Trends in Cybercensorship

A talk with an editor of Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering about the recent rise in Web censorship

When the military government of Burma cracked down violently on protests by tens of thousands of Buddhist monks (BusinessWeek.com, 11/7/07), it wanted to do so in private. So, to keep photos, videos, and descriptions of last November's clashes from leaking out, the government decided to halt the flow of information by cutting off its citizens from the Internet entirely.

Not long after, when a YouTube video said to be offensive to Islam caught the attention of Pakistani regulators, the government there moved to block access by its citizens—not just to the video, but to all of YouTube. This took place only weeks after the Pakistani government had ordered blackouts on cable TV news outlets and newspapers (BusinessWeek.com, 11/27/07).

In China, a country infamous for a "Great Firewall" that strictly controls what its citizens can read online, outside reports and information about the recent crackdown on protests in Tibet have been blacked out (BusinessWeek.com, 3/17/08). Once again, regulators targeted YouTube after clips of protesting monks in the capital city of Lhasa began to circulate.

Blocking access to the Internet has become a standard "policy" option around the world. The editors of a new book, Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, published this month by the MIT Press, say this type of filtering is taking place in at least 25 countries—in Asia, North Africa, and even Europe. And U.S. technology companies are finding themselves torn between the open principles of their own country and the realistic need to do business in countries with restrictive regimes.

BusinessWeek.com's Arik Hesseldahl discussed the topic with one of the book's editors, John G. Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor who is also executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

You and your collaborators on this book conducted a survey of cybercensorship in 40 countries around the world. Can you summarize your findings?

The thesis of the book is that there is an undeniable increase in the extent to which states are making it policy to censor the Internet. The data show that five or six years ago there were a few states that were doing it, China and Saudi Arabia most famously, and today we've found more than two dozen states that are carrying out state-mandated Internet censorship.

On what grounds do they justify these policies? National security? Morality?

It's all of the above really.… In places like Iran or China or Uzbekistan, there are multiple reasons for the extensive filtering going on. One is political. Those in power don't want dissent to spread so easily as it can on the Internet. Another is cultural. They don't want so many people seeing pornographic images. In other cases there are very specific reasons. Like in Turkey, which has just happened, they are blocking entire services like YouTube and WordPress when even a single video is critical of Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. Another example is Thailand. When there is a single Web page or video critical of the king, it's taken down. There are also some western countries that do some censorship. Germany and France block information about Nazi paraphernalia and Holocaust denial.

What is the least restrictive country?

There is no one least restrictive country.… I would put the U.S. on the more open side of things, but there is some censorship that takes place in schools and libraries.

What responsibilities do U.S. tech companies—telecom hardware makers such as Cisco Systems (CSCO), software companies like Microsoft (MSFT), and service providers including Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO)—have when they face the question of facilitating or enabling this censorship?

We have a chapter in the book that addresses this. I would distinguish between some of the companies you just mentioned. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are involved with us in creating a set of principles to determine some ethical guidelines for American and western companies to respond to these concerns. There are some companies that are not party to these efforts. Cisco, Juniper [Networks (JNPR)], and Nortel [Networks (NT)], for instance, are not.