They’re completely blocking YouTube. No official explanation given, but it’s probably not unrelated to the fact that official sources are accusing the Dalai Lama of producing a phony video allegedly showing Chinese police beating Tibetan independence protesters.

Aside from the obvious moral that the Chinese government feels quite at ease getting tough when it tires of playing games, there is a larger moral for the rest of us: If you want to make what you think will be an important point, don’t worry about over-blocking. We tend, quite properly, to get outraged about the suppression of the isolated instance of offending speech, but in doing so we lose sight of the far more outrageous fact that the entire haystack is shrouded in darkness so that the needle won’t be seen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Censorship and free speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.