The Ethics of Life
The Unknown Promise of Internet Freedom
Peter Singer
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MELBOURNE – Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.
But in one of those liberal democracies, Australia, the government recently said that it would legislate to block access to some Web sites. The prohibited material includes child pornography, bestiality, incest, graphic “high impact” images of violence, anything promoting or providing instruction on crime or violence, detailed descriptions of the use of proscribed drugs, and how-to information on suicide by Web sites supporting the right to die for the terminally or incurably ill.
A readers’ poll in the Sydney Morning Herald showed 96% opposed to those proposed measures, and only 2% in support. More readers voted in this poll than in any previous poll shown on the newspaper’s Web site, and the result is the most one-sided.
The Internet, like the steam engine, is a technological breakthrough that changed the world. Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world’s greatest libraries – indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need.
Remarkably, this came about with no central planning, no governing body, and no overall control, other than a system for allocating the names of Web sites and their addresses. That something so significant could spring up independently of governments and big business led many to believe that the Internet can bring the world a new type of freedom. It is as if an inherently decentralized and individualist technology had realized an anarchist vision that would have seemed utterly utopian if dreamed up by Peter Kropotkin in the nineteenth century. That may be why so many people believe so strongly that the Internet should be left completely unfettered.
Perhaps because Google has been all about making information more widely available, its collaboration with China’s official Internet censors has been seen as a deep betrayal. The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the twenty-first century, as North Korea has done.
Reality is more complex. The Chinese government was never going to cave in to Google’s demand that it abandon Internet censorship. The authorities will no doubt find ways of replacing the services that Google provided – at some cost, and maybe with some loss of efficiency, but the Internet will remain fettered in China.
Nevertheless, the more important point is that Google is no longer lending its imprimatur to political censorship. Predictably, some accuse Google of seeking to impose its own values on a foreign culture. Nonsense. Google is entitled to choose how and with whom it does business. One could just as easily assert that during the period in which Google filtered its results in China, China was imposing its values on Google.
Google’s withdrawal is a decision in accordance with its own values. In my view, those values are more defensible than the values that lead to political censorship – and who knows how many Chinese would endorse the value of open access to information, too, if they had the chance?
Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change. Last month, when the governor of China’s Hubei province threatened a journalist and grabbed her recorder after she asked a question about a local scandal, journalists, lawyers, and academics used the Internet to object. A Web report critical of the governor’s behavior stayed up for 18 hours before censors ordered it taken down. By then, however, the news was already widely dispersed.
Likewise, in Cuba, Yoani Sánchez’s blog Generation Y has broken barriers that conventional media could not. Although the Cuban government has blocked access to the Web site on which the blog is posted, it is available around the world in many languages, and distributed within Cuba on compact disks and flash drives.
The new freedom of expression brought by the Internet goes far beyond politics. People relate to each other in new ways, posing questions about how we should respond to people when all that we know about them is what we have learned through a medium that permits all kinds of anonymity and deception. We discover new things about what people want to do and how they want to connect to each other.
Do you live in an isolated village and have unusual hobbies, special interests, or sexual preferences? You will find someone online with whom to share them. Can’t get to a doctor? You can check your symptoms online – but can you be sure that the medical Web site you are using is reliable?
Technology can be used for good or for bad, and it is too soon to reach a verdict on the Internet. (In the eighteenth century, who could have foreseen that the development of the steam engine would have an impact on earth’s climate?) Even if it does not fulfill the anarchist dream of ending repressive government, we are still only beginning to grasp the extent of what it will do to the way we live.
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Practical Ethics, One World, and, most recently, The Life You Can Save.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
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WaltFrench 01:43 05 Apr 10
“Remarkably, this came about with no central planning…”
Remarkably, it's not just Libertarians who discount the critical funding and demand from US DARPA in creating the internet, and the large amount of volunteer work, much done by govt employees or contractors. Yes, the commercialization of the internet has taken this kernel of capability, magnified it by many orders of magnitude and made it relevant to the ordinary citizenry who originally funded it thru taxes. But arguably, the required coordination between individual players might not have happened without the government directions.
Does this history matter to the argument here, which is that the Internet is a force for change? I think so, as it demonstrates that an open government is helpful for democratic expression, while a fearful government will, either by overt censorship or by crippling the infrastructure for a free flow of ideas, slow the free flow of ideas.
Allow me to repeat the note: a government that limits the accessibility of the internet, whether by commission or omission, can be presumed to be fearful of its citizenry's use of information, hoping to reserve the access for its trusted, top tier citizenry, perhaps those more aligned with the political party in power. I'm not saying that the government should subsidize free internet access, but both your example and the experience of the US shows this unfortunate effort to dumb down its populace.
Kristi 05:53 07 Apr 10
For those who would reduce the study of the science of astrology to folly there is limited understanding. However, if you contact Rick Levine to confirm this I am certain that the explaination of the understanding available through his analysis is unique and compelling. I suggest he being the expert would say something like this: The "Age of Aquarius is upon us. Countries like China, India, Iraq are all slow to recognize the lessons of the past regarding outmoded ways of interpreting new information. Before in the Age of Pisces there was a duality, deception, illusion, delusion. Now with the rebel Aquarius pouring out information and technology these powers are feeling the impact of change in many old and fearful ways. The facts of global humanitarianism are just coming to light and the commonality of our wants, needs, feelings, and values are becoming less avoidable or threatening. Enlightened ones who recognize this are the greatest hope in the creating of a workable future for humanity. The old has to dispell it's hold over reality in every way...cultures, religions and worn out dogmas are in the way of the ethics and rationality of choicemaking for too many in this day and age. Information and freedom are not going away, but are so real, that nothing can threaten them in any way. Astrology teaches that this generation will take responsibility for transformation that elevates our thinking best by real thorough and even mentally aggressive, positive masculine energy of Aquarian Revolution". "Love, Love, Love...Nothing you can know that isn't known." Beatles. There will be a resurgence of this point for the next five months from today. Those currently who do "Throw our proverbial "baby"(Age of Aquarius)out with the "bathwater"(modern technology)Have missed the entire wisdom of the past and are in fact vain and delluded about how this is going to go down. Since the Chinese and other cultures are grasping at security and autonomy it would be wise to
transform fears into co-operation via information sharing of the sort that separated our species from the other fourteen types of hominids humans have been proven to have outlived (who obviously missed the point of doing so and are currently extinct: unless one has actually seen "big foot's prototype" among us). See the future now: We do have to be the change we choose to witness in the world. It is a fact not an opinion. To the degree these leaders can overcome fear and deception to keep the illusion of control we will witness good or bad for our global connectedness to them. Wisdom involves reason and information. Sharing that spirit will give aid in the ways more hope will be proliferated for our challenges. I say we seek to understand and acknowledge their concerns so that the light of reason will appeal to their understanding and transformation in a world now guided by rational unity.
Mountern 03:14 20 Apr 10
Do you think all information should be freely available? How about how to assemble bombs?
At the end of the day striking the right balance is important. In general, China's attempt to restrict information flow is for all the wrong reasons. But that is not to say they do not have a legitimate concern about ensuring social order and stablity while they pursue economic growth.
The country is still too fragile to withstand propaganda onslaughts by Western media with hidden agendas.
alykhansatchu 12:39 03 Apr 10
An Excellent Piece and nuanced as well. I would agree with you that The Internet and the Information Age [which is how I believe the c21st will be remembered] is like a Live Stream and cannot be dammed for long. It has an all powerful Forward Motion.
I think the Google issue is not as straight forward as You have allowed. Given that Information is the most valuable Capital of all, surely then Google occupies a Predominant Market Position as Market Maker and Custodian of the World's Information. It looks in many ways like a Good Old fashioned Chokehold or Corner, if you will. Therefore, it was always likely that this Preeminent position would collide with what some Countries might consider the National Interest.
Google played smart Politics domestically to elide Google, Free Information on one side [and capture the State Department whilst they were at it] versus China and Censorship on the other. It played well in Mountain View as did comments that Google were only seeking to make Life better for the Chinese People [the extraordinary absurdity of that comment clearly was lost on the Speaker] but the Point remains that the Argument was a great deal more complex than first apparent.
Aly-Khan Satchu
www.rich.co.ke