Shashwat Chaturvedi
MUMBAI: In the fall of 1969, round about the time Apollo 12, the second
manned mission landed on the lunar surface, a network node went live at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
There was hardly any coverage given to this event. After all, in those heady
days of lunar landings, Vietnam war, Woodstock festival, who would bother if
the first electronic computer network between two mainframes, one at UCLA
and the other at Stanford Research Institute, had gone live!
It was the ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet. In the next three
decades, this technology, which allowed computers to link to each other,
would completely change the world as we know.
This mother of all networks has influenced nearly every institution of human
civilization, the way we communicate, the way we transact. Hardly anything
has remained untouched by the power of IP.
The Internet has also transcended from merely being a network on which
information passes, to an alternate universe where millions of individuals
meet, discuss, express, their desires, concerns or happiness. People have
become more aware of their rights; they are no longer dependant on a
state-owned medium of information, namely the newspaper or the television.
And this is the very reason that has unnerved the authorities, in the name
of propriety or justness. The state has at innumerable times in the past,
attempted to impose its will on the Internet.
The big question is, can they do so effectively? Can Internet be really
gagged?
Attempts so far
Quite a few governments across the world have tried their hands, at
censoring the Internet. While, China and Saudi Arabia are quite brazen about
their controls, numerous other countries often take a more discreet
approach. Globally, the Internet is censored on three popular pretexts:
Child pornography, religious blasphemy and political bigotry.
These justifications can at best be termed subjective; thus one regimes
blasphemy is another's propaganda. Thus in China, any website or blog that
talks about Taiwan being a free country or liberation of Tibet is blocked by
the Great Firewall of China.
According to some reports the government employs thousands of people just to
screen anything that might have filtered through the software filters. Or
take the case of Saudi Arabia, which has blocked any website that has
anything offensive against Islamic beliefs. Pakistan has been a new entrant
on the club, and has even established Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE) for
this purpose. The military regime in Myanmar maintains the restive Myanmar
Wide Web.
But, censorship is not limited to authoritarian regimes like China, Saudi
Arabia or Pakistan. France. South Korea has ordered ISPs to block access to
various sites that are too sympathetic to North Korea. Norway and Denmark
often block websites that indulge in child pornography. The US has also
enacted an act in 1996, called as the Communications Decency Act, which had
innumerable provisions aimed at censorship, but the courts under appeal from
free speech activists turned down most of them.
Technological considerations
According to experts, there are two ways by which information can be
censored. One is to coerce the host to remove the content and the other is
to block the access. The best way to do is to ask the host to remove the
inflammatory content.
For instance, France asked a few auction sites in the US to remove Nazi
memorabilia.
Unarguably, the most popular method is to block access. But more often than
not it is
ineffectual. Says Saket Vaidya, a computer geek, blogger and an MNC
employee, “While it is possible to ban something on the Internet, in theory,
it's neither practical nor feasible. The cheapest and the easiest method to
ban something is to resolve a domain to an IP address and block all incoming
packets from that IP address, but such a ban can be easily circumvented.
Tools such as Tor or OpenDNS make such tactics look pedestrian.”
Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration vouches for the first method. “If the
authorities discover a site with offending content, they may ask the hosting
company to take that site offline. Most probably, the hosting company will
comply with their orders and remove the site from their servers,” he says.
“But again,” Agarwal adds, “the offender may always move to another host and
the regular will have to run after another hosting company. So the cat-mouse
game will never end.”
John
Gilmore, co-founder and board member, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is
of the view that a ban is largely ineffective. “If there are dedicated
people who wish to publish the information, it is quite hard to ban or block
information. Often, the attempt to ban particular information produces
publicity that causes tens of thousands of people to seek out and/or
republish the very information that was being censored,” he says
Is the trend of blocking websites and blogs on the rise? Derek Bambauer,
research fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School,
says, “Undoubtedly. Internet filtering is becoming broader and more
effective. The OpenNet Initiative's research finds that China, for example,
is getting much more skillful at blocking sensitive material (such as
information about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989) while leaving
similar, neutral information (such as tourist information on the Square)
accessible. The number of countries using Internet filtering is also
steadily increasing.”
Bambauer is associated with OpenNet Initiative that constantly tracks how
different countries and governments are trying to suppress the Internet.
Many proponents of censorship argue that some controls are necessary, for
instance in the case of child pornography. Yet, not many agree with this
argument. “You ban child pornography by banning child pornography, i.e.
going after the producers and sellers. It's not specific to the Internet.
Just because child porn is sent in the mail doesn't mean you try to censor
the mail,” says Brad Templeton, chairman, EFF.
Indian debut
India recently joined the 'elite' group of countries that have sullied their
hands at trying to restrict access to websites and blogs that it “believes
are harmful.” The issue came into light when the ISPs did a shoddy job and
blocked the entire domain rather than specific blogs. A
lot of bloggers picked up cudgels against the move.
According to Gopal Shankarnarayan, lawyer and blogger based in Bangalore,
“Under Section 69 the IT Act, it is possible to intercept material that is
obscene in nature (prurient or lascivious) and this currently includes the
power to block sites.
Also, such action can be taken against pornographic websites, which is why
you won't really find any porn being hosted in India.”
He also mentions the first cyber crime case in India, the prosecution of
Shamit Khemka from Kolkata. “His website heaped vitriol on Bengalis and
their Chief Minister and he was arrested in 1999 (before the IT Act). His
computers were confiscated and the website removed,” he adds.
The government had also enforced a blockage of Pakistani mouthpiece Jang's
website during the Kargil conflict. Sometime back, the government had asked
Yahoo to block a group, Kynhun that talked about secession in Meghalaya.
These instances prove that the Indian government is quite active on the
cyber censorship front. The issue has shifted from one of censorship to
cyber policing. Says, Bala Pitchandi, currently residing in the US, and
blogs regularly on various Disaster Relief Collablogs like WorldWideHelp,
TsunamiHelp and KatrinaHelp: “There's a bigger issue of Freedom of Speech
and Expression here. These are basic rights given to us by the Constitution
and cannot be simply quashed by an order issued by an official from DoT who
thinks some content is inflammatory. The fact that the government has been
'quietly' banning sites like Princess Kimberly & My Pet Jawa, which don't
seem to have 'inflammatory' contents as you can see, is of grave concern to
us, the citizens.”
Pitchandi adds, “If they thought that these websites provide some imminent
threat to our national security, they could file a lawsuit in the court and
obtain a court order to ban a website.”
Agrees, Peter Griffin, avid blogger and freelance journalist. “The biggest
ethical concern for me is that of free speech. I'm against Governments
deciding for me whether I can watch a certain movie, read a certain book,
visit a certain website, dress a certain way. I'm an adult, and I want to
make those decisions for myself,” he asserts.
In the end, it can be surmised that blocking or banning can hardly be the
solution. One of the bloggers whose blog was blocked by the Indian
government, posted a thank you note for the Indian authorities, as the
traffic on his blog had peaked through the roof.
One hopes that the administrators realize that such action, only reflect
badly on Indian democratic institutions and values and make us laughing
stock globally.
© CyberMedia News
Can Internet be really gagged? Â
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