Networker: Control freaks
Shock! Horror! Racism has been found on the internet. Searchers have discovered web sites encouraging race hatred.
Of course, all other vestiges of racism have been eradicated. Governments have ensured that racial discrimination has been expunged from every other corner of the world. Racist immigration laws have all been abolished. Racist views are found nowhere else.
It sounds silly, doesn't it? But the appearance of vile racist views on a handful of the millions of web sites throughout the world (along with pornography) is being used as an excuse to clamp down on internet access, especially for young people.
The first approach was to police the content that young people could see. Several internet filtering programs emerged that promised to protect the minds of the young. The approach of these filters breach an article of faith of "democratic" censorship regimes: the right of the public to know what has been banned.
If you want to get a flavour of the sort of sites that get excluded, have a look at PeaceFire (<http://www.peacefire.org>). The site begins with advice to young people on how to get around blocking software imposed by parents because, as the site puts it, "ignorance shouldn't have to be hereditary: it's not a crime to be smarter than your parents".
PeaceFire includes a "blocked site of the day". When I last looked, a site with the text of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, blocked by the I-Gear filter program, had been selected.
Filter programs generally don't let you know the names of excluded sites. But that isn't the end of it. When Matthew Skala and Eddy Jannson wrote a program called "cphack' that lets users look inside the Cyber Patrol product to see what it had banned, they were sued for copyright violation. The company even demanded that they hand over a list of everyone who had downloaded a copy of their program. In the face of a massive legal barrage, they withdrew their program.
The opponents of internet access are getting more serious about restricting content and access. France's "Liberty of Communication" bill currently being debated requires that anyone who places any information on the internet be identified, and legally liable for the information. As a technical advisor for the French ministry of culture put it, the aim of the legislation is to eradicate anonymity in web publishing.
In the "real" world it is impossible to enforce a regime under which every comment, every leaflet, every piece of graffiti is appropriately authorised by a person who can be sued if they offend someone. On the internet, while this would be difficult, it is more feasible. And while issues surrounding libel and defamation may seem complex, they are really very simple: if you have a lot of money, you win. If you don't, you lose.
The French legislation is a part of a global movement to gag the internet, a movement which, unfortunately, the Australian government enthusiastically supports.
BY GREG HARRIS