<IT WORLD> Black hole of censorship
By Martin J Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - Internet censorship is on the rise globally and the web's
benevolent uncle, Google, wants to do something about it so that it can feed
its products to more people. This week, the search giant released new online
tools to monitor specific instances of government censorship and
content-removal requests that it frequently receives.
According to the company blurb, the new Transparency Report [1] will maximize
the transparency of the flow information regarding Google tools and services
around the world. The interactive map shows the number of requests the company
gets from
governments to remove search listings and video, and discloses information on
users.
A tool to monitor government requests for data-removal was originally released
in April, but this version offers a lot more data.
The details given are quite comprehensive, with traffic reports on each country
in relation to specific Google services such as YouTube, Earth, Gmail, Maps,
Search and Google News. Charts can be viewed to show traffic outages when
governments have blocked services - for example the Iranian blockage of YouTube
in June last year, which is still in effect.
The "land of the free" tops the list, with the US government issuing 4,287
requests for data and 128 removal requests between January and June 2010. In
Asia, the censorship king is obviously China - but in a delicious Catch 22 the
Transparency Report could not disclose any information on demands from the
People's Republic as the data are deemed state secrets.
Elsewhere in Asia, censorship of data services and the Internet is on the rise,
especially in India, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. Unfortunately, Google's
transparency report only applies to its own services. A bigger story would be
told if there was a report including all web services such as Facebook and
Twitter and genres such as pornography, gambling, politics and human rights.
The OpenNet Initiative [2] has a global Internet filtering map that shows a
country-by-country breakdown of Internet filtering by various criteria. These
tools are handy, but the trend they reveal is concerning; online information
censorship is on the rise everywhere, and with the founders of the Internet
leading the pace (according to Google's tool) it does leave us wondering what
the future of the freedom of the World Wide Web holds.
Telecoms
Thailand is having a tough time in its bid to catch up with neighboring
countries in offering third-generation (3G) mobile services to its population.
A court ruling this week resulted in the suspension of the bidding process for
3G licenses within the kingdom, putting it further behind less-developed
Cambodia and Laos, which already have 3G networks in place.
The auctions for the licensing of 3G broadcasting frequencies had been long
awaited in Thailand, although the process has been fraught with setbacks and
entangled in government red tape. This week's Supreme Administrative Court
ruling that the National Telecommunications Commission did not have the
authority to hold 3G auctions only hinders the advancement of technology in the
country.
State-run CAT Telecom initially appealed to the courts to block the auction,
which had been planned for last week, claiming that its own interests would be
damaged. It objected to the sale of 3G licenses to private companies that would
be depriving it of profits from users still using its own 2G networks but who
would be paying the 3G providers instead.
A new scheduling of the licensing process has yet to be announced.
India is in talks with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) about gaining
access to encrypted corporate e-mails after securing access to instant messages
sent via the devices within the country. RIM has yet to confirm or deny whether
the Indian authorities actually have access to any of their services according
to Reuters news agency.
Saudi Arabia has also reached a deal with RIM over access to the instant
messenger service that operates outside of the secure corporate domain. Kuwait
and the United Arab Emirates are seeking similar deals.
Browsers
Microsoft's Internet Explorer maybe on the brink of a comeback as over 2
million people downloaded the beta version of IE9 within two days of its
release last week (see
Explorer puts on power, Asia Times Online, September 28, 2010).
The website hosting the download has received more than 9 million unique
readers and company product managers are upbeat. "All in all, we are encouraged
about the very early response to the IE9 release this past week," one was
quoted as saying.
To win back some of that lost market share, the browser needs to innovate and
offer good enough reasons for users to switch back from Firefox and Chrome.
Notes
1. To see report, click here
2. To see the OpenNet Initiative Internet filtering map, click
here.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
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