Jonathan Zittrain
Jon Zittrain is up now to talk about filtering in China and circumvention of such filtering. And hacktivism.
Shows a DMCA notice received by Google for infringing search listing — threat is that Google will be sued unless it takes result down. Google even says that there are things you're not seeing. So Google is cooperating in taking things away from public view (supply side filtering).
If you're China, and you want to stop your citizens from seeing things, you stop people from even seeing google.com (shows search page from Beijing University). Shows lists posted of blocked sites. All of MIT and Brown blocked; and all US courts.
JZ did a dialup to Beijing (from his office in Cambridge) to see what could be seen — but that was expensive. Then Ben Edelman and JZ asked Chinese servers what was available (eg, search results on google.com for “Tibet” — top search results unavailable from Chinese servers). And people out in the world found many other additional sites blocked. Over 50K were blocked.
Doing this work is becoming more difficult. (And empirical research is hard!) Effort to do this entails assuming that China blocks sites for everyone (or not). Looks as if what's going on is more subtle. If you type political name into Google, suddenly you won't get access to Google any more.
Evolving towards a drivers license approach - eg, junior highs do this. Maybe countries may someday as well — AUPs for citizen use. We'll be taught what we should do and what we shouldn't.
Saudi Arabia also does this — and allows sites to be unblocked. Gave JZ two weeks to see what's blocked. Both SA and China block some common things (like Amnesty International).
Pennsylvania does this too. Discusses Pappert case statute. Order can go out to PA ISP saying don't allow Pennsylvanians to go out to particular sites. (JZ didn't mention that CDT is leading this litigation; see ABDavidson presentation.)
JZ is tracking all of this using the OpenNet Initiative. Accepting help.
Now: circumvention. OpenNet has a circumvention lab in Toronto. Internet offers opportunity to unhook civil disobedience from wrong being attacked — before maturation of social moment. [distracted for a few minutes]
Quick tour of JZ efforts. Thanks!
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