[governance] Content filtering and jurisdiction of cyberspace

Thu May 30 19:39:07 EDT 2013

A digression, to be sure, but Suresh, it’s falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.

A truly excellent blog post on that subject is at http://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/

--

James S. Tyre

Law Offices of James S. Tyre

10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512

Culver City, CA 90230-4969

310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)

jstyre at jstyre.com

Policy Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation

https://www.eff.org

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Suresh Ramasubramanian
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 4:29 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Kabani
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Faisal Hasan; Chapter Delegates; ISOC Chapter Support
Subject: Re: [governance] Content filtering and jurisdiction of cyberspace

This has to be handled and presented carefully.  Because Google at least has to take first amendment protections for free speech into account when deciding what content to take down

The first amendment is quite broad but does have specific limits and exceptions ("shouting fire in a crowded theater" is an example).

The suggestion of having a local instance of Google where a country's national censorship applies - well, it isn't cheap or easy to do, so Google may comply, refuse to comply and get blocked, or simply - like mainland china, where they apparently faced attacks as well, just exit the market.

--srs (iPad)

On 31-May-2013, at 3:33, Kabani <kabani.asif at gmail.com> wrote:

Faisal,

We can understand the problem you have highlighted, since we are in same boat, as you also aware pakistan has similar problem that YouTube is blocked based on the content. Till to date google has not been able to solve the problem with govt. 

Sad to hear about the deaths of people. Let us all sit together and  try to solve the issue together as one society.

Technical and policy, advice from, community pl.

Sincerely

On Friday, 31 May 2013, Faisal Hasan wrote:

Dear Friends,

Bangladesh Govt. plans to filter internet contents. We know that this option of filtering is not a solution, instead efforts must be taken to remove content from the source. The move actually stemmed from Google’s refusal to take down the trailer of a religiously sensitive film from its website Youtube.com. Bangladesh even asked Google to install a mirror server for Bangladesh nine months ago so that such videos could be filtered out. Youtube is still blocked in Bangladesh since last September.  Recently, in Bangladesh the Internet has become a double edged sword which is used not only by activists to raise voice for legitimate reasons but also by some bad politicians to provoke innocent people to create deadly violence. We have already have had 'our spring' last February. Clearly, the government is in a dire situation.

>From our chapter we are initiating a dialogue with the government in two weeks time. We would like to get your inputs about this issue. I know many govts have implemented filtering like this and all most all the report I have seen suggest that this does more harm than good for the people. The situation in a country like Bangladesh deserves special care as there are millions of people here who donot have basic education and are easily agitated by inappropriate/fake content. To give you an idea about the seriousness of the issue, I would say that in a single day in February 40 people were dead!

Please let us know what you think can be done? What is the alternative? Does global companies have more responsibility in making their policies such that it takes care about issues in developing countries?

Thanks

Faisal Hasan, PhD

Internet Society Bangladesh Dhaka Chapter

-- 
Sent from iPad

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