“Schools in Beijing are quietly removing the Green Dam filter, which was required for all school computers in July, due to complaints over problems with the software,” notes this Reuters report. Even though China backed down on their earlier requirement to have the Green Dam filter installed on all computers, according to Reuters “schools were still ordered by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to install the web filter, which Chinese officials said would block pornography and other unhealthy content.” The Reuters article mentions a notice carried on the home page of one Beijing high school that reads: “We will remove all Green Dam software from computers in the school as it has strong conflicts with teaching software we need for normal work.” The article also cites a school technology director, who confirmed that the software had been taken off most computers, as saying “It has seriously influenced our normal work.”
Ironically, many educators and librarians in the United States can sympathize since they currently live under similar requirements. Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2000, publicly funded schools and libraries must implement a mandatory filtering scheme or run the risk of losing their funding. As the Federal Communications Commission summarizes:
[CIPA] imposes certain types of requirements on any school or library that receives funding for Internet access or internal connections from the E-rate program… Schools and libraries subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy and technology protection measures in place. An Internet safety policy must include technology protection measures to block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) are obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors).
Of course, nobody wants kids viewing porn in schools, but CIPA has been know the block far more than that and has become a real pain for many educators, librarians, and school administrators who have to occasionally get around these filters to teach their students about legitimate subjects. Anyway, I just find it ironic that some American lawmakers have been making a beef about mandatory Internet filtering by the Chinese when we have our own mandatory filtering regime right here in the states. For example, Continue reading →
What Unites Advocates of Speech Controls & Privacy Regulation? [pdf]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
The Progress & Freedom Foundation,
Progress on Point No. 16.19
Anyone who has spent time following debates about speech and privacy regulation comes to recognize the striking parallels between these two policy arenas. In this paper we will highlight the common rhetoric, proposals, and tactics that unite these regulatory movements. Moreover, we will argue that, at root, what often animates calls for regulation of both speech and privacy are two remarkably elitist beliefs:
- People are too ignorant (or simply too busy) to be trusted to make wise decisions for themselves (or their children); and/or,
- All or most people share essentially the same values or concerns and, therefore, “community standards” should trump household (or individual) standards.
While our use of the term “elitism” may unduly offend some understandably sensitive to populist demagoguery, our aim here is not to launch a broadside against elitism as
Time magazine culture critic William H. Henry once defined it: “The willingness to assert unyieldingly that one idea, contribution or attainment is better than another.”[1] Rather, our aim here is to critique that elitism which rises to the level of political condescension and legal sanction. We attack not so much the beliefs of some leaders, activists, or intellectuals that they have a better idea of what it in the public’s best interest than the public itself does, but rather the imposition of those beliefs through coercive, top-down mandates.
That sort of elitism—elitism enforced by law—is often the objective of speech and privacy regulatory advocates. Our goal is to identify the common themes that unite these regulatory movements, explain why such political elitism is unwarranted, and make it clear how it threatens individual liberty as well as the future of free and open Internet. As an alternative to this elitist vision, we advocate an empowerment agenda: fostering an environment in which users have the tools and information they need to make decisions for themselves and their families. Continue reading →
Rebecca MacKinnon has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal today about China’s “Green Dam Youth Escort” filtering mandate and the danger of this model catching on with other governments. “More and more governments — including democracies like Britain, Australia and Germany — are trying to control public behavior online, especially by exerting pressure on Internet service providers,” she notes. “Green Dam has only exposed the next frontier in these efforts: the personal computer.”
She’s right, and that’s cause for serious concern. Moreover, there’s the question of how corporations doing business in China should respond to demands and threats related to installing such filters. She notes:
In a world that includes child pornographers and violent hate groups, it is probably not reasonable to oppose all censorship in all situations. But if technical censorship systems are to be put in place, they must be sufficiently transparent and accountable so that they do not become opaque extensions of incumbent power — or get hijacked by politically influential interest groups without the public knowing exactly what is going on.
Which brings us back to companies: the ones that build and run Internet and telecoms networks, host and publish speech, and that now make devices via which citizens can go online and create more speech. Companies have a duty as global citizens to do all they can to protect users’ universally recognized right to free expression, and to avoid becoming opaque extensions of incumbent power — be it in China or Britain.
I generally agree with all that but this is a difficult issue and one that I have struggled with personally. (See this “Friendly Conversation about Corporate High-Tech Engagement with China” that Jim Harper and I had three years ago). But I do hope that more companies take a hard line with the Chinese as well as there own governemnts when it comes to filtering mandates or even restricitve parental control defaults and settings [an issue I wrote more about in this paper: “The Perils of Mandatory Parental Controls and Restrictive Defaults.”] On that note, kudos to the business groups that already signed on to a joint letter oppossing China’s new filtering mandate.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.