MOLI VIEW™

Back in the early days of the online world, the Kool-Aid was strong stuff. Besides making us all rich – and better looking – the Internet would defeat censorship. If information wanted to be free, who could possibly stop it? As John Gilmore said, "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Except that it doesn't. Even recently, Myanmar was fairly effective in shutting down news about unrest there. And although China all but promised to loosen its restrictions on information before the Olympics, it doesn't seem to have done so. Gosh, who could have ever predicted that a despotic regime would lie to the rest of the world?

But the Kool-Aid hasn't gotten any weaker. Almost a year ago, the techno-idealists at Wired (where – full disclosure – I used to work, but never drank the punch) ran an article about "China's Misguided — and Futile — Attempt to Control What Happens Online." I certainly won't argue that China is misguided (the relaxed attitude toward child labor bothers me more than the censorship, but what the hell).

While I wish that China's censorship efforts were futile, I'm not sure they are. The Wired article points out that China's "Great Firewall" isn't all that hard to get around, which is true. But I think hacker-types tend to confuse a perfect solution with a workable one. For example, many engineers point out that no digital rights management system is perfect – and they're right. But the point of digital rights management systems isn't to be unbreakable – it's to be difficult enough to break that few people bother. Same with the speed limit: The idea isn't that everyone will drive 55 but that most people stay below 65 or so.

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