Week 1 of Design Blog: New Internet Policies and International Blog Censorship

The internet has been under fire from all directions recently, with the rise of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and other proposed legislation in the U.S. and Canada, it's no surprise that countries under less democratic rule are having their free cyberspeech threatened tenfold. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, bloggers in Vietnam are being detained for speaking out against their government or criticisms of the communist regime. Google has been compliant with these laws, instated under the guise of national security, by creating a location-specific availability filter that uses IP addresses to register locations. It provides a way to circumvent this filter by using a non-country-specific URL. Also, China has been shutting down Tibetan blogs without explanation, after decades of tension between the minority group and the Chinese government.

The censorship of the internet and the prosecution of those using it, while unsurprising, is wrong. The internet has lost it's element of total anonymity, and now postings are quite easily traced back to unique IP addresses and individuals. This makes blogging much riskier for those with dissenting opinions posting in environments with strict speech regulations. As Americans, we sometimes forget, that though our liberties are occasionally lessened for the sake of "national security", we are still relatively free to openly criticize and oppose our governmental processes and leaders. In other countries without protection of free speech, harsher punishments await those who suggest dissent in a public forum. Google, whom I would have expected to absolutely oppose these censorship laws, has enabled this policy that complies with them, though they offer a way around the filters, "NCR" URLs may not be made readily known to everyone. The fact that this policy was released quietly, hidden under the outcry over Twitter's new censorship policy, doesn't make it any less oppressive.

The implications of these policies are unclear for now, but a future may still come when such standards could be applied to us here in the United States. There can always be found some loophole or adjustment to be made that will allow these impositions by the way of "protection" and "national security". SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, are only the beginning, in my opinion. These and other short-sighted legislations could easily be passed and our liberties would be just as limited as those affected by China and Vietnam's new censorship policies, especially since Google already seems to be on board.

What are the implications? Where will free speech on the internet be in five years? Ten? What can we do to make sure the "World Wide Web" remains just that? With Iran throwing the Kill switch, China and Vietnam detaining and shutting down bloggers for their opinions, and the United States and Canadian Governments working to take down Piracy without analysis, where do we draw the line between liberty and security? Food for thought.