"A Closer Look"

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

April 22, 1996  Electronic Buyers News,  Page 2.   A Closer Look column, by 
Jack Robertson

"bigbrother.com"

Orwell would have loved it.  National tyrants are helpless to control the 
free flow of information within their borders.  And if they do succeed in 
closing down ramps to the global data superhighway, their economies crumble.

Not that some folks aren't trying to rein in the Internet.

Strong-arm governments--including China, Vietnam, Singapore, and some 
African military dictatorships--want to control domestic access to the Net.  
Even democracies such as Germany want to censor the Web, and the European 
Union is debating regulation of it.

The United States itself could end up trying to control the Net in 
well-intentioned but dubious efforts to censor content deemed obscene.  The 
censor's club could be provided unwittingly by the movie industry and by 
consumer-electronics manufacturers.  Their rigid copyright protection plan 
for DVD would require that every computer I/O interface be designed to block 
out the copying of any copyrighted motion picture.  Once in place, others 
could sieze the I/O block to bar access to any content thought to be 
objectionable.

Uncle Sam could also end up giving ammunition to Internet censors in a 
yet-to-be-released proposal to the G-7 economic powers pertaining to 
copyright protection on the Internet.  The Clinton administration will 
submit the plan to the next G-7 conference in Lyon, France, in late June.  
The administration's earlier copyright plan for the U.S. National 
Information Infrastructure has stirred plenty of controversy in th is 
country over its potential shackling of the free flow of information.

So far, the unruly and ubiquitous Internet has defied almost all restraints. 
 Governments, businesses, politically correct factions can't get their arms 
around this amorphous giant.

Stalin could jam out the BBC and the Voice of America.  Iran can bar 
newspapers and periodicals.  Singapore can threaten judicial to try to keep 
the press in line.  But how do you cordon off the Web?  Some regimes 
envision their own national gateways to control Net traffic acrosss their 
borders.   Fat chance.  Even if police states could build an Internet 
firewall, it would take the resources of a National Security Agency to 
monitor the traffic and ferret out noxious communications.

In a first thrust to control electronic data, China is regulating all 
foreign news services through its Xinhua News Agency.  That way, Big Brother 
can lower the boom wherever a central node can be hit.  

But the anarchical Internet has no central control points--In fact, very 
little control at all.  A grassroots paradigm, the Net is a totally free 
democratic voice.

Like it or not, we need to keep it that way.

[end of article.]