The article I read this week is
“The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control” by Roberts, Zuckerman, Faris, York
and Frey. It discusses control of the Internet
through censoring. The article
specifically looks at practices from China and Russia. China, for example, has very strict
control over the Internet in the country.
Mainstream sites like Facebook and YouTube are banned. On the plus side, 95% of web page requests
are hosted within China, which fosters the growth of local sites. I think such severe Internet
regulations are too extreme.
Russia is not as strict as China,
but it has its own ways of monitoring the Internet. Since Russia has such a complex network structure, it has
the ability to hack into sites to harass activists or flood forums with
pro-government views. This passive-aggressive approach is basically as
intrusive as China’s direct limitations.
After reading about other
countries’ policies, I am very happy I live in a country where we have freedom
to browse the web as we please! It
is nice knowing our government will not hack into a personal website and deface
or hijack the site because it displeases them. I will be interested to see how
successful the United States’ “Internet Freedom agenda” will be at funding ways
to circumvent Internet censorship in other countries.
We definitely are lucky for the "internet freedom" we have in the US, although the US falls behind many other countries when it comes to its monitoring privileges. There has also been many recent bills aimed at controlling the internet - luckily all have faced strong retaliation from politics-aware internet users. The US still requires data retention and can usually easily get that data for whatever reason. It also has the power to block sites through the DNS infrastructure. There are some major positive aspects in US law about technology, however, such as fair use of technology (can use hardware of software in whatever way you want as long as it is not against the law) and recent FCC rulings pushing net neutrality (the openness and fairness of internet traffic). For this we should be thankful, but keep in mind that there are always private parties and interest groups who want the internet controlled. If we enjoy the internet as it is now we much fight against advances by such parties.
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