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Comment by evv | Hacker News Reader

You're right- the internet isn't magic. There is a natural law at play here, and you just mentioned it!

Information does want to be free- its not just a slogan, its a universal law.

There is no practical way for a corrupt government to constrain the flow of information in this day and age.

I think you're gravely underestimating the effects of propaganda and herd thinking. Significant parts of the US populace appear the seriously believe - despite undisrupted internet access - that evolution is a lie, the world has been created 4000 years ago etc. And that's without a state-sponsored actor trying to influence people.

Unfettered access to information does not mean people will access, accept, understand, and use that information. If you have a massive state-run media monopoly, you're able to manipulate people in remarkable ways.

The information is out there, though, even if not everyone reaches the conclusions that you agree with.

What about North Korea?

I think that's still just a slogan.

North Korea never had Internet (as we know it) in the first place, so it does not apply.

"Information wants to be free" doesn't apply to North Korea because they never had access to the Internet as we know it? Information is only dependent on the Internet insofar as the Internet is a transmission medium. Other media exist even in NK- print, broadcast, word-of-mouth.

Information can be exchanged freely by whispering voices.

That information has a much higher chance of corruption while in transit, and the bandwidth is low. People can't broadcast photos and videos through whispers for instance.

Whether the information is corruptible isn't the issue. Freedom to share it is. Before the Internet, we had entire civilizations (even free ones) built on communication that was less than perfect. I'm sure that in the early years of the USA broadcasting photos and videos wasn't a high priority, yet, somehow, freedom to share information was acknowledged as a basic human right that must not be removed.

China's great firewall works pretty darn well. Plus the fear embedded in the populace, if they are aware of things they're not supposed to know (i.e. Tienanmen Square).

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