{"id":965,"date":"2006-01-10T15:42:54","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T15:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:32","slug":"bad_internet_no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=965","title":{"rendered":"Bad Internet! No Cookie!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on the Global Voices<\/a> list, two things worth of note.
\nThey are proposing legislation which would make repressing information on the Internet more difficult, as follows:<\/p>\n

* No US company would be allowed to host e-mail servers in a ‘repressive’ country (as defined by a State DSepartment index of freedom of speech); this would require that legal moves to obtain email content or identity would have to be done in US courts.<\/p>\n

* No search engine hosted in the US would be allowed to block a list of key words like “freedom” and “democracy.”<\/p>\n

* No US Internet company would be allowed to host servers originating content in a repressive country.<\/p>\n

* No US company would be allowed to sell filtering technology without holes for the above list of protected words.<\/p>\n

* Exports of Internet surveillance technology would require a Department of Commerce approval (much like weapons).<\/p>\n

* Training foreign nationals in techniques to censor or surveil on the Internet would require Department of Commerce approval as above.<\/p>\n

Personally, I can think of some highway-sized holes in this, and that the likelihood of something like this passing Congress – and the standing up in the courts – is vanishing small. But these aren’t bad principles at all, and I’d love to see some way of pushing toward them.<\/p>\n

Microsoft and Yahoo are very bad corporate citizens for what they have done, as is Cisco (and I’m sure a host of other Internet names). As I make purchasing (and surfing) decisions in the future, I’ll be keeping that in mind.<\/p>\n

I’ll make a suggestion; local governments (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley come to mind here in California) are notorious for wanting to pass symbolic foreign-policy measures. Here’s one that could have some real impact: Don’t buy products from vendors who do bad things for freedom.<\/i> Any local activists want to take this on?<\/b><\/p>\n

Next, there’s also a discussion in which pro-free expression activists are uncomfortable accepting aid from Spirit of America<\/a>, which is perceived as problematic because of its ties to the Bush Administration and some unfortunate conflicts of interest by the founder.<\/p>\n

I’m generally supportive of SoA and the Bush Administration, so that kind of falls on deaf ears here, but I’ll suggest a broader and simpler rule when deciding on projects and allies:<\/p>\n

“When we’re done, will more people’s voices be freely heard?<\/i>”<\/p>\n

Kind of a one-step test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More freedom of speech is pretty much always a good thing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}