Yet Again, Government is the Internet and Communications Authoritarian Problem
We just recently tried to congressionally undo the Barack Obama Administration’s egregious and illegal Internet-Network Neutrality power grab to keep the government out of what has become – in the Leviathan’s absence – a free speech, free market Xanadu.
(Hope for continuing Internet freedom now lies in the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court.)
During our year-plus long push to try to stave off the Obama administration’s huge overreach, we pointed out that if one looks around the planet, one sees time and time and time again – in China, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia,… – it is the government that is the threat to Internet and communications freedom, and not the eeeee-vil corporations that the Media Marxist Left shake as their Shibboleth to allegedly justify our government taking over the Web.
—–
Of course, governments lord over not just the Internet, but all forms of communications (and, of course, everywhere and everything else).
Prior to the fall, Egypt President Hosni Mubarak’s regime commandeered control of some of their nation’s cellular phone networks – so as to force feed the people propaganda.
Over the past five days, Egyptians have been hit with a steady stream of pro-Mubarak text messages.
“Youth of Egypt, beware rumors and listen to the sound of reason — Egypt is above all so preserve it,” read one text, according to a photograph and translation posted on this Flickr account. Another, received Sunday by an Associated Press reporter in the country, called on “honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.”
And now we have yet another example of government being the wireless authoritarian problem. Behold Pakistan.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority told mobile carriers to begin blocking text messages Nov. 21 containing words from a list of more than 1,600 “obscene” terms….
The list met widespread Internet criticism, in part for including believed benign words such as “Jesus Christ,” “athlete’s foot,” “poop,” “fairy” and “harder.” An unconfirmed version of the list has been circulating online. Some 1,100 of the words are in English, while less than 600 are in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language….
Pakistan is no stranger to digital bans from the government. In May 2010, the country blocked Facebook for two weeks after a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed sparked controversy. YouTube was blocked temporarily in 2008 following news that images from a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed had leaked onto the site.
Despite all of this government wireless authoritarianism all around the world, our Media Marxist Left is suing to…increase our government’s control over cell phones and the wireless Web because they deem it a failing that our government now only has said totalitarian sway over the wired Web.
The Net Neutrality rules protect free speech of individuals online from corporate censorship and keep the internet an open and participatory platform for all to use. It is big telecom and cable companies who have an anti competitive duopoly on fixed wire-line broadband and an oligopoly over mobile broadband headed for duopoly if AT&T T Mobil were approved that want to discriminate against users and innovators online and to censor the internet. Government is not trying to censor the Net with these rules its trying to protect the Internet for users and innovators online from the greedy big telecoms and cable companies trying to make a power grab on our broadband communications.
manpan,
Remember that unless they are supported by government regulations, monopolies tend to collapse upon themselves over time. And in “internet time” this process happens even faster — remember the big, overpowering companies that seemed like they were going to be controlling everything — like IBM in hardware, Netscape in browsers, AltaVista in search, MySpace in social networking, even Microsoft in software? When you allow free competition, power shifts to customer-focused companies, and monopolies are quickly run out of town.
In the case of regulated utilities, the solution to a concentration of control is more competition, not less. Wireless is a great opportunity to expand the number of companies providing service, if the existing players are not meeting customer needs.
It all comes down to control: who do you trust more, the free market or the government bureaucracy? If you choose government control over competition between corporations, remember that sometime in a future election cycle, you may not be so pleased with your choice if the “other” party controls Congress or the Presidency.
There should be a contest to come up with the ultimate text message out of Pakistan’s banned word list. It has to be grammatical English; it doesn’t have to make sense.