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| For those not familiar with internet meme’s, this is “Insanity Wolf’, who as the name suggests, does not always follow the sane means of achieving his goals. |
In a move that could potentially mark the beginning of a divided, monitored and censored internet, blogspot has started redirecting users to country specific sites by introducing country-code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). If you look in the address bar of your browser, our Indian readers will likely see spicyipindia.blogspot.in instead of .com (and Australian readers will see .au, apparently). Google has posted some FAQs about it here. Why is this a problem? Read on:
In short, the reason that Google has done this is so that if there are take-down requests due to either copyright infringement claims or ‘offensive’ content, then they can take down those pages without harming internet users outside that specific country. And the reason that Google is worried enough to be making provisions for this is all the international effort that has been going into making ISPs and intermediaries responsible for the content that goes up on websites/URLs that they’ve hosted. The SOPA / PIPA draft bills included within their jurisdiction all sites that ended with “.com” since those are registered in USA – and would’ve held intermediaries liable for content which came up on any of these sites. These Bills were eventually shelved after the largest ever internet protest took place against it but there are several skeptics who believe it is just a matter of time before a similar bill is presented under a new name. Intermediary liability was a part of the draft ACTA bill for a long time, but was dropped eventually.
Website blocking in India, due to copyright infringement is also an issue. There was a series of guest posts which looked at website blocking due to copyright infringement in India and UK. Leaving aside the issue of copyright infringement, intermediaries are responsible for all kinds of content which fall under the vague description of content which causes ‘inconvenience’ (Section 66A). An example of what can happen due to this: CIS sent out frivolous take-down notices to 7 internet companies in India and found that 6 out of 7 of the companies over-complied, i.e. removing ‘potentially’ offensive content as well – and this was after sending ‘complaints’ about content that was not actually offensive in the first place! Facebook and Google have already started removing content that were ‘found offensive’ to local political and religious leaders after a Delhi court ordered them to do so.
Freedom of speech and expression can take a backseat, companies need to make extra profits off unfair copyright laws and dissent must be stifled!
The point here being – successful or not, the continual talk and effort of shifting the burden to ISPs and intermediaries to be liable for content hosted by them has ‘scared’ Google, one of the largest players, into making certain changes so that they cannot be held liable under any (ridiculous) local laws – existing or potentially drafted. By creating ccTLDs, Google has, in a way, given in to lobbyists and supporters of the such removal, blocking and censorship. Dividing the internet into ‘national boundaries’, also will likely break down the voices of dissent against harmful laws and regulations. Digital communication has been allowing people to voice their thoughts, display their creative sides and communicate like never before. By allowing the internet to be divided so that parts of it can be censored and not bother other parts of it, certainly seems like a step in the wrong direction – by promoting grossly unfair copyright policy as well as by stifling (political) dissent. Google has said that they’re bringing ccTLDs into effect in phases. I don’t know on what basis they’re prioritizing countries to phase into this system but it doesn’t bode well that India seems to be in their first group – the world’s largest democracy, indeed.
yes you right in some way.
The concept behind prioritization, I feel, seems pretty straight forward. Identify countries where there is unrest in terms of politics and religion. These will be the countries where the internet giants like Google and Facebook may witness more lawsuits being filed against them for bringing “offensive” content down from their website!
The irony is, as very well put by you, that the largest democracy is trying hard to make the internet more accessible to its huge user base while at the same time battling people who are trying to put an end to the freedom of speech!
Another aspect is “how will these internet players control dynamic/real-time data that is being generated by millions of users”? Will it be possible to regulate or control such data. Following or complying with the local laws in the era where data is generated, shared and distributed so rapidly is a herculean task. Are they going to start punishing people to voice their opinions and thoughts now? I am not denying that compliance of local laws is important, but better strategies and a better vision is desired.
An emailed comment reads as following:
Hi all,
First of all thank you for making spicyindia. I do read it sometimes
to know things outside my domain. Please CC me if somebody responds to
this mail as I have turned off mail from the group (just too many
mails to handle).
I read the blog post at
http://spicyipindia.blogspot.in/2012/02/lets-divide-internet.html .
What seemed to be a missing is also a story about some domain name
which was revoked similar to site takedowns which have done by Feds in
the US (see the megaupload takedown) . See for instance
http://www.geardiary.com/2012/01/23/locker-sites-suspend-sharing-after-megaupload-takedown-could-dropbox-be-next/
While that happened in the U.S. the domain name thing happened in
India. While the details are sketchy in my head, what I do remember is
that some person (Mr. X) applied for a domain name (say Y.com) . Some
other people (say Z) didn’t like the domain name and claimed it was
offensive or something like that. Without giving the affected party
(Mr. X) a chance to explain the domain name was seized/revoked . Does
anybody have any details of that case ?
—
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
@A Simple Equation:
Australia is also in the ‘first phase’ of Google’s change, and I haven’t looked into it but I don’t think Australia is facing such kinds of unrest. So, I can’t really figure on what basis they’re making the changes.
Better policy is certainly required. It’s a waste of time and effort to simply try to clamp down.
@Shirish:
The megaupload takedown situation is quite an unfortunate one. The owners are apparently under threat of being deported to USA to face trial too. After America’s (successful?) attempts at extraditing a British teen on copyright infringement charges, this wouldn’t be surprising.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/31/barack-obama-richard-odwyer-extradition
Unfortunately, I don’t know which Indian case you’re referring to. Perhaps other readers of the blog may know?
Good post.
I have this doubt. There is this legislation called DMC Act which shielded youtube in youtube v viacom. What would be the status of this legislation after sopa?