Essay Part 2

Part 2:

Censorship of the Internet has become an increasingly troublesome problem, with regimes in Syria, Libya, Egypt and China all exacting control over their citizens on the web. Recent examples of attempted censorship and control in more democratic countries include PIPA and SOPA of the US.  These acts would allow for the removal of websites via request and for the censorship of information by websites in order to maintain legality. International effort from the European Union as well as western countries such as the US to ratify ACTA also posed a serious threat to internet freedom (ACTA being a stronger version of SOPA/PIPA). These bills were criticized by human rights organization for not having safeguards in place to prevent abuse of power in taking down copyright infringing cases. Due to the language of the SOPA bill, many feared that it would allow free speech to be censored and lead to overzealous regulation of the Internet. Also brought up was the fact that the main supporters were large corporations which would propose such a bill to increase their own profits at the expense of what many people consider basic rights. Corporations such as Coca-Cola, Visa, Viacom, Capitol Records Nashville, Time Warner, and the MPAA were/are all supporters of the bill, along with dozens more. (House Judiciary Committee, 2011), A key example of this being the idea of innocent until proven guilty, which would be overlooked in these bills as requests of site takedowns would be honored first and it would be up to the site to provide evidence, not the requester. The MPAA and other Hollywood entertainment companies such as Time Warner lobbied for the passing of the bills and spent millions in pushing them through congress. This type of corporate interference is unfortunately all too common in the digital age, as corporations try to maximize profit by cutting theirs losses—often from the Internet.

Besides trying to censor the Internet through legislation, corporations also infringe on our perceived moral rights through their own ways as well. There are many incidents where corporations such as Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other social media companies endanger the rights and sometimes lives of people in restrictive countries. For example, MacKinnon details the case of Shi Tao, a reporter who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for sending an email containing military procedures. However, the charges of “divulging state secrets abroad” were not reasonable, as the military procedures and policies were available on the state military’s website and Shi Tao received them from a non-secretive presentation. However, this did not stop the Chinese government from silencing his less-than-praising voice on the issues. But the rights violations on behalf of the Chinese government are not the only ones here. According to Human Rights Watch, an international NGO focused on the research on and advocacy for human rights,

In its case against Shi Tao, the prosecution charged that he improperly took notes on the memorandum as it was being discussed at an editorial meeting at the newspaper and then hours later sent an outline of its contents by email to be published in an overseas web forum under a pseudonym. Evidence presented during the trial included account verification information provided by Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., which linked the IP address used to send the email from Shi Tao's personal Yahoo! email account to a computer located in the Contemporary Business News office.

(Human Rights Watch, August 2006)