Slashdot

This is quite a disturbing trend in so called 'industrialized' countries (although Russia's industrialized status could be questioned). The lack of outside information and abundance government propaganda is why N. Korea is so scary. Many of the people there that have no access to outside information actually whole heartedly believe what the government tells them, and why wouldn't they, it's all they've ever known. All it takes is one new generation to grow up behind these 'iron curtains' and the governments have effectively indoctrinated an entire country with the ideals of a select few.

The stories about Putin and his hot gymnast girlfriend got a paper's license revoked. I imagine the internet rules would be as even handed.

Redundant meme censored.

I think that it is time for the Internet (read anonymous) to start striking back at those world leaders that wish to silence information.

Yes, I'm American and I think the Bush Administration is one of the likely targets of such an effort.

We have the Internet, it is free, information flows around the globe. For all the faults that might bring it has been hailed as an equalizer and liberator of peoples all over the globe. Freedom of information is the basis of the good inside an OLPC.

FTFA:

Yes, we are all against extremism and extremists, but very few of us agree on what exactly those are. Such subjective terms should never be allowed to be enacted as laws. By allowed, I mean that free peoples should protest such laws, even if they are not in the country where it is enacted.

In times past it was said that Monarchy's that do not hang together will 'hang' separately. I think that time has not changed this at all, and many of the so called republics are merely facades for the ruling classes to hide behind.

Wow, that sounded a bit socialist or something, but I truly think that the Internet has the power to change things for the better. If the Russian people are unable to, perhaps we outside of Russia should make our voices known and heard.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Just a few days ago there was a story here about new Russian law requiring Wi-Fi registration. It turn out they would require registration of commercial and non-standard equipment. Earlier there was a story about creating an isolated Russian Internet. It turned out they just want to use Cyrillic letters in domain names. There were many stories like this before and each time they were twisted to cause cries about dictator Putin and slavish Russians. Are these posted by "message force multipliers"?

... an iCurtain?

The US and the European Union seem to be working hard to keep up.

The EU just passed a resolution making it illegal to publish "terrorist propaganda" [arstechnica.com], even though the actual definitions are quite vague. That vagueness is incredibly broad:

America hasn't outlawed "terrorist propaganda" websites yet, but they are working hard to create the case that they need to -- they recently passed the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" [govtrack.us], in which our government finds that:

The US government has been so busy pumping the notion that the Internet is recruiting terrorists at home that they have even claimed that terrorists hang out in the online game Second Life [wired.com] where they engage in information warfare [washingtonpost.com].

The Internet as it stands causes governments, regardless of party, left/right leaning, democratic, heriditary, authoritarian, fascist, or progressive, way more problems than it solves.

1. It makes many laws nearly impossible to enforce on people in your country (the various laws in France banning Holocaust denial, globalised P2P in less RIAA/MPAA friendly countries).

2. It makes it easier for corporations and other employers to provide services and product in your country while employing few if any of your citizens.

3. It creates a tax-gathering nightmare for revenue officials.

4. It provides free and open access for foreigners who are inclined to break your laws, and exploit and defraud your citizens. Commercially operated botnets and the total hijacking of e-mail for spam, protected with a wink and a nod by corrupt officials and organized crime sponsors are just the start.

5. Foreign militaries, paramilitaries, intelligence agencies, and terrorist groups have a direct, hard to trace, and nearly impossible to stop communications line into your country, on top of a map to attack your critical network infrastructure (and physical infrastructure too, if you're like the US and are stupid enough to connect power plant control systems directly to the Internet).

6. Critical Internet infrastructure, and new development is often at the whim of an unfriendly or hostile government. (though this government is generally the US in just about every case, with its control of ICANN)

Again, this is governments. The people don't like a lot of the negatives too, and that means that in general they are going to be pleased if action to cut off "bad actors" from flooding their inboxes with spam, or stopping the US government from controlling the DNS system, or the Chinese military from attacking their country, or Russian hackers taking their entire country offline if they do something that Russia doesn't particularly like. The fact that it gives governments nothing but nightmares is eventually going to create a lot of little internets, with countrycountry access governed by treaty. The Wile West was tamed a long time ago, and the Internet will be as well, just like every other frontier. You've just got to create a new one.