Blog Censorship

The French have done something right.

Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French Foreign Ministry and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can be downloaded in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French.

It is the inevitability of a free market that will eventually put pressure on censors. China, who I have issues with over almost everything (esp. Tibet and other human rights violations), is by far the worst censor (although Iran is not far behind...could they be in league together?).

Does anyone remember the old "Anarchists cookbook" that every junior high school kid had or wanted?? Just as that was downloadable from nearly every "cool" BBS in the early 1990s, so this will find its way ubiquitously into China, Iran, and other censor-states. Blogs will be the vehicle for change and freedom. Feels kinda good.

Global Voices Online calls it

"the first truly useful book I’ve seen aimed at the kinds of bloggers featured here at Global Voices every day: People who have views and information that they want to share with the world beyond their own national borders."

In the final chapter, we see a written report of what we already know (although our government continues to court these regimes)--

Aptly, Juilen [Julien Pain, editor] concludes with a final chapter entitled: “Internet Censor World Championship,” in which the Chinese government is the hands-down winner, followed by Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan.

It's nice to see that somebody realizes the extreme fanatical censorship that Vietnam has. Last year, I could not write freely from an internet cafe, because everywhere I went, they posted signs that said talking about the government, or democracy would get you kicked out of the cafe and possibly thrown in jail.

Here's to another step in the eventual freeing of world thought and action through blogging.