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Can Internet be really gagged?  

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CIOL Bureau
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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) i
s

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
































































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