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Loading...What Is “Internet Freedom”?
The United Nations Human Council has issued a resolution affirming that internet freedom is a basic human right and that people have the right to freedom of expression on the internet:
The same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice.
The resolution is not binding and, as Human Rights Watch’s Executive Director Ken Roth, says in the New York Times, it will mostly be cited for “public shaming.” Even China, whose “Great Firewall” blocks out online content including Google and Twitter, has backed the resolution in a sign, notes Roth, that it “isn’t comfortable publicly owning up to the Internet censorship regime that it tries to maintain.”
Russian Wikipedia Goes Dark
Russia, whose human rights and censorship records leave something to be desired, has also signed the resolution. Today, Russian Wikipedia has gone dark to protest a law, the Internet Act, that would allow the government to blacklist certain sites, specifically those containing child pornography, promoting teenage suicide and containing information about drugs. Wikipedia contends that the law gives the government power to “subjectively” choose which sites to censor. For today, the Russian Wikipedia site has a black line across it and a message which says the law “could lead to the creation of extra-judicial censorship of the entire internet in Russia, including banning access to Wikipedia in the Russian language.”
Internet Freedom and Censorship Also an Issue in the West
But as debates arising around the UN’s resolution reveal, Western countries are no more off the hook, says the New York Times:
The ball, in some ways, is now in the court of the technology companies that produce the tools that countries use to monitor and circumscribe their citizens on the Internet. China’s firewall uses technology from Cisco, for instance. American law-enforcement agencies routinely seek information from Internet companies; Twitter is among a handful of companies that insists on informing users when their data is sought, as it did with supporters of WikiLeaks and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Google, Twitter and other global now routinely public transparency reports to reveal how requests for takedowns they receive. Notably, the US made the most requests, as have companies including Microsoft, in the most recent report. Facebook does not publish such reports, an omission that the social media company may be called to revisit as the outrage for unexplained deletions of posts (from human rights abuses in Syria to photos of a child with Down Syndrome) accumulate.
Global internet companies must also figure out how to respond to the differing laws about referring to political figures (such as the Thai monarchy) in different countries.
What is “Freedom” on the Internet?
Whatever “internet freedom” is and means is equally a controversial topic within the US. As The Hill notes, politicians and advocacy groups from all parts of the political spectrum have turned “internet freedom” into a “rallying cry.”
Read more: censorship, china, facebook, google, human rights, internet, internet freedom, Issa, Net Neutrality, russia, takedown, Transparency, twitter, Wikipedia
Photo by RIUM+
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Thank you for this information.
Article 19 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights !
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
This is to be !
Ghostery is an online protection from tracking and it is free; it shows the trackers that are blocked on each page, and works on various browsers. Not all of the games I was playing work when it is enabled, so I'm guessing that those games weren't safe anyway.
Would you PLEASE proofread your articles BEFORE you submit them??? The following sentence is some of the worst writing I have ever seen!!!
"Google, Twitter and other global now routinely public transparency reports to reveal how requests for takedowns they receive."
Obviously the sentence SHOULD HAVE been:
"Google, Twitter and other global SITES now routinely PUBLISH transparency reports to reveal how MANY requests for takedowns they receive."
Sheesh!!!!
I hate to admit it, but my iso blocks some of the sites I regularly visit - sometimes just web-comics! God knows why?!?
I have to go to an anonymous server site to connect (via Europe) to get to blocked material. Our commercial isp's are out of control, but apparently within the law... It is just very irritating!
And I don't pirate music or movies; I'm just an ordinary old retired person!
why are they blocking everything and why are they spying on us?
what is the government doing in my email?
I would like to learn more about this... thank you for keeping this important issue on the front burner.. I support our worldwide right to freely share information..
Thank you for the article...
Issa's example shows the challenges of those who want to claim freedom for all except wen they (or something they agree with) wants to do otherwise...feet of clay?
Keep the internet open and support everyone's right to freely communicate and share information.
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