Good. Censorship and other attacks should be as noisy, obtrusive, and damaging as possible, so that we have more incentive to stop it (by both legal and technical means). Such attacks should not pass silently.
> However what triggered the whole article was that more and more websites become completely impossible to use in the absence of SSL even for anonymous data access.
Why do you need to use them in the absence of SSL?
Many ridiculously tiny devices still have enough power to run a simple TLS stack. And if you're really trying to access web services from some potato-powered device that can't run a TLS stack, you have much the same problems as a device that can't run a fully capable network stack at all. In either case, speak a simpler encrypted protocol (e.g. Bluetooth Low Energy, 6LoWPAN) to a local device, that can either provide the services you need or access them on your behalf.