links for 2009-08-04

Morozov thinks a package that will e-mail people RSS feeds (a service I think already exists somewhere) helps make censorship obsolete. He also claims of restrictive countries "there is no way that they will block Gmail," which we know to be untrue in China—see last month.

The real problem with this argument is that just because some circumvention exists doesn't mean censorship has no effect. Say half of all people used circumvention, which I think is incredibly generous for China. That leaves another half that is either compliant or unaware of the forces shaping the information they find available.