The Destabilizing Influence of the Internet

No doubt I'll be returning to this subject, because the effects of Internet access on existing power structures in business, culture, media and government are just in their beginning stages. Here's the latest manifestation of the story that I've come across, in the quoted article below.

The questions, for Western societies in particular, include how much we believe in free speech and open societies? Are open societies ultimately in the interests of business (to me that answer is a resounding "yes!")? Are we ready for the way the Internet is transforming society the way the advent of the printing press did, or will we take steps (as the U. S. telecom lobby is now doing, to create new revenue streams and protect established markets) to discriminate against access to non-obscene content, ideas, products and services that cannot pay a hefty preferred-distribution fee?

Here's the article snippet, with my bolded emphasis added (notice the home address of this site is through blogspot):

July 22, 2006
India Calls It a Technological Error, but Blog Blockade Continues
By Somini Sengupta

NEW DELHI, July 21 — After two days of angry inquiries and charges of government censorship, the Indian government took a step Thursday toward explaining a mysterious blockade on personal blogs, calling it “a technological error” that would be repaired soon.

In an e-mail message sent early on Thursday, India time, an official at the office of the Consulate General of India in New York said the order to block a handful of Web sites, including the popular blogspot.com, which plays host to thousands of personal blogs, had been prompted by the discovery of a site that contained what the official called “two impertinent pages” rife with material considered to be “extremely derogatory references to Islam.”

In an effort to stave off potential sectarian violence, the official said, the government’s Department of Telecommunications instructed Internet service providers to block access to the two pages. “Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them, which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs,” the official explained.

As of Friday, however, the sites remained blocked.

The consulate’s response came a day after a number of news articles on the matter appeared in the American news media, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. It remained unclear why, despite repeated efforts, officials at the Department of Telecommunications in the capital, New Delhi, refused to provide any explanations for the blockade earlier this week.

The blockade has sown anger and confusion among Indian bloggers, who accuse the government of censorship and demand to know why their sites have been jammed.

Among the speculations that had been offered was that certain blogs could be used by terrorists to coordinate operations.

The terrorism issue gets muddy, given the tools governments are now using to sift through all digitized communications, including voice data, to flag targeted keywords for review by counterterrorist, government intelligence agencies. This has brought great controversy in the U. S., since the 4th Amendment to the Constitution requires a court order for the monitoring of citizens' interactions, and apparently this has not been happening. Internationally, there is no real prevailing law.

The potential for the abuse of surveillance power, unchecked in the hands of a state, is there for the taking. History ( ahem!) provides a clear guide on the matter. And yet, societies seek security, and commerce benefits from stability. While there's a lot of money to be made from war, perpetual war tends not to benefit anyone, including the business community. Unstable international markets and unpredictable energy prices are bad for most businesses and economies.

The systems for protecting otherwise open societies, free speech, innovation and commerce in the Internet age are not yet established. My main point, however, is that the Internet, and blogs like this one, apparently now barred in India (where I do have newsletter subscribers), are raising new questions and destabilizing established institutions and systems of authority.

This does not even begin to adress when online sites and communities form with the specific purpose to monitor and criticize a given company. That's a new headache few businesses are prepared to comprehend. Now, potentially, everyone online has the power of the "printing press," with no barriers to entry.

That's a new world order indeed.

(The image above is of Gutenberg's printing press)