Viewer Protection or Political Suppression?

Following the violence in Tibet the past several weeks, China has blocked access to YouTube and other websites showing videos of the riots. The Wall Street Journal ran a story last week about the inconsistencies in YouTube’s censorship policies in Asia and the Middle East:

In Thailand, in order to be accessible, [YouTube] agreed to block Thai users from seeing clips deemed insulting to the king in violation of Thai law. In Turkey, YouTube has suspended the account of the person who uploaded the Ataturk video, though the site remains banned there. In Myanmar, YouTube was banned after clips of protesting monks appeared on the site. In that case, YouTube declined to remove the clips and remains banned.

Media analysts say YouTube's string of censorship flare-ups -- and the site's sometimes inconsistent responses -- indicate it needs to develop a more transparent strategy for dealing with these issues. YouTube's community guidelines state the site encourages "free speech and defend[s] everyone's right to express unpopular points of view." But the site also reserves the right to remove content it deems inappropriate, which gives it significant discretion when it comes to politically sensitive content.

The article states that YouTube often has to choose between “bending to censorship and losing business opportunities.” But YouTube isn’t just bending to foreign governments, and censorship is more than a business development issue.

The WSJ article leaves out mention of the Egyptian political turmoil and violence which was caught on video last fall by activist and YouTube user Wael Abbas. Abbas is the first blogger to receive the Knight International Journalism Award for his work, which led to the conviction of police for torture, but YouTube suspended his account. The nearly 100 images “including clips depicting purported police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations” that Abbas had uploaded were blocked, not just in Egypt but worldwide.

According to Reuters, YouTube told Abbas that the videos generated complaints about the content of torture. Human rights activists protested, including Gamal Eid, head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, who argued that the intent of Abbas to expose human rights violations should have been taken into account. Abbas’ access was restored in December and the majority of his clips were allowed back online.

The WSJ article discusses a similar case in Russia:

After being alerted by users last month, YouTube removed a video clip that appeared to document abuse of prisoners at a Russian prison camp that YouTube determined violated the site's graphic-violence policy. It eventually restored the video but required viewers to click to consent to watch a clip that "may contain content that is inappropriate for some users." YouTube says its staff hadn't initially been aware that the video was meant to document alleged human-rights abuses.

Where is the line between protecting viewers and censoring content of political value? Should YouTube be required to develop more consistent guidelines when it comes to political censorship, and in doing so is it YouTube's responsibility to decipher users’ motives?

Wikileaks shutdown raises censorship questions

The muckraking website Wikileaks was ordered shut down earlier this week by a Federal Judge in San Francisco, in response to a request made by Swiss bank Julius Baer (the site can still be accessed via its IP address http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks).

Wikileak's mission is to provide a repository for "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis." Whistleblowers can post to Wikileaks anonymously. The site made a splash in late 2007 when it posted a military manual with details of the daily workings of the Guantanomo Bay detention facility.

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances - the internet, and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered.

Predictably, there has been much online discussion of the shutdown order -- most of it disapproving. Palo Alto, CA internet attorney Julie Turner told CBS News that the order "is akin to seizing all the copies of The New York Times, locking the doors and ordering the landlords not to let anyone back in the building."

Whoa!

While conceding my belief that Wikileaks undoubtedly provides an aggregate benefit to society, allow me to indulge in a bit of devil's advocacy. Looking at the injuction request with my untrained legal eye, it seems pretty clear that Julius Baer sought only the "temporary and preliminary" shutdown of the site until the removal of the documents could be verified. As the bank alleges that the documents were pilfered by a "disgruntled employee" and subsequently altered, their continued display causes the bank "further irreparable harm."

Now, we could all potentially agree that the bank is probably lying here. And we could all see eye-to-eye on the likelihood that the bank will lose this case, and rightly so. But, wouldn't we also agree that property rights (these documents are the bank's property) and privacy rights (they refer to client's financial information ) are the bedrock rights of our legal system?

"But what about Wikileak's First Amendment rights," you say?

Good question. We should be ever vigilant. But should those rights extend to stolen property? We know that they don't.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but at the very least, I think disputes of this sort should play out in court, not online. Some jurisdictions may not allow a transparent and impartial setting for whistleblowers to make their case, but San Francisco is certainly not one of them.

The fact is, we are not talking here about a rogue judge shutting down The New York Times without cause or warning. This is a legal dispute in which one side is seeking legal protection and the other is displaying potentially prejudicial evidence in public.

Level Playing Field? IOC to allow limited athlete blogs at Beijing Games

The International Olympic Committee has decided to allow athletes to blog during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Many unofficial blogs have appeared during previous competitions.

But there are draconian restrictions regarding what content an athlete can post. The IOC has taken the tack that blogs are personal expression, not journalism, and it is guarding the intellectual property associated with the event and the broadcast rights. For example, video and still photography of events and medals ceremonies is disallowed or limited.

Is this censorship in the name of branding? "Domain names for blogs should not include any word similar to 'Olympic' or 'Olympics,'" reports The Canadian Press. I would think Olympics qualifies as public domain after several thousand years; fair use at the very least.

Has anyone heard how the IOC intends to enforce this policy? In addition to the usual medals being stripped for steroid use will we see an angry IOC dragging athletes to court for copyright infringement?

China's "Mental Firewall"

Today’s Wall Street Journal reported on bloggers in China and touched on two important issues discussed previously on the Ethical Blogger: trust and credibility on the Internet in China and the blogger Zola’s influential corruption coverage. The main emphasis of today’s WSJ article, however, was on the role of self-censorship, rather than government controls, as a hurdle to free speech on the Internet:

China’s 162 million Internet users are a largely young and wealthy set who typically aren’t engaged in politics. Most don’t seem intent on accessing the sort of content that would upset the authorities. They are busy amassing virtual weapons in online games and posting photos to blogs.

But when content does get political, the government doesn’t have to do all the censoring itself…

China’s Confucian values teach respect for authority and the subordination of the individual to the family and state. In China’s rigid education system, young people rarely are encouraged to express their opinions. And people have learned to keep quiet as political orthodoxies changed with the wind over the decades, with leaders coming into power, then falling out of favor as new regimes installed themselves. Finding yourself on the wrong side could lead to punishment, including exile and jail.

The Chinese government has made it very clear to the public that the tradition of harsh punishment for dissidence extends into cyberspace. In addition to placing rigid barriers to market entry on Internet companies, making it difficult for independent Internet service and content providers to compete with State controlled entities, the Chinese government has laid out rigid regulations for companies and individual Internet users to follow. Companies that skirt the rules can be subject to fines of up to RMB 50,000, closure of sites, and revocation of business licenses, while in extreme cases, individual cyberdissidents have been sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. This alone has deterred a number of Internet users from pushing their limits.

In some instances the line between self-censorship and government censorship is blurred. A May 2006 New York Times article entitled “As Chinese Students Go Online, Little Sister Is Watching” spotlights Hu Yingying, a student at Shanghai Normal University who monitors the university’s discussion boards and steers conversation away from politics or other sensitive topics:

Part traffic cop, part informer, part discussion moderator — and all without the knowledge of her fellow students — Ms. Hu is a small part of a huge national effort to sanitize the Internet. For years China has had its Internet police, reportedly as many as 50,000 state agents who troll online, blocking Web sites, erasing commentary and arresting people for what is deemed anti-Communist Party or antisocial speech.

But Ms. Hu, one of 500 students at her university's newly bolstered, student-run Internet monitoring group, is a cog in a different kind of force, an ostensibly all-volunteer one that the Chinese government is mobilizing to help it manage the monumental task of censoring the Web.

These tactics haven’t completely eliminated sensitive political discussion. Cyberdissidents in China use email spamming techniques to dispense information. Li Hongkuan, who goes by the alias Richard Long, began sending a newsletter called VIP Reference News out to roughly 250,000 people in via email. His newsletter is actually a banned website, but Li is able to provide his otherwise unavailable information to the masses because email recipients can claim that it was unsolicited and avoid punishment (although some suppliers of email addresses were jailed). Other modern communications tools like text messaging have been crucial to organizing protests, and since cell phone use is more widespread than the Internet in China’s rural areas, this may for now be a better tool for disseminating information and mobilizing the masses.

So perhaps blogs don’t provide complete insight into the spectrum of controversial activities going on in authoritarian regimes, as dissidents may be finding it more beneficial to spread their influence through multiple communications outlets.

Iranian blogger in bow-wow row

Under some interpretations of Islamic law, dogs are considered unclean animals. (N.B.: As with many aspects of the Holy Quran, there is considerable, complex debate over this. You can read examples here, here and here.)

A story first appeared in The Guardian on November 20 revealing the use of bomb-sniffing security dogs by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's security detail. Now, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is reporting that Iranian blogger Reza Valizadeh is being detained by authorities after blogging about the purchase of 4 German dogs by the president's security staff.

Arash Kamangir reports on Arabisto.com that Valizadeh is being held on charges of "acting against public security as well as disruption of public opinion."

From the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report:

Valizadeh's arrest comes two days after dozens of Iranian journalists and intellectuals issued a statement to protest the jailing of journalists who are critical of the Iranian government.

One of the signatories, journalist Issa Saharkhiz, told Radio Farda on November 26 that a government crackdown on journalists has intensified in recent months. "There are some who are sitting and thinking of ways to fill up Iran's prisons. Unfortunately, we now see this not only in Tehran but also in the provinces," Saharkhiz said.

Saharkhiz added that journalists and media workers have lost their jobs as a result, and society has been limited to a "single voice."

Syria blocks access to Facebook

In my last post, I mentioned the wonderful site Global Voices Online -- a sort of clearinghouse for international blogs. The site "aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore."

And fair play to them.

At the top of Global Voices tonight is this post from Amira Al Hussaini, detailing the censorship in Syria of the social networking site Facebook. (Access to Google's Blogger, which hosts The Ethical Blogger, is also blocked in Syria.) Hussaini links us to the Syrian blogger Golaniya, who claims to be "neither an 'Arab' nor a 'Syrian', not even a 'female'." She blogs "for the right to be a citizen."

What follows is bold, brave and truly inspiring.

...recently there has been a cultural awakening [in Syria]; people are starting to organize their interests in concerts, galleries, conferences, plays, screenings…etc. and Facebook is facilitating the process which is very hard to do in an inactive militarily controlled society. There are no cultural institutions in Syria, no private independent NGOs, no civic institutions, who represent the populations except the government? Syrian Facebookers are trying now to represent themselves. Those who cannot be activists in a "real" Syria can be one in a virtual Syria. Facebook is becoming a tool to bring together these very individuals to promote their socially, religiously and politically prohibited thoughts. We are not talking about blocking of a social networking tool, we are talking about blocking an awareness networking tool, a chance to express, to finally speak and do something about it. It's high time to demand our right to seek ALL and ANY information regardless of its source, we have the mind to decide for ourselves what we should/should not read or believe.We have the right to organize ourselves and activate our numb citizenship. We want to be socially and politically active. We want to campaign for human rights, we want to be civilians instead of abstract "Syrians," instead of mere Muslims and Christians. We want to engage in building our nation. We don’t want to be permitted to act; we want to be voluntarily and spontaneously acting. We want to be doers and actors. We want Syria uncensored!

As we discourse here on the appropriate use of profanity and anonymity in fora such as this, it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that freedom of expression remains out of reach in some corners of the globe.

As Ian Bremmer points out so eloquently in his book The J Curve, authoritarian regimes rely heavily on state control of the media to keep the citizenry in the dark.

...the slightest influence on their citizens from the outside could push the most rigid...states toward instability. If half the people of North Korea saw 20 minutes of CNN (or of al Jazeera for that matter), they would realize how egregiously their government lies to them about life beyond the walls. That realization would provoke widespread social upheaval. The slightest improvement in the ability of a country’s citizens to communicate with one another—the introduction of telephones, email, or text-messaging into an authoritarian state—can likewise undermine the state’s monopoly on information.

No doubt the Syrian regime feels mortally threatened by the latent power of sites such as Facebook. It is not hard to see how easily the political opposition in Syria (such as it is) could leverage these sites, both at home and abroad, to destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad. Even the lowliest technology (think of the role of the cassette tape in the Iranian revolution of 1979) can conceivably be employed to illuminate "life behind the walls."

We should acknowledge and commend the brave struggle of dissidents such as Golaniya.

I Built My Blog of Glass

The article about how the New York Times is striving to maintain an editorial policy of "civil discourse" in the comments on its blogs raises some interesting issues (Matthew Hennessey touched on a few here). It led me to think that in some ways blogs blur the lines between public and private space. For example, if you have an open house party and a guest leaves footprints on your walls you're well within your rights to give him the boot. But discouraging similar unruliness by deleting or editing comments on a blog can quickly lead to accusations of censorship.

This issue is compounded by the fact that blogs are hosted and owned in a number of different ways, from free public services like Blogger to proprietary and commercial institutions of journalism like the NYT. That's why bloggers and hosts develop content policies and terms of service to set the rules of use, indemnify themselves, reserve rights, etc. Otherwise all the huffing and puffing might blow their blog down.

It seems natural then, given the public/private nature of blogs, that many would adopt a "house rules" approach to filtering content, and transparency comes from making that policy explicit. Do the blogs of journalists, press, and media carry unique or additional responsibilities for disclosure or tolerance? Many letters to the editor never see the light of day, but there's no public outcry over that.

Photo of Philip Johnson's Glass House by Mel K (CC).