Representative Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Another example of how persistent new media attention In play is nothing less than the shape of the future. It is the first key issue of the new Geo-Politics What is emerging in the shadows as we fart and fiddle So keep a close watch on the actions of the Chinese from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The often acute and astute Hiawatha Bray, technology correspondent for the Boston Globe, weighs in with a decent general overview of the thorny, bleeding edge issue of Chinese Internet censorship, and the complicity of US technology concerns therein. Representative Christopher … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/maooo.jpg\")
The often acute and astute Hiawatha
\n Bray<\/a>, technology correspondent for the Boston Globe, weighs in
\n with a decent general overview of the thorny, bleeding edge issue of
\n Chinese Internet censorship, and the complicity of US technology concerns
\n therein.<\/p>\n\n
\n Republican and chairman of a House subcommittee on human rights,
\n plans to hold hearings next month on reports that US Internet companies,
\n including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., aid efforts by the government
\n of China to suppress free speech. The issue has simmered for years
\n as American companies have raced to enter the Chinese Internet market,
\n already the second-largest on earth and rapidly growing.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n can eventually move an issue into the mainstream of political and old
\n media attention. Berkman’s own Rebecca
\n MacKinnon<\/a>, among many others, have been trying to draw attention
\n to this key frontier showdown with implications for the future form
\n and function of the emerging Global OmniWeb for some time. Some of
\n the key questions raised by the intense and ongoing efforts of the
\n world’s #2 Internet power to control how its citizens access and interact
\n with the web:<\/p>\n\n
\n over a BILLION potential users? If they all jumped off chairs onto
\n the same URL at exactly the same moment, would it knock the web out
\n of its orbit?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\n or refuse to comply with requests\/instructions from foreign governments
\n for access to information or technology there is reason to believe
\n will be used against citizens of those countries in ways which would
\n be considered human rights violations?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\n in such a sensitive area merely through restricting licensing and
\n service contracts?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\n internet activities of an egregiously wanton violator of human rights
\n or supporter of terrorism, be it China or some other, effective isolate
\n a pariah state and "keep it off" the OmniWeb?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
\n the world by far, actually create a viable alternet (alternative
\n internet)?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n In the future we will all be spending significant portions of our life
\n in cyberspace, which we will be able to access anywhere, anytime. Some
\n people, kids being born today, will probably spend most of their conscious
\n time online. What will that experience be like? What will it look like,
\n where will it let you go, how much will it cost? Who gets to say? The
\n current Chinese case involves all that and more.<\/p>\n
\n of the 21st century – cyberspace geopolitics. You can bet your bottom
\n dollar that the US government has a top secret, multi-disciplined team
\n studying what the Chinese government is doing, what works and what
\n doesn’t, both technologically and politically, in terms of large scale
\n monitoring and spying on one’s own citizens via the internet. No telling
\n when that kind of information might come in useful, eh?<\/p>\n
\n our way around the Blogosphere is an entirely predictable Gibsonesque
\n cast of characters, black ops government geeks, teenaged wizards creating
\n virtual marvels and imploding spectacularly, high-level, high-tech
\n military-industrial conspiracies, data pirates and identity wholesalers,
\n and covering it all, the unavoidable hall of mirrors that is the media.<\/p>\n
\n Government, and the US Senate, and corporate America on this one. It
\n involves not just Darth Gates and IBM, but liberal icons like Google,
\n which dropped news sites disliked by the Chinese government. It very
\n much involves the shape of things to come.<\/p>\n