I see that the West copies the absolute best Russian solutions. Censorship has been in the manual mode here for years, no one even asks useless questions about

I see that the West copies the absolute best Russian solutions. Censorship has been in the manual mode here for years, no one even asks useless questions about formal framework. Basically, some official comes running with the message “THEY don't like X, add X to The List of Bad Blocked Things”, and technical details don't matter. Anything gets approved by law offices anyway, and the laws routinely get extended (sometimes post-factum) if it is needed for operation. I'm not a fan of “economystical” models, but here it is quite striking. The business, the not so novel startup idea, is putting a roadblock on a previously open busy road, and acquire the power to decide who can pass. Then you can offer free services to the government (ass licking is the key to success), and paid services to the big copyright holders — something that unites “democratic” and “undemocratic” countries is that corporate piracy fighters are in bed with government censorship, and usually lobby the inclusion of pirate sites. You can be sure that agreeable stance and swift daily updates (through formal law enforcement proxy) cost them a percentage of global revenue. By the way, this is how cities and states on world trade routes operated for centuries. One thing that is missing from the scheme is the reason to start the whole thing. Whether it's “the children”, “the war”, or “starving kittens”, it doesn't matter at all. What matters is the willingness of the people to agree with that execution of the power. Given what we've seen in previous years, people all across the world are going to agree even with checkpoints and searches for the sake of starving kittens, because those, too, could be a part of “natural order” today. The war, in fact, greatly helps things like those.