Slashdot Log In
Open Networks, Closed Regimes
Posted by
michael
on Sat Jan 11, 2003 06:01 PM
from the technology-is-a-force-amplifier-for-good-or-ill dept.
from the technology-is-a-force-amplifier-for-good-or-ill dept.
kris writes "First Monday has an interesting article on Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule, presenting evidence that The Internet may not be automatic downfall of authoritan regimes as anecdotes commonly suggest.
In their words: The authors trace Internet use in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries: China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. They discover that authoritarian governments, far from fearing the information age, have chosen to direct Internet development in ways that bolster the state. At the same time, many regimes are struggling to cope with the potent challenges posed by new technologies. The authors encourage policy makers in the U.S. and other industrialized democracies to promote specific Internet-based initiatives that foster political liberalization, rather than perpetuating the myth of the Internet as an unstoppable "virus of freedom.""
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
eight authoritarian countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a bad price (shitty CD's, but I just found the first ad for them I could find). Factor in the CDR tax, and it ends up costing you over $100 for them.
This tax is funneled straight into the **AA's, in a misguided effort to "compensate artists" for "illegal piracy"
Now, IANAL, but I don't think you can tax an illegal activity, or else Revenue Canada'd be down on East Hastings (drug riddled area) busting every dealer for not reporting income. If they're taxing it, it must be legal now... I'm going to go burn a whole bunch of IP law violations
Eventually, Canadas parliment will cave to corporate money (though I don't know why, the Liberal party doesn't need to campaign, they're going to win anyways) and make a restictive, evil law like the DMCA. When that day comes, I too will emigrate. I don't know where to though...
(either that, or bloody revolution. YAY!)
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they came for the pirates, but I did not speak, for I was not a pirate.
Then they came for the copiers of their purchased CDs for fair use, but I did not speak, for I was not a copier of my purchased CDs for fair use.
Than they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American who opposes most of "my" government's policies, who fall back on this sort of reasoning as a defense of American imperialism and plutocracy. The implication that we ought to stand united behind a government which fails to represent our interests simply because we don't get in locked in jail for saying so is absurd. Moreover, there are plenty of countries around the world which respect the most basic civil liberties of its citizens (and quite a number that do a better job of it).
The history of American is largely one two separate threads. One is those who have advocated for the continued expansion of this great experiment we call democracy -- the anti-Federalists, abolitionists, sufragettes, Populists, labor unionists, Socialists, (some) progressives, New Dealers, and the Civil Rights and peace activists of the 60s.
On the other side is those who have typically held power, in alliance with the nation's wealthiest and selfish interests. It is they who passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, maintained slavery in the South, opposed voting rights' for women, turned their back on starving farmers, martryed labor leaders, threw the Socialists in jail for speaking out against WWI, opposed anti-trust legislation, let loose the dogs on Martin Luther King, and sent our young men to die needlessly in Vietnam.
Today, that tradition is being continued by politicians like Bush and Ashcroft who seek precisely to limit our liberty and threaten democracy. To uphold America-under-Bush as a beacon of openness for the rest of the world plays into their hands.
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:5, Interesting)
All I can say is -- we can have this discussion here because here TALK IS CHEAP, and nothing is supposed to depend on it. It's almost the same in Russia now. It may look less barbaric to have the government that never listens to anyone, and breeds just enough humanlike cattle to vote for itself than the government that restricts speech because it has a lot of educated humans that may listen to it.
But the problem is, I don't want to talk to the cattle. I want my arguments to be heard by people that may happen to be in control, and here it's not possible. People that disagree with government can just as well talk to each other in prison because no one anywhere close to power would listen to them.
Re:eight authoritarian countries (Score:4, Insightful)
The question now is if the USA ITSELF is increasingly a threat. Turn off your rabid extremist 'usa-rah-rah-rah' goggles for a moment and look at things.
er? (Score:4, Funny)
Do they? Where is this? I can just see a two chapter taster of a book, that to read more of I have to pay $$$
Make Networks Open Source! (Score:2, Insightful)
Only when we unleash the full potential in networks such as UUnet can we attain the goal of providing broadband for the general South American consumer.
Sympathetic companies (Score:4, Insightful)
OKAY! (Score:5, Funny)
How Much? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule
Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas
Price: $18.95
Paperback, 208 pp.
ISBN: 0-87003-194-5
Pub. Date: Jan. 2003
Order the book
How much for one of these ads? I keep asking but no one will tell me.
Virus of freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Their first mistake (Score:2, Insightful)
Please don't dilute the term "democracy" by including the U.S. in its definition.
poor countries (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that if I read more of the book, I'd probably find that it goes well beyond that point, but it appears that the summary, the foreword, and much of the first chapter could be adequately covered by the first half of my last paragraph. That's the sort of overly verbose crap that makes books like these so boring. They're padded so heavily that a couple of sentences is expanded into three repetitive chapters and you don't find anything new or interesting until the fourth chapter or so, if not until the halfway point of the book.
First-hand experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe a bit naive (now knowing perfectly how insecure our email is
Paul B.
Write your congressmen! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your government throws money at all types of security "solutions" right now because it believes that is what you want it to do. It believes that, given the events of the last 14 months, you are frightened enough to break Franklin's famous principle about trading freedoms for security. It will do anything to make you feel safer, not only by making you safer, but by throwing tax payer dollars at pointless and socially dangerous projects such as internet censorship, as well as more infamous projects such as the face scanning technologies used in Tampa that were found to misidentify a large percentage of the population.
This quagmire of government spending to make you feel safer regardless of the consequences will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them not to do anything. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to protect your safety, or that you're fed up of taxpayers money being spent on enforcing unenforcable laws, but if money keeps being thrown at half-assed half-implemented solutions that you either agree or disagree with, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how half implemented laws harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on whether or not they either implement the law fully, or abolish it, depending on your point of view.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
The best thing I love about slashdot is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
As technology is challenging old business models (the way mp3's have suposedly challenged traditional casette and CD purchasing), it is creating an increasing number of conflicts between the information eutopia and the ruling bodies (i.e. countries) it spans.
Does anyone have an idea on what the future will look like for the internet?
And of course, there's Palladium... (Score:3, Funny)
Myth (Score:2, Interesting)
At the time everyone was thinking about the impact the internet would have in dictatorships also everyone was saying that internet was boasting discussion about every topic possible. Free speech was bad for oppressive regimes.
Interesting it is that noone thought at the time the internet could be a major way to challenge the western regimes. It's not a bad thing (tm) per se, actually it's quite good to the world that discussion about what kind of regime is best for the world. Maybe new ideas might come up... Afterall for all it's failings democracy is the best form of government that we can come up with [idealog.info] (quote: Winston Churchill)
Hurray for the internet.
Only a myth if you think it happens overnight... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is Already Doing This... (Score:2, Informative)
Post predictions! (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty loose definition of authoritarian (Score:5, Informative)
I've lived in Saudi Arabia and Singapore, and anyone who mentions them both in one breath is insane. Saudi Arabia is a society where religious police patrol the streets looking for and beating people who don't go to prayers, who keep their stores open or use pay phones during the 5 daily prayer periods, or who are women and show their ankles or noses. It's a country where government agents hang around in the mosques listening for rabblerousers, who are summarily dragged off for interrogation.
Singapore, on the other hand, is basically what you get if you combine the social conservatism and corporate-centricity of the USA with the ridiculous libel laws of the UK. It's far closer to the USA than it is to Saudi Arabia.
And the big difference is, in Singapore, people want it that way. They have one of the world's highest income levels, they have safety, they have long life and good health, and they have enough freedom not to feel stifled. One of the greatest achievements is that there's basically no sectarian trouble despite significant Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu populations all sharing a small and dense space. Any number of polls has turned up time and time again that the vast majority wouldn't change a thing.
Singapore is effectively a one-party state. In part that's because only a minority have wanted change. It's also because the PAP is aggressive in its use of libel action to silence non-member candidates who make too much noise.
Personally, coming from a tradition where freedom of expression is a cherished core social value, I find that uncomfortable. But it doesn't change the fact that it works for Singapore. And it's not the sort of country where people would feel like they couldn't complain to me because they'd get taken away by the secret police.
Anyway, by conflating these - though the material online was too thin to really be able to get to the bottom of their evidence - they seem to elide over the likely fact that the internet's open expression is a far greater threat to a regime like Saudi Arabia, which is unpopular anyway - than to one like Singapore's. Without relatively complacent countries like Singapore and UAE to soften the mix, I doubt their thesis would stand. Additionally, the inclusion of countries like Burma and to some extent Vietnam, where internet is a non-factor in general society, clouds their point further.
Who is the authoritarian? (Score:3, Interesting)
And again in terms of small countries which have embarrassed the US - Vietnam is another example. It's almost beyond belief that a US-funded study would call Vietnam's government authoritarian. What would they call the puppet government they tried to prop up from the 1950's on, where memoes and even Eisenhower's memoirs say the US leaders didn't want an election in Vietnam because they knew the anti-colonialist/imperialist candidates would win? And before that the Western leaders (US, France, England etc.) were trying to keep it a French colony.
I'm tired of having the faults of only the countries who US leadership feels is not to their liking at the moment pointed out. I am an American, but I often think leaders who are criticized in the corporate press (Chavez, Lula) are better people than the ones glossed over. I find more common cause with the working class people like me in these countries than I do with the owners of the press and elite of my own country frankly. As the Bible says, check out the log in your own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else's.
Ultimately the internet will be weapon of tyranny (Score:2)
I'm not shocked that the mindless radicals here make obligatory statements about the US "wahtaboutda US !!!" But if you think there is oppression here then you faux Che wannabess really have to live in a poor country. I have and it deeply and truly sux, there is no comparison.
All the speed of a glacier (Score:2, Insightful)
Political changes are generational things. In the United States, the civil rights act was passed in the mid-60's, and real change in the South is just happening now, as this comment is being read. In this particular case, it had to wait for the diehard bigots in congress and in the electorate to die off. Freedom in the Soviet Union took a similar change of leadership, over a similar length of time.
There are two general cases that need to be considered, those being "rich" countries and "poor" countries. In those countries where sizeable chunks of the population are starving, changes of politics are quite secondary to the average citizen (though perhaps they should not be, in the long run). Adlai Stevenson expressed it well when he said, "A Hungry Man is not a Free Man." These people have no time to be interested in the internet, though even here, the internet will make changes over the long haul.
In countries where hunger is not the primary motivating force, changes will come faster. One can see the ripples even now -- spend some time in Hong Kong and look around. In some of the most repressive theocracies on the planet, voices for change are being raised, and one of the primary ways we know about them is through the internet.
Have patience; revolutions that happen overnight tend to be accompanied by copious quantities of blood. With any luck, things in many of these places may happen as they did in the Soviet Union. One day, we may wake up and notice that tyrants are becoming yet another endangered species.
Typical sheltered, naive bullshit (Score:1)
yet more published horseshit (Score:2)
The internet isn't a violently intrusive tool. If it does contribute to the downfall to repression it'll do so slowly and insidiously, over the course of decades. Since most nations of the world had either no connection or a negligible connection to the internet back in '93, no conclusion can reasonably be reached as to its effect.
The book is bullshit, pure and simple. No one is in a position to say much of anything on the topic, and won't be for at least another 20 or 30 years.
Max
Just a second! (Score:1)
Re:"open" net...?working?, here? (Score:2)
Re:The immorality of Open Source (Score:1)
We can control what other people do with our work.