The Streisand Effect

[NovaKart]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently generated further publicity. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.[1][2]
Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term after Streisand unsuccessfully sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for violation of privacy. The US$50 million lawsuit endeavored to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand's mansion from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs.[1][3][4] Adelman photographed the beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the government-sanctioned and government-commissioned California Coastal Records Project.[5][6] Before Streisand filed her lawsuit, "Image 3850" had been downloaded from Adelman's website only six times; two of those downloads were by Streisand's attorneys.[7] As a result of the case, public knowledge of the picture increased substantially; more than 420,000 people visited the site over the following month.[8]

I've known about this phenomenon for a long time but I didn't really know the name of it before, it's pretty funny because it provides another example of Barbara Streisand acting like an entitled drama queen again.

Anyway, I was wondering what other examples people know of this kind of effect, not necessarily internet related. Once I was in China looking through some books imported from other countries and I was flipping through one and there was a page with some white paper glued to it, I pressed it down and looked closely and I could read through the paper, something critical about China's government. Of course I never would have noticed it if it hadn't been covered up

 

[cybrxkhan]

Once I was in China looking through some books imported from other countries and I was flipping through one and there was a page with some white paper glued to it, I pressed it down and looked closely and I could read through the paper, something critical about China's government. Of course I never would have noticed it if it hadn't been covered up

That has got to be the most low-tech, low-cost censorship I have ever heard about. Wouldn't the Chinese authorities have considered the fact that someone would have figured it out easily?

 

[Antilogic]

So, if you were careful, you could just remove the white paper and read the original material? That's about as good as the NY Times paywall.