#TechCrunch RSS Feed publisher TechCrunch » Feed TechCrunch » Comments Feed TechCrunch » Internet Control Issues: It's Not Just China Comments Feed Ricoh Updates Its Rugged Camera Line With GPS-Enabled G700SE Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels [Email] alternate alternate TechCrunch WordPress.com ____________________ Submit * Home * Startups * Mobile * Gadgets * Europe * Video * More + Enterprise + Venture + Social + GreenTech + Gaming + Opinion + Drama * Tech Policy * Guides + Smartphones + Tablets + Digital Cameras + Laptops + Headphones * Events * CrunchBase Hot topics * Apple * Facebook * Twitter * Google * Microsoft Main Event Page news Comment IFRAME: http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html?url=http%3A%2F%2F techcrunch.com%2F2010%2F09%2F23%2Finternet-control-issues-its-not-just- china%2F&text=Internet%20Control%20Issues%3A%20It%26%23039%3Bs%20Not%20 Just%20China&via=techcrunch Internet Control Issues: It's Not Just China Sarah Lacy View Staff Page Follow me on Twitter Sarah Lacy writes for PandoDaily, a news site which she founded. She is also an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0” (Gotham Books, May 2008) and “Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos... → Learn More Thursday, September 23rd, 2010 Comments Fighting international cyber-terrorism isn’t easy, but it’s a mission on which we can all agree, right? Not so fast. Russia has been pushing a proposal in The United Nations agency for information technology, which describes the greatest cyber-threat not as hacking or stealing but as using the Internet to spread ideas that might undermine a country. Russia wants any such use of the Internet classified as “aggression,” and hence illegal under the UN Charter. Sounds like China right? Yes, but check out this awfully teal map of countries that agree. It seems that a lot of the world seems more aligned with the Chinese view of controlling any information that may be considered subversive than they’re aligned with the high-minded Western ideals of freedom of speech and access to information. Most notably they include the other BRICs: India, Brazil and Russia. In fact, it’s Brazil that has asked Google to remove more content from the Web than any other nation this year. Brazil made more than double the requests of the next closest country, Libya. NPR covered the story this morning, but it’s not a new shift in thinking. Russia has actually tried to introduce this information-arms-control-like agreement every year since 1998. So why do we only jump up and down about China? Presumably, under Russia’s proposition, Iran could hold Twitter accountable for giving people the ability to change their avatars to green or any Middle Eastern country could hold Facebook accountable for providing a platform by which people de-radicalize potential suicide bombers. It’s a delicate issue for the US diplomatically and inside the US– way bigger than “Googlegate” because, well, I refer you again to the map. The issue doesn’t seem to be about different political systems, but rather different levels of stabilization in more chaotic emerging markets. Near-unfettered Internet freedoms aren’t always as high a priority in these countries, not because they’re evil, but because there are more pressing problems of gun violence, terrorism, or a paucity of food, water, jobs and basic infrastructure. I usually try not to get into a lather about protecting Internet freedoms in other countries, because I don’t think it’s the job of private sector tech companies who are supposed to be international to act as tools to enforce Western-style democracy. Freedom and democracy are two different things. Some “democratic” countries I’ve reported in are more repressive in day-to-day life than other authoritarian countries. In addition, I believe that Google would have done more good by staying in China and working within the system than pulling out with a pouty “We don’t like their laws” as Eric Schmidt said on the Colbert Report this week. (To which Colbert astutely asked how long did it took for Google to start disliking China’s laws.) But this is something different. It’s not about whether other countries should be allowed to control what happens within their borders and whether US companies simply chose to do business there or not, based on local laws. At stake are new rules that would bring international United Nations justification to draw sovereign boundaries around many different Internets. At stake is making it OK to build powerful new Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook and Twitter at the borders of the Western world– not with an easy-to-circumvent Great Firewall but with internationally-accepted rules against freedom of information and expression. Talk about unintended consequences in a debate we thought was about identity theft and hacking. On a more crass, business note, this could have a chilling impact on US Internet companies expansion into lucrative emerging markets. So far China is the only country that’s developed larger audiences for its own homegrown Internet companies than US versions in almost every category. That makes not only political sense but business sense because China is so culturally and linguistically different and the market is so much more advanced in terms of entrepreneurship, venture capital and the wild-west IPO markets of Shanghai, Hong Kong and the new Startup Board in Shenzhen. But so far, US companies do better in many categories in India and Indonesia– because the Internet has grown slower giving less opportunity for locals to build big companies and more challenges with monetization. When the percentage of the population online is this small, frequently the people online are city-dwelling, affluent multinational employees or office workers who also speak English, making the need for, say, a local-grown Hindi Facebook a lot less immediate. And on a platform like Twitter, there are even fewer cultural and language restrictions because the site is so simple, how people use it localizes it. But comparatively isolationist countries like Russia and Brazil could easily fork off with a more local versions of sites dominating as their markets grow. It’s not hard to see how local, business pressures could drive this diplomacy around blocking ideas on Western sites– they way some people allege it already has in China. And–on a more banal level than the future of freedom in the world–that would be disastrous for older Web companies in the US counting on emerging markets to grow. This problem is not going to go away– and not just because Russia appears to introduce it every year. By 2050, the US will be the only G7 nation that is still one of the largest nations in the world. Its testament to the sheer size and resilience of the “world’s only Superpower” that we’ll still be no. 2. At least we’ll still have a strong say in the way the world runs. But sharing power with modern, emerging markets that have had a totally different history and experience with the 20th century will likely take the bulk of the 21st century to figure out– especially when it comes to border-less technology issues like the environment and the Internet. I criticized Groupon last week for running too fast with its international strategy before it had stabilized its lock on the US market. But the flipside of that argument is that at least Groupon executives are getting a better picture of what the Internet will look like in this new world. Tags: brazil, censorship, China, india, russia « previous story Ricoh Updates Its Rugged Camera Line With GPS-Enabled G700SE next story » Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels [Email] Advertise Here * * * * blog comments powered by Disqus Advertise Here * * * * Have a Tip, Pitch or Guest Column? Tell us.X (*) Tip ( ) Guest Column So you've got the inside scoop on a story or topic that we've covered? We respect your anonymity. Feel free to directly email us at tips@techcrunch.com Please read our guest post guidelines before submitting. Hyperlinks and images must be manually coded using html mark-up. Examples: TechCrunch and ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ (BUTTON) Send Thank you. Your submission has been sent. Trending Stories The Microsoft Surface Pro Proves That The PC Is Back The Surface Pro Proves That The PC Is Back Microsoft Surface: From Idea To Pro Microsoft Surface: From Idea To Pro Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer And Ben Lerer To Speak At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2013 Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer And Ben Lerer To Speak… Zynga’s Q4 Beats, Revenue Flat At $311M, Net Income Swings To A Loss Of $48.6M Zynga's Q4 Beats Analyst Estimates Dropbox Unveils Sync API For Mobile Developers, Allows Apps To Work With Cloud-Based Files As If They Were Local Dropbox Unveils Sync API For Mobile Devs The Teeny, Tiny Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Is Available For Pre-Order The Teeny, Tiny Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Is… Read What Facebook’s Sandberg Calls Maybe ‘The Most important Document Ever To Come Out Of The Valley’ Most. Important. Document. Ever. Google Brings 38 Additional Ski Resorts To Google Maps Google Brings 38 Additional Ski Resorts To… Foundation: Jawbone’s Founder Hosain Rahman On How to Build Meaningful Hardware Prototypes Foundation: Jawbone’s Founder Hosain Rahman Want To “Bang With Nobody”? Use Google+ Want To “Bang With Nobody”?… Apple Will Reportedly Lose The iPhone Trademark In Brazil Apple Will Reportedly Lose The iPhone… Open Source Death Star Hits Kickstarter After Government Foolishly Refuses To Build One Moon-Sized Weapon Seeks Crowdfunding Upcoming Events 04/27/13 Disrupt NY 2013 New York City 02/12/13 New York City Meetup + Pitch-Off New York City Crunch With Us * Download the TechCrunch App for iPad in the Apple App Store * Download the TechCrunch App for Android in Google Play SIGN UP for CrunchDaily Latest Headlines Delivered To You ____________________ (BUTTON) Subscribe Crunchboard * Jobs * Services * Now hiring 25 Software Dev's at Booking.com in Amsterdam (relocation + visa included)Booking.com * Enterprise PHP DeveloperUniversity of California Irvine * Software Engineer (iOS Developer)WhaleShark Media * Partner Sales ConsultantSeamless * Corporate Sales Operations AssociateSeamless See all * RelayStrategyDevelopers * Smartsourcing GlobalServices * Epsilon Concepts - LA Web Design CompanyDevelopers * Arul & Associates LLCAccounting * The ResumatorHR admin See all Powered by Personforce Latest on TechCrunch TV * Foundation: Jawbone’s Founder Hosain Rahman On How to Build Meaningful Hardware Prototypes * Founder Stories: Okta’s Todd McKinnon On What It Means To Be CEO And Employee Zero * Fly Or Die: Microsoft Surface Pro * Keen On… Zuck: The Five Business Secrets Of You-Know-Who * Bitcasa Launches Its ‘Infinite Storage’ App To The Public To Take Down Traditional Hard Drives [TCTV] More on TechCrunch TV Latest in Gadgets * iPads (Thanks To The Mini) Were 1 In 6 ‘PCs’ Shipped, Tablets One-Third, And Windows RT Didn’t Even Break 1M: Canalys * The Teeny, Tiny Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Is Available For Pre-Order * The Raspberry Pi Is About To Get An Eye * Pebble Addresses Early iOS Bluetooth, Android Fragmentation Issues, And Battery Issues * Apple Will Reportedly Lose The iPhone Trademark In Brazil More in Gadgets Also on AOL Tech * Peacock feathers form basis for reflective displays, could bring color to e-readers soon * Encrypted Text: Cat and mouse in rogue PvP * What Starfish can learn from its failed Macworld appearance * Hitman movie rebooted with 'Fast and Furious' Paul Walker * Sony K-12 initiative puts the Xperia Tablet S into schools More on Engadget, TUAW, Joystiq, HuffPost Tech About * About & Staff * Advertise * Jobs * Events * Europe * France * Japan * Contact Subscribe * RSS * Email * Twitter * Facebook AolTech Privacy Policy Terms Of Service © 2013 AOL Inc. All rights reserved. Powered by WordPress.com VIP