective.
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There is a gaping chasm between "the Chinese people" and "technically knowledgable internet geeks"

Most normal internet users wouldn't even know what an proxy was.
 
This Bill, GovTrack: H.R. 1955: Text of Legislation finds that, "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens." The bill creates a commission to look into ways to take action to prevent homegrown terrorism and they could "find" that the internet needs to be censored or at least more government regulation to prevent it. I could foresee filters like "This page has been blocked for it's ties with and distribution of terrorist propaganda. - Homeland Security."
 
I think that it is possible, Some middle east countries have all the social networking sites banned.

btw : to my surprise, FaceBook is still not banned :)
 
I think for the more advanced user it would be harder to completely censor the web. Maybe if you just don't know what you're doing then they could control what you can and can't see.

who knows. but i kmow we're all living in the beginning of it. it could get better....or it could get a lot worse
 
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