A recent report by an independent United Nations investigator (‘Special Rapporteur’), Frank La Rue, caught my attention1. In this report, the official, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, called attention to state censorship and speech restrictions, devoting a surprisingly large part of his report to the developed world.
Three strike laws
Clearly singled out in the report are the so-called ‘three strike laws’, which prevent an individual from accessing the internet in cases of repeated copyright infringements. Such laws have been passed in several countries, including the UK2 (as part of the Digital Economy Act), France and more recently New-Zealand.*
This form of disconnection legislation can be particularly problematic, in that it can deprive an entire household of internet access. By doing so, is it violating a ‘human right’ ? La Rue certainly things so:
“Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states.”
He then goes on to say:
“The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
A question of rights
This brings us back to the eternal debate about positive and negative human rights. Does the state have an obligation to not interfere with internet access? Or, does it have an obligation to provide access to the internet, just like some might expect it to provide public education or healthcare ?
In June 2010, Finland made broadband a ‘legal right’ for every one of its citizens3. This is an interesting move, although one should keep in mind the small population of Finland and their already extremely high broadband usage rate (close to 96%).
These laws have only just started being implemented throughout European countries and it will be fascinating to see how the courts deal with them (France’s Constitutional Council already censored part of the French law, which then had to be amended4), especially as far as Luxembourg and Strasbourg are concerned.
More traditional censorship
As highlighted by the report, governments all around the world are compelling Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to aid in their censorship efforts. Take Germany or France for example, where there have been several instances where material denying the holocaust, promoting nazism or radical islamism5 have been removed from Google search results as per legal requirements. Such decisions are often the result of a court decision and the scope of banned material is clearly set out in law. This isn’t the case of many other instances of censorship such as operates in countries like Iran, China or even Egypt and Tunisia, where a few months ago protests were met with blanket censorship of the internet by the then Mubarak government6.
One thing is clear, with more than 2 billion active users, the internet has now become an integral part of our lives. Up until no there have been no insurmountable boundaries to the free flow of information, with government censors always reacting in a technological game of cat and mouse. Nevertheless, the willingness of states to completely shutdown Internet access, as was the case in Egypt, can only be likened to the use of weapons of mass destruction against speech. International pressure to keep the pipelines open would be welcome. In this regard, Hillary Clinton’s spirited defense of Internet freedom worldwide is to be commended, and one can only hope that action will be taken to back these words up. It is regrettable that this issue was conspicuously absent from the agenda of the recent e-G20 summit. As usual realpolitik prevails…
*More worryingly, the secretly negotiated, international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) (which will be the topic of another post) until recently incorporated similar internet disconnection language. This no longer appears to be the case in recent drafts according to the report.
In a future post I will look at traffic management and net neutrality.
- http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf [↩]
- http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/15/three-strikes-appeals [↩]
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10461048 [↩]
- http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision//2009/decisions-par-date/2009/2009-580-dc/decision-n-2009-580-dc-du-10-juin-2009.42666.html [↩]
- http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google [↩]
- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/amidst-chaos-and-riots-egypt-turns-off-the-internet.ars [↩]
