my_fifth_work

Salford Business School Professional Issues in Information Technologies Internet Censorship in Developing Countries Albert Poghosyan (a.poghosyan@pgt.salford.ac.uk) Course: Lecturers: MSc eGovernance Maria Kutar (m.kutar@salford.ac.uk) Maria Griffiths (m.friffiths@salford.ac.uk) March 2007 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 Content Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction: Internet or alternative reality............................................................................................. 3 Rights, Ethics and Moral ......................................................................................................................... 4 Do we need Internet Censorship? ............................................................................................................ 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 7 References ................................................................................................................................................ 8 2 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 The Net interprets censorship as damage... and routes around it. John Gilmore Abstract  Already almost two decades Global Network became Free State as it was with State Maryland, where wasn’t slavery long time ago. Easy to see that in these ten years it developed as much as it was possible to image in any fantastic science fiction novel. But with this development we got much more problems than even we could image in worth horror movie. And time to time this balance between fantastic discoveries and horrible actions which came possible though these new technologies were violated many times. “In only a few years, the Internet has revolutionized trade, health, education, and, indeed, the very fabric of human communication and exchange. Moreover, its potential is far greater than what we have seen in the relatively short time since its creation. In managing, promoting, and protecting its presence in our lives, we need to be no less creative than those who invented it. Clearly, there is a need for governance, but that does not necessarily mean that it has to be done in the traditional way, for something that is so very different.”(Annan, 2004) Probably the best speech that goes through all Potentials of Internet and intention to control it is the speech of Secretary-General of United Nations Kofi Annan on Global Forum on Internet Governance (New York, 24 March 2004) presented above. With new tools of communication we got also new tools for controlling it. And this new tools are rapidly developing separating all humanity into two camps: one camp who thinks that Internet should be controlled and another camp who stands for free and uncensored network. And along with these camps there are lots of points of view on these issues. The work is presenting one of these points. Introduction: Internet or alternative reality  And indeed, the Internet developed into alternative reality which very fast became widely free and accessible but do not abbey to any old rules or regulations. This new reality targeted became something more than the simple system of information sharing. It brings its own destiny and probably changed destiny of all humanity. And the most important what happen trough that time is that we suddenly became free to communicate with each other without any intermedium. We got possibility to communicate with each other, to express our opinion, have meetings, debates and write protests or manifestos. (Locke et al., 2001) After some time of development we understood that we have completely new generation of people, who indeed trust all this new reality. The generation: “I saw it on Internet”. From one point this generation became slave of different persons, who could affect them, but from another point they became more critical being able to evaluate more information as it suddenly got available for them. And they do got trust to Net. And more, they live there. It changes our perception of Information in itself and even it became nowadays one of the most powerful forces in the world. Interesting declaration has been done by John Perry Barlow in his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, where he states, "The Internet is inherently extra-national, inherently anti-sovereign and your states' sovereignty cannot apply to us. We've got to figure things out ourselves." (Barlow, 1996) This probably should change world in one day. Because some of us are completely happy with all this as the new information tool (Internet) became more liberal and freely accessible, but some of us are not. Why not? Of course answer on this question couldn’t be easy, but in my subjective opinion this mainly happen because some of us losing control over others. All types of Media were developing as tools of power for governments and corporations and now they got something which is really impossible to 3 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 control like Sherwood in the times of Robin Good. This makes them powerless and bankrupt. And of course they are trying implementing the first rule of any Business: “Protect Investments”. Besides that Internet was the tool for human communication and it was obvious that it adopts all human ethics and morals which now apply to this new environment with some special way. All our bright and innovative but along with all nasty and amoral (of course related to culture) ideas transferred to virtual reality very fast. Not only just transferred but also stands for time and competition. Became rated and positioned. Along with transformation period one thing remain with us humans, while we where jumping from offline to online. “The censorship never dies” stated by S. Hannabuss and M. Allard in their work about Issues of censorship (Hannabuss and Allard, 2001). And I think it is true. It could come from one form to another but will never die. This happen also with transaction of human communication from offline to new online environment – to the Net. So what is basically censorship, if we agree that we already found out what is Internet? The easies way where we could find the definition of censorship is contemporary encyclopaedia: Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia the censorship is the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body (Wikipedia, 2007). In my version the censorship is manipulation of information for any person or group of people. The term manipulation include in itself the definition of editing, cutting or even hiding any part of information which could be described as original. And the most important is that this manipulation could happen with one or more people. As this state that censorship could be carried out by different parties. Most common of course the example is of course the Government censoring the publications. The best example of Government’s censorship we could find in Nazi Germany where they where burning all books related with Jews. Or the cartoon called “Film, Film, Film” from Soviet era, where the main heroes trying to get approval to make movie, passing all possible and impossible instances. So the next question raised for me, which is actually the most important for this work is “Who is going to control Internet?” And who are these people who will decide what is good/bad for me or for Carlos from Spain or for Elvida Max from Tanzania or even for Echo from China. There are different opinions round the world. But for sure mainly Americans trend to think worldwide. The organizations which are trying to do this already had got big history and to be fair about theirs targets and importance of theirs works I need to present what they have done. But also I will try to make argumentation of people who are against censorship, such as National Coalition Against Censorship (www.ncac.org). So, here I came to obviously coming structure for this work with list of questions raised during introduction. “Who is going to do censorship?”; “On which level it will be in the world?” and “How it will be carried out?” Additionally to my review I am going to state the importance to separate the type of countries into Developed and Developing were the issues with Internet Censorship are greatly different. And my hypothesis from this point of view is that Internet Censorship should be scaled into countries level as appropriate to be measured for level and pressurize of censorship on that society. Rights, Ethics and Moral  Before going into deep jungles of Internet Censorship and Internet Governance from Governments and International Organizations we should try to categorize the simple understanding of censorship, ethics and moral which appears to us in every corner. Speaking about ethics and moral first we should cover the theme of rights of any of us. This is seams very easy but it is as much important as any moral principles that our society stands for. So, basically we are operating with 3 types of official acts concerning our rights: Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Information and the rights to privacy. For sure the main right fixed with International Human Rights is the Freedom of Expression. And even it is one of the fundamental rights of human beings it is not absolute. According International laws Governments can limit this right of expression to protect public moral, others peoples reputation and to manage with national security. (Amnesty, 2006) Another fundamental document for layers is the 4 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 Freedom of Information. With this document we state that all information produced by government and which is not qualified as secret should be published and presented in appropriate way for general public. Fair enough to say that if in the case of Right of Expression on the other hand we have right of knowing everything what happening with us. From another point we have the Data Protection Act or similar acts all over the world, which ensure that all your information which you share with different organization including Government will be stored and transferred safe and will never be given out to any other third party. And looking from this prospective we are handling with all this rights a little complicated way. First of all we should review the impact of first two acts on Information society. First of them the freedom of expression or Freedom of Speech says that I can publish any opinion that I have and Government should guarantee my protection from anybody who will not like my ideas. From second act we said that we have right to know everything what is happening or happed and it should be published as soon as it is available. Basically we have right to know what other people said. What about the third act of privacy protection, it says that if we are against that anybody publishes our private information, nobody can do so. So if we will look at this in prospective of Internet Freedom we will see that there are very interesting conflicts. According to these three rights we are able to publish anything that we want, nobody could stop us to do that, more over government should protect us and we can remain anonymous if we want. And this is exactly what is happening on the Internet, well except protection. But no doubt that people who old the power will think from other part. And that why the Internet censorship is so hot topic right now. Being able to do what I have described above we are violating the main idea of strong society. We are becoming out of Ethics and Morale, which is the most powerful operating tools for people who want to manage the information. So let’s see how many levels of censorship apply to our society, of course limited this to US and UK societies with intention to continue this analysis for developing countries. First level probably is the International level where different organization trying to generate the International policy of regulating Internet, so said Internet Governance regime. This occurs as whole world and Europe understand in last 4-5 years that if they will not do anything the Americans will do all work. Another level down is of course the national bodies defined in this work as Government. Level down in my opinion we should put Organizations and Companies who are also involved in Information flow as independent entities. And a little down we will find Parental control over children or self-censorship. So, while I have cover problems with rights and levels of censorship I should now be able to transfer these ideas to ethical and moral level of argumentation. Let’s pretend that we are expecting to analysis the censorship of pornographic website to go over ethical or moralistic analysis easily on exact example. Doing this let’s say we are on the way to review on which levels we have any type of ethic or moral about pornographic website. Talking about International organization we should state only one thing: they have been formed already. Right now these organizations didn’t come to any type of agreement nor about this field nor about any other field. So probably it will not contribute to our review viewing what they have done so far. Going down we will find already more interesting things. Most governments develop the concept of ethics towards pornographic materials on the Internet. First of all it is the law on 18+ statement that should be asked on any website containing pornographic materials. It is the attitude towards child porno and violence on that websites. Additionally it is total ban of this kind of websites from public places such as libraries. What about for example same situation in Russia? Even they still have law on child porno, they still keep drafting about pornography in country. That’s why even half of materials published in Internet come from Russia according popular webzine Gazeta.ru. Coming back into Levels we can now go to Organizations and Companies, where is very much done in the prospective of Ethics. In US and UK almost all companies and organizations have network policies which state situation with pornographic materials there. Same for example in Armenia, it is total free access to any kind of material during of work time. Going further we will see for sure that Parental controls in US and UK is much stronger forcing children to limit usage of these materials than in any other country in the world. 5 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 So here it is clear that I have used relativistic approach to explain the situation with censorship in Matrix of Levels of censorship and Countries. Trying to avoid academic definition for moral relativism I will propose my own. It is the viewpoint where we can reject that there are any absolute moral truth and state that all things is relative to some extends in which we will state them relative to theirs context. Do we need Internet Censorship?  So if we are looking on Internet Censorship from the viewpoint of different levels of entities that are doing censorship in our countries we will find different approach to it. And I think that it is not only in the different approaches but also the different understanding of things. That why I have used relativistic positive approach to explain the situations with moral problems. The question that leads me to this position my review was “Who will do censorship?” and if I already review that I need to show how they will do that, or better to say, how I see they will do that. And that’s my method to show that Levels of censorship is very important. Also I am sure that the cultural difference is very important factor for censorship, but also there is more important factor for Internet Censorship, which is level of development of country. Depending on above mentioned criteria’s, I am ready to ask the last question “Do we really need Internet Censorship?” and ready to give answer to that. I think that answer will come from the level of development of country. The main example of mine review is based on Armenia, which is ex Soviet Republic which became independent almost 15 years ago. Reviewing the situation in Armenia I will state that there isn’t yet any International organization which could implement any regime or regulation. So the first level we exclude almost immediately. Second level of Internet Censorship is quite rarely implemented in Armenia. And it is almost accepted in society. Even if there is very important opinion of Armenia Internet Users that Internet is free of censorship, actually the censorship happens there and here is one of the best examples of it. I was working in one webzine in Armenia which was called “A1Plus”. This was one of the free and independent news companies and was working from the start of 1991 when Armenia became a part from USSR. It was the time of presidential elections and we where programming small poll on the first page. When it get ready it was the day of elections and when everybody was looking after percentage that got one or other candidate. The leader of non governing party was winning and it will happen of course, if not some hackers who came across with our system. They changed the percent in one second and in 15 minutes we have seen our webzine first page on Official Public television with the winning governing party’s candidate. It was shocking for us. But especially for me was shocking when we publish that it was done externally- especially for public television, nobody react in the country. This was proof for me that everybody was thinking that this was very normal in our society. I think that on this level of Governmental control of Internet, there shouldn’t be any type of control at all. I think that all governments should sign the official International regulations which will come with Global forums and summits. This will help to keep the level of official censorship on the level of International standards and be fair about moral rules which shouldn’t be managed by governments, in my opinion. Role of organizations is a little bit different story. I was working in one very big diary producing company in Armenia. And I was assigned to do the work of marketing consultant in period of 3 month time. It was very interesting company, who do not know anything about network or privacy security but this example is much more interesting in the prospective to show how the small group of people could regulate censorship in developing countries. First of all they close all external readers and writes on all computers do not allow take out information from company. Then they tried to close all free or public email services in the Internet. After when all workers started compliant about that they even goes further. They close all portals such as Yahoo.com or Google.com where we were spending time reading the information which is not needed for work. When they done it, I just write small report that I can’t work in that kind environment of distrust and basically network policy, where I can’t do simple search. So after reviewing my report they let me choose or I will play with theirs rules, or I will live. I lived. And they produce the product which I was designing 5 month latter. But what was interesting 6 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 that when I goes back to that company after 6 month, I found that the network privacy still remain in force. This mean that less developed group of people, who faced same problem as I faced choose to adopt rather than to go further. That’s why in this kind of societies the importance of more liberal networks is much more important. Conclusion  And of course there is the last level of censorship, which I include in my conclusion as final argumentations. And it is the level that I am full support – the parental control. Category "dangerous information" which I will describe in this work I want to relate only to child education. Being in the young years the children is the most unprotected part of our society, who could affected by external factors including Internet. On this level I am fully support the Parental Censorship of the Network. The market develop lot of software where the parents could ensure that children can’t get assess to some kind of information. But when I was trying to do so with my sister, one day she told me that I can’t even imagine that how many methods there are to avoid my censorship, same developed by market. So what I basically stand for is the idea of levelling the censorship. It is the basic for understanding the relations of each level to the ideas of human rights, ethic and moral. Mainly in current days I fill that idea of censoring the web is spreading with catastrophic speed. And mainly all arguments based on shaping the form of Internet Censorship from very different points. It is like the story by Jon Godfrey Saxe about Blind man and Elephant. When the lot of blind people approach to the elephant to feel what is it and to shape the perception of elephant and all they produce very controversial image of poor elephant. This is same happen with Internet censorship, where I think should be complete understanding of all cause-consequence of all actions. 7 Albert Poghosyan, MSc eGovernance 16/03/2007 References  AMNESTY, I. U. (2006) Undermining freedom of expression in China. The role of Yahoo!, Microsoft  and Google.  ANNAN, K. (2004) Global Forum on Internet Governance New York.  BARLOW, J. P. (1996) Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Cyber Right Electronic List,  Davos.  HANNABUSS, S. & ALLARD, M. (2001) Issues of censorship. Library Review, 50, 81‐89.  LOCKE, C., LEVINE, R., SEARLS, D. & WEINBERGER, D. (2001) Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business  as Usual, Perseus Books Group.  WIKIPEDIA (2007) Censorship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship). Wikimedia Foundation.    Albert Poghosyan Comments: albert@poghosyan.com Information: www.albertpoghosyan.com 8