It seems like the eventual trajectory of such censorship is the creation of a completely separate Internet that is China-only. With more and more sites from around the world being blocked, the demands aren't going away, and so parallel censorship-friendly sites go up inside The Great Firewall. I wonder if one day, China will get sick of maintaining the Firewall and just turn off connections to the rest of the world.
Censorship is horrible. But if you think it's restricted to China... think about what would happen if 10,000 people would tweet something sensitive on 9/11. My guess is something along the lines of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/paul-chambers-convicted-f_n_570073.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/10/paul-chambers-convi...</a>