IP: Chinese intranets and other tales of the censors

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 19:59:20 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)
From: "Richard J. Solomon" <rjs () rpcp mit edu>




At 8:25 PM -0400 4/5/97, David Farber wrote:
> "At the same time, we can collect all the information that is needed
> by China from the world community and put them into our giant database
> in Beijing, in Chinese language so that all the users in China can


This is all very funny, and the joke's on Mao.


Let me relate a true story, as far as I can recall having read it in
Science Magazine a long time ago. Some years ago the editor of Science
(Phil Abelson, I think, at the time) was finally invited to Moscow to give
a talk. This was sometime in the early 1970s. After his talk, he was
invited to the library of some important scientific society. The librarian
(who apparently was not clued into what was what) was thrilled to meet this
important editor of a most important American publication. He told him: we
have your periodical prominently displayed, but the only problem is it
takes 6 or more months to get here -- could you find a way to speed that
up? All the while the librarian was waving a mimeographed (that's right,
mimeo'd) pile of pulp with strings around it, and indicating that this was
the famous "Science."


Wait a minute!, asks Abelson, are you translating Science into Russian --
is that why it takes so long to get here?


What translation?, the librarian said -- this is your original
English-language publication.


Mimeo'd? Abelson pulled out the current copy of the magazine, printed on
coated stock, with a color cover. The Soviet librarian had never seen this.
Instead their shelves had decades of dog-eared mimeographed, disintegrating
pulp called "Science."


What was going on? Censorship of course -- but what do you censor in
Science? The articles on genetics? No -- THE ADS! The Russians had re-typed
the entire issue each week for decades -- without the ads, especially the
classified ads for jobs and the product adverts. They simply did not want
their scientists to know what people earned outside of the USSR, nor what
equipment cost, or what was available. For this insane goal, important
research results were delayed, errors  (of course) would crop in due to
re-typing, charts and graphs and photos were missing, and the typescript on
pulp was difficult to read. Stalin probably thought this prevented cultural
pollution. Beria probably thought Western science was useless anyway.


The Science editor was even more miffed than the Soviet librarian -- the
AAAS was not getting any revenue from Soviet scientists or libraries! The
Soviets were buying only ONE copy per week for the entire nation, and
violating copyright by re-typing it.


What did you say the Chinese were going to do about the Internet?


Not to worry about competition from this sector. They are doomed to be
always how many months behind by re-keying everything in Chinese? and
leaving out the ads, of course.


Richard
for IP, if you can handle the length