Last week there was another leak of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This time it was a copy of the of the entire latest draft. It seems to dispel some of the initial worries bloggers had written about, including customs searches of your iPod at the border, but also stokes other concerns. For one thing, the U.S. seems to be pushing for protocols to cut off copyright violators from their internet access.
In the most recent episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk with Prof. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa, who has been following ACTA more closely than anyone else. He explains that not only is the content of ACTA troubling, but the fact that it’s being negotiated in such secrecy.
Listen to other episodes and remember to subscribe to the podcast using RSS or iTunes.
The Treasury Department today announced that it would grant the State Department’s December request (see the Iran letter here) for a waiver from U.S. embargoes that would allow Iranians, Sudanese and Cubanese to download “free mass market software … necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant messaging, chat and email, and social networking.”
I’m delighted to see that the Treasury Department is implementing Secretary Clinton’s pledge to make it easier for citizens of undemocratic regimes to use Internet communications tools like e-mail and social networking services offered by US companies (which Adam discussed here). It has been no small tragedy of mindless bureaucracy that our sanctions on these countries have actually hampered communications and collaboration by dissidents—without doing anything to punish oppressive regimes. So today’s announcement is a great victory for Internet freedom and will go a long way to bringing the kind of free expression we take for granted in America to countries like Iran, Sudan and Cuba.
But I’m at a loss to explain why the Treasury Department’s waiver is limited to free software. The U.S. has long objected when other countries privilege one model of software development over another—and rightly so: Government should remain neutral as between open-source and closed-source, and between free and paid models. This “techno-agnosticism” for government is a core principle of cyber-libertarianism: Let markets work out the right mix of these competing models through user choice!
Why should we allow dissidents to download free “Web 2.0” software but not paid ones? Not all mass-market tools dissidents would find useful are free. Many “freemium” apps, such as Twitter client software, require purchase to get full functionality, sometimes including privacy and security features that are especially useful for dissidents. To take a very small example that’s hugely important to me as a user, Twitter is really only useful on my Android mobile phone because I run the Twidroid client. But the free version doesn’t support multiple accounts or lists, which are essential functions for a serious Tweeter. The Pro version costs just $4.89—but if I lived in Iran, U.S. sanctions would prevent me from buying this software. More generally, we just don’t know what kind of innovative apps or services might be developed that would be useful to dissidents, so why foreclose the possibility of supporting them through very small purchases? Continue reading →
“With a few notable exceptions, the tech industry seems unwilling to regulate itself. I will introduce legislation that will require Internet companies to take reasonable steps to protect human rights, or face civil and criminal liability.” – Senator Dick Durbin, as reported by the Washington Post. 
We hear you, Sen. Durbin. The practices of many nations toward free speech and political dissidents are terribly wrong. But we respectfully and strongly disagree with your statements at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on global Internet freedom and the rule of law.
The growth of IT companies throughout the world has been an enormous boon to free speech and human rights. Although these technologies present new challenges, particularly when taken together with widely varying laws, they are doing far more good than harm, everywhere that they are deployed.
But if you attended the hearing and knew nothing about the Internet, you’d think that American online companies doing business in China and elsewhere were pure evil – as if they were the ones with the power to not comply with – or change — the criminal laws of other nations.
In particular, Facebook and Twitter were called out for not joining the Global Network Initiative (GNI). The product of more than two years of study and development by companies and public interest groups, the Initiative offers a set of guiding principles for global IT companies doing business in an increasingly global environment.
But while the GNI exposes online companies to new scrutiny, it doesn’t provide any protection from aggressive governments. And at a price tag of $200,000, the GNI isn’t cheap. How effective will it be, really, at changing the practices of totalitarian nations? Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.