Indonesia blocks YouTube over a controversial Dutch film about Islam.

China recently blocked YouTube for hosting videos showing the turmoil in Tibet, as big western companies helped keep information from the Chinese people. From my column on that topic:

This is the kind of situation in which the Internet was supposed to change the balance of power. The expectation was that the free flow of information from beyond a country's borders, combined with the power of local blogs and other social media, would break the monopoly of state news sources and liberate the minds of oppressed people.

Unfortunately, that's not the way things are working out.

...[T]he Net puts all kinds of power once reserved for central authorities in the hands of smaller entities, even individuals. In this context, business decisions can become moral ones... the Internet makes once-distant issues impossible to avoid.