RE: [soac-mapo] Background info?

["Andrei Kolesnikov" <andrei@xxxxxxxx>]

Evan,

Of course I’m not taking this personally – there is no reason for this. In 
every country there are rather big number of people who think they can control 
the internet. The media will use every case to address the issue and make a big 
story out of little things. This is valid for Russia  and for the rest of the 
world.  Concerning your assumption about getting around: I can only speak for 
the big part of Russian population: many from the 43 million regular internet 
users can and will avoid DNS blocking. Internet is young in Russia + social 
studies and few real cases show, that if you tell Russian “do not go to this 
site” the number of visitors will multiply overnight. It’s out of national 
curiosity and genome reaction to the 70 years of total censorship. Closing 
torrents.ru resulted in increased popularity of the rutracker.org (moved to) 
and increased torrent traffic detected by ISPs. But I don’t want to make an 
assumption that this is a case with other nations. 

 

--andrei

 

From: owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:18 PM
To: Andrei Kolesnikov
Cc: soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [soac-mapo] Background info?

 

Hi Andrei.

On 30 August 2010 02:35, Andrei Kolesnikov <andrei@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Evan, there is no such things as global blocking of some URLs/IPs/Content 
in Russia.


Indeed. The Economist article indicated that the efforts listed were regional, 
and not completely successful.

I use them as examples of the desires of politicians, bureaucrats and theocrats 
to block undesirable pieces of the web. It also demonstrates that MAPO (and 
specifically the PO part in this case) can be broadly interpreted by some 
political leaders as means to suppress opposition.

 

There is no central system nor technical possibility. There is no central 
proxy/filter lists.



Don't take it personally. The examples were only that, examples. The practice 
is well-used if not (yet) widespread. And, as you have pointed out, some of the 
blocking is done by regions whose presence as ICANN stakeholders is negligible 
if existent at all.

 

Sometimes attempts to block occurs as local court decision  in far away regions 
out of judge’s knowledge on how internet works. All these cases listed in 
Economist, but none have been implemented . Blocking only by domain name - 
technically useless.


It's all relative. The blockers do not have to be incredibly sophisticated -- 
they only need to be more sophisticated than those to whom they are trying to 
block access. Determined and knowledgeable people can get around most such 
circumventions, but I would suggest that such people constitute a rather small 
and elite segment of the population. While such elites play cat-and-mouse with 
the government technicians, most of the populace remains blocked.

Do your parents know what an IP address is? Must they?

- Evan

 

On 30 August 2010 02:35, Andrei Kolesnikov <andrei@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Evan, there is no such things as global blocking of some URLs/IPs/Content 
in Russia.


Indeed. The Economist article indicated that the efforts listed were regional, 
and not completely successful.

I use them as examples of the desires of politici

 

There is no central system nor technical possibility. There is no central 
proxy/filter lists. Sometimes attempts to block occurs as local court decision  
in far away regions out of judge’s knowledge on how internet works. All these 
cases listed in Economist, but none have been implemented . Blocking only by 
domain name - technically useless.  The only way to completely control / filter 
the net -  turn off the light. 

MAPO issue is a design of the process to make politicians happy. It has nothing 
to do with technology.

 

--andrei

 

From: owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 9:23 PM
To: soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: [soac-mapo] Background info?

 

Hello all,

I'm not totally sure that the posting of background information or relevant 
news stories here is welcomed or frowned upon, but to me it may help with the 
discussion to know what is already happening.

By this I mean the existing practices of governments using Internet 
infrastructure to block access to sites with objectionable content based on 
names or IP addresses. For example there is  
<http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/08/internet_censorship_russia> 
this article from The Economist on such blocking efforts in Russia and  
<http://opennet.net/studies/uae> this report from the OpenNet Initiative on a 
variety of blocking tactics in place in the United Arab Emirates -- some of 
which block based on TLD.

Is it of value to this group to attempt to collect such information? To me, we 
can't ignore what's already being done in the real world, and any efforts we 
make will need to complement -- or at least recognize -- existing practice. 
Trying to dismiss, ignore or regulate existing government action seems 
pointless and indeed counter-productive. It's clear that measures by national 
governments to filter/ban domains with objectionable content already exist, and 
it's important to our efforts (IMO) to determine how our proposals here will 
actually affect such efforts without doing damage to other policy priorities.

Of course, if there is a consensus that such news items and background info 
will not help, I'll stop sending them. I have no intention to be disruptive.

- Evan