Content, Contingencies and Conflict on the Internet

Rebellion at the farm

An African legend tells the story of a mouse
that lived in a house in the country. One day, from the door of his cave, he
was able to see how the house’s owner prepared a trap to catch him, and stowed
it in a basket. The little one went into a panic and ran outside in search of
help. He found some chickens pecking in the granary and begged them to help
him. They told him not to bother them with mice problems. The rodent went a bit
further and saw a goat that was happily grazing in a meadow. After hearing his pleas,
the goat snapped that he was neither in the mood nor interested in dealing with
trivial issues. Almost on the verge of despair, the mouse went to an ox and
cried so it would take pity on him. Without even a glance, the ox yawned and
asked him to stop boring him with his nonsense.

In the meantime, the woman was picking up the
basket when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her hand: a coiled viper that was
next to the mousetrap had bitten her. At the town hospital, she was given very
few hours left to live and little by little, her relatives arrived from far-off
places to witness her agony. Her husband decided to cook some chickens to
shorten their wait. However, the family was numerous and the next day another
batch of relatives arrived. At that point, the man did not hesitate to roast
the goat. Hours before the woman’s death, people continued arriving at the
humble abode. So he decided to sacrifice the ox to feed the guests.

“Had the animals not been so stubborn and
selfish,” thought the mouse, “perhaps things would have gone differently, with
a more promising end for us all”.

The interdependence of people and nations in
a globalised world that has resulted partly from widespread use of the internet
presents a significant challenge: the appearance of common problems and the
need to resolve them, even in the most diverse socio-political and economic
contexts, with joint and articulated actions. It is useless to promote national
policies for a technological medium whose architecture is built on
unprecedented spatial and temporal coordinates, for which there is apparently
no possibility of regulation.

Although each one of us may choose to take care of our own chakra, our
destinies – which are inversely proportional to the manner in which information
flows on the internet - are lined up like dominoes. If one falls, the rest will
inevitably follow. It is therefore necessary for internet governance to include
the participation of all countries, so that their interests are represented in
the management of the multiple dimensions of this public technological
resource. The Digital Solidarity Agenda[1] which was proposed during
the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) calls for “close national, regional and
international cooperation among all stakeholders”.

In reality, the strongest global debate has been taking place in
relation to infrastructure, which is the so-called “top level” of the internet.
Nonetheless, the issue of content demands the equally urgent attention of international
community of users, governments, technicians and, in general, public and
private sector actors.

The topic of content is not limited to security issues or economic
crimes, but rather proposes numerous concerns related to human rights; the
right to communicate, the free circulation of information and freedom of
expression. And, insofar as “development is a process of expanding the real
freedoms people enjoy (…) it is necessary to conceive individual freedom as
social commitment”[2].

Various governmental initiatives –
particularly in the United States - have aimed at regulating internet content
in the name of morality and decency or national security. Faced with the
emergence of cybercrime, the idea that individual rights should be sacrificed
has become generalised among some groups. Nevertheless, the internet, unlike
any media before it, seems to conceptually and technically confirm that this is
neither ethical nor possible.

Stopping a tsunami with one’s hands

“To mention internet content regulation without being
anaesthetised is impossible anywhere in the world,” affirms Juan Piaggio,
General Manager of the Communication Services Regulatory Unit (URSEC - Unidad
Reguladora de Servicios de Comunicaciones). “The problem is that the internet
as a network of networks is thought of and designed anarchically – not
hierarchically - and is therefore uncontrollable: one does not know where the
server that sends things is, one can’t even know the route that the information
packets take. If you ban servers, you can do so on your territory, but they
will all be at the border”.

URSEC is a decentralised regulatory entity
with technical autonomy belonging to Uruguay’s Executive Branch. Its
administrative, control and defence functions span the national radioelectric
spectrum and telecommunication services. Although it does not have legal
authority to regulate content, it can apply sanctions solicited by the Ministry
of Education and Culture. An example of this is cases of child pornography.

Piaggio clarified that “in Uruguay the
issue of internet content is not being debated at the governmental level (...)
We have spoken with the Ministry of National Defence and the Secretariat of the
Presidency of the Republic exclusively on cyberterrorism and protecting our
large servers”.

When consulted on the existence of
national regulations to regulate internet content, Carlos Petrella, professor
at the Catholic University of Uruguay (Universidad Católica del Uruguay) and
technical expert, affirmed that “it works like any other content: you maintain
the responsibility of the agents when placing information in the public domain,
the same responsibility journalists have when speaking on the radio or on
television, or publishing in a newspaper (…) that is to say that the majority
of the legislation is through the analogy of content in other media, that is
applied to any kind of medium”.

However, Petrella recognised that the internet
presents specific difficulties for the application of existing laws. “You have
various actors: the owner of the medium, the owner of what is being
communicated and the owner of the content (…) unlike what happens in
traditional communication media where physical and conceptual management occur
in the same place.”

Petrella is convinced that attempts to pre-censor on the network have
been proven to be “inefficient and marginal” but that if “you don’t regulate
anything, you are going to have to take action after any occurrence that
injures political, religious and economic interests (…) Regulations must be
created with sound judgment, but without excessive detail, and mechanisms must
be put in place to authenticate the responsibility of any transmitter, which is
not clear in many cases. Having said that, anyone who sets up a sustainable operation
on the internet is identifiable.”

Many cybercrimes are linked to the sexual exploitation of girls, boys
and women. This makes the strong inequality of power relations, misogynistic
practices and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes evident. One could fall
into the temptation of supporting regulatory and censorship mechanisms for
these cases.  

The problems that arise are many: in the first place, “there are no
global standards to regulate pornography”[3] because there is no global
internet governance.

Secondly, in the case of implementing regulation, there are the dangers
of using it for less laudable purposes like persecution and political
censorship (examples already abound[4]) that threaten the
freedoms and new practices of cybercitizens.

Thirdly, the gender-based violence that takes place in the virtual
sphere is no more than the reflection of patriarchal cultural values that are
still present in day-to-day interactions between men and women. Hence the
problem is rooted in the manner in which society is organised rather than in
the technological tools it uses. The fight against the trafficking of women,
for example, cannot be “an exercise of advanced technology that only ICT
experts – who are usually men - can handle”[5]  but
rather it must be fought with updated versions of existing laws, with
cooperation between countries for joint investigations and including the
experience women have accumulated in their long battle against violence.

Piaggio is forceful: “IP addresses constantly change, and their dynamism
hinders tracing those who commit crimes on the web (…) You can’t control what
is being thought of to be uncontrollable. We can’t stop a tsunami with our hands”.

But his suggestion goes further by considering that the role of the State
should not be paternalistic and controlling, but rather educational. “What role
do you give citizens in the information society (IS)? Should they exclusively
be consumers? Or also generators of content? If you only understand the IS from
the point of view of the consumer, you are back at the north-south
relationship, because large quantities of internet content are created in the
north and are another sign of dependency (…) I understand the knowledge society
as access to all the information out there including my own, so I need to
generate information as a country and from the perspective of the state,
promote public policies for digital inclusion and active policies for local content
development”.

Homemade

Assuming an active role in the generation of
content has various facets. In the formal aspect of the language used, English
is overrepresented in content published on the internet[6].
This reinforces the production of materials in English, to the detriment of other languages, because of its lingua franca
status[7].

On the other hand, amplifying the “voices of those without voice” has
been an increased tendency on the web, as it allows for all of us to be
potential transmitters/receivers of messages. The democratisation of
communication depends on the possibility of making oneself heard without
depending on the news agencies of the traditional media.

The women’s movement, for example, grew and was strengthened in the virtual
space insofar as it was able to accumulate knowledge and experiences,
articulate strategic actions for the attainment of concrete objectives, and
publicly denounce situations of gender-based oppression and injustice. The
generation of content is a priority for the movement, from the moment that it
questions the imposed cultural order and promotes the generation of
alternatives for social change.

There is a global
concern, in this sense, that has already been captured in various documents,
amongst which those generated during the World Summit on the Information Society
process and the Association for Progressive Communications Internet Rights
Charter stand out. Both proclaim the need to “create and access culturally and
linguistically diverse content”[8]
for the “development
of an Information Society based on the dialogue among cultures and regional and
international cooperation (…) an important factor for sustainable development”[9].

For these words to become a reality in the day-to-day practices of
citizens, the internet must be understood as a tool for empowerment instead of
a threat. From there, we can work both from the governmental perspective as
well as from that of social organisations to privilege the individual
capacities and liberties that strengthen democratic systems.