Greetings. As you've probably heard by now, YouTube -- the entire site -- has apparently been blocked in China by the nation's massive content control regime. At last report, YouTube remains blocked.

While there isn't official confirmation (even of the block itself) from Chinese officials, there is widespread speculation that the shutdown was triggered by Chinese government displeasure with a particular YouTube video, purporting to show Chinese soldiers beating Tibetan monks. The authenticity of that video has been disputed by China.

In practice, whether or not the entire video is genuine or not is essentially irrelevant to the broader issues of Internet content and censorship attempts.

Rather than blocking entire sites, China of late has been trending toward more selective blocking of specific Web pages or other specific Internet items, so the blocking of the entire YouTube site would appear on its face to be a major escalation, which frankly flies in the face of logic.

Actually, there's all manner of illogical aspects to such situations. Google has in the past removed specific "offending" videos from YouTube upon complaints by specific foreign government officials -- theoretically blocking those videos' access to the entire world (though in practice alternate copies are always available scattered around the Net and usually trivial to find). In some cases (like the ongoing mass blocking of YouTube music videos from the UK due to an ongoing rights dispute), Google deploys regional blocking.

But again, in all of these cases, every single one of these videos can be obtained online by anyone from other Internet sources.

While I understand why Google must respond to rights-based take down requests, the bottom line is that such efforts aren't only ineffectual, they also draw new attention to the videos in question.

This is the case with the current Chinese YouTube blockage as well. I've gotten notes from people who hadn't even heard about the Tibetan video before word of the Chinese YouTube block started circulating widely in the press yesterday. Once folks knew about it, copies (sometimes encrypted) started flying around the Net at lightning speed -- through torrents, FTP, e-mail attachments -- you name it.

The end result is that far more people are now paying attention to a video that China presumably wanted to suppress and minimalize.

China is certainly not alone in failing so far to learn a key lesson -- that effective Internet censorship is impossible -- no matter how beneficial to society their leaders (and leaders in other countries) may feel such content censorship efforts to be.

In the final analysis, the appropriate and effective response to disputed information in the Internet age is more information, not less. If a video is faked, then explain why, lay out your case -- treat your population like thinking adults. Trying to block videos or other Internet information just doesn't work.

Governments (all through human history) have had a natural affinity for censorship, but Internet technology has rendered impotent that tool in a manner that even the invention of the printing press was unable to accomplish.

The sooner that the governments of the world recognize and accept this reality, and adjust their policies accordingly, the better off both they and their citizens will be. Any other course will not only fail, but will engender ever increasing damage to their own interests in the process.

A lose-lose proposition, to be sure.

--Lauren--