Making Small Steps Against Censorship

JD writes "BBC News has an article about online censorship, blogs in particular. It points out that 'perhaps we need to accept that small gains and slight shifts in direction can make a difference to people's lives, and work for them instead of trying to blast down the walls of repression with a single blow.' Whittling away may be the only realistic way to see change happen."

Re:Those who built it

[palfrey]

AFAIK, a lot of this gets done by a variety of American companies, who are quite happy providing and customizing their filtering software for anyone willing to pay up. Unlike cryptographic software, there aren't any restrictions on the export of filtering software, and the continual efforts of users to get around the software provide a steady revenue stream.

Re:The times they are a changing

[Kesh]

This is not a recent thing, contrary to popular opinion. Things weren't better in the "good old days."

Point of reference: The Alien And Sedition Acts [wikipedia.org], signed into law by President John Adams in 1798.

Luckily, it didn't last long. But, other laws did. It took us a very long time to stop censoring entire classes of people, and things were still a lot more constrained than today.

It's not an excuse for the abuses of today, but it's false to think things were really better a long time ago. Censorship has existed since the first words were spoken.