The United Kingdom's government--or any government, for that matter--should
think at least twice before regulating content on the Internet, states a
report released today by a British cyber-liberties organization.
In the report, "Who
Watches the Watchmen," Cyber-Rights &
Cyber-Liberties argues that government, in its attempt to control
information on the Internet, may wind up doing more harm than good by
applying overly broad standards to a medium that is, by definition,
multinational and multicultural.
This is far from the first time the group has addressed
censorship on the Net and it is by no means alone in its dedication to
Net anti-censorship issues. In fact, the ACLU issued a paper in August,
entitled "Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?" Yaman Akdeniz, head of
Cyber-Liberties, said he agrees with most of the ACLU paper, but he added
that it was important to weigh in on the issue while ratings systems in
the United Kingdom are being developed.
"These systems are developed here in the U.K. without any public debate by
industry-based organizations," he said in an email interview. "It is
important that there should be a counter argument. I did not want to wait
till these systems are accepted as standards. It is time to act now rather
than later."
The main goal of the report, he said, is to broaden the debate and "explain why
the debates on regulation of Internet content should take place openly and
with the involvement of the public at large rather than at the hands of a
few industry-based private bodies."
The report criticizes the two most popular forms of Internet controls being
considered by governments and others: ratings systems and filtering
software used on a group level. In the former category, the idea is to give
sites ratings based on their content. Browsers could then be set to avoid
certain ratings. In the latter, specific programs make different claims to
filter out content based on their own criteria. Both systems, the group
argues, tend to be "much more intrusive and restrictive than the supporters
of rating systems and filtering software claim."
Akdeniz also argues that the systems are being primarily developed in the
United States and therefore are biased toward U.S. culture, which is
arguably different than the culture in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.
The report also says that censorship is being justified in the name of
ridding the Internet of child pornography. But Akdeniz argues that child
pornography is already illegal and that no special programs need to be
developed to counteract it.
"Child pornography is often used as an excuse to regulate the Internet, but
there is no need to rate illegal content such as child pornography since it
is forbidden for any conceivable audience, and this kind of illegal content
should be regulated by the enforcement of existing U.K. laws," the report
states.
It also argues that it is impossible to regulate an inherently
international medium with local statutes.
"Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties argues that a radical self-regulatory
solution for the hybrid Internet content should not include any kind of
rating systems and self-regulatory solutions should include minimum
government and industry involvement," the report states.
In sum, it says that "any filtering system should be market-driven by the
local industries, without government interference, and the local
industries creating these kind of parental tools should be open and
accountable to the online users."