The subject line of this message is not supported by the paper. The full paper, posted at http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/21KalathilBoas.pdf, says the Internet is not necessarily "an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule." That is different from saying the Internet "helps brutal governments retain control." The paper begins by noting recent scholarship that has found a positive correlation between Net penetration and democratization -- and correctly noting that does not imply causality, any more than the crowing of a rooster causes the sun to rise. But by relying on official government data on computer *ownership* and on *registered* email accounts, the authors may have encountered a methodological problem that has skewed data for many countries around the world -- including the US. Throughout Asia and Africa and especially in China (I don't have first-hand knowledge of Cuba), relying on such data means you miss the vast majority of the online community that uses hotmail accounts, proxy servers and cybercafes or other non-owned machines for Net access. For every registered user we met in China, we met several who were not registered. So instead of the official Beijing number of 26.5 million people on line (that's the *official* number from China Internet Network Information Center reported today, up 56.8% from last year - details at http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=14423) most experts we contacted said the ratio of unregistered to registered users is 4:1, yielding a total of well over 100 million. That's still a small percentage in a country of billions, but it is different from the paper's 17 million. Why lower than the official numbers? The citation in a footnote takes you to www.chinaoline.com, a Web site in Chicago. The page cited notes one "definition of Internet users rules out Web surfers in Internet cafés" - which would seem to be a problem in a country full of hotmail and yahoo email accounts. So instead they use another method to reach these new, lower numbers: they "conducted online and written surveys of each group to determine the proportion of Web users within each group. The total number of Chinese Internet users was then obtained by calculating the proportion of these groups in relation to the total Chinese population." These are people who go to great pains *not* to be counted or found by the government, but somehow they are expected to respond to an official survey. And if they do not complete the survey, these people do not exist. We also are receiving email from people in countries where, according to this paper, all such traffic is monitored and all users are registered. Not so. Students all seem to know how to use proxy servers and anonymizers and avoid official scrutiny -- and are not reported by those relying on official numbers. But more broadly, the problem is with the "one machine, one user" model of the Internet that most in North America and Europe assume is the standard worldwide. Not so: in Africa, Asia and South America, the standard is "one machine, many users." One example is at www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=11876 based on our first-hand observations and research on the ground, and there are many others on our site. This is not to say the Internet must inevitably topple undemocratic governments. That is the straw man addressed in this report's introduction. But this is to say that it is an important influence in totalitarian countries, enabling a still small but rapidly growing minority to access information directly from outside of their countries -- and to relay that information and their personal views via email to others. Otherwise, what are we to make of the reports by the BBC and the NY Times that China has been forced to change "official" versions of news stories because Chinese can send email to each other (and to those outside of China) with first-hand accounts of what actually happened? Cheers Adam ********** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------