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TELECOMS AND SOFTWARE NEWS
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Internet censorship and the revolt of the masses
David Kennedy
Internet censorship and the revolt of the masses
Democratic governments have toyed with the idea of Internet censorship for years. ISP-level filtering technology is slowly progressing, but the changing politics of Internet usage is undermining public support for censorship.
The issue of Internet content censorship has been a staple of politics since the mid-1990s. Attempts have been made to regulate content. In Western countries, these efforts have typically focused on content providers, with ISPs in the secondary role of taking down illegal or offensive content as instructed by police or regulators. To some, ISP-level filtering technology seems to offer an alternative. But does it?It seemed like a good idea at the time_
The Australian government came to power in November 2007 with a plan to trial ISP-level filtering at a national level. At the time, this seemed an innocuous proposal. Who could oppose just trialing something?A laboratory trial by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was inconclusive. It found that ISP level filtering could slow networks by as much as 87%, as little as 2%, or something in between, depending on the product being tested.But real-world filtering must rely on a blacklist, a keyword filter or some other mechanism, which will always deliver a number of false negatives and (worse) false positives. That is, 'bad' content will get through and 'good' content will be blocked, no matter how efficient the filter.So there was nothing in the trial to attract ISPs, which could only face additional cost and degraded performance if filtering were implemented.That would have been a good place for the government to stop, and a perfect excuse to do so. However, the government announced that it wished to proceed to field trials. This is when the trouble began. A barrage of negative press and online petitions were fuelled by the refusal of major ISPs to become involved in the field trials. The Minister was forced to defend the project against opposition attack.The changed politics of Internet usage
Surprisingly, support for the government has been muted and sporadic. But perhaps this is not so surprising. Uptake of user-level filtering has been weak for a long time. More fundamentally, the politics of Internet censorship have shifted away from those who would impose schemes like ISP filtering in democratic countries.The importance of the Internet for communications has grown to such an extent that disruption cannot be contemplated. The proliferation of applications such as websites, blogging, forums and social networking over the last ten years has drawn in large numbers of users.On the other side of the coin, social conservatives are no longer automatically supportive of such efforts. Some are, but others see the benefits of free Internet communications just as clearly as social liberals can. Furthermore, there is suspicion of government regulation of speech in both camps. Pointed questions have been asked about who will control any blacklist, and there is heightened awareness that any effective filtering system could be redirected towards political or merely controversial speech.In short, the loss of political capital that the government now faces isn't worth the marginal political benefits it might capture. The lesson for governments is that the chief obstacle to Internet filtering isn't really the technology but the changed politics of Internet usage. The genie of global communication is out of the bottle, and the value it generates is increasingly seen as worth the risks.
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