US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just given a landmark speech on internet freedom. But before we chide China and others, shouldn't we look in our own backyard?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just given a
landmark speech on internet freedom. But before we chide China and others, shouldn't we look in our
own backyard?
Doesn't an information superhighway need rules for the road?
Indeed, as for Obamerica, there are many claims from right-wing
bloggers that internet freedom is threatened by Clinton's own
interventionist administration. Be that as it may, at both sides of the Tasman, we also see threats
to internet freedom.
New Zealand once had a piece of legislation called the Electoral
Finance Act. Our former Labour government sought to regulate the internet by
making group blogs, plus those taking adverts, register with the
government. But our bloggers did not want government to know where
they lived.
Leading bloggers like David Farrar of Kiwiblog and Cameron
Slater of Whaleoilled a campaign on the Act, which also affected
election campaigning. Their campaigns helped amend proposals as
well as helping to bring about the demise of the Helen Clark
Government as well.
Internet freedom still remains a contentious issue in New
Zealand, thanks to the aforementioned Cameron Slater.
Slater is now leading a campaign opposing the common practice of
the courts granting name suppression for certain criminals, usually
the wealthy or celebrities. He faces court hearings too after
allegedly breaching such suppressions.
But doesn't an information superhighway need rules for the
road? If there are laws against libel, shouldn't it also apply to
postings online and name suppression?
But when governments start developing "hate speech" laws, where
does this prevent free speech and debate? What is the difference
between a private chat and emailing a few friends or a
newsgroup? Where does "hate speech" become something someone doesn't
like?
Now, TV stations, especially state-owned ones, are meant to be
politically neutral, at least in our part of the world.
The US used to have laws on such neutrality for its broadcasting
too. However, there is talk of the Obama Government bringing back
such a "fairness doctrine". But how do you define what is media or television or radio in an
online age?
Britain used to have an online TV station called 18 Doughty
Street, focussing on politics.
How does that differ from bloggers making their own YouTube
style postings? Perhaps even getting together to form something
like Pajamas Media? Should and can government regulate
something like that?
Of course, it was easy in the old days when a few media barons
could easily be controlled, even if informally, by an
interventionist government; or the few publishers could set the
media agenda. But these days, nobody owns the news anymore.
Hordes of bloggers in their pyjamas are perhaps uncontrollable
beasts and are more unwilling to toe the government or the media
line and even that of the political parties they supposedly
support. This is why we see greater focus from the blogs on issues like
Climategate or failings in various governments, rather than what we
see in the mainstream media. The public thus often gets to find out
things government might prefer them not to.
Both Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd have hit out at bloggers, and I
am sure Cameron Slater is now causing a few headaches for John Key
as well. More dictatorial leaders might take stronger action
against them.
Could we in the near future see our own controls aimed at
suppressing free speech? Of course, it won't be called "Internet
Suppression Act 2010" or something. No, it will officially be about election funding, curbing porn, net neutrality, fairness,
cyber security or anti-terrorism. And thus, in the end, we could end
up just like China!