Category: Free Speech

Going Memeless – Do civil rights abuses have to be hip to get attention?

I guess it comes down to the obvious answer that “sex sells,” but with the recent arrest of two Vietnamese songwriters, I can’t help but notice the overwhelming silence on social media in stark contrast to the outpouring of support for Pussy Riot.  Okay, I get it.  Mini-dresses on leggy, Russian girls wearing brightly colored balaclavas are hard to beat in the  attention-deficit theater of Facebook and Twitter, but surely the social justice issue is no different in this case.

Last week, the song writers Vo Minh Tri and Tran Vu Anh Binh were sentenced to four and six years in prison, respectively.  Uploading their songs to a website hosted by politically active Vietnamese outside the country, the two were charged with spreading propaganda against the state and faced possible sentences of up to 20 years.

Vo Min Tri, 34, wrote the song “Where is My Vietnam?” featured in the video above. The lyrics criticize the Chinese imperialist influence in his country, and according to some sources, the song was played over 700,000 times on YouTube.

Human Rights Watch has called for the songwriters’ immediate release, and their arrest comes in the wake of the Vietnamese government cracking down on political dissent in other forms. As quoted by AP, Phil Robertson of the  Asia division of Human Rights Watch stated, “First critics, then bloggers, then poets, and now musicians!” The international community can no longer stand by quietly as these free speech activists are picked off one by one by Vietnam’s security apparatus.”

If social media in America is any indication, it seems the international community is more than content to stand by quietly.  But why?  Almost every day, I encounter some proclamation that democratic governments are trying to stifle free speech, and the claim usually comes from some middle-class American or European whose rights are more than intact.  But it really does seem that when we have clear evidence of exactly this kind of oppression, there has to be a hook before it can get much attention.  Admittedly, it’s pretty tough to turn this case into a catchy tweet. #Freevominhtriandtranvuanhbinh doesn’t exactly pop off the stream, and there isn’t any available artwork that’s much better.  So, what’s a political prisoner to do these days, if he can’t be memed?

Why isn’t the Internet breaking?

During the squabble over SOPA and PIPA, one of the underlying (and possibly just lying) PR bullets coming out of Silicon Valley was that the actions called for in the bills would “break the Internet.”  And when that wasn’t the claim, the most consistent complaint was that the bills would chill free speech.  But in the wake of violent protests to an online video that may be related to the deaths of American diplomats, it turns out there is suddenly room for discussion about both speech and algorithmic solutions to thorny problems in an otherwise “free and open Internet.”

According to this piece by Somini Sengupta in yesterday’s New York Times, there is not only room for discussion, but it seems we’ll be having this discussion for quite some time and hearing from many parties. If nothing else, this article makes plain that the concept of free speech is no more universal inside the conference rooms at Google and Facebook than it is among nations.  So, if speech is relative, and algorithms can theoretically be written to correspond to definitions of “hate speech,” what was all that flap about SOPA and PIPA? I know the mechanisms requested by those anti-piracy bills are different from those required to address the issues cited here, and I don’t know anything about writing code; but it seems to me that the math problem in the case of analyzing hate speech worldwide is a hell of a lot harder than cutting off funding sources to a finite number of torrent sites.

The irony, of course, is that the makers of The Innocence of Muslims are fully protected by the First Amendment, even though what they chose to do with that right is irresponsible and loathsome.  And even if someone did manage to come up with a universal definition for hate speech, and a programmer managed to write code to seek it out on the Web, it’s possible this film that started all the trouble might not even meet the narrow criteria that would need to be written.

By contrast, the transactions made possible through torrent sites are not protected by the First Amendment, are comparatively easy to define, and extremely easy to locate.  Yet, we were led to believe that neither law nor technology could possibly have stopped or even mitigated piracy.  I don’t know.  As I say, I don’t write code, but it sounds a little bit like the masters of the Internet are clearly capable of flying F-18s when they need to but suddenly incapable of driving golf carts when they don’t want to.

Can cyber borders really be closed?

Photo by Peter Austin. http://www.peteraustin.co.uk/

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Iranian government is laying the foundation for a national intranet that would replace Iranian citizens’ access to the world wide web.  Iranians already have limited access to high speeds and certain social media sites, but this infrastructure would give the government even greater control to filter out western influence, to squelch and monitor internal dissent, and presumably to guard against western cyber attacks like Stuxnet on its nuclear program.  One very interesting note in the article also predicts that a byproduct of building this intranet would be knowledge that would improve Iran’s capability to launch cyber attacks as well as defend against them.

Once again, a move by an oppressive regime should give those of us in free societies who too often cry censorship a moment to reflect on what censorship really looks like.  But it will be interesting to watch whether or not the Iranian government pursues this program and what its effects will ultimately be.  By most accounts, the citizens of Iran are among the most pro-Western, pro-democratic, and highly educated people in the Middle East.  So, will closing off access work for the government, or will it intensify the seething desire for regime change?  It is my bias that free speech is like weeds, that it tends to find a way through the cracks, but as always, I want to hear from you.