Top 201 Quotes by Rebecca MacKinnon

It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression and instead to address the much more urgent question of how digital technology can be structured, governed, and used to maximize the good and minimize the evil.

When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese websites for pirated content, a blind eye is generally turned to the fact that ensuing crackdowns provide a great excuse to tighten mechanisms to censor all content the Chinese government doesn't like.

Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Communist China and re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But when he got into office, he pursued a very different policy of engagement with China and of increasing trade and business ties with China.

Intermediary liability enables the Chinese authorities to minimize the number of people they need to put in jail in order to stay in power and to maximize their control over what the Chinese people know and don't know.

'Intermediary liability' means that the intermediary, a service that acts as 'intermediate' conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.

The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.