Keeping the cyberspace free
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: January 23, 2012 -

Among the many technological advances which greatly changed the way we carry on with our lives, is the coming of the internet.

Its arrival made communication from one corner of the world to the other corner within seconds possible through instant messaging and emails, allowed unfettered access to information and knowledge, facilitated easy conduct of business across the globe, etc.

The world, in many senses, became a 'global village', with the coming of the internet.

Datas in the form of texts, graphics, or videos came to be available in the virtual world.

The information available in this virtual or cyber space is enormous, as for instance, for educational reference, it is said, material from pre-school to post doctorate are there for anybody to access.

Of late, the internet has been quite effectively used by scores of people in campaigning for various issues through social sites like the facebook, Twitter, Orkut ,etc.

In the most high profile instance, these social networks contributed significantly in mobilizing lakhs of people for the Tahrir Square (in Cairo) protest, asking Hosni Mubarak to step down.

The protest which came to be known as the Arab spring, setting off similar protest in other Arab countries, at its peak drew about 3 lakh people, which eventually led to the fall of the likes of Mubarak and Col Gaddafi, who at one time were all powerful and ruled with an iron hand.

Wikileaks put thousands of diplomatic cables exchanged between the various US Missions and the State Department in the public domain, thereby making the shady deals and machinations of the US government for all to see.

In the light of all this background there has been many attempts by various governments around the world to control and censor the contents of the internet, which they find inconvenient.

Wikileaks came under the scanner of the governments which found the leaked cable not just embarrassing but highly detrimental to their interest.

Cases were foisted against its founder Julian Assange and various means were deployed to make the existence of Wikileaks as difficult as possible by starving it of funds.

In India, Kapil Sibal called for removing contents which might be "offensive" from social networks like Facebook.

The latest such move to control and censor contents in the internet was the proposed US draft laws SOPA or Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representative and PIPA or Protect Intellectual Property Act in the Senate.

These acts designed to stop piracy, talks about blocking a site which contains unauthorised copyright material or pirated material altogether and even go as far as making it impossible to exist as a domain name.

These draft bills are viewed as a direct attack on free speech and sparked a huge protest.

Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia in the net, presumably the largest in the world, in protest against the proposed law, blacked out its contents on January 18 for 24 hours, 7 million people signed a Google petition against the act and one million messages were sent the the US Congress on the same day.

Many US Lawmakers are now said to have withdrawn their support for the Bills in the light of the massive popular resistance against it.

This is a huge success for those of us who believe that the internet should be left free.

But the netizens should ever remain vigilant as those who benefit out of hoarding information, knowledge and various other properties like films, and music are not going to sit idle and will surely launch another onslaught against their free movement.

People of this country should also be on guard least the UPA government comes up with similar laws on some pretext or the other.

We have seen streaks of such a tendency as exemplified by Kapil Sibal utterances on "offensive" contents.

Such a move should be resisted at all cost.