Russian Wikipedia Goes on Strike Over Censorship Plans

Re:Russian Wikipedia Goes on Strike Over Censorship Plans by barrkel on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @05:48AM (#4222852)

When the UK introduced Cleanfeed to block child porn, it was supposed to only be used for that. But when cases came up in court, ISPs could not deny that they had the capability to block individual websites, so it got repurposed to block things like TPB - which I think is wrong[1]. The fact that Western countries also misuse censorship is no excuse. All I expect that will be required is a compliant court, and further censorship may be applied once the infrastructure is in place.

[1] More widespread use also works against its original motivation, because it encourages people to work around the blocks with VPNs, proxies, etc. But that's generally restricted to very motivated and half-ways technically adept people.

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Re:Russian Wikipedia Goes on Strike Over Censorship Plans by obtu on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @06:48AM (#4222997)

Just to clarify, both courts and an as yet unspecified government agency will have the power to order content removed (by site operators, web hosts, and ISPs). Looking at http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&... , the criteria are open-ended (the list starts with objectionable stuff for the sake of framing the debate; the last bullet point says anything deemed unsuitable can be suppressed; links to the same content are disallowed as well). In practice I expect the motivation for this law is to crack down on political dissent, alternative candidates, and any platforms that may support them.

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