newspaperThe U.S. State dept has decided to provide some laws helping to clarify what obligations a US company has in regards to internet censorship for a foreign country.1

“State Department officials said they will push to encourage foreign countries to allow greater freedom of expression online and help U.S. businesses figure out what to do when called on to enforce repressive laws in countries where they operate. Many technology companies … want to work to help those who lack the freedom that we often take for granted,” said Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky. “If we band together, we can make significant progress on this issue.”

In case you missed it Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all made the news lately with reports of how they have each help the Chinese government censor and sometimes prosecute web surfers in separate ways. Each company in question is pretty much saying the same thing about there separate but related scandals, that the Chinese people are better off with their products and that they must follow Chinese law if the want to do business there. They’ve also hinted that they would like some regulatory guidance. And I can see how it could help in this instance. If they told China “I’m sorry but U.S. Law prevents us from shutting down that blog or giving you that user’s IP address,” China is not going to be able to censor or prosecute web surfers.
Yahoo made an interesting point on this area.
When the government demands the IP address of a user Yahoo has no idea why they want it. And to stop things like child porn and stalkers, they have to comply with such government requests. Their obligation is to follow the law, not make law.

Well good! I hope the internet users of China get a little more freedom!

However . . .

What about here in America? In America the internet is censored by the Federal govt. state govt. local govt, schools, libraries, major corporations and small companies.

The tale of RackSpace is frightening.4After a lot of particularly bad news about Cheney and Bush the U.S. government lashed out at independent media and seized their servers, in America ad overseas. This of course, put them out of business. They weren’t even the ones who reported the news on the web sites in question. They just provided hosting and co-location services. Initially the government wouldn’t even supply a warrant or admit they did it. After many long court battles parts of the warrants were unsealed. There are more cases that effect everyday users, not just those trying to read or report news.

For instance New Mexico just passed a law that bans almost ALL internet content, anything from an image of Michelangelo’s David to speech about prison rape, abortion, safer sex practices, and other sexually related topics would be criminalized, she said.

“It’s sad that the state of New Mexico, known for its wide-ranging free speech traditions and dedication to the arts, has passed a law criminalizing online discussion about safer sex or displays of classic nudes and other artistic images,” Jennie Lusk, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico said.2

According to Beeson, the law is an unconstitutional content-based restriction on free speech that would reduce adult communication to levels acceptable for a six-year old. Is this just a case of a poorly written law? No this is the third re-write, the other two where struck down by the courts upon challenge. An almost identical law in New York was passed and then struck down by courts.3

I could go on and on (for instance, for several years, the word “breast” was banned for use in all chat rooms and forums on AOL), you get the picture though. I just think that congress shouldn’t forget about the prolific attacks on free speech here at home.