People who live in some very restrictive societies - like China in the extreme and, to a lesser extent, those involved in the Arab Spring - have managed to disseminate officially unacceptable material online. I think the authorities still just can't grasp that the nature of this beast of online communication necessarily means they will never be able to fully control it. They're pissing in the wind with their attempts to regulate the internet. To take piracy as an example, they might get one thousandth of one percent of the people engaging it and have absolutely no deterrent effect on potential future acts. It's a sea change compare to the way information was shared even 15 years ago, and governments are ill-equipped to handle it unless they make fundamental changes in the way they view information sharing.
