Short but sweet – Just thought I should post a link to a piece in the Economist . . . as it is of interest to those defending a civil society space . . . as an internet – no longer accessible, no longer free and possibly controlled and monitored by states could be an increasing problem.
It shows a graph of country’s requests to remove information . . .
From the Economist
There is also a full article on controls that governments and corporations are trying to set up to have more “sovereignty” over the information on the web.
It speaks to the “balkanization and possible reduction in “freedom” and free access to and on the internet.
That article says in part:
. . . a decade and a half ago. . . [it was]prophesied [that] a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist.
. . .
. . . The internet was a wide-open space, a new frontier. For the first time, anyone could communicate electronically with anyone else—globally and essentially free of charge. . .
. . .
Fifteen years after its first manifestation as a global, unifying network, it has entered its second phase: it appears to be balkanising, torn apart by three separate, but related forces.
First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. Recently several countries have demanded that their law-enforcement agencies have access to e-mails sent from BlackBerry smart-phones. This week India, which had threatened to cut off BlackBerry service at the end of August, granted RIM, the device’s maker, an extra two months while authorities consider the firm’s proposal to comply. However, it has also said that it is going after other communication-service providers, notably Google and Skype.
Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.
It is still too early to say that the internet has fragmented into “internets”, but there is a danger that it may splinter along geographical and commercial boundaries.
Although not mentioned in this article, I have some similar concerns related to the explosion of “cloud” computing. Although storing all of your data, on someone else’s hardware may be convenient (accessible from anywhere) it does cede control over the data to a central player/location and make it harder to keep data private. Controls are so much easier in a centralized rather than diffuse network – just another area in which Civil Society needs to be vigilant.
