What is the Internet like in Other countries? (besides the USA and UK)

I remember when the Internet (or rather the WWW - World Wide Web) was new back in the 90's. It was a beautiful place of information exchange and the promotion of new ideas. It was a medium through which one could exchange knowledge without regard to censorship.

In the USA between about 95 and 2000 the internet or WWW underwent drastic changes. It became commercialized. If you look at pages like the Wikipedia article on the Internet (en.wikipedia.org...) you will be led to believe this was a global effort. I call BS propaganda on this. This wasn't a global thing, it was an American thing or more correctly a Capitalist thing because Capitalist in other countries like the UK ran with it too.

I started thinking about this because of a post in another thread by ATS member Robodoon who writes:

Well the power elite used our money to create the global web, they feel it is theirs to help destroy and enslave us. After all everything they steal and lie about is theirs...so they think.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

But it wasn't the Power Elite from the Government who did this to us.. it was the big corporations who wanted to gain a foothold on the market. They in turn put pressure on the Government to regulate the Internet in their own image. Now we have laws and regulations governing the Internet that represent a minority of the population, not the majority of the People.

Other non Capitalist countries I reason must not have this type of Internet.. their Internet must be different somehow - I want to know How. I want to know what those differences are and how they either restrict or enhance the freedom of the people who use the Internet. Is there a country with a more free Internet than we have in the USA that is not co bogged down with capitalism and commercialism?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the WWW and he is BRITISH and not American.

en.wikipedia.org...


Surfing on the net are like in the market, you don't have to go through everywhere but have to learn where to go to.
Like ATS, perhaps ?

Down here in NZ, we are VERY free....such as, you hacked into the government and they caught you and instead of locking you up, they will ask : Do You Want A Job With Us ?

Beat that !!!!!

I'm not sure I get the concept. The internet is not different in different places. It's the same thing everywhere.

If you mean restrictions on access or content based on a country or region, then these things are likely well known to all of us or at least externally - I remember someone I knew having a debate with someone in India, about the abuses of government and time after time the debate would turn to argument over invalid links to support claims.

As in, my mate would post references to backup his claims, and the other guy would come back saying none of your links work, you can't even do that properly.

But the problem was, his internet was censored. HE had no idea. We all did, however.

So do you mean censored?

Because apart from customised content based on region, which is known to the end user, I doubt there is a different 'internet' in a non-capitalist country.

As to the difference between a capitalist government and a run of the mill company as reasoning to monetise the internet in their locale... given that the Commonwealth Of Australia is a registered company in the USA, with a prospectus and a financial report, and that a hell of a lot of taxes get siphoned out from tax paying legal Australian citizens to a fraudulent counterfeit government agency, I have no idea what the real difference is any more.

If all of the political and financial hats can work within and accept a form of treason, the whole thing is a joke.

USENET is still there. Still uncensored. Still used.

theres several good forums in japan and china .. also most shops in japan have online sites .. then theres online gaming mmorpgs are quite popular .. not as much porn and pop up ads that seem common to western websites ..

apologies.. double post ... signal playing up ...

reply to post by mypan


I didn't know that. it was an interesting read, Thanks. I remember the Internet before the web went mainstream. We had dial up accounts that put you into a shell you then used with programs on your PC like Hytelnet en.wikipedia.org... or a newsgroup/email client or IRC client. The browser spoiled it all because it allowed the wide spread commercialization of the Internet. Now, few people use programs like newsgroups or IRC.

.Back then it was still popular to dial into local BBS systems to chat, play games, download files etc. I miss these systems. All without use of a browser. I met my best friend of 30 years on such a system.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


IDK about you and the 90's but I was on the net back in the early 80's. '83 with "Compuserve" which basically started email (electronic mail) And later with "Prodigy" which started BB's and early web pages using HTML (hyper text mutable launguage) I basically had a comodor 64 and a tandy "cradle" phone modem. Watching the public net grow back then was very cool. new stuff everyday and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Wish I new a way back then to monopolize it. I remember pics taking allmost all day to Dl too. And games, games, games. Most where text fantasy games, very few where graphical until a few years later I remember one very cool game. Liesure suit Larry! Ha ha ha.

reply to post by proob4


I forgot about those because I didn't use them very much. I used the free trails because as a teen, I couldn't afford the service monthly. Thanks for the reminder. Even before PC's came out I enjoyed dial up ( or rather dialing into local systems) with my Atari, Radio Shack and Commodore computers. These are what I used in the early 80's. You couldn't beat a BBS run by an Atari 800 for many years.It actually had cool color graphics. LOL

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I re-edited my post to explain and remenence more, lol

I also remember them old tandy's and C-64 and all that syntax language. later came DOS and that was easier but still haunting with typo errors all the time. Finally came windows 3.0 when I discovered it, lol. Yea that was some fun days.
ETA: Apologies If I went off topic and ranted, lol

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Other non Capitalist countries I reason must not have this type of Internet..

What none-capitalist countries?

There are no countries that don't have a capitalist economy. Capitalism is simply private ownership of the means of production, that can be by individuals, share holders, or governments (state-capitalism, what is incorrectly called communism).

Capitalism is not democratic, try that where you work. Capitalism is not a form of government, it is an economic system that does not guarantee freedom to anyone but those who can afford to pay for it.

Take note that this was written in 1936, before all the US post-WWII communist cold war propaganda that twisted the meaning of terms to demonise communism, and to demonise the countries that refused to become part of the world wide economic system the west was, and is, pushing....

The term “State Capitalism” is frequently used in two different ways: first, as an economic form in which the state performs the role of the capitalist employer, exploiting the workers in the interest of the state. The federal mail system or a state-owned railway are examples of this kind of state capitalism. In Russia, this form of state capitalism predominates in industry : the work is planned, financed and managed by the state; the directors of industry are appointed by the state and profits are considered the income of the state. Second, we find that a condition is defined as state capitalism (or state socialism) under which capitalist enterprises are controlled by the state. This definition is misleading, however, as there still exists under these conditions capitalism in the form of private ownership, although the owner of an enterprise is no longer the sole master, his power being restricted so long as some sort of social insurance system for the workers is accepted.

Anton Pannekoek State Capitalism and Dictatorship