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ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing
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This quarterly publication is a
quarterly journal that publishes
refereed articles addressing issues
of computing as it impacts the
lives of people with disabilities.
The journal will be of particular
interest to SIGACCESS members
and delegrates to its affiliated
conference (i.e., ASSETS), as well
as other international accessibility
conferences.
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www.acm.org/taccess
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in the group, causing its number of
followers to grow rapidly by 200 in
just one day. Whether those followers were neo-Nazi sympathizers or
simply people who were interested in
the case is unclear, but what is clear
is that the censorship itself acted as
global publicity. It is arguable that
in both cases the furor caused by the
censorship of information has only
served to draw attention to it further,
surely defeating its purpose.
In fact, ever since the samizdatb of
the Soviet bloc, it has been clear that
in many ways overt censorship has
always served to stimulate interest in
the forbidden material. In the case of
samizdat, this forbidden material became strongly fetishized in such a way
as to make its contents immediately
appealing, and immediately accepted
by many sections of the population as
truth. As Ann Komaromi has said in
her essay “The Material Existence of
Soviet Samizdat,” “[Samizdat was]…
something on which to get high… …
an intoxicating product. It was forbidden fruit.” 4 The process of overt censorship here only served to elevate the
censored material to a sacred status.
It is clear that it also serves to expose
a government’s intentions, and in
many cases to undermine the government’s credibility.
Why is it, then, that governments
such as China’s still choose to pursue a
policy of aggressive and overt Internet
censorship? The issue was investigated
by researchers at Harvard University. 3
The conclusion they came to was that
China’s policy on censorship is not
what it seems. From the outside, it
may seem China’s intention is to suppress all anti-government discussion
and the expression of revolutionary
ideas. In fact, what China found was
that direct criticism of the government
was no more likely to be censored than
anything else. Censorship was instead
targeted at postings that sought specifically to organize collective anti-government action or to create action
groups of any kind.
Germany’s reasoning for the censorship of Better Hannover was similar. Germany’s aim was not the sup-
censorship exposes
a government’s
intentions and
in many cases
undermines
the government’s
credibility.
pression of neo-Nazi ideas, but rather
the prevention of any organized and
collective anti-democratic action suggested by those ideas.
It is easy to see why Germany would
adopt such a policy. After the horrors
that National Socialism inflicted on
the German population, it was clear
that measures had to be taken to stop
such a situation from arising in the
future. Unfortunately, however, these
measures may only serve to stimulate interest in the subject, and to
create a whole new kind of samizdat
in the form of websites that must be
accessed covertly. They may be successful in disabling action by these
forces for a certain period of time, but
it remains to be seen in both cases
whether the publicity created by overt
and aggressive censorship ultimately
strengthens or weakens the government’s position.
References
1. bradsher, k. china criticizes the times for article on
premier’s family fortune. The New York Times (oct.
26, 2012); http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/
world/asia/china-criticizes-the-times-for-article-on-premiers-family-fortune.html?ref=censorship.
2. brumfield, b. and Smith-Spark, l. twitter blocks
content of german neo-nazi group. cnn (oct. 10,
2012); http://articles.cnn.com/2012-10-18/tech/
tech_twitter-censorship_ 1_alex-macgillivray-twitter-
neo-nazi.
3. king, g., Pan, J., and roberts, m. how censorship
in china allows government criticism but silences
collective expression; http://gking.harvard.edu/gking/
files/censored.pdf.
4. komaromi, a. the material existence of Soviet
Samizdat. Slavic Review 63, 3 (autumn 2004), 605.
Jean-Loup Richet ( jeanloup.richet@gmail.com) is an
information systems service manager at orange in Paris,
france, and Ph.D. student at nantes university (lemna),
nantes, france.
b ‘Self-editing and publishing’ in times of
censorship.Fo r more details, see http://bit.
ly/183hLUU.