Delaney on Dodson Chapter 1

I knew that there was censorship in China, but it never occurred to me to at what extent this censorship existed. I was surprised that from the get go the Chinese government was censoring the Internet before it really became very popular. Another thing that was really interesting to me was the fact that the Chinese people unite over the Internet. If they see something that is not right they all ban together to bring justice to where justice needs to be served. For example when the Chinese politicians tried to get the waitress to be their prostitute, the waitress fought back in self-defense. Later on a viral video went out over the Internet and people banned together to bring the three politicians to justice. In the end the waitress was dropped of all charges for the politicians being hurt. This movement, so to speak, is called the Human Flesh Search. There are several other cases where the masses have influenced how the justice system works and the government is not too thrilled with this. As for the government blocking pornography on the Internet I understand this to an extent. They are trying to keep people from seeing this. However, I don’t think that they are completely doing it for all the right reasons. People who are of age should not be censored from anything. It should be at the viewer’s discretion. I feel as though the government blocks it just because they can and not because it is bad. The way that Dodson writes his book is very technical and factual. Although there are many specific examples that he shows which makes it much less cut and dry and more interesting to read. It is a very informative approach to writing and it gets straight to the facts, which seems to be a good thing for this type of material that he is trying to portray.