Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Net Censorship does too violate Network Neutrality
Our friend HandsOff, in a comment here, continues to claim that Censorship and Net Neutrality Violation are completely different animals. She writes,
Net Discrimination is discrimination based on origin, destination, type of content, contents of content, originating and/or destination application, et cetera. It is much worse when it is deliberate discrimination. Whether a government does it or a company.
Update: HandsOff's subtext implies that Google's the main company in cahoots with China. There are several U.S. companies abetting Chinese censorship. Rebecca MacKinnon has written the definitive article on this IMHO.
Discrimination occurs when one packet is given preference over another because of its origin/destination or the type of information it contains, but not the content per se. Censorship occurs when a company like Google collaborates with a country like China to block specific search results that are counter to the political and ideological ideals of that country.OK . . . what's the defining difference? Taking HandsOff's scenario above at face value, in one case a company is impeding non-preferred content, in another case a company is blocking content. Suppose in the first case the impediment is so strong it amounts to blocking. If so, then we've found out what it is and we're simply negotiating how strong it has to be.
Net Discrimination is discrimination based on origin, destination, type of content, contents of content, originating and/or destination application, et cetera. It is much worse when it is deliberate discrimination. Whether a government does it or a company.
Update: HandsOff's subtext implies that Google's the main company in cahoots with China. There are several U.S. companies abetting Chinese censorship. Rebecca MacKinnon has written the definitive article on this IMHO.
Technorati Tags: NetworkNeutrality
Comments:
Post a Comment
