Thanks, that's a great deconstruction of my argument. It seems one of the problems I have is cultural (censorship being increasingly thought of as acceptable) and the other a proposed solution to the problem as it exists solely on the internet. And you're right, the internet is already decentralized...it's just the things built on top of it that are mostly centralized.

I guess my viewpoint is that decentralized services (accessible enough that they don't require someone to run a server in their basement) can somewhat curtail the problem of cultural censorship. In other words, I think the average person should be able to publish what they want (no matter how stupid) without specialized knowledge and without being censored. That is what I envision.

Will this help the problem with cultural censorship? I really don't know. I just believe in the free exchange of ideas.

That said, and as others have brought up in the discussion, the banking system (Visa et al) engage in censorship fairly often as well...so the problem is certainly not limited to internet.

I guess my post is more of a general observation and complaint than a coherent idea of what should be done. But it's good to at least separate out the parts that aren't really related and argue them as separate pieces =].