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Comment by tokenizer | Hacker News Reader

Not just in China, I'm sure if this was AlJazeera being blocked in the US the majority of Americans wouldn't care as well.

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That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera.

One of the most conservative people I know, a PoliSci major, gets a large portion of his news from AlJ. If you took that away from him he'd hoist the black flag and start slitting throats the next morning.

>That's not true at all. Not only are westerners rather proprietary about their freedoms, but most of the more politically engaged people I know read AlJazeera.

Lets be realistic. Only a small portion of Americans follow AlJ. Just like I'm sure there are small proportion of Chinese that follow western news stories about china closely. The parent post was talking about average citizens not political engaged people.

Yeah, but here's the thing about the US. It's a large enough number of people, to the point where somebody would be making noise until it was remedied. Also, I'd like to think that the US is culturally diverse enough, that there are large communities and groups of people outside the standard "white male" category who are reading AlJ, and would complain loudly if said paper was fire-walled. Lastly, hopefully there would be trusted academics and professors who would yell and howl and moan about the ethics of it. Then the stereotypical American would get involved, over the simple facts that his is America, and he loves freedom.

Are you apart of the wumao? If the US blocked AlJazeera, their would be holy hell to pay in the press. It would be a huge story and their would be huge consequences. We really value free speech that much. We might not care to read it, but if it is blocked, that would go against our principles.

If the Obama Administration started regularly deleting tweets and removing things from Google search results, a pretty big chunk of the American people would be really pissed off about that - including the Supreme Court and most Attorneys General. And people would vigorously hunt down the information that was being hidden from them. Generally speaking, this is not the case in China. The people know this is being done, don't really care and don't go out of their way to learn the truth.

Ultimately I guess thats why they can get away with it. If this were something the average Chinese person got really angry about, it would never work. They'd have another revolution on their hands.

They already do it with torrent websites and nobody cares, how much of a stretch is other politically inconvenient sites being unilaterally blocked?

Said torrenting sites are by and large against the laws of the US and many other nations and shouldn't be compared to the NYT.

> torrenting sites are by and large against the laws of the US

Right. We have free speech as long as it's legal. Just like the Chinese.

Blargh... yes and no. Nothing torrentable is explicitely bannable in the US... it's just that some methods of attaining the media are being banned. I'm not sure but I suspect the Chinese government could ban physical copies of the NYT as well as the web portal and no one would be able to do anything about it. This is not true in the US.

You know I see this a lot: we have valid grievances in the US, absolutely. But we also need to be able to see our own issues within a greater world context. There is a massive spectrum and we should be very grateful for the freedom we have and institutions that enable it. If we conflate what we've got with places that truly have materially less freedom, we risk not being able to fight the most important battles.

The discussion is about attitudes towards censorship. The point of my comment was that Americans are willing to accept censorship, as long as it's "legal". And I think history is on my side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_States

Press Freedom Index scores: - United States: 14 - China: 136

Let's not lose focus of this very drastic difference. Sure 14 is too high, but it's not appropriate to bring it up in the context of China, in my opinion. But then, I shouldn't censor you, should i?

Did I claim China was freer than the US? I didn't mean to, and would have been outside the scope of the point I was trying to make.. which was American's are tolerant of censorship.

Again: there's a difference between - blocking an [avenue] to information where other avenues exist, and - blocking information

Why not? NYT has now been deemed "illegal" in the eyes of Chinese rulers, just as these torrent sites have been deemed "illegal" in the eyes of US rulers.

Both cases are forms of speech. Neither is free.

It is not deemed illegal in China, there is no transparent policy to blocking sites. If you call a Chinese ISP and ask them why Facebook isn't working, they'll tell you it must be Facebook's fault.

I'm sure NYT is at odds with the laws of China by publishing things that blatantly (and I'm sure falsely) accuse the ruling elite. That does not mean they should be compared. However, your argument is flawed (and you can do much better than this to prove why they should not be compared).

It's not difficult to argue that torrenting websites -- and ThePirateBay in particular -- are treated particularly harshly due to their obstinate flouting of American civil law, in addition to so quickly dismissing legal challenges to their existence.

Or more to the point it is retribution, and punitive measures are imposed as a warning to others.

I am by no means arguing for (or against) the concept of IP and the laws surrounding it, however the entire situation leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Defaming sovereign leaders is against the laws of many other nations - laws as popular as Anglo-Saxon copyright laws.

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