A lot of us, I’m sure, know that over the course of the past several years, there has been a struggle to define the limits of “free expression” within the neutral boundaries of the internet. Maybe “neutral” is too defining of a word — what I mean more is that no one nation owns it. Earlier today, I came across an Associated Press article published by the Washington Post talking about the increase in over the course of the past few years. Many of you may remember that this entered the public eye most when Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, defied the Chinese government’s demand to censor certain articles and topics. In a comment to The Observer, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales commented as such:

“[Cenroship is an] antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia… we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there’s no one left on the planet who’s willing to say “You know what? We’re not going to give up.”‘

As such, Google was ‘banned’ from China from last October. In the same light, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft have bent over to “cooperate” with the government. In some sense, both parties are accommodating the free-expression motto. Wikipedia declines to show only a part of itself — it’s “all or nothing”. On the other hand, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have decided that providing the people with as much information as possible is the most methodical approach to this issue.

This episode served as a catalyst for defining the boundaries of the Internet. On one side, many people, especially those in the West, are arguing that a government should not censor and channel only discrete information to its people. In response, a Chinese government representative noted that it is not a problem with expression — rather, it is an issue of catching criminals. The Chinese stance in this sense makes it very clear when they participate in the recent Internet Governance Forum (IGF) — a United Nations-initiated forum to discuss matters concerning the internet. In the opening panel entitled Setting the Scene, Chen Yin, the Director General of the International Corporation of the Ministry of Information Industry from China, notes as follows:

“Thank you, sir. As I mentioned earlier, China is devoted to — committed to a policy for developing the Internet. Our approach is to balance development with security. In the course of content development for Internet, it is necessary to respect the need for security of Internet content according to law. That is, we have to make sure that in terms of for laws, that there’s freedom of communication and no threat to state security or to the healthy psychological mental development for juveniles should be allowed. So we are trying for a balance between development and security.”

You can see the entire transcript on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Website.

Just as a note, the United States Supreme Court, in [former Attorney General] Reno vs. ACLU, granted the internet with protection of an unrestricted freedom of expression and speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Most experts will point to that as the motto of the United States in regards to censorship and restrictive flow of information through the internet.

My thoughts:
Undoubtedly, there’s a big question on how to handle the internet and the highways of information that it can facilitate. As I mentioned earlier, it is bound to no particular nation; rather, it is a sort of a “neutral” ground.

I would argue here that certainly the enforcement of security and the law has great force on any medium of communication, among them being the internet. Creating order and maintaining a level of national security is a crucial government task. That said, to what extent the government should be able to censor and restrict the channel and flow of information to its people largely depends on the extent to which it is doing it. In the United States, we are governed by the Constitution which grants freedom of expression and speech (among others, of course) but keep in mind that these are not unrestricted rights that any person has under absolutely any circumstance. The fact that the government would censor and restrict the channel of information in any medium is certainly not new, at least not in the United States.

Taking a step out from a completely political take on the topic, I think the internet was created in order to facilitate the free flow of information in a medium more conducive in the twentieth century. It is, in my opinion, a “free highway” of expression. As always, feel free to comment below.

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