The Compost Files: Online protest against censorship

Quote of the Day:

"As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends."
~ Jeremy Bentham ~

What's going on with the net tonight? When the BBC loaded it looked like hieroglyphs. After a few more tries it now says this: "Due to technical problems, we are displaying a simplified version of the BBC homepage."

Yahoo wouldn't load at all and neither would blogger. Maybe this isn't so unusual. When a site is really busy it can hang a bit, I think. I'm a trekkie not a techie. ; )
A bunch of other sites that usually load quickly were also very sloooow. Makes you wonder if the info on the SOTT lawsuit is having an effect on the PTB and the way they allow information to flow. Here is a shot of the Internet Traffic Report for 3-13-08. At the time, an online protest against censorship was in full swing.

This is the global average:

Pretty pathetic. Maybe the net is being scrubbed. It seems that Google is erasing most of the articles or at least placing them on distant pages away from the front of the search results. It certainly appears that the SOTT article is having reprecussions that TPTB are trying to handle.

ITM, check out this article on the BBC. The page finally loaded.

Virtual demos over net censorship

Thousands of people are taking part in "virtual protests" against countries accused of censoring the internet.
For its first Online Free Expression Day, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has created virtual versions of nine public spaces.
These areas where protests are not normally possible include Beijing's Tiananmen Square and Kim Il-Sung Square in the North Korean capital Pyongyang.
RSF says at least 62 cyber-dissidents are in jail around the world.
More than 2,600 websites, blogs, or forums were closed down or blocked last year, the group says.
'Internet enemies'
The RSF demonstrations are running for 24 hours, until 1000 GMT on 13 March. Several hours after they opened, more than 5,000 virtual dissidents were protesting online.
Users are invited to create an avatar, choose a message for a banner and take part in one of the demonstrations in Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, North Korea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
This year, RSF has added Zimbabwe and Ethiopia to its list of "internet enemies".
The other countries blacklisted by the group are Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
"From now on, we will organise activities every 12 March to condemn cyber-censorship throughout the world," RSF said in a statement.
"A response of this kind is needed to the growing tendency to crack down on bloggers and to close websites."
One of the most targeted internet sites is the popular video-sharing website, YouTube, that has been blocked or banned in a number of countries including China, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Burma and Brazil.
The reasons for banning the site vary from country to country, but include government objections to religious and political material, foreign sites and pornography.