The problem is that the internet is fucking global. As long as that is the case, it is simply not possible to fix this problem.
You can put whatever regulations you want on online content, and some provider from a different jurisdiction is going to say screw you I abide by the laws of my own jurisdiction. The restricted citizens will use that company.
It is like making drugs illegal when there is still an illegal drug dispenser in every home. It doesn’t work.
The most you can do is try to block this at the payment level, but that requires setting up a very intrusive payment blacklist or whitelist system. And then some VPN provider will just make themselves ad supported and you are back at square one.
And that doesn’t even touch the issue of torrents, p2p file sharing, and decentralized networks. Go back to the early to mid-200s and everybody used those things because most of the content they wanted wasn’t easily available legally. Then it became easily available and people started paying for it. But you throw enough roadblocks, make people subscribe to too many streaming services, require too much age verification type crap, and the world will sail the high seas once again.
If you’ve ever been on the internet in China, Russia, or Iran you can get a taste for how powerful this kind of regulation can be. Correct, there are loopholes but it can be made quite difficult to access the things you take for granted when you experience this kind of lock down.
That’s true, but the kind of lockdown on the Internet that China does can’t be done with just regulation and mandates.
There is an absolutely mind-boggling server infrastructure managing the routing and filtering at every Internet point of entry/exit in China, and it is directly physically filtering traffic headed for consumption by people in China.
Its nickname, “The Great Firewall of China”, while hilarious, is an apt analogy for it. They literally built a barrier around their country’s Internet borders to keep out unapproved information, and probably Mongols.
The problem is that the internet is fucking global. As long as that is the case, it is simply not possible to fix this problem.
You can put whatever regulations you want on online content, and some provider from a different jurisdiction is going to say screw you I abide by the laws of my own jurisdiction. The restricted citizens will use that company.
It is like making drugs illegal when there is still an illegal drug dispenser in every home. It doesn’t work.
The most you can do is try to block this at the payment level, but that requires setting up a very intrusive payment blacklist or whitelist system. And then some VPN provider will just make themselves ad supported and you are back at square one.
And that doesn’t even touch the issue of torrents, p2p file sharing, and decentralized networks. Go back to the early to mid-200s and everybody used those things because most of the content they wanted wasn’t easily available legally. Then it became easily available and people started paying for it. But you throw enough roadblocks, make people subscribe to too many streaming services, require too much age verification type crap, and the world will sail the high seas once again.
If you’ve ever been on the internet in China, Russia, or Iran you can get a taste for how powerful this kind of regulation can be. Correct, there are loopholes but it can be made quite difficult to access the things you take for granted when you experience this kind of lock down.
That’s true, but the kind of lockdown on the Internet that China does can’t be done with just regulation and mandates.
There is an absolutely mind-boggling server infrastructure managing the routing and filtering at every Internet point of entry/exit in China, and it is directly physically filtering traffic headed for consumption by people in China.
Its nickname, “The Great Firewall of China”, while hilarious, is an apt analogy for it. They literally built a barrier around their country’s Internet borders to keep out unapproved information, and probably Mongols.