| Censorship Bitten by Technology |
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| Communications | |||
| Written by Administrator | |||
| Sunday, 05 July 2009 09:00 | |||
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The great irony of technology is it's ability to benefit one group while at the very same time hindering another. China and Iran have recently discovered the power of technology might exceed their ability to censor their citizen's Internet activity. All this is very evident in the myriad of news articles released in the past 2 weeks. Recent news displays Iranian citizens rising-up in protest against the results of an election. Elections ... freedom in action! Yet, without complete freedom to begin with, voting results always seem to become questionable. The government of Iran tried to limit their exposure to the scrutiny of the world. In the new age of communications, truth and lies spread like never before. In this case truth was unleashed, exposing the Iranian governments "true colors". Only "their" version of the election results will be accepted. Challenges will be suppressed and challengers might be beaten or killed. Despite the Iranian government's attempts; the Iranian people spoke via the Internet, they showed us what was happening. The world noticed! With one of the most extensive and effective Internet filtering (a.k.a. censorship) programs in the world, the Chinese government is "damned" over Green Dam. Green Dam is the "parental control" application the Chinese government originally insisted be installed on all computers sold in China beginning July 1, 2009. It seems Lenovo and other Chinese manufacturer's were ready to comply without a grumble, not so with the rest of the world. A wave of descent quickly spread through-out the Internet and various "real" organizations opposing the blatant insistence the rest of the world assist in China's effort to censor it's people. Descent began to spread with the "Great Firewall". China's people began to express their opinion. China's government has at least temporarily relented. This battle is not over! The Internet is inherently designed for the open sharing of information. I have no doubt that repressive governments will eventually succeed in "satisfactory" censorship. Until then, technology will empower the people and bite repressive governments to our delight!
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I received a comment via email today....
Thanks for the kudos!!
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