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Geographies of Global Internet Censorship

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Geographies of Global Internet Censorship GeoJournal DOI 10.1007/s10708-010-9393-3 Geographies of global Internet censorship Barney Warf Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract More than one-quarter of the planet’s Keywords Internet Á Cyberspace Á Censorship Á population uses the Internet today, although access to Habermas it is highly uneven throughout the world. While it is widely celebrated for its emancipatory potential, many governments view the Internet with alarm and The Internet interprets censorship as damage, have attempted to limit access or to control its and routes around it contents. This project seeks to provide a comprehen- (John Gilmore, in Elmer-Dewitt et al. 1993, sive, theoretically informed analysis of the geogra- p. 62). phies of Internet censorship. It begins by clarifying the reasons, types, extent of, and opposition to, In mid-2010, more than 1.9 billion people used the government limitations of Internet access and con- Internet, making it a tool of communications, entertain- tents. Invoking an index of censorship by Reporters ment, and other applications accessed by roughly 28% Without Borders, it maps the severity of censorship of the world’s population (www.Internetworldstats. worldwide and assesses the numbers of people com/stats.htm). The distribution of these netizens was affected, and using the Freedom House index, it highly uneven (Fig. 1). For many users these uses correlates political liberty with penetration rates. extend well beyond email to include bill payments, Second, it explores Internet censorship at several stock trading, ‘‘e-tail’’ shopping, digital gambling, levels of severity to explicate the multiple means videogames, telephony (e.g., Voice Over Internet Pro- through which censorship is implemented and tocol), hotel and airlines reservations, chat rooms, resisted. The third part offers a moral critique of downloading television programs, digital music, and Internet censorship via a Habermasian interpretation pornography, as well as popular sites and services such of cyberspace as the closest real-world approximation as YouTube, Facebook, and Google. In all these ways, of an ideal speech situation. The summary notes the and more, cyberspace offers profound real and potential paradox of growing e-government and continued effects on social relations, everyday life, culture, poli- fears of an expanded domain of public discourse. tics, and other social activities. Indeed, for rapidly rising numbers of people around the world, the ‘‘real’’ and the virtual have become thoroughly interpenetrated. In this light, access to cyberspace is no longer a luxury, but a & B. Warf ( ) necessity. As its applications have multiplied, the Department of Geography, University of Kansas, 219C Lindley Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045-7613, USA Internet is having enormous impacts across the globe, e-mail: [email protected] including interpersonal interactions and everyday life, 123 GeoJournal Number of Internet Users 2,100 - 999,999 1,000,000 - 3,999,000 4,000,000 - 19,999,000 20,000,000 - 99,000,000 100,000,000 - 420,000,000 Fig. 1 Distribution of world’s Internet users, June, 2010. Source: author, using data from www.internetworldstats.com identity formation, retail trade and commerce, gover- strategies and tactics deployed by states the world nance, and is affecting the structure and form of cities, in over to limit access and shape the contents of what the process generating round upon round of non- their denizens may view on-line. Brunn (2000), for Euclidean geometries in the context of a massive global example, explicates how cyberspace is closely inter- wave of time–space compression. twined with various geographies of regionalism, A cottage industry of geographers has artfully networks, non-state actors, and various transnational charted the origins and growth of cyberspace, its processes. Steinberg and McDowell (2003) delved uneven social and spatial diffusion, and its multiple into the mechanics of domain name policing, but not impacts, ranging from cybercommunities to digital censorship per se. While the geographic literature has divides to electronic commerce (Dodge and Kitchin delved into issues of geosurveillance and govern- 2000; Castells 2001; Kellerman 2002; Crampton mentality, virtually nothing has been said about how 2003; Zook 2005a, b; Malecki and Moriset 2008). governments erect obstacles to Internet access or Such authors typically embed the Internet within massage its contents to their liking. Warf (2009a, b) post-Fordist capitalism, and, drawing on the literature touched upon Internet censorship in Latin America in critical cartography, view it as a power/knowledge and the states that comprised the former Soviet constellation with decisive social roots and conse- Union, and Warf and Vincent (2007) addressed the quences. Zook and Graham (2007) note the Internet’s marked government restrictions found in the Arab ‘‘core and periphery’’ structure, as exemplified by the world. Nonetheless, no comparative geographic anal- dominant role played by search engines such as ysis of Internet censorship worldwide yet exists, and Google, and voice concerns over the privatization of regional approaches are limited in scope and ability the digital commons. Similarly, Zook (2003) called to detect differences in Internet censorship practices attention to the Internet’s role in the ‘‘online adult and outcomes among the world’s states. Confronting industry.’’ This literature offers a valuable means for this issue directly is essential if we are to achieve a spatializing the Internet, demonstrating its rootedness robust understanding of the nuanced political impli- in social relations and changing geographic relations cations of the digital domain. of proximity, and serves as a necessary antidote to Of all of the innumerable myths that swarm around many prevailing utopian and technocratic interpreta- cyberspace, one of the most insidious is that the tions such as those that proclaim the ostensible Internet is an inherently emancipatory tool, a device ‘‘death of distance’’ (Cairncross 1997) or the ‘‘end of that necessarily and inevitably promotes democracy geography’’ (O’Brien 1992). by giving voice to those who lack political power, One dimension, however, has received woefully and in so doing undermines authoritarian and repres- little attention from geographers, concerns the sive governments. President Ronald Reagan, for 123 GeoJournal example, asserted that ‘‘The Goliath of totalitarianism children’s access to pornography or corporations that will be brought down by the David of the microchip’’ monitor their employees at work are examples. The (quoted in Kalathil and Boas 2003, p. 1), while the focus here, however, is on government restrictions on chair of Citicorp, Wriston (1997, p. 174) argued that Internet access. The paper begins with a discussion of ‘‘the virus of freedom … is spread by electronic the dimensions of state restrictions on cyberspace, networks to the four corners of the earth.’’ Oh that including the variety of forms involved, a rough such optimistic proclamations were true. Drawing on conceptual model of the temporal sequence of modernizationist theories of development, in which different types of intervention, and a brief statistical rising education levels and information access led confirmation that political liberty is indeed correlated inexorably to a liberalization of the public sphere via with Internet penetration rates. Second, it turns to the a well informed, rationale public that asserts itself specifics of Internet censorship as it is practiced, and politically, prevailing discourses about the politics of resisted, within a variety of levels of severity. Third, the Internet tend to be couched in an unrealistic by way of moral critique, it discusses these issues in utopianism rooted in technological determinism and a light of a Habermasian conception of the ideal speech silence regarding the perpetuation of inequality. Such situation and the implications of Internet censorship visions appeal widely to Western policy makers, who for the broader process of truth construction. Finally, may exaggerate the extent and power of ostensibly the conclusion notes how many governments are freedom-loving cyberdissidents. Closely associated caught between the rock of promoting information with this idea is that the global community of technology and a hard place of fearing a widening of netizens is a self-governing one in which the state the domain of public discourse, a conundrum bound has become largely irrelevant (Goldsmith and Wu to rise in intensity as many states initiate electronic 2006). government (e-government) measures. The reality, unfortunately, is more complex and depressing, and the necessary corrective calls for a state-centered approach. As Lake (2009) notes, ‘‘the Dimensions of Internet censorship Web is not nearly the implacable force for freedom that some of its champions have portrayed. The Internet accessibility reflects, inter alia, the willing- world’s authoritarians have shown just as much ness of governments to allow or encourage their aptitude for technology as their discontented citi- populations to log into cyberspace. Repressive gov- zens.’’ Many governments across the planet aggres- ernments often fear the emancipatory potential of the sively limit access to the Internet, and as Kalathil and Internet, which allows individuals to circumvent Boas (2003) demonstrate, Internet opposition to tightly controlled media. Theorizations of Internet censorship and political activism is typically confined
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