Chinese authorities have detained a software developer for selling computer services that allow internet users to evade China's "Great Firewall," which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets, a media report said Monday.
The software developer, who is from the coastal province of Jiangsu, near Shanghai, was arrested in late August and held for three days for building a small business to sell virtual private networks, the Global Times newspaper reported, citing the official Xinhua news agency. VPNs create encrypted links between computers and allow Chinese web users to see blocked sites by hiding the address from government filters.
Subscribers paid 10 yuan, or about $1.50, for one month of the developer's service. Authorities also seized the developer's earnings, which totaled 1,080 yuan, or about $165.
Some internet businessmen have faced far harsher punishments: Earlier this year, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who sold VPN services in Dongguan, near Hong Kong, was sentenced to nine months in prison.
How far away from having this happen in the West are we, really?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:09PM
Yes. Although it is futile to explain this to an authoritarian cretin of the highest order, government censorship is, in fact, wrong. I'm not sure why anyone would ever trust the government to decide what should and should not be censored after considering the countless ways all governments violated people's rights in the past and in the present, but I guess I answered my own question in that last sentence.
Supporting free speech is natural for anyone who cares about freedom.
Now you're going to argue that self-censorship is similar to government censorship? They have totally different implications. Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this equivocation.