wat's all thE fuk: intErnEt, cEnsorship, frEE markEt & frEEdom

Through the mainstream media, we are told that China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and the likes are states that restrict freedom of expression through censorship and limits freedom of expression. On the other side we have the free world which mainly comprises of the US and the Europe where we have unlimited freedom, choice and the entire freedoms one could possibly imagine. I would have taken these down just like any other life in the "Matrix" had I not taken the red pill once in a while. This time it was an article that came in the IEEE Communications Magazine written by none other than Richard Stallman. It had startling revelations which I would like to broadcast with GPL and fair use permissions from Stallman.

The So-Called Free World

1. Let’s start with China (although not a "free" state), where the government plans to Identify and photograph everyone that uses an Internet cafe. ⁽¹⁾

2. Some of the cell phones can be activated by remote command to listen to the user's conversations without giving any sign of listening, by the police⁽²⁾ and by unauthorized individuals.⁽³⁾

3. The European Union mandates keeping record of all phone calls and emails for periods of up to two years.

4. Your cell phone can be used to locate your position by triangulation to amazing accuracies.

5. Denmark’s government has blocked access to a secret list of web pages. Australia’s government plans to follow suit but has met strong resistance, so instead it has forbidden links to a long list of URLs. Australia now says it will sensor access to a secret list of foreign sites starting this year. ⁽⁴⁾

6. Electronic Frontiers Australia was forced under the threat of fines of AUD 11,000 per day to remove a link to an anti-abortion political web site.

7. India has announced a broad plan of censorship that would effectively abolish freedom of the press on the Internet. ⁽⁵⁾

8. In the United States, people have been imprisoned as “terrorists” for running a website which discussed actions taken against experiments on animals.

9. Microsoft Windows has features to spy on the user⁽⁶⁾, Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) features designed to stop the user from making full use of his own files⁽⁷⁾, and an all purpose back door with which Microsoft can forcibly change the software in any way at any time⁽⁸⁾. Microsoft can alter any software, not just its own.⁽⁹⁾

10. In 2009, Amazon remotely commanded the erasure of all the copies of 1984, by George Orwell, that users had bought from Amazon. ⁽¹⁰⁾

11. The French government recently passed a law (HADOPI) to abolish the principle of due process of a law, by punishing Internet users with disconnection on the mere accusation of copying. Although this law is not in effect, United Kingdom has proposed such a law too.

12. Canada reluctantly published a list of suggestions it received from private parties, and HADOPI style punishment without trial was one of them. ⁽¹¹⁾

When the so called democratic and developed countries pursue such forms of censorship, intolerance and restriction of ‘fundamental’ rights, who are they to blame countries like Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, china and the likes of press censorship and restriction of freedom ? It will be sheer hypocrisy and nothing else. It’s nothing new that the developed countries are becoming more and more plutocratic and authoritarian. When George Orwell wrote “1984”, he had in mind the closed structure of some of the communist nations. But whatever the free world doubted and feared in the communist ages of post World War 2, is in their backyards.

References:

wat's all thE fuk

Sunday 18 July 2010

intErnEt, cEnsorship, frEE markEt & frEEdom

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