I don't know much about Internet policy in Egypt and they may in fact be
facing a free speech crisis.  But nothing suggested in this article is
quite so dire.  Isn't there some reasonable arguments that can be made
between a totally unregulated Internet and the Great Wall of China? 
"Slippery slope" arguments are always problematic.  But the "Great Wall
of China" is more than a little cliche when it is used for every
argument, and its an insult to what the people of China are really
suffering in human rights violations to so trivialize it.

Cheryl B. Preston
Edwin M. Thomas
Professor of Law
J. Reuben Clark Law School
Brigham Young University
424 JRCB
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-2312
[log in to unmask]

>>> Robert Guerra <[log in to unmask]> 6/5/2008 7:02 am >>>
Further to my earlier message on the topic - wanted to share two
articles about the issue of censorship trends in Egypt. As it appears,
users from the middle east/north africa region as well as the Egyptian
blogosphere increasingly believes that the draconian great firewall of
china will be coming to Egypt soon.

regards

Robert
--

Censorship: A Threat to the Stability and Security of the DNS?
http://www.circleid.com/posts/censorship_threat_dns_stability_security/


Egypt: Great Firewall of China Coming Soon
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/06/05/egypt-great-firewall-of-china-coming-soon




posted by Amira Al Hussaini on Jun 05, 2008
categories: Egypt, News

Egyptian bloggers have one hand on their keyboard and another on their
hearts. Following a recent crackdown on bloggers and online activists
following the April 6 unrest, some are now predicting the worse is yet
to come.

Tarek, at Not Gr33n Data, writes:

It's getting more and more fishy everyday, the Newspapers are
attacking what they call "The Dark World of the Internet", you may
read Al-Ahram Newspaper's article here [Ar]. They are blaming the
Egyptian people because they use the internet to … ehm … spread
rumours, call for strikes, and post videos that may harm the Egyptian
National Security!

You know what, I am getting more and more confident now, that the
Government's next move will be filtering the Internet. I already had
similar suspicions a long while ago, but now I am really afraid that
they may start filtering the Internet here in Egypt very soon, they
may block sites such as Facebook, because what's said that the April
6th General Strike was organized there. They may also block YouTube,
and who knows what will they block next.

Seems that the Great Firewall of China is on its way to Egypt.