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                Date: 1998-12-18
                 
                 
                Metternich Global: Zensur marschiert
                
                 
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      q/depesche  98.12.18./1 
 
Metternich Global: Zensur marschiert 
 
Weltweit ist die Zensur im Internet auf dem Vormarsch,  
heisst es in der NY Times von heute. Die im Artikel  
angeführten Personen sind allesamt Mitglieder der Global  
Internet Liberty Campaign.    
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PAMELA MENDELS 
December 18, 1998 Fifty years after the United Nations  
General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of  
Human Rights, with its guarantee of free expression for all,  
the world's newest form of mass communication is under  
attack around the globe from laws, policies and police  
actions seeking to restrict content.  
 
That's the bad news in a new report called Freedom of  
Expression on the Internet, released earlier this month by  
Human Rights Watch as part of the organization's annual  
chronicle of rights abuses around the world.  
... 
"Nineteen ninety-eight can be characterized as (a time of)  
increasing censorship regulation -- and going beyond  
regulation to prosecution," said Jagdish J. Parikh, online  
research associate for Human Rights Watch and author of  
the Internet section of the report.  
... 
Advocates of free expression on the Internet say they are  
concerned about developments in Western countries, too.  
... 
 And the European Union is examining proposals that would  
require Internet service providers to block "harmful speech,"  
like sites promoting racism, or hold them accountable by law  
when they make such information available, said Barry S.  
Steinhardt, one of the founders of the Global Internet Liberty  
Campaign, an international organization pressing for free  
speech rights in cyberspace.  
... 
Advocates of free expression worldwide also worry about how  
well software filters, the main method used to block access  
to objectionable content, are able to distinguish between  
unacceptable and legitimate material.  
 
Yaman Akdeniz, director of the British group Cyber-Rights &  
Cyber-Liberties, said he is aware of at least one filtering  
system that blocks access to his group's own Web site,  
apparently because the words "pornography" and "child  
pornography" are often used in discussions of online policy  
issues. "Whether this is done deliberately or not, I see this  
as censorship of political speech," he said in an e-mail  
message.  
... 
 The service provider "risks search and seizure of his  
machines," said Rigo Wenning, a founder of the German  
Internet free speech group FITUG.  
 
"That would deliver him directly to bankruptcy. So what he  
does is, he removes all content that has the slightest doubt  
of being legal. Any critique, thus, would be suppressed  
automatically," Wenning said via e-mail.  
... 
 Parikh fears that this gives countries with less democratic  
traditions a handy justification for state Internet censorship.  
"If you can use filters at libraries, why not at the national  
level?" he asks.  
 
At the same time, Parikh says he is hopeful that attempts to  
reign in online speech worldwide will fail, because savvy  
users can find technological detours around filters, and the  
sheer volume of information on the network could ultimately  
inundate the most diligent corps of censors.  
 
In addition, many people are now awakening to the important  
information available to them on the Web and will somehow  
seek it out, he said. As evidence, Parikh pointed to the  
recent huge surge in visitors to the Human Rights Watch  
Web site from Malaysians apparently seeking an alternative  
source of information about the authoritarian leadership in  
their country.  
.... 
full text registrierungspflichtig 
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/cyber/cyberlaw/18law.html
                   
 
 
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edited by Harkank 
published on: 1998-12-18 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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