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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Jun 8th 2004 3:21pm





Vietnam Wants Internet Cafes To Monitor Internet Usage

from the don't-download-bad-information dept

If there's one thing that's obviously available in bunches on the internet, it's "bad information." However the Vietnamese government has decided that "bad information" (which they seem to believe is anything they don't agree with, or anything that portrays them in a negative light - this post, for example, would probably qualify) is illegal and must be stopped online. They've now told local governments to start monitoring internet usage and have warned internet cafe owners they can be fined or jailed if any of their patrons uploads or downloads "bad information." To help track this sort of thing, they also want all internet cafe owners to "document what Web sites their clients visit and for how long." In other words, it's now prohibitively expensive to run an internet cafe in Vietnam. It's amazing that these sorts of regimes honestly believe that stopping such info, at the cost of killing off all of the benefits the internet provides, is actually worthwhile.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    dorpus, Jun 8th, 2004 @ 3:48pm

    What if it really is bad?

    Vietnam is a popular hub for child sex trafficking, heroin trafficking, among other things. If you ask such dealers, they will tell you they are "dissidents".

    It could be that we also outlaw such "bad" usages of the internet here too.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 9th, 2004 @ 9:31am

    Re: What if it really is bad?

    Why is this so amazing? These are not democratic societies.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    NOBODY, Jun 9th, 2004 @ 12:46pm

    No Subject Given

    Doesn't China do almost exactly the same thing? It hasn't stopped internet cafe's there. Although, I don't really understand how they can prevent anyone readinf opinions they disagree with. Sex is easy to filter out. It's pretty predictable. Full on actual content with body and meaning, is a lot more complex.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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