Online Liberty and Freedom of Expression

Overview

Tuesday, 2:00-3:30pm
Format: Lecture, featuring guest respondents
Lead: John Palfrey
Potential Participants: Bruce Etling, Rob Faris, Ethan Zuckerman (TBC), and others

Led by John Palfrey, this session will focus on online liberty and freedom of express and expand on some of the core themes introduced in the preceding sessions by providing an overview of the different phases of content regulation on the Internet. It will engage the audience with questions regarding the ways in which different political contexts shape different methods of and motivations for government control, and how various approaches in different countries inform each other. Respondents will be invited to reflect on key issues, including different forms of government controls and online speech regulation: China (a mix of “traditional” technical filtering with legal and informal regulatory mechanisms); the Arab Spring (just-in-time filtering combined with the arrest and intimidation of bloggers and digital activists); Russia (mostly non-technical, second and third generation controls rather than technical filtering); and US/Western Europe (mostly focused on child pornography and the illegal spread of copyrighted content). They will also grapple with hard questions related the role of intermediaries in response to government requests for user information, content removal or account deactivation and the implications of the current phase of control for free expression and privacy worldwide.

Required Readings

Filtering

• John Palfrey, "Four Phases of Internet Regulation" Social Research, Vol. 77, No. 3, Fall 2010.
  • Summary of Four Phases
• Jonathan Zittrain & John Palfrey, "Internet Filtering: The Politics and Mechanisms of Control," Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, (Cambridge: MIT Press) 2008.

Arab Spring

• MENA Net Watch
• Masashi Crete-Nishihata and Jillian York, “Egypt’s Internet Blackout: Extreme Example of Just-in-Time Blocking,” ONI Blog, January 28, 2011.
• "Civil Movements: The Impact of Facebook and Twitter, Arab Social Media Report, May 2011.
• Also recommended: Exploring the Arab Spring

Digital Tools

• John Palfrey, Bruce Etling, Robert Faris, and John Gorham, "Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing,", 2010.
• Yochai Benkler, "Chapter 7: Political Freedom Part 2: Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere," in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

Recommended Readings

Filtering

• The OpenNet Initiative's Blog
• ONI's China Profile
• ONI's Middle East and North Africa Profiles and News
• ONI's Russia Profile
• ONI's United States and Canada Profile
• ONI's Europe Profile

Arab Spring

• James Cowie, “Egypt Leaves the Internet,” Renesys, January 27, 2011.

Second- and Third-Generation Controls

• Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, “Beyond Denial: Introducing Next Generation Information Access Controls,” Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace, (Cambridge: MIT Press) 2010.

Russia Project

• Bruce Etling, et al., “Public Discourse in the Russian Blogosphere: Mapping RuNet Politics and Mobilization,” October 18, 2010.

Related Cases

• GNI/Role of Intermediaries