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Russia Wants To Censor The Internet as well?

April 27, 2008 by

Techdirt is now reporting that Russia is the latest like the People’s Republic of China who wants to censor the Internet within. In China, the Golden Shield Project (a.k.a. Great Firewall of China) is owned by
the Government of China (MPS) and started in 1998. The system blocks
content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and
consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet
gateways of China’s ISPs. The banning of websites is mostly
uncoordinated and ad-hoc, with some web sites being blocked and similar
web sites being allowed or blocked in one city and allowed in another

On the Russia issue, prosecutors are hoping that an internet version of the law would
require ISPs to block access to any sites that include "extremist"
content. Of course, extremist content is defined rather broadly. It
seems pretty clear that this is just an attempt to try to stifle speech
the government doesn’t like. Isn’t that the same with most laws? ;)

This could be a problem for those of you who do business in Russia like China. Why you ask?  Skype had a dilemma when they wanted to enter China with TOM Online. TOM’s people told their Skype Technologies to avoid problems with the Chinese leadership, they needed filters to screen out words in text messages deemed offensive by Beijing. No filtering, no service. At first Skype executives resisted, but after it became clear that Skype had no choice, the company relented: TOM and Skype now filter phrases such as "Falun Gong" and "Dalai Lama."

You used to be able yest any website in real-time and see if it is accessible from China at

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org, but it seems that China has censored that too :)

-Dennis
Eloqua

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to “Russia Wants To Censor The Internet as well?”

  1. spamfighter
    April 27, 2008 at 5:40 pm #

    "At first Skype executives resisted, but after it became clear that Skype had no choice, the company relented"

    The company had and has a choice. Their decision to make money prevailed over doing the morally correct thing.