On 09/03/2013 12:33 PM, Delirium wrote:
I certainly agree with learning from history, but when it comes to censoring encyclopedias or similar reference works, are there good examples that might more concretely narrow down the specific type of thing we ought to be learning from history?
Not that I know of, but that's because the model of what an encyclopedia /is/ has changed a great deal -- they used to be centralized distribution of knowledge and subject to an unknown number of pressure points (including, most dangerously, self-censorship).
Wikipedia, and the Net in general, have changed the landscape substantially and -- accordingly -- the attack vectors. I don't think we have much left to fear from attempts to repress individual bits of data so much as attempts to change the landscape back to top-down control (through legislation, disinformation, and so on).
Certainly, the Défence Nationale's attempt to rubber hose information out of the French Wikipedia is a recent and very visible failed attempt. I've no doubt that for every very visible and embarrassing failure like that one, there are a dozen that fly under the radar.
Are there more successful attempts?
It would be difficult to enumerate successful attempts since, by definition, they would have been successful at not being known. :-) I don't disagree that it would be very difficult, perhaps even nearly impossible, to completely censor information in this day and age and under our current political climate -- but that is exactly *because* we reflexively fight authority figures attempting to control information not because there is no longer a desire or attempts to do so have gotten less frequent.
Gilmore was already noting in in 1993 while the 'net was still the province of the elite geekdom; there is no reason to believe this has gotten better since (and lots of reasons why it could have gotten worse).
-- Marc