http://legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2006/ feature_bambauer_janfeb06.msp Cool Tools for Tyrants The latest American technology helps the Chinese government and other repressive regimes clamp down. By Derek Bambauer "... Curbing market freedom to protect human rights inevitably limits profits, an unappealing prospect in the best of circumstances. With this no doubt in mind, companies argue that merely doing business with repressive nations helps open the nations to democracy, free trade, and human rights. Cisco CEO John Chambers said recently, "Anytime you've got a good exchange of information, citizens benefit as a whole." And Microsoft has argued that a censored Internet is better than no Internet: Although the company's Chinese MSN Spaces web-log software prevents users from writing words like "democracy" and "human rights" in the titles to their postings, it encourages a central value of democracy by promoting self-expression. But there is little evidence to support these views. Despite China's five million bloggers, the Communist Party remains firmly in control of the nation and, for the most part, the Internet within its borders. Iran's blogging community is perhaps the country's liveliest political arena, yet the authoritarian Iranian government is stronger than ever, especially after a resounding victory in February 2004 elections. Contrary to the utopian view that the Internet evades local control, governments are proving adept at controlling the information that their citizens receive and share. Market freedom does not necessarily lead to personal freedom. We must at times limit the first to safeguard the second; the right to sell must sometimes yield to protect the right to speak." -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]