NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] As with Twitter, Google's localized censorship capabilities do not advance freedom
As with Twitter, Google's localized censorship capabilities do not advance freedom Some days ago in "Twitter's Censorship Muddle" ( http://j.mp/x85v7A [Lauren's Blog] ) I was critical of Twitter's moves to simplify the implementation of country-specific censorship capabilities. Please refer to that posting for my detailed concerns and discussion. I believe it's incumbent on me to note today that the same issues and arguments apply to all global Internet enterprises, and specifically that Google's announcement of per-country Blogger redirects can be viewed as falling into the same basic category of concerns ( http://j.mp/ADj5qm [Google] ). Although we can all stipulate that abiding by legal national censorship demands is a requirement for doing business in each country, the fact remains that history tells us that the more "frictionless" censorship becomes, the more it will expand. And while per-country censorship allows the damage of censorship to continue for the population in each affected country, and it also removes much outside pressure for reducing censorship, since the rest of the world is not directly affected by nationally-limited censorship takedowns. One particularly interesting aspect of Google's Blogger redirection is the provision of a URL "bypass" mechanism that users can employ to access a "No Country Redirect" version of associated sites. To the extent that countries don't block access to this "NCR" system, it is indeed a very useful functionality to help limit the impact of per-country censorship in this context. And there are counter-arguments to my "localized censorship" concerns, to be sure. It can be argued that abiding by censorship demands helps users in those countries continue to have access to other services, rather than face total cutoffs. But we know there are limits to this -- recall Google's pull out from the Chinese government's censorship regime (originally agreed to in hopes of helping Chinese users over time) as censorship demands and related problems escalated. The public posting of censorship demands (as Google and Twitter both are doing) is useful, but as I've noted previously, there is no evidence I've seen to suggest that this has a notable impact on reducing actual censorship demands overall. Again, please refer to my posting referenced above for more detailed discussions and nuances related to these issues. This is not a simple matter! Overall, I am very concerned that in the long run our willingness to conform to national censorship demands, and the implementation of systems to limit the global community's exposure to being affected by those demands, are -- on balance -- moving us away from freedom, not toward it. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad