[flexie]

These firewalls are traditionally viewed as censorship from a free speech perspective. And I don't disagree with that. But I have started to wonder whether the Great Chinese Firewall, the Turkish one, and what seriously looks like a budding British firewall shouldn't also be viewed as import regulation like any other:

China wants to sell cars in the US: The US imposes import duties on the cars. The effect is that the US automobile industry is protected, survives and can develop.

The US wants to sell web or smart phone applications (often really advertisement) in China: China blocks it. The effect is that the Chinese IT industry is protected, survives and can develop.

Whereas I don't like trade barriers, there is an unbalance in the way trade in bytes crosses borders without tariffs and the way goods are subject to import duties, taxes and sometimes outright banned due to policies deemed vital to the importing country such as environmental concerns, health regulation etc. We also protect our industries through government subsidies.

The US East Coast and Northern Europe would completely dominate search, social media, email etc. all over the world and not just in the Western world, if it wasn't regulated. That would be fine if our part of the world opened up for the goods and services they produce in Asia and Africa. But we don't.

We are quick to throw around accusations of censorship, but for billions in the developing world, access to our markets would probably mean more to their life and to further democracy than the opportunity to like kittens on facebook or read nightly tweets from Trump.

No doubt sovereign firewalls are often used by regimes to repress free speech. But let's also not forget the financial part of it. In the Western world we exceedingly sell bytes. We cannot expect for the developing world (of which the UK is not part, I know) to allow our software if we don't allow their hardware.

[jonathanstrange]

It's not clear to me what you're trying to say here. The goal of this bill is certainly not a strengthening of the UK porn industry against perceived unfair foreign competition. If the bill had anything to do with import regulations, it would not concern UK porn sites. The opposite is the case.

[flexie]

Really?

While WTO negotiations in the Doha round largely failed, China perfected its firewall.

When Turkey's negotiations with EU failed, Turkey tightened its firewall.

When it becomes increasingly likely that Britain will crash out of the common market, British censorship emerges.

Whether a firewall is justified by concerns with pornography or terrorism or something else, those concerns tend to be kept at bay as long as economic forces wanting to keep society open are stronger. When those economic forces collapse, political forces that want censorship find it easier to prevail.

Also, import regulation consist of many measures and countries don't just impose those measures on products that compete with domestic products. Countries impose tariffs on wine even if they don't produce wine or competing liquors themselves.

[michaelt]

China and Russia kicked out Google/Gmail - which was only possible thanks to a firewall - and by so doing allowed local competitors to thrive. Obviously it also gave them a bunch of political control, so we can only speculate about the relative importance of protectionism vs control when deciding to create the firewalls.

Once the UK has a firewall, they could also decide to block Google out of protectionism. Or (perhaps more likely) they could block smaller foreign companies with less political clout and more UK competition.

Of course, I hope they don't; it'd seem like a pretty bad decision to me. But the current conservative government doesn't have many tech-literate members - witness this very proposal! - so a bad decision is entirely possible.

[pjc50]

There's a valid point here about the asymmetry of trade in services, and the Chinese firewall definitely also functions as a means of developing local social media businesses as "import substitution". But I don't think it applies here. You could apply it more to the French requirement that a certain minimum percentage of TV be in French.

(The outcome of the last round of ""extreme porn"" regulation was the opposite: local producers were closed down, but of course people can still import the stuff)