The Internet Censorship debate

Freedom of expression takes a new dimension altogether when placed in the context of the digital channels like blogs, social networks or microblogs in the Internet. While there is no absolutism associated with any freedom, the applicability or the non applicability of restrictions and laws between the real world and the digital space needs clear understanding and a distinction based on this understanding.

The stand of Free Software Movement, has always been to sustain and perpetuate the freedom of computer users and information technology benefactors. When the Government of India today has proposed severe but unsubstantiated endorsement of censorship, leading to the curbing of fundamental rights of expression, we would want to reiterate our stand to Free Software supporters by presenting the the threat this move would pose to the essence of neutrality in the Internet and democracy in the country.

Expressing oneself in the conventional media like press, books, television and radio are entirely different, than when an individual is expressing via digital vents on the Internet. The accessibility to the media itself, and the broadcast range of the channels in both the realms are fundamentally different.

In conventional media, not everyone has a say, and the chances of rebutting to the opinions of the 'media privileged' people expressing them is seriously restricted; In the Internet it is quite the opposite. By design the Internet provides equal footing to everyone to express their own views. Anyone can express their views, or counter an expressed view without having to depend on 'media partners' to attach a voice to their opinions. Hence, it could be said that the Internet is self conditioned, and does not require external regulators.

Secondly, the views presented in newspapers, books and television, or any other form of conventional media are in a sense 'imposed', wherein except from unsubscribing to those services there is little of resentment one can demonstrate. Moreover the conventional media vents have percolated deep into the society in a country like India, where it is not the Internet but newspapers and television which build opinions of people. In contrast, the content put up on the Internet operates and caters to a relatively small portion of the population. The sensibilities of the information on the Internet makes sense to the communities of people on that particular service or platform alone, and does not spill over to the streets. It is the user who seeks content on the Interent and nothing is imposed, in comparison with the conventional media.

Further the current stand of the Government to curb and hone down the views expressed on the Internet comes as a shock. Authorities headed by Mr Kapil Sibal, whose lack of comprehension of the problem at hand is being debated heavily on all platforms, well beyond the online platforms. 

http://www.labnol.org/india/censorship-in-india/20527/

It seems he has suddenly gotten aware of the censorship trick. Mr. Sibal and the rest of the Government have been projecting that “religious blasphemy” is what they are trying to counter in the Internet – which is far from the whole truth.

There has been a lot of active propaganda on the net about the plethora of scams that the current UPA Government has been involved in. The facts being circulated might not be audited, and very just but the essence these streams online have been carrying have certainly put the Government at guard and now are using a masquerade of “religious blasphemy” to curb the freedom of expression in the Internet.

The extreme interest Mr. Sibal has been taking in this regard comes as a bigger surprise, for, the issues pertaining to the infrastructural problems of e-Governance in India, the security issues related to the Aadhaar Unique Identification project and the secretive NATGRID are not being given the same importance. These issues about Internet and technology which have been growing steadily for sometime now have to be addressed firstly, which neither Mr. Sibal nor his instigators have bothered about.

The enthusiastic involvement which Mr. Sibal, representing the Government of India has demonstrated, to curb the freedom of expression in the digital sphere manifests the unreasonable apprehensions of our current governors. If implemented, this censorship would beyond curbing the freedom of expression, cripple the democracy, or the little of it which remains.

Free Software Movement with this clear understanding, urges Internet users and activists to take up online campaigns, propagate the nuances of the issue at hand and stand up for the freedom in the Internet. 

Reinstating freedom in the Internet

The Internet when conceived was an autonomous conglomeration of end user machines present at the edge of the network. These terminal machines were talking to each other using the infrastructure provided by the Internet Service Providers (ISP's). The only arbitrators in the Internet were the standards organization (like ISO, IEEE), which made the nodes on the Internet to follow universal protocols for intercommunication.
The Internet was simply 'decentralized'.

P2P networks

The Internet has been the grandest manifestation of democracy of the users. It has been free (free as in freedom ) and neutral (as in unbiased) until the late 1990's. Starting  then, the Governments, primarily of the developed countries, in the name of making the Internet safer and secure have tagged with some of the big profit seeking corporations in the world wide web to monitor and influence the way the Internet works. The Internet today is no longer neutral and/or free; From being decentralized it is steadily converging to become a Centralized infrastructure with little or no freedom to the end users.

Centralised Server based networks

The closest to what the Internet should be resembling in the current scenarios is the Peer-to-Peer mode of networking. In this architecture, every end user apart from being a client, is also a server.  This is in contrast with the rest of the services in the Internet where we have the Single Server- Multiple Client model. This model is called the Centralized model, where the online transactions occur between the mandating, giant servers and the helpless end users. This deterioration of the democracy in the Internet reflects a major invasion into the privacy of the users and more importantly infringement of the political freedom of the users as well. The case when the Internet services for Wikileaks was withdrawn by the corporations succumbing to the pressure of their Government is a direct manifestation of the impact that Centralization of the Internet can have.

As users, the point we need to be concerned about is the safety of the data we entrust to the biggies in the Internet. Every time we are online, there is almost a certain chance that either we are being spied, or our data is being used for increasing the business on the Internet.

One prospective solution to reinstate freedom in the Internet is, by the decentralization of servers, and giving the full control back to users. Decentralized Internet will comprise of not few servers where all the users will have to mortgage their data, but when fully decentralized, every user will end up having a small, cell phone charger sized Open Plug servers like the FreedomBox.
The FreedomBox again has been an initiative instigated by Prof.Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre and now the Debian Community of Free Software developers have kick started the project to set the Internet free.

To visualize it better, consider the current model of online Social Networking: About 500 million users on one famous Centralized Social Networking site have handed over all of their data to a single bunch of servers, after endorsing heavily privacy invading terms and conditions. Statuses, chats, pictures and the private interaction between users on the network is all under the scanner of on single Corporation.

To tackle such hegemony in the Internet, a new model of social networking is being tested. Distributed or Federated Social Networks, like Diaspora will decentralize the way online social networking will happen. Instead of all the users handing over their data to a server farm belonging to a single corporation, users can now put their data on smaller, independent servers like campus servers (called Pods) and get networked with other pods. In this way, the centralization can be reduced from a single hegemonic server cluster to decentralized, independent servers. The best part of this decentralization is that this decentralization can trickle down to the last of the users.

Using the Plug servers such as FreedomBox, individual users can run their own Diaspora Pods, with all the data residing in their personal mobile servers, which will communicate with other pods. Users will have total control over the data, and the extent of its availability to other users and even to the Internet.

This model of decentralization using FreedomBox like open plug servers will not only increase the privacy and security in social networking, but in near future will be applicable to mails, voice-over-internet phone calls, making the Internet neutral and democratic, reinstating freedom back to the users.

PS: The initial writeup for the recently published article in The Hindu , which was later optimized to concentrate mainly on Diaspora*.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2132236.ece