Free Internet, Free Me



Free flow of information over a medium is not new scene for us now and there has been continuous effort to censor such of free flow information. Democratic states has been facing resistance over a issue of censoring information as it’s against democratic values of freedom of expressions and speech. Bills like SOPA and PIPA in America is not only their national concern but to me its major global concern.

Internet has proven itself as fastest growing and most penetrated medium of information across the globe. This medium has greater impact than any other mediums because it directly connects to masses and enables sharing of text, images and videos over commonly shared platforms using pre decided protocols.
 
Every country has its own legislations for regulating medium of information (media), but internet is less regulated media in democratic world because it promotes democratic values. Now a day, great area of conflict is observed between political interests of governments and the real democratic values.

Coming back to information on internet, there are basically 3 types sharing takes place on internet
  1. 1.       What we produce (sharing new things)
  2. 2.       What we found (sharing already existing things)
  3. 3.       What we produce after whatever has been found (sharing after manipulating existing things)

behind all the things which is being shared on internet are WE,  an individual or groups, censoring contents which being shared over internet is clearly censoring exchange of information among WE, it’s against our freedom to create, to share, to express.

Unlike other mediums, internet is more self regulatory, every owner of website; blog etc. on internet has its own regulatory mechanism and security standards. Many of them also take care of anti social contents shared on their domains. If some so such owners violate laws of copy right or intellectual property, governments should catch hold those owners. If shoes are making floor dirty, shoes should  be removed,  not legs !

America introducing bills like stop online piracy act and protection of IP act, makes me to conceptualize basic thing, that they want us to share things which they think is appropriate to share. Who are you (government) to tell us what to share and what not share?? if you think that my things are creating troubles to other people than lets meet up in court , why to censor my feelings , my creation and my way of expression ??

There is has been lots of political controversies regarding censorship of information over internet in India (and almost all developing democratic countries) but I am more concern with America as major chunk of internet traffic are regulated by US based corporations. Thus, any act or law restricting, for instance Google or Yahoo, can affect whole world and by doing this US government can have control over information flow on this globe.

There are only two ways of handling this issue.
  • Understand issue and provide support to those who are struggling for ‘freedom of internet’
  • Or be prepared to face it !!!



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