[p2p-research] lightfoot book sharing ?

[Andy Robinson]

"Even with a highly authoritarian Internet surveillance regime, BTW,
burning CDs or making floppy disk copies of stuff from hard drive and
distributing it by sneakernet would be a massive improvement over the
means available to the Soviet samizdat movement."

Indeed - as it is proving for Chinese and Iranian dissidents among others.
Though, there are limits - North Korea AFAIK has no web connection at all,
the Taleban banned it, Cuba has very limited connectivity (due to the
blockade rather than by choice I've heard), and China shut down the web in
Xinjiang during the unrest last year.  Xinjiang has light enough coverage
that they can pull this trick - it wouldn't be very viable most places -
though I have heard of Northern regimes (Britain, Germany) jamming mobile
phones across entire regions (Britain did it after 7/7, Germany did it to
sabotage anti-nuclear protests).

The difficulty however, may be getting access to computers rather than
getting the data.  The trend in regulation seems to be towards monitoring
cybercafes which are the main means of connection in places like China.
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