“It has been recognized that China's mines are among the most dangerous in the world…corner cutting by owners … lead to almost 5000 deaths during 2006 alone, and to an unknown number of potentially serious injuries that is thought to far outstrip the number of outright casualties….” (source: http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/)
Now, it is statements like these on Internet blogs that many website hosting providers and search engines are pressured to censor. Last year, Google and Yahoo took flak for censoring web searches in China prohibiting sites that seemed politically ‘unfit’. In fact, a political dissident, Shi Tao, is serving a 10 year jail term for an email that did not suit the government. Information on him was given out by Yahoo. MSN Spaces too bent over and removed certain objectionable blogs that did not meet the approval of the Chinese government. In fact, now news of China banning opening up of new internet cafes for the ‘protection’ of the public from ‘objectionable material’ is not too unexpected either.
“Censorship of certain content is usually argued for when considering the possibility that children may have access to that content. The mass of the population of any country are not children and we should not be treated as such by our various governments,” shares avid blogger Steven McDermot of one controversial blog singabloodypore.blogspot.com, “Usually governments use such arguments to censor material that they feel is detrimental to their claim to legitimacy to rule within a given state....as an adult I merely require the protection of the law as all other adults do.”
Now, this Jan-end the internet behemoths like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly finally agreed to get together with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders to come out with an online ethical code of conduct. “The positive effect may simply be that they are less likely to self-censor their thoughts. It may even lead to a whistle-blower ethos taking formation online. One such endeavour recently launched was http://wikileaks.org/news.html,” argues McDermot.
Considering, China, Vietnam and Iran are on a list of sensitive countries that restrict freedom of speech on the Internet and have persecuted citizen journalists based on the same this would indeed come as good news, though we still are waiting for the formal charter to appear. Of course, one icky issue is that the US based companies are handing over this censorship or non-censorship role to the US government! Considering, it is the very country where many blogs by army men on their opinion on the Iraq war and ground realities have been banned and deemed ‘objectionable material’ the situation is indeed murky, to say the least.
So the question remains, how far is “freedom of speech” really free? How far is user’s data private? Take the case of MySpace that finally decided to turn over their database to help track sexual offenders. The site is employing Sentinel Safe technology that will match user profiles with the federal sex offender database in real time. Google’s Orkut has been heavily criticized for helping pornography as some user’s photographs were being used to build fake profiles and solicit ‘clients’. When many ‘I hate ….’ communities took long to be pulled off, the social networking site was lashed out at in the papers.
Not that we condone any of this irresponsible behaviour, what is then this debate of absolute freedom of speech online? Is this a farce, like our idea of truly non-politically motivated deeds of “social welfare” by many corporate houses in the real world?
Well, here sites like http://peacefire.org/, http://psiphon.ca/download.php and http://www.afreeproxy.com/ come to the fore, which provide numerous ways to circumvent censorship – from ideas that help you get a proxy URL to routinely testing out filtering software that in many cases have been caught subverting “inappropriate” political content.
It is through information alone that the fight to clamp down information can work. The ethics code is one step, the marathon run is yet to begin.
“Censorship of certain content is usually argued for when considering the possibility that children may have access to that content. The mass of the population of any country are not children and we should not be treated as such by our various governments,” shares avid blogger Steven McDermot of one controversial blog singabloodypore.blogspot.com, “Usually governments use such arguments to censor material that they feel is detrimental to their claim to legitimacy to rule within a given state....as an adult I merely require the protection of the law as all other adults do.”
Now, this Jan-end the internet behemoths like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly finally agreed to get together with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders to come out with an online ethical code of conduct. “The positive effect may simply be that they are less likely to self-censor their thoughts. It may even lead to a whistle-blower ethos taking formation online. One such endeavour recently launched was http://wikileaks.org/news.html,” argues McDermot.
Considering, China, Vietnam and Iran are on a list of sensitive countries that restrict freedom of speech on the Internet and have persecuted citizen journalists based on the same this would indeed come as good news, though we still are waiting for the formal charter to appear. Of course, one icky issue is that the US based companies are handing over this censorship or non-censorship role to the US government! Considering, it is the very country where many blogs by army men on their opinion on the Iraq war and ground realities have been banned and deemed ‘objectionable material’ the situation is indeed murky, to say the least.
So the question remains, how far is “freedom of speech” really free? How far is user’s data private? Take the case of MySpace that finally decided to turn over their database to help track sexual offenders. The site is employing Sentinel Safe technology that will match user profiles with the federal sex offender database in real time. Google’s Orkut has been heavily criticized for helping pornography as some user’s photographs were being used to build fake profiles and solicit ‘clients’. When many ‘I hate ….’ communities took long to be pulled off, the social networking site was lashed out at in the papers.
Not that we condone any of this irresponsible behaviour, what is then this debate of absolute freedom of speech online? Is this a farce, like our idea of truly non-politically motivated deeds of “social welfare” by many corporate houses in the real world?
Well, here sites like http://peacefire.org/, http://psiphon.ca/download.php and http://www.afreeproxy.com/ come to the fore, which provide numerous ways to circumvent censorship – from ideas that help you get a proxy URL to routinely testing out filtering software that in many cases have been caught subverting “inappropriate” political content.
It is through information alone that the fight to clamp down information can work. The ethics code is one step, the marathon run is yet to begin.
2 comments:
Very well written
I always motivated by you, your opinion and way of thinking, again, appreciate for this nice post.
- Norman
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