On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, Alex Strasheim wrote:
I've seen a couple of pointers to information about China's ambitious attempt to build their own censorable net, but not a lot of discussion.
Agreed, and not just about China. The Internet community is supposedly international, yet can be remarkably parochial.
The Chineese net strikes me as a very signifiant (and very negative) development.
I'm sure it surprises nobody that the perpetrators of Tiananmen will not let the Internet slip through, without an attempt at censorship. However, on this subject, I stand by the conclusion of my "Radio Free Usenet" July 95 Byte commentary, that if ever they attempt a Tiananmen Square in cyberspace, the students will deploy the more powerful tanks. Running an ISP isn't easy, and if you are an authoritarian, it is even harder. Once they set up the infrastructure, the genie will be out of the bottle. Remember that starting this year, satellites of Iridium and other LEO satellite projects will start to go up, spreading bandwidth around the world. How will the Chinese government build a firewall against satellites? Say, for instance orbiting anonymous remailers with pgp? Will happen some day. However, that is not a reason for complacency. I think your warning is timely, and discussion, perhaps even action, may be called for. If people can mirror a web site so that Germans get access to it (an action I entirely support) what is being done about the large numbers of newsgroups that India and China have no access to? A lot of noise is made about how Compuserve users do not have access to the sexusenet. Guess what -- in India, now China, we've *never* had such access. Why is that any more acceptable? Arun Mehta, B-69 Lajpat Nagar-I, New Delhi-24, India. Phone 6841172,6849103 amehta@doe.ernet.in a.mehta@axcess.net.in amehta@cerf.net http://mahavir.doe.ernet.in/~pinaward/arun.htm "I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."--Gandhi