Internet censorship

The German Justice Minister imposed fines on social networks for their failures to delete hateful content. His act has been criticised as people concern about Internet freedom. There are some countries that have some Internet censorship policies, one notable example is China. China has blocked Facebook and Google and some other foreign websites. Such Internet censorship policies are usually designed for some good purposes, such as social stability (to stop spreading terrorism, crime and other violent ideologies), education (to protect children from pornography) and etc.

However, the effectiveness of Internet censorship may be relatively limited. The information on the Internet is very different from physical goods. The characteristics of the information on the Internet are very close to the characteristics of public goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. The information on the Internet is often free and once it is spread across the Internet, it definitely is public goods. Some information is not free but this kind of information does not entirely belong to private goods. Because when the information is bought by others, it does not stop others from purchasing the same information, as the quantity is not affected by any purchases.

Moreover, information on the Internet has one special quality that it can grow and develop by itself. For example, once an event happens, many news presses publish the story on their websites, later some expertises, bloggers and columnists and some others will write comments about this event on the Internet. In addition, more people will share the story and the relevant comments and will also make new comments. Such process is almost infinite and will develop more sources of the information.

Overall, the spreading of information will not reduce the quantity (if we can measure). Instead, it will increase the quantity.