互聯(lián)網走進政府信息管制的包圍圈

There’s a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating.

一種新的數字審查形式正在席卷全球，它可能是某種災難性過程的開始。

In the last few weeks, the Chinese government compelled Apple to remove New York Times apps from the Chinese version of the App Store. Then the Russian government had Apple and Google pull the app for LinkedIn, the professional social network, after the network declined to relocate its data on Russian citizens to servers in that country. Finally, last week, a Chinese regulator asked app stores operating in the country to register with the government, an apparent precursor to wider restrictions on app marketplaces.

在過去幾周里，中國政府迫使蘋果公司(Apple)把《紐約時報》的應用程序從它的應用程序中國區(qū)商店中移除。之后，在職業(yè)社交網絡領英(LinkedIn)拒絕把俄羅斯公民的數據轉移到該國的服務器上之后，俄羅斯政府迫使蘋果和谷歌移除了該應用程序。最后，中國的一個監(jiān)管機構上周要求在該國運營的應用程序商店向政府注冊，這顯然是對應用程序市場進行更廣泛限制的一個前兆。

These moves may sound incremental, and perhaps not immediately alarming. China has been restricting the web forever, and Russia is no bastion of free speech. So what’s so dangerous about blocking apps?

這些措施可能聽起來是一點一滴、徐徐而來的，也許不會馬上引起人們的警覺。中國一直在限制網絡，俄羅斯從來都不是自由言論的堡壘。所以，封鎖應用程序為什么就那么危險呢?

Here’s the thing: It’s a more effective form of censorship.

問題在于：它是一種更有效的審查形式。

Blocking a website is like trying to stop lots of trucks from delivering a banned book; it requires an infrastructure of technical tools (things like China’s “Great Firewall”) and enterprising users can often find a way around it. Banning an app from an app store, by contrast, is like shutting down the printing press before the book is ever published. If the app isn’t in a country’s app store, it effectively doesn’t exist. The censorship is nearly total and inescapable.

封鎖一個網站就像是努力阻止很多卡車運送一部禁書，它需要一些技術領域的基礎設施(比如中國的“防火長城”[Great Firewall]) ，膽大心細的用戶往往能找到一個方法繞開它。相比之下，禁用應用程序商店里的一個應用程序就像是在書還沒印出來之前關掉了印刷機。如果這個應用程序不在一個國家的應用程序商店里，那它就相當于不存在。這種審查方式幾乎是徹底且無法逃避的。

But that’s not the end of this story. The banning of apps highlights a deeper flaw in our modern communications architecture: It’s the centralization of information, stupid.

但這還不是最終的結局。應用程序的禁用突顯出現(xiàn)代通訊架構的一個更深層次的缺陷：簡而言之，信息集中化。

“I think the app store censorship issue is one layer of ice on the surface of the iceberg above the waterline,” said Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School and a leader in the free software movement of activists who have long been warning about the dangers of centrally managed, commercial software.

“我認為，對應用程序商店的審查是在水面以上的冰山表面再加上一層冰，”哥倫比亞大學法學院(Columbia Law School)教授、自由軟件運動領導人埃本·莫哥倫(Eben Moglen)說。該運動長期以來一直在警告集中控制的商業(yè)軟件的危險性。

For more than a decade, we users of digital devices have actively championed an online infrastructure that now looks uniquely vulnerable to the sanctions of despots and others who seek to control information. We flocked to smartphones, app stores, social networks and cloud storage. Publishers like The New York Times are investing in apps and content posted to social networks instead of the comparatively open World Wide Web. Some startups now rely exclusively on apps; Snapchat, for instance, exists only as a mobile app.

十多年來，我們這些數字設備的用戶一直積極支持在線基礎設施構建，但是現(xiàn)在看來，它極易受制于專制者和其他企圖控制信息的人。我們紛紛使用智能手機、應用程序商店、社交網絡和云儲存?！都~約時報》等出版商正在應用程序以及社交網絡發(fā)布內容方面進行投資，而不是在相對開放的萬維網(World Wide Web)上。有些初創(chuàng)公司現(xiàn)在完全依賴于應用程序，比如Snapchat就僅以手機應用程序的形式存在。

Compared to older forms of distributing software, apps downloaded from app stores are more convenient for users and often more secure from malware, and they can be more lucrative for creators. But like so much else online now, they risk feeding into mechanisms of central control. In most countries, the Apple and Google app stores are the only places to find apps for devices running their respective operating systems (there are more choices for Android app stores in China, where Google does not offer its store).

與以往的軟件發(fā)行形式相比，從應用程序商店下載應用程序更便捷，往往也更安全，可以避免下載惡意軟件，對創(chuàng)造者來說，它們也更有利可圖。但是，和現(xiàn)在網上的很多其他東西一樣，它們有可能被卷入集中控制機制。在大部分國家，在使用蘋果和谷歌各自操作系統(tǒng)的電子設備上，它們的應用程序商店是唯一能找到應用程序的地方(中國的安卓系統(tǒng)有更多應用程序商店，因為谷歌沒在那里開設自己的商店)。

Just about all of the internet’s economic value is instead connected to two very specific somewheres: the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, the homes of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook, the four monstrously large companies that own the internet’s central information platforms. As these companies began to build ever-larger empires online, they have evolved into convenient choke points — the very points of control that the internet had been designed to eliminate.

互聯(lián)網的幾乎所有經濟價值都與兩個具體的地方有聯(lián)系：舊金山灣區(qū)和西雅圖，它們是蘋果、亞馬遜(Amazon)、谷歌和Facebook的總部所在地，這四個異常龐大的公司擁有互聯(lián)網的中央信息平臺。隨著這些公司開始在網上建立更龐大的帝國，它們已演變成極易受控的要津，而這些正是互聯(lián)網最初設計時想要消除的控制點。

Like all companies, online companies must offer some level of deference to governments. They obey local and national laws, court orders and national security authorities, and bend to other, less transparent means of coercion. They can fight governments — as Apple did when it battled the FBI over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone last year — but they often must pick their battles and balance their interests. Apple makes a significant fraction of its profits from China. Can it really risk all those billions to protect a handful of apps?

和所有的公司一樣，在線公司必須對政府表示一定程度的尊重。它們要遵守地方和國家法律、法院命令以及國家安全機構的指令，并屈從于其他一些不太明顯的脅迫。他們可以與政府抗爭——比如去年，蘋果公司拒絕為聯(lián)邦調查局(FBI)解鎖一名恐怖分子的iPhone——但他們往往必須對進行哪些對抗予以選擇，以實現(xiàn)利益平衡。蘋果的很大一部分利潤來自中國。它真的愿意為了保護少數幾個應用程序而承擔損失數十億美元的風險嗎?

Apple offered this statement in response to my queries on how it decides to take down apps: “For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations. As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.” Google declined to comment.

我向蘋果詢問它在移除應用程序方面如何做決定時，它給出了這項聲明：“《紐約時報》的應用程序不被允許向中國的大部分用戶展示內容已有一段時間，我們被告知，該應用程序違反地方法規(guī)。所以，該應用程序必須從應用程序中國區(qū)商店下架。如果情況發(fā)生變化，該商店將再次提供《紐約時報》的應用程序，以供在中國下載。”谷歌拒絕作出評論。

But Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights activist organization, said the internet giants were not without leverage in this fight.

數字權利活動團體電子前沿基金會(Electronic Frontier Foundation)的網絡安全主管伊娃·加爾佩林(EvaGalperin)表示，在這場斗爭中，這些互聯(lián)網巨頭并非沒有砝碼。

“The flip side of that is, is China going to block the entire Apple App Store over a single app?” she asked. Interestingly, the internet giants’ hold on every aspect of online life works toward their advantage in battling governments.

“另一個方面是，中國真的會為了一個應用程序而封鎖整個蘋果應用程序商店嗎?”她問道。有趣的是，這些互聯(lián)網巨頭對網絡生活各個方面的控制都讓自己在與政府的對抗中更具優(yōu)勢。

“The bigger a company is, the bigger the risk that blocking them will lead to riots in the streets because you have come between people and their pictures of cats,” Galperin said. “Those are the companies that governments are going to be more wary of blocking, and they should be the ones that stand up to government pressure. They have a special responsibility.”

“公司越大，封鎖它們會導致街頭騷亂的風險就越大，因為你擋在了人們和他們的貓的照片之間，”加爾佩林說。“政府在封鎖這些公司時會更加謹慎，所以它們應該抵抗政府的壓力。它們負有特殊的責任。”

Users and app developers who are now at risk of being censored also bear some responsibility. When I asked Moglen at Columbia about app bans, he was incensed that I didn’t recognize The New York Times’s own complicity in this story.

現(xiàn)在面臨審查風險的用戶和應用程序開發(fā)者也負有一定的責任。我對哥倫比亞大學的莫哥倫教授談起應用程序禁用問題時，他非常憤怒地說，我沒有意識到，在這個故事中，《紐約時報》也是共犯。

The Times, he argued, could have stuck with the old way of publishing news. The company could have declined to create a downloadable app and instead invested all of its engineering resources into making its news available on the web, anonymously. The Times could have refused to profile users for advertising purposes, or to have its articles hosted on Facebook, or to monitor what people read in order to recommend more articles to keep people engaged. In short, The Times could have refused to play the modern digital-publishing game. But like every other publisher, it went along.

他認為，時報本可以堅持傳統(tǒng)的發(fā)布新聞的方式。本可以拒絕創(chuàng)造一個可以下載的應用程序，本可以把所有的工程技術資源投入到在網上匿名提供新聞上。時報本可以拒絕為了廣告目的制作用戶檔案，本可以不把文章發(fā)布到Facebook上，本可以不為了推薦更多文章吸引讀者而監(jiān)視他們的閱讀內容。簡而言之，時報本可以拒絕參加現(xiàn)代數字出版游戲。但是，和所有其他出版者一樣，它也加入了。

“What did you expect would happen?” Moglen said. “China didn’t have to build a Great Firewall to do this. You all offered them an opportunity to piggyback onto your disrespect for the privacy and integrity and autonomy of your readers and users.”

“你們原以為會發(fā)生什么?”莫哥倫說。“中國不用建防火長城就可以做到這一點。你們都給它們提供了一個機會，讓它們可以利用你們對讀者和用戶的隱私、正直和自主權的不尊重。”

I don’t agree with Moglen that The Times disrespects its readers by offering a news app. (I think it’s a very nice app.) But he is right that a lot of people online walked blindly into the no-win position we are in now, where our only recourse against censorship might be the goodwill of a few giant corporations that control most of the internet.

我不贊同莫哥倫認為時報提供新聞應用程序是對讀者的不尊重這個觀點(我認為它是一個非常好的應用程序)。但有一點他說對了：網上的很多人無意中走進了我們目前所在的無望取勝的位置，我們對抗審查制度的唯一資源可能就是少數幾個控制互聯(lián)網大部分資源的大公司的善意。

There has to be some other way. Let’s maybe work on finding it.

一定有什么其他方式。也許讓我們一起來尋找吧。