Ttly OT: Fiji exercises internet censorship !!!

[Peter Nacken]

Dear fellow iBook listas ...

I am directing this OT email to this list since I have over the years learnt
the diversity of opinion and good advice here ...

As I have mentioned before, the online situation here in Fiji is somewhat of
a joke for a more or less democratic and civilized country which likes to
see itself as a prime tourist destination .. I have actually seen tourists
scouring the capital city for reasonable internet cafes ..  But I digress

A crude summary of how things were so far is on
nacken.blogspot.com/online.htm  in short, a monopoly situation ...

 Fintel sits on the only one cable connecting the island to the world, and
they give the right to sell to retail customers to the only ISP of the
island: Connect.

Now Fintel has decided to cut off access to a certain service of the
internet. No longer are people on the islands able to use net2phone or
related voice-chat features!!! I personally do not use it at all (mainly no
good software exists for the mac), but I find that very alarming when a
monopoly player exercises this kind of power ... if not stopped, what
happens next ? Next they cut out text chat like AIM, ICQ and IRC ? and then
? email ???? and then ... certain websites ??? THIS is the beginning of
censorship .. and I find it unthinkable that this happens in a democratic
and wannabe civilized country !!!

I am very curious what other takes is here ... Is this censorship?  I know
fintel does that since they want to control the market of international
calls ... But I really fear what comes next  ...

I am looking forward to interesting comments ...

Someone here has connections to the online press ??

P