The Debate for Anti-Internet Censorship And Net Neutrality for Global Internet Freedom (Draft
I)
Alexander Luna
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
The Debate for Anti-Internet Censorship And Net Neutrality for Global Internet Freedom (Draft
I)
Thanks to the advent of the public Internet network in 1992, we are now familiarized
with an eased ability to communicate with others, share opinions and concerns, keep up to date
with current events, access various forms of entertainment, and even keep our own personal lives
organized and archived online. It is a neutral place where one can do and say almost whatever
one pleases, a place where one can speak his/her mind and access anything they might be
interested in. However, despite this wonderful freedom that society been fortunate enough to
have for the past decade and a half, some countries and leaders see the potential danger that this
tool has; and that it should be filtered, monitored, and watched upon with strict regulations – a
totalitarian-esque control of the state with the government watching over their citizens’ every
move. The debate for Net Neutrality is making more of a rise than ever. In the end, the
implementation of internet censorship in today’s modern day and age is restricting, as it is
preventing the forward creation of new media, human creativity, communication, and global
awareness.
When the internet was first incepted, it was a smaller, centralized network, but it
eventually sought out to be worldwide and free. The internet’s intentions were soon obvious: to
be an open network for anyone to use and utilize, a new piece of technology that modern society
should be able to take advantage of, unfiltered and neutral. The internet today, is much different
than what it was when it was first available to the public in 1992; originally was used by a group
of scientists, and the military to experiment communication between data systems and various
ways to transfer data and access information. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that
the internet would become readily available to the public for full access and use. Throughout the
late 1990s and early 2000s became the debate for network neutrality and neutral internet use.
Network neutrality, a term coined by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu, “describes the effort by
adherents of an ‘open access’ communications platform to treat all data on a network equally.”
Essentially, this means that net neutrality is the basic principle that networks participating on the
internet advocate no restrictions on content, sites, or any kind of media, or how the media is
communicated. This simple ideology has become the basis of internet principles and policies,
and is what the internet has thrived so much on in the past 15 years.
Despite this net neutrality philosophy, totalitarian countries such as communist China,
North Korea, and Iran are filtering and censoring the internet in their prospective countries. They
are filtering and censoring certain websites, with China’s main concern with censoring the search
engine giant, Google. With the filtering of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook,
authoritarian countries have gained a dominion over what kind of content their users can access,
especially during controversial current events such as riots, or political issues. This type of
censorship has rendered most of their internet users helpless and left in the dark.
Communist China has been the worst proponent of internet censorship; as they are the
figureheads of the entire controversy and concern, pushing for the most authoritarian control and
monitoring of the internet. The effects of internet censorship on the internet users in China is
more prevalent than in most other countries, as China in the past five year molded itself into the
largest body behind the internet censorship controversy. In the case of internet user Wang
Xiaoning of China in 2007, Xiaoning was arrested by Chinese authorities when a web page he
posted contained anti-communist debate and values. He was sentenced to work in a labor camp
in 2007 and his court case was semi-dismissed. However, the effect of Xiaoning’s arrest has
become a staple for the Chinese censorship debate, and the U.S. Government, Google, and other
parties are looking at his case as an example. Not only did the arrest of Xiaoning take a toll on
the internet censorship debate, but the riots in Xinjiang in 2009 caused China to shut down mass
portions and regions of the internet in its country. Of these measures taken by the Chinese
government, they are sought taken to disable and effectively cripple their citizen’s access to
opinions outside of wherever they are currently living.
Despite the evidence provided about how internet censorship is wrong and how net
neutrality should be implemented and followed, there is still a fairly large debate following some
of the content on the internet. Various questions are raised about the universal blocking of
pornography, violent websites, anti-war pages, or pages that are collectively deemed as indecent
or immoral. Other questions are raised about how to keep our children safe from lewd content on
the internet, with a nationwide ISP and government censorship/ban being the main suggestion for
removing this content. People advocating internet censorship in favor or removing pornography
are set out to filter this content, both in hopes to keep the internet clean and user friendly and
keep the children safe.
Keeping our modern society moving forward both culturally and realistically is the
continuation of net neutrality and the eradication of internet censorship. The implementation of
new internet policies and circumvention technologies can easily fight the debate about internet
censorship, encouraging net neutrality and internet freedom from censorship. The ability to
access any and all kinds of information can be a daunting privilege, but the amount of great
things that come from the internet completely outweigh most (if not all) of the questionable
content that can be found online. The destruction of internet censorship in countries like
communist China and in Iran would ultimately help their citizens become more aware of the
events happening in their surroundings, and allow them to discuss them amongst themselves,
connect with others, and share information in regards to whatever political or cultural event that
is going on near them.