Liberty is a private university, and its students choose to attend knowing full-well its policies. (And it blocks a lot more than WaPo.)

FIRE and the Virginia ACLU both agree with Liberty's right to do so: http://thefire.org/article/10717.html

You are, of course, free to criticize LU for its policies.

Hmmm. I'm curious: if it turned out that private ISPs in China were blocking the NYTimes of their own volition, would that make it okay?

There are degrees of OK. It would be much more OK than if the government is doing it. Why? Chances are if private parties are doing it, there is some third-party that isn't, if you're willing to pay.

Is that your sincere opinion or are you being sarcastic?

The point is that they used their control over the information available to their "population" to retaliate against and block journalism that revealed information unfavorable to their internal narrative.

I'd say that's the exact same tactic.

It's not a good analogy because Liberty is a private, evangelical Christian school whose population is there by choice and China is a secular nation whose population is largely there by birth.

Those who make up Liberty's "population" are students attending by their own volition and are there specifically because they share the same cultural worldview as the institution -whatever its censorship tactics or however similar they may seem to China's.

I understand this.

However, in both cases the censorship is an effort to save face with their supporters. China doesn't want its Communist supporters to know how rich their party leaders are (a big no-no in communism), and Liberty doesn't want its conservative students to know that they receive massive amounts of federal money (a big no-no in American right-wing anti-government-spending rhetoric).

Obviously it's a futile effort, but it's obvious that China and Liberty both had the idea of punishing journalists and suppressing information in the same way and for the same fundamental reasons.

Am I completely crazy, or does anybody else see the obvious parallel?

I block Hacker News in my hosts file at work to maintain productivity, so I guess I'm no better than China either.

You're not blocking Hacker News in a shallow attempt to keep embarrassing information from supporters and punish those who disclose it.

Then they could go down the road to the local coffee shop/home/mobile network and browse the internet, unblocked. No?

They have options. I'm not sure the Chinese population have (such an easy) option to get around it.

Having several friends and relatives who are either attending or alumni... no, AFAIK it's pretty isolated for students without a car. Not that you can't get away, just that for most people leaving the campus isn't a daily activity. Also, I would be surprised if many of the nearby businesses had public wifi, unless there's a Starbucks I've missed.

The thing is, attendance at Liberty is non-compulsory. I'm sure it does feel like China to the more worldly of its student body, but there is no law compelling them to attend there. (Maybe family is, but that's different story ;)

I think it is very inaccurate to portray the environment and "conditions" at Liberty as a microcosm of the US, let alone as an apt comparison to the people of China being kept in the dark by their government.

Oh, I wasn't necessarily agreeing wholeheartedly with the comparison, just that some of the things we take for granted on HN aren't so simple or ubiquitous as they can be made out to be by people who know what they're doing.

It is inaccurate to call it a "microcosm". That's why I noted the error and corrected my post 4 hours ago.

You don't even need to move a centimeter. All you need is an iPhone with 3G.

Or is that not allowed for students of the university? Sorry, I didn't read the full article.

Well, similarly, every Chinese person annoyed at the censorship just needs a short-wave radio to pick up global broadcasts. (unless they're jamming that frequency somehow) That doesn't make it any less bad. Personally, I have yet to own a phone with internet access.

Having access to Google Maps... there's a Starbucks (and Panera) basically next door. Granted the area isn't all that walkable and "next door" is still kind of far without a car.

Liberty University is in no way a "microcosm of the US". If anything, it is a Christian version of the Islamic Republic, hidden in Virginia.

if my opinion of the states was formed by the loudest voices in this year's elections, I'd think the US was a Christian version of the Islamic Republic.

You're right. I chose a poor word there. I meant that they are a pocket of this kind of ideology in the US (retaliatory censorship).

> Jerry Falwell's conservative Liberty University did a very similar thing

That's like a coffee shop blocking some domain on their WiFi -- not even remotely similar to state censorship.

Maybe if the coffee shop blocked a domain that revealed some facts about them that they didn't like.

And anybody who feels like bringing a smartphone onto campus can get around it.