For years the flow of information through television and radio was emanated and created by a few players to the multitudes around the world. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, however, changed this lopsided flow of information exchange by creating an enormous "read/write" community (as Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig describes it).
That community, once small and mainly consisting of uber-nerds utilizing bulletin board systems (BBS), exploded in the last decade to include blogs, websites, message boards, podcasts, and social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster. These tools have enabled a huge swath of the world's population to trade, receive, mix, remix, and contribute information to the global knowledge repository. The Internet has to a large degree not only connected people, but given them a greater voice in the world.
As evidenced by political and social campaigns at home and abroad, the Internet has also allowed for greater participation by citizens in their respective countries' political processes by reducing the cost of organizing or contacting their representatives. This new technology has caused disturbances in the business models and political practices designed prior to the Internet -- and as any new technology, it has caused an anti-freedom backlash from some of those adversely affected.
What may be most surprising is that that backlash has been aided by some of the largest and most respected companies, companies who were founded on the ethos of the Internet, to be open and supportive of free speech. The consequences of this backlash and the involvement of these companies have been quick and severe, and it may threaten the potential of what the Internet can become.
This story starts with Microsoft, the world's largest software company. Upon launching MSN China, a joint venture with Shanghai Alliance Investment (a company funded by the Chinese government), Microsoft bowed to regulatory conditions imposed by the Chinese government which prohibited "offending" language from its MSN Spaces blog service. According to Agence France-Presse, words like "democracy," "human rights," and "Taiwan independence" were among those banned.
Microsoft, like many other technology companies, sees China's growing Internet user base -- currently around 100 million and expected to rise to around 187 million in two years -- as an essential market to peddle their wares. But while Microsoft has merely limited access to some information, Yahoo!, the search engine and increasingly social networking portal, has aided the Chinese government in the arrest and conviction of two dissident journalists.
The conviction and resulting imprisonment of Shi Tao (serving ten years) in April of 2005 and Li Zhi (serving eight years) in 2003 is pernicious itself, but the hypocrisy of Yahoo! is rather striking due to their involvement in disseminating news and their sponsorship of the Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone project.
Google too, with its "Don't be evil" mantra, has not escaped these grotesque errors. As John Murrell from the Good Morning Silicon Valley writes, "Apparently you can scratch "censorship in pursuit of profit' off your list of Things That Are Evil." Google introduced its own censored search engine in China, and like Microsoft, will work with local authorities to remove language deemed inappropriate.
The reaction from these companies to the public outcry has been strikingly similar and dismissive: both Microsoft and Yahoo! claim only to be obeying local laws and regulations. This was in stark contrast to an article by Bill Gates for the Internet Policy Institute in Decemeber 2000, where he says, "It [the Internet] provides equal access to information and communications, allowing the formation of rich communities and forging real connections between people. It breaks down barriers between (and within) nations, opening up economies and democratizing societies."
When asked to the respond to the growing Internet censorship in China and the complicity of American firms, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the following: "The Chinese government has the right to do it" Oracle's job is not to encourage governments to change their policies," and added that Oracle "was just a technology provider."
The coziness of some American tech firms with the Chinese government in the denial of basic human rights has not come without a serious public response. A of myriad groups, among them Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International have called on these companies to change their policies and incorporate basic human rights into their agenda when searching for new revenue streams. Protestors in Dharamsala, India with the local chapter of Students For A Free Tibet began demonstrations against Google using such creative derisive terms as "Goolag." Cisco Systems, which provided the routers for China's Internet access and was recently accused of enabling China's "Great Firewall," has had to fight a shareholder action.
The growing prevalence of enabling censorship in China by American companies has brought the ire of Congress as well. According to a New York Times story, "Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, unleashed a scathing condemnation of four American Internet and technology companies -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco -- for a 'sickening collaboration' with the Chinese government and for 'decapitating the voice of the dissidents' there."
The battle of censorship on the Internet is not only being waged overseas. Telcos and cable companies in this country are looking to create a multi-tiered system, one in which people would pay for faster and supposedly guaranteed service for downloads, site access, email, and other net services. The consequences are broad and extremely disturbing. What is to stop one company from degrading the free or lower tier services to grow their subscription base on the more expensive tiers?
More crucially, Telcos and cable companies' power to charge for levels of accessibility means they are also getting the power to determine what is accessible and what is not. If this reality seems implausible, cable and telecommunications companies have been circulating white-papers that put in writing their intentions, including preferential treatment for partners (advertisers, corporations, and special interest groups).
Ed Whitcare of SBC Communications has gone on record and declared,
"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?
The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
What does all this mean?
It means that censorship -- overt or covert, abroad or at home -- wrecks the potential of the Internet. If the fundamental tenet of the Internet is to break down barriers and to further and enhance dialogue between disparate and geographically isolated communities, then the policies of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and the like must change. In addition, legislation at home must reflect and protect the openness and blindness that is inherent in the Internet's existence.
It is a war that pits the fortified business models and political practices of old against new methods of communication, distribution, and citizen participation. If you have ever emailed a family member, friend or colleague, visited websites about a topic you otherwise would not come across, or thought about an idea from a different perspective because of something you experienced online, you know the importance of this freedom.
If our world is growing smaller and closer because of the Internet and technology, can we afford to balkanize our thoughts, ideas, and dreams so a few companies can make a buck today?
To contact Yahoo! about their business practices in China please click here.
Published in Pop + Politics dot com, March 7, 2006