Critical Faculty Dojo - Banned in China?

Well well. It seems the Chinese government may have banned Critical Faculty Dojo - or it could just be due to ‘technical reasons’.

At least according to this site.

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility though, if they are sensitive and have been reading this, this, this, or this.

Maybe they wouldn’t want their citizens reading about Chinese net censorship. Hey the truth is out there, if you are not being censored you may even be able to read it too…

ICANN may ban domain names to avoid causing offence

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN ) was founded in 1988 by the US Government to take over regulating key aspects of the internet's technical architecture like domain names and IP addresses. It has had a troubled history.

A recent report from a working group within ICANN called for any new domain names to be carefully regulated demanding that names should be censored according to "legal norms relating to morality and public order". Thus banning rude, abusive or culturally sensitive words.

Here we have a slippery slope. For a start exactly who’s 'rude' are we talking about? As anyone who has ever tried to market a product internationally this can be a minefield. As we all know something can be perfectly acceptable in one country that is rude, or insulting in another, even in English speaking nations, if you factor in other nations the problem multiplies.

The idea that it is ok for ICANN to appoint it’s self as global censor for the network concerns Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

She believes ICANN should only set technical standards and avoid setting it’s self up as some sort of moral guardian of the network and it should be left to individual countries and even institutions to decide what is acceptable. The whole network should not be limited because of sectional or local interests

Regulating the internet is certainly possible, as the governments of China, the US and the UK have all demonstrated in various ways. But we don’t all want to be bound by what may be acceptable or convenient for one county. If there is to be such regulation then local control would be the least restrictive of freedom and freedom of speech and association.

The core architecture should be as open as possible, not only technologically but also in terms of any limitations of freedom of expression, not locked into a limited and politically controlled framework.

As Noam Chomsky said: "Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favour of free speech, then you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favour of free speech."

Shareholders torpedo Yahoo's anti censorship policy

Yahoo, amongst others, have been getting stick recently for cosying up to governments such as China, who are big on net censorship.

Presumably feeling a little sensitive to criticisms of their policies by human rights groups, Yahoo proposed to adopt a policy that opposed censorship and to set up a human rights committee, to review it’s policies in various locales.

Complete sites - including news media - are eliminated from Yahoo and Google in China. Also Yahoo has been criticized for turning over political dissidents' e-mails that were then used as evidence against them.

Sad to say the proposals were very heavily defeated by Yahoo shareholders.

At Yahoo’s AGM the human rights committee idea was rejected by a huge 96%.

More disturbing 85% are apparently advocates of censorship. Or at least ambivalent towards it when it comes to an increased dividend. It’s enough to make you start to wonder just how many shares in Yahoo the Chinese communist party actually holds ;-)

Personally I would really like to see them rethink their apparently pro censorship stance.