Clinton seeks global Internet regulation

In a speech yesterday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for 'global Internet standards' that would allow for the freedom of information flow while limiting abuses and illegal activity online.

In her speech she said, "Finding the proper measure for the Internet is critical because the qualities that make the Internet a force for unprecedented progress—its openness, its leveling effect, its reach and speed—also enable wrongdoing on an unprecedented scale."

She went on to talk about what restrictive countries like China and Cuba are doing to curtail internet use while also hailing the use of the Internet in the recent Egyptian change of government.

The speech is an interesting one in many ways. Secretary Clinton is really describing the idea that the Internet should be monitored and regulated so that content can flow freely, but that bad content or wrongdoings online can be curtailed. This argument is one that we do see time and time again around Net Neutrality as well as online editorial censorship in the name of, among other things, children's safety.

The problem is that while the Secretary Clinton's intentions are well meaning, in order to have a free and open Internet you must take the good with the bad.  Yes, there will always be people putting bomb making sites or child pornography online, but there will also be people who will report or even find these people. There will also be regimes like China who will monitor and filter the Internet, but there will also be Chinese citizens who will find ways around web filtering to access websites and communicate online.

The issue that Secretary Clinton is talking about is not the Internet, but it is freedom. To promote freedom and share ideas about democracy and freedom is at issue. The Internet just so happens to be the most modern way that we have to do that today, but tomorrow something else might enable this. So while Secretary Clinton calls on 'global internet standards', she should really be calling for the sharing of ideas both online and offline to achieve her goals.

Comments

[Andrew Ampers Taylor]

Government interference again.

Unless she blocks the visiting of countries sites which she can't control, how on earth is she going to do this?

[funambulist]

I believe, within ten years at the outside, the internet will be available through state-owned and run servers only, to persons uniquely identifiable to the state.

That is, of course, provided the 'authorities' don't dismantle the internet entirely, which is quite obviously what they would love to do.

Use it while you still have it, my friends - very soon it will be lost to us.