[itchitawa]

MegaUpload, Silk Road shut down by US government. Piracy, drugs, child porn, online gambling. These are things Americans feel are OK to silence. Inciting violence (they have deadly anti-government riots), destabilizing the government. These are things Chinese feel are OK to silence. Different stokes for different folks. In either case you need enough staff to monitor for such illegal content.

[dengnan]

Well. According to Ugly duckling theorem[0], any classification algorithm is biased. It's not about finding an unbiased system, it's about which side should be preferred by the system. Specific to the discussion about network surveillance, it's about which group of people should be protected: The mass majority or the minor elite/politicians.

If we have limited resources to control speech, I would argue that those resources should be mainly used on to government/politicians. Because they have much more power over the others.

Piracy, drugs, child porn, online gambling, blocking these things online is supposedly by the people through direct or indirect votes. (NOTE: I'm not talking about the facts in the U.S. or any country. I'm talking about how things should work.) The things blocked in China, on the other hand, are only decided by the government, not the people.

> In either case you need enough staff to monitor for such illegal content.

Until there's a clear definition of "illegal". As I mentioned, Chinese government can shutdown any website at their will, without any warranty. No need to say that the government is not voted by the people, which by itself is illegal.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_duckling_theorem

EDIT 1: add another graph to clarify my point.