Writings

This part of the Censorship guide considers writing about censorship of the internet. Subsequent parts deal with freedom of speech, site labelling and filtering tools, offline censorship as a model for practice online, and official secrets.

  overviews

As yet there are few outstanding studies of online censorship; much of the best writing is embedded within larger works about regulation of the global information infrastructure or the nature of the digital economy.

lan Travis' new Bound & Gagged (London, Profile 00) is an account of public policy and agitation in the United Kingdom. The bouncy Sex, Laws & Cyberspace: Freedom & Censorship on the Frontiers of the Online Revolution (New York, Owl/Holt 97) by Jonathan Wallace & Mark Mangan is a popular account of developments in the US. It has a companion site. 

Interpreting Censorship In Canada (Toronto, Uni of Toronto Press 99), edited by Klaus Petersen & Allan Hutchinson, is a collection of papers on internet censorship and the offline variety. Liberating Cyberspace: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, & the Internet (London, Pluto Press 98) is a collection of short essays edited by Jonathan Cooper.

From the technolibertarian left Howard Rheingold's communique Why Censoring Cyberspace Is Dangerous & Futile asserts there's

no excuse to cripple the most valuable technology America has going for it. Heavy handed attempts to impose restrictions on the the unruly but incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit of cooperative knowledge sharing that makes the Net valuable for everyone 

That's in line with John Perry Barlow's deliriously silly A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (DIC) 

... Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind....  I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Back in the real world legal thinking is, predictably, mixed. 

Yaman Akdeniz's 1997 paper The Regulation of Pornography & Child Pornography on the Internet in the Journal of Information, Law & Technology is a starting point for considering the EU regime described in the  European Commission Working Party report on Illegal & Harmful Content on the Internet and the associated green paper on the Protection of Minors & Human Dignity in Audiovisual & Information Services.  

In the US the Stanford Law Review paper on Law & Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace by David Johnson & David Post argues that efforts to control the flow of electronic information across physical borders are likely to prove futile. 

Donald Stepka's paper on Obscenity On-Line: a Transactional Approach to Computer Transfers of Potentially Obscene Material disagrees: existing law is adequate and its business as usual.

An Australian perspective's provided by new media lawyer Philip Argy's paper and the Digital Technology Law Journal article by Michael Blakeney & Fiona Macmillan.

  impacts

The economic impact of censorship is a neglected research topic, surprisingly so given recent hype about the information economy/society. 

Apart from the obvious works such as Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston, Harvard Business School Press 99) by Hal Varian & Carl Shapiro and the OECD's report on The Economic & Social Impacts of Electronic Commerce: Preliminary Findings & Research Agenda the following publications are suggestive:

A Nation Transformed By Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States From Colonial Times To The Present (New York, Oxford Uni Press) - a sparkling collection of essays edited by leading business historians Alfred Chandler & James Cortada

Menahem Blondheim's News Over The Wires: The Telegraph & The Flow Of Public Information In America 1844-97 (Cambridge, Harvard Uni Press 94)

News In The Mail: The Press, Post Office & Public Information (Westport, Greenwood Press 89) by Richard Kielbowicz

Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity & the Assault on Genius (New York, Random 92) Edward de Grazia's engagingly written - and for the moment definitive - study of literary censorship and its enemies

For studies of cultural impacts - or perceptions thereof - turn to the offline part of this guide.

  anxieties and evaluations

Is the internet an open sewer from hell? In answering that question we recommend Risk & the Internet: Perception and Reality, Christopher Hunter & Eric Zimmer's advice to the COPA Commission. The Commission's final report is also recommended.

Two perspectives on political opportunism and media hysteria about offensive content on the Web - particularly the "great cyberporn panic of 1995" - are provided in Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (New York, Times 98), the memoir by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Mike Godwin and in You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (New Haven, Yale Uni Press 00) by former Federal Communications Commissioner Reed Hundt.  

Edward Cavazos & Gavino Morin's Cyberspace & the Law (Cambridge, MIT Press  95) predates collapse of the CDA and COPA but provides a useful introduction to the issues, along with information about state and local legislation.  

As always, Ithiel de Sola Pool is of exceptional value, in particular the discussion in Politics in Wired Nations (New Brunswick, Transaction 98) and the prescient Technologies of Freedom: Of Free Speech In An Electronic Age (Cambridge, Belknap 87). 

Eli Noam's essay Principles for the Communications Act of 2034 is a succinct analysis by Pool's protege.

The essays in Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy & the Global Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MIT Press 97) edited by Brian Kahin & Charles Nesson, and High Noon On The Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues In Cyberspace (Cambridge, MIT Press 96) are also of significance.

For those interested in tracking abuses we recommend the online edition of the Index on Censorship. 


  next part  (freedom)