Day 1 Thoughts

Tyler: I thought JZ's point about "half-assed" censorship was quite interesting. For example, I like the idea that Google created google.cn, while retaining an easy way for people in China to use a Chinese-language, uncensored google.com instead, as a way of convincing the Chinese government that it had taken steps to censor content that it had been ordered to censor but without actually preventing access to anything. A similar example of Microsoft censoring the titles of blogs but not their content was also given that I found interesting. I wonder if there are other, more subtle, behaviors that have been built into products that allow for the appearance of censorship without actually fully implementing the censorship?

Jason: But notice that how effective this all is depends on what you think about how powerfully the "Principle of Bovinity" operates (amazingly, there appears to be no Wikipedia article on this topic - someone get on that! - but you can check out this Lessig article and scroll down to the second block quote). By this, I mean that if 99% of all users use Baidu or Google.cn without checking Google.com, isn't that more than enough control for the whole censorship project to accomplish its goal? Isn't "good enough" censorship really all the government is looking for? Those who believe in the strong operation of this principle might be highly skeptical of "work-around" solutions, even if they seem really easy to people like us. Here's Lessig in Code (quoted in that Cato link): "I think it is as likely that the majority of people would resist these small but efficient regulators of the Net as it is that cows would resist wire fences. This is who we are, and this is why these regulations work."

Also interesting is the distinction between the two types of countries that may want to filter online content. The first type, like Saudi Arabia, can filter content as it comes into the country because its network topology is small and simple enough that each incoming server can be configured to support the government-ordered censorship. The second type, like China, has too large of a network to rely on an approach that is working in Saudi Arabia and must rely more heavily on the content servers/providers doing the filtering themselves. Are there steps, such as encrypting URLs to make keyword filtering more difficult, that could make filtering more difficult in either of the types of countries?

Reuben: I think a good point to remember for this class is that there are approaches to solving problems other than law, be it a technical solution, an incentives based solution, or other. JZ is right that lawyers and law students can fall into the trap of just saying "There oughtta be a law!" and minimizing the difficulty of actually getting a law passed.