Janet CollinsGovernments and Internet Censorship
March 25th 2009 19:53
Image from Get Up's Campaign Site
Google’s YouTube has been off limits in China since Monday and it’s causing something of an international protest, one leading advocacy group accusing the Chinese government of failing to live up to international norms and is limiting freedom of expression.
Google themselves say they have no idea why the Chinese government have blocked the site and are trying to restore access to users in China. The BBC, however, had reported earlier in the week that a graphic video of soldiers beating monks and other Tibetans released on YouTube had been the cause of the government’s action. It had been released by Tibetan exiles and included footage of a group of troups beating a man with batons.
The Chinese must be accustomed to being deprived of internet sites such as YouTube for days or more at a time. In 2007, while a Communist Party congress was taking place in Beijing and coincidentally the Dalai Lama was receiving a Congressional Gold Medal, the site was block for 14 days. Another incident at about the same time last year saw the site blocked for six days. Many will remember too, the criticism of China during the Beiging Olympic Games after they had promised reporters full internet access and then blocked access to some sites.
A BBC news report, also draws attention to several other countries that have prohibited access to YouTube. Bangladesh only this month blocked access to the site after footage of a tense meeting between the prime minister and angry army officials was uploaded. The meeting followed a mutiny by border guards in Dhaka where 70 people died.
YouTube is presently being blocked in Turkey and has been for some time. There have also been many reports about many other blogging sites that have been blocked by their government. Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders released a report “Enemies of the Internet” listing some 12 nations that the group alleges to have systematically restricted access to online news and information.
Countries named in the report are China, Burma, North Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba and Tunisia. The group also reported that more than 2,600 websites, blogs or forums were closed down or blocked around the world in 2007.
While it may seem not too surprising that the governments of the countries mentioned have taken such stringent measures against the use of the internet, the trend for governments to censor the internet is growing worldwide.
In The Guardian, UK on Monday it was reported that their government has proposed that social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space should be required to retain details of their users’ movements on the internet.
What has been submitted to a parliament committee is a proposal for a central database to store information about every telephone call, email and internet visit made by anyone in the U.K. The Home Office minister defends the interception of social networking sites because they are not covered by the latest proposals from Brussels.
Here in Australia, our government has been attempting to pass through Parliament its own style of censorship proposal. Its defence to force internet service providers to filter and remove all “inappropriate” content was to block child pornography and web pages associated with terrorism.
Things heated up last week with the whole proposal after Wikileaks published the governments blacklist on its site which included regular gay and straight porn sites, YouTube links, online poker sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites. More astoundingly, it included the site of a Queensland dentist, a school canteen consultancy and an animal carer, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Following that, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added Wikileaks itself to its blacklist. The fine for linking to Wikileaks on a website will cost $11,000 a day. Australia’s third largest internet service provider has also since withdrawn from the Government’s internet censorship trials joining the other large service providers who pulled out earlier.
Get Up, an Australian online movement organisation, has been mounting an internet campaign “Save the Net” for some time now. The organisation boasts a membership of more than any political party in Australia and has raised enough funds to run a pretty large advertising campaign against the censorship proposal which is about to start running.
Governments everywhere have embraced the internet, particularly when they can use it for their own promotion, even using it to leak information themselves. It is worrying indeed that they are now using everything possible to prevent access to information that they do not want us to have.
Everyone should be concerned about this…….very concerned.
If you would like to check out Get Up's campaign site it is here:
Really Long Link
Sources:
www.forbes.com
www.voanews.com
www.guardian.uk.co
www.bbc.co.uk
www.smh.com.au
Image credit:
Get Up “Save the Net” Image
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Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by Janet Collins
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Yes, I think all the big ISPs were with the Government to begin with until they realised that the filtering was to be far more extreme than they had been led to believe. My hunch is that they all thought the probable loss of customers wasn't going to make it worth their while.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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whenever you ban something you just increase peoples curiousity about it
Comment by Janet Collins
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Unfortunately I missed the debate. Get Up were actually asking everyone to contribute to the questions to ask Steven Conroy.
This may seem trivial to many but if it is a sign of what is to come we will all be saying one day "remember when we used to be able to get any information we wanted on the internet".
Thanks.
Comment by alt_ed
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ArtCombat
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He said this list has been in place and active since 1999... if that's the case then does the government propose we block things twice?
Secondly, he stated that the black list would be administered by the ACMA, yet in his next breath said the system would be overhauled.
And lastly, he admitted that some sites had ended up blocked erroneously... that is, they we're given a PG rating yet the ACMA mistakenly blocked them. If the government don't publish the list of blocked sites, what assurance do we have that they are actually administering the whole system effectively? I mean really, has the Rudd government been capable of the effective management of ANYTHING since gaining power..
Comment by Janet Collins
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My understanding of the issue is that the Government were using pornography and illegal activity on the net to justify their proposals for a filter.
When it all came out that the filtering would be a lot further a lot of the big ISPs pulled out of the trial program.
The fact is that if they start filtering where will it go. They will be able to filter anything, particularly sites that challenge government decisions.
If this happens we are really no better off than the Chinese.
Thanks for the comment.
Comment by Wilson Pon
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Poor them! I hope this incident will be solve very soon...
Comment by Janet Collins
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That sort of government control over the internet will come here if we let it. Perhaps that might be a bit of an exaggeration but what the government is trying to do here is ridiculous.
If they can nominate filtering out any site they want then we are not much better off.
Thanks for dropping in.
Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
China proved themselves to be utter fools during the olympics. All their rules, regulations and lies, proved they had no idea of the spirit of the olympics. Because I have a mental heath record, even if I had purchased tickets, they wouldnt have let me in.
And I just think - does the government enjoy that comparison? I guess they do. They are thinking about giving cops and security gaurds machine guns. I lived in Korea for two months. Seeing law enforcement with machine guns is not comforting.
The big question for me, is ok, they sit up there going, 'oh, please, somebody think of the children?' for the kids, you can use net nannies which are extremely effective. We have one. But what about the ADULTS????
I frequent a sex stories site, it has pornographic stories and erotica, but no images. Will I still be allowed to?
I frequent hentai and risque anime sites. Will I still be allowed to?
My boyfriend has to research and buy video games online, because in Australia we dont have a ratings system for games. So, if its over MA 15 he has to find out about it and order it elsewhere. Will he still be allowed to?
I like to delve into all sorts of research for my writing - crime, murder, assasinations.....Will I still be able to?
My boyfriend likes to study warfare. Will he still be allowed to?
It simply terrifies me. Just how far are they willing to go with this?
I signed up, of course.
Comment by Janet Collins
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Great that you signed up. This isn't about porn, it is about the government taking control of what we are reading and what we can say.
Thanks for your comments.