[governance] FW: <nettime> Evgeny Morozov: Free Speech and the Internet (- and Wikipedia)

Sat Dec 5 04:52:15 EST 2009

Interesting in light of recent discussions.

M
-----Original Message-----
From: nettime-l-bounces at kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-bounces at kein.org] On
Behalf Of Patrice Riemens
Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 9:34 PM
To: nettime-l at kein.org
Subject: <nettime> Evgeny Morozov: Free Speech and the Internet (- and
Wikipedia)

New York Times/ International Herald Tribune Nov 28-9, 2009 Original at:
http://bit.ly/5lpXS3

Free Speech and the Internet
By EVGENY MOROZOV

To appreciate the full bouquet of challenges that the Internet is posing to
the modern nation state, look no further than the case of two German men who
are waging a legal battle against the U.S.-based Wikimedia Foundation  the
charity behind the online encyclopedia  for violating their rights to
privacy. In 1990 the two men killed a German actor, were sentenced to life
in prison in 1993, and were released on parole a few years ago. The German
law allows them to start afresh; the media has been barred from mentioning
their full names in relation to the crime.

The German-language Wikipedia complied and removed their full names from its
entries. The English-language Wikipedians, after producing more than 60
pages of arguments, persevered. Stopp & Stopp, the improbably named law firm
representing the two men, duly filed lawsuits against the Wikimedia
Foundation in German courts, which prompted accusations of censorship from
the likes of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a free-speech group.

Striking a balance between an individuals right to privacy and the publics
right to know is never easy and is usually the result of intense national
deliberations. Thus the non-compliance by the English-language Wikipedia has
most interesting implications for Germany: As long as English remains a
global language and Wikipedia entries occupy top search results on Google,
many Germans would continue stumbling upon information that their courts do
not want them to see. Limiting access to Wikipedia does not seem like an
acceptable solution: Only very brave (and
impractical) judges would go that far.

Such defiance to authorities is not necessarily a bug in Wikipedias
programming: By the same token, Thai courts cant force Wikipedia to adopt a
deferential attitude to the countrys monarch because of its draconian lèse
majesté laws. Few would argue that Wikipedians should comply with those.

So what to make of Wikipedias rebelliousness? That it has inadvertently
challenged the sovereignty of the German state should not be written off as
just another ironic twist of post-modernity. Germany is not the only
government that has difficulty maintaining control in todays decentralized
and digitally-mediated environment, which knows no borders and respects no
court orders. How could a modern nation state aspire to protect local norms
if it has lost the ability to enforce the very laws that follow from these
norms? If entire nations are forced to live in information environments that
no longer reflect their own assumptions about human nature, would all of our
legal and social norms eventually converge to some global lowest common
denominator?

We are unlikely to find comprehensive answers to any of these questions this
early into the digital game. But we can try solving them one by one. The
current case in Germany presents a good opportunity to examine Wikipedias
rapidly growing power  and the numerous ways in which it can be harnessed
to right the wrongs that are bound to arise on its pages.

If newspapers produce the first drafts of history, Wikipedians certainly
produce its latest and  thanks to Google  most viewed drafts. Wikipedia
has become an extremely powerful platform with tremendous real-world
repercussions for those caught in the crossfire of its decision-making. For
this reason alone, Wikipedia can no longer be run like the favorite basement
project of anonymous 13-year-olds.

The German case illustrates that some of the disputes could be too complex
to be easily pigeon-holed into an intractable body of Wikipedias rules and
practices. To resolve such cases in a satisfactory fashion, one needs a
thorough understanding of philosophy, history, law and ethics; having some
hard-earned worldly wisdom wouldnt hurt either. So far, Jimmy Wales, a
co-founder of the project, has served as Wikipedias deity-in-chief,
adjudicating the cases he saw fit. Often, he did make sensible
interventions, including a recent plea to Wikipedians not to disclose the
details of the kidnapping of David Rohde, a New York Times reporter in
Afghanistan. However, whatever Mr. Wales individual talents, many of
decisions that Wikipediands need to make appear too daunting for any
individual to decide on his own.

Thus, whenever current rules and norms of the project come into conflict,
Wikipedians shouldnt shun away from asking for help. An external
international panel comprising the worlds most eminent philosophers, legal
scholars, historians and others can prevent challenging cases from getting
ugly before they reach the courts.

After all, there is a reason why newspapers have editorial boards and
ombudsmen; it seems strange that one of the most powerful media sites in the
world hasnt yet followed suit. There would be little harm in bringing half
a dozen wise people on board, if only to reaffirm Wikipedias commitment to
becoming the worlds most respected  rather than most feared  source of
knowledge.

Evgeny Morozov is a Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University and a contributing
editor to Foreign Policy. His book on Internet democracy will be published
in 2010.

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission #
<nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, #  collaborative
text filtering and cultural politics of the nets #  more info:
http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org

!DSPAM:2676,4b19e7d8177552167155274!

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance