“ Even if authorities are incompetent, unable, or unwilling to tar the Web with official “information,” there is little evidence that an open Internet will suddenly make the Chinese or Russians dream of democracy. We have been here before: East Germans who could not tune in to West German broadcasting had higher rates of opposition to their government than those who did. The idea that unfettered access to the Internet will bring democracy suggests one of the worst fallacies of cyber–utopianism. Once they get online unsupervised, do we expect Chinese Internet users, many of them young, to rush to download the latest report from Amnesty International or read up on Falun Gong on Wikipedia? Or will they opt for The Sopranos or the newest James Bond flick? Why assume that they will suddenly demand more political rights, rather than the Friends or Sex in the City lifestyles they observe on the Internet?
