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Can Internet be really gagged? 

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CIOL Bureau
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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 and 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.






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