That corporations are part of the problem should come as no surprise. MacKinnon points out that Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon.com, and other giant companies often adopt corporate policies that threaten freedom or limit people’s access to controversial ideas. For instance, the controversial WikiLeaks website, famed for publishing government secrets, was hosted on servers owned by Amazon, until Senator Joseph Lieberman complained about it. Amazon promptly ousted WikiLeaks. As a business, Amazon is entitled to pick and choose its customers, just as Apple is free to reject any iPhone app. But at what cost to free speech?
And don’t count on laws or regulations to save the day, she points out. Even democratic governments of all sorts are asserting control over the global Internet, in the name of fighting data piracy, eliminating child pornography, or tracking down terrorists. In the process, they are embracing the same methods used by authoritarian governments.
MacKinnon notes that a decade ago, only a handful of regimes, like those of China and Saudi Arabia, imposed nationwide government controls over Internet access. Today, about 40 countries do so, including the United Kingdom, France, India, and the Netherlands.
And the United States is not immune. Consider the Stop Online Piracy Act recently under consideration by Congress. An early version of the bill would have required Internet providers to block websites hosting pirated music or movies. This would have required US Internet services to apply the same tools used by the Chinese government to block news items about Tibet. In addition, the blocking policy would have neutralized an Internet security system designed to protect consumers from fake websites run by criminals. It took a massive public protest, largely conducted on the Internet, to get the measure scrapped.
