We commend the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) inquiry into restrictions on the free flow of information on the Internet, particularly at a time when the U.S. government’s approach to Internet policy has been marked by dissonance and contradiction. Between the State department's push for Internet freedom,[1] the Federal Communication Commissions’ regulator efforts on Net Neutrality, the administration’s push for more extensive Internet surveillance in the name of national security, and the strengthening of website takedown and censorship mechanisms in the name of copyright enforcement, the U.S. government’s actions in aggregate send contradictory signals about Internet control versus Internet freedom.
We respectfully take this opportunity to provide a range of examples where policies create environments that restrict the free flow of information. Some examples demonstrate restrictions resulting from direct government action, such as Internet filtering regimes and censorship via intermediary platforms. However, we also take this opportunity to demonstrate how government inaction can allow companies to stand in the way of freedom of speech and communication. We stress that this is not an exhaustive list of isolated incidents but part of a range of policies that can result in the restriction of the free flow of information on the Internet. While repressive regimes are in many cases intentionally restrictive, otherwise well-intentioned policies of democracies – in the pursuit of security, child protection, copyright protection, and other commercial aims – can also create barriers to the free flow of information, or provide justification for more oppressive censorship.
In our filing, we stress that the Internet is a shared resource, with over a billion networked devices and a global community created by over 26,000 independent and autonomous networks. [2] All Internet users benefit from spillover effects.[3] Similar to common pool resources like water and air that sustain and nourish life, the Internet provides value across borders by enabling and nourishing innovation, collaboration, and new forms of communication and cooperative development. The interconnection of ideas, economies, and innovation between people throughout the world maximizes the democratic and economic potential of the Internet. The effects of information policy are far reaching, impacting human rights and freedoms of expression, and restrictions can hide government abuses, prevent organizing, or create chilling effects.[4] Whether caused by insufficiently accountable or transparent state interference or weak regulation of private actors, restrictions on information flows can occur throughout the Internet ecosystem. As an added challenge, countries connected by the Internet have vastly differing cultural norms, levels of political accountability in their governance, and commercial and economic regulatory regimes, further complicating any potential harmony in international information policy frameworks.
In pursuing the free flow of information on the Internet, the NTIA must consider the global implications of long-term policies across varying legal regimes and political systems. In approaching this issue we urge the NTIA to act on principles of openness, contributing to a consistent U.S. government policy domestically and internationally to promote the exchange of free thought, democracy, innovation, and information.
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[2]Information and Communications Technologies OECD Communications Outlook 2009 [3]See Brett Frischmann & Mark Lemley, “Spillovers”, 107 Colum.L.Rev. 257 (2007). [4]For example, following riots in the Xinjiang province in July 2009, the Chinese government cut off Internet access to the province for six months and Iran blocked Facebook and Twitter before the election in 2009. See Rebecca MacKinnon Networked Authoritarianism in China and Beyond: Implications for Global Internet Freedom, presented at Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regimes, October 11-12, 2010. See also Ali Sheikholeslami, Iran Blocks Facebook, Twitter Sites Before Elections (Update1), Bloomberg, May 23, 2009, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=anh.uW3gNZp4.
