Internet Freedom Challenged Not Just In China

There has been a lot of talk, debate and criticism — leveled at Google, Microsoft and other major Internet content providers — about censorship of Internet content by the government of China. Google v. China: Principled, Brave, or Business As Usual? [Huffington Post]. The assumption most of these pundits make is that mandatory filtering and blocking of the Internet is a policy embraced only by repressive or authoritarian regimes.  That’s not at all correct.

Iran's Green Revolution

Western nations are just as bad; worse in some ways.  “Enemies of the Internet”: Not Just For Dictators Anymore [ReadWriteWeb].  As a few for instances:

• France passed and is on the verge of launching a so-called “three strikes” law that would require termination of Internet access by ISPs for end users found to have engaged in trafficking of copyrighted music and other content via P2P file-sharing services.
• Great Britain is considering similar “punishment” as an anti-piracy measure as well as blocking specific sites, such as Hamas for “inciting hatred” of Jews.
• Australia has applied its Human Rights Commission “hate speech” prohibition to what it deemed offensive content about Aborigines and requires mandatory filtering of Internet content.
• Italy criminally convicted three Google executives (in abstentia) for privacy violations in refusing to take down a YouTube video making fun of an autistic child.
• The European Union has threatened to require a “Eurofilter” to block child pornography sites.
• New Zealand uses a government-run “child exploitation” Internet filter that blocks not only child pornography but also file-sharing.
• In South Korea, a new Internet censorship law allows for five-year prison sentences for anyone found using the Internet “to disseminate false news intended to damage the public interest” and bans anonymous comments on any blog with more than 100,000 readers.
• Since 2000, Russia has required all ISPs to install “Sorm-2” software — “SORM” being the Russian acronym for “System for Operative Investigative Activities” — which enables the police and FSB (the “new” state security agency) to have access to all user surfing activity and email traffic.
• Even the United States government still presses for implementation of COPA (the Child Online Protection Act) despite its having been declared unconstitutional repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

Reporters Without Borders recently released a penetrating study of government Internet censorship, titled “Enemies of the Internet 2010.” It cogently observes:

Western democracies are not immune from the Net regulation trend. In the name of the fight against child pornography or the theft of intellectual property, laws and decrees have been adopted, or are being deliberated, notably in Australia, France, Italy and Great Britain. On a global scale, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), whose aim is to fight counterfeiting, is being negotiated behind closed doors, without consulting NGOs and civil society. It could possibly introduce potentially liberticidal measures such as the option to implement a filtering system without a court decision.

So Internet censorship is alive and well in the world’s “progressive” industrialized nations. The liberating technology of the Web is under assault because, as in 2009’s “green revolution” in Iran via Twitter, it can catalyze viral growth in political opposition and tends to harbor folks, like pedophiles, who’s activities are politically disfavored (even repulsive).  No one lobbies for child pornographers, after all.

Just do not operate under the misimpression that it is only Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, Vietnam, China and the like that censor Internet content.  Almost all governments do it.  The United States, with its constitutional First Amendment protection for free speech, and the Scandinavian countries — where the Pirate Party was victorious in Swedish parliamentary elections — which have classified Internet access as a fundamental human right, are the exceptions. This blogger, for one, hopes the exception swallows the rule.  One can always hope.