Interweb Censorship

WTF is going on with the internet people!  I’m seeing stories this afternoon about Iran shutting down Gmail in preparation for the anniversary of their so called republic.  Google has all but pulled out of China because of internet hacking and censorship issues there, and now even the Australians have gone crazy and are censoring their population by not allowing access to pornography.  The aussie public, being awesome, is now in complete revolt, a wave of hackers has unleashed hell on the government, and rightfully so.

Look, I’m going to keep this very short.  The cat is out of the bag, governments will continue to see their attempts to censor the flow of information on the interwebs fail.  It’s a matter of the individual always being one step ahead of the larger system.  This is the case with any system, such as our own financial regulatory system, which has fallen so incredibly far behind the structured products created by the banks.  In any complex system, the individual always has the advantage of speed, the ability to change tactics, and create new solutions.  What does the government have?  The ability to control the means of transmission of information, but certainly not the information itself.  So Australia can go to the ISPs and say, don’t allow these sites to be reached by your customers, and China can say to the search engines, don’t allow these certain words to be search for, and Iran can block Gmail.  But as we’ve seen time and time again, the individual will find new ways to spread information, the technology is out of the box, and will continue to morph as governments attempt to catch up.  Frankly, I believe this pushes innovation.  There’s nothing more motivating than an overlord government when it comes to innovating ways to escape their censorship.

Governments will always attempt to control the flow of information, this will never change, it is a crucial part of any power system, whether it be a government, a company, or a personal relationship.  Information is power.  I have absolutely no doubt that innovative individuals will find ways around these issues, and we will all be better off for it.

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