4 ms·

Is it just me, or does the phrase a Western style democracy (used in the article) seem just a little ironic given the context?

• mustpax 16y ago
  Not to defend Turkey here but other Western style democracies can be just as boneheaded when dealing with technology. For a long time France was notorious about restrictions on the use of cryptography. It is a natural tendency of governments to try to control the flow of information, the commercial landscape for ISPs in Turkey probably contributes to the current predicament more than the political climate.
• InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Australia is a "western style democracy" currently rushing headlong into building its own great internet firewall.
  • hugh3 16y ago
    There's currently a pretty good chance Rudd will be out at the next election. Somebody needs to shanghai Tony Abbott into committing his party to abolishing the great firewall if it wins. update: Looks like Abbott is maintaining strategic ambiguity on the issue as recently as yesterday: http://www.zdnet.com.au/abbott-drawn-into-filter-debate-339300089.htm http://www.zdnet.com.au/abbott-drawn-into-filter-debate-3393... "I just don't know enough about it at this stage to have an opinion on that," he said, which decodes as "I don't know whether it's an election-winning or election-losing issue for me yet". People need to start agitating now to convince him.
• yummyfajitas 16y ago
  At least two actual western style democracies do something similar. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/new-yorks-amazon-tax-called-unconstitutional-by-retailer.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/new-yorks-am... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124603593605261787.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124603593605261787.html