Goverment and the Internet

Q:

Discuss issues relating to the regulation of the internet by goverments.


A:
Ai Weiwei is an artist in China who constantly speaks out against the communist party, something not many people are courageous enough to do. Through his blogs he can freely comment about the government and he has a large amount of support. When a town in China suffered an earthquake and poor government buildings collapsed the government refused to release names. Weiwei put together a project to find out the names of the people and children in a school killed. The names were published on the web and ever since Weiwei has been watched very agressivly by the Chinese government. They removed blog posts on his website and eventually shut it down entirely in 2009.

The government was uncomfortable with having a citizen who could freely speak out through the internet about injustice. The government was afraid of what kind of support he could garner. They sought to control and stop him through censoring and controlling his blog. They even demolished his studio recently. In this case the government wants to be able to hide information and control its people. Its all about keeping its hold over its people in order to keep power.

The internet is one of the places almost anybody can go to in order to speak out and use it as a tool. Therefore, if a government were to censor it like in the communication decency act (1996), or the internet kill switch legislation, or allow legislation regarding net neutrality to go through, the internet would start down a slope of becoming more and more controlled and eventually loose all effectiveness and spirit of what it actually is. The government should keep its hands off the internet because it is already a tool for free speech. As soon as the government starts playing with free speech we get into very dangerous territory.