It's not just dictators. Governments around the world, many of them popularly elected, have tried for years to control the Internet and social media, dismayed by their potential to incite violence, spread mischief and distribute pornography and dissent.
But in Asia, home to everything from free-wheeling democracies to totalitarian regimes and others in between, many governments are increasingly realizing that controlling online content, including dissent, just will not work.
Even China, which strongly regulates the Internet and is grappling with how to deal with the extremely popular microblogs read by hundreds of millions of its people, is highly unlikely to block them completely.
"Governments are committing quite a bit of resources and time to block websites and I think it's a panic reaction," says Phil Robertson, Bangkok-based deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
(...)
"Usually all it does is draw attention to the person and the message, who tend to be small players anyway," said Cherian George, an associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"The general pattern is that the blogger who gets censored becomes far more famous than he otherwise might be. Full story...
Don't miss:
But in Asia, home to everything from free-wheeling democracies to totalitarian regimes and others in between, many governments are increasingly realizing that controlling online content, including dissent, just will not work.
Even China, which strongly regulates the Internet and is grappling with how to deal with the extremely popular microblogs read by hundreds of millions of its people, is highly unlikely to block them completely.
"Governments are committing quite a bit of resources and time to block websites and I think it's a panic reaction," says Phil Robertson, Bangkok-based deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
(...)
"Usually all it does is draw attention to the person and the message, who tend to be small players anyway," said Cherian George, an associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"The general pattern is that the blogger who gets censored becomes far more famous than he otherwise might be. Full story...
Don't miss:
- How Asian govts try to strangle the Internet...
- Technology keeping Internet freedom ahead of censorship...
- How police in China interacted with bloggers over street incident...
- Press freedom index: European countries way ahead of Asia and Africa...
- Social networks booming in Asia...
- Asia-Pacific governments chipping away at Internet freedom...
- India forces magazine to blank out map of Kashmir...
- Singapore tops the world when it comes to internet snooping...
- Internet freedom: Estonia the best, Iran the most repressive...
No comments:
Post a Comment