Hayyakum Allah

The success of the Internet, without which you obviously won’t be reading these lines, is astounding and unprecedented in modern history. For this reason, the Internet brings to the forefront some new and, not so new, issues that are of social and global concern. In order to better understand the reason for the Internet’s popularity, one has to look at who is using it and how it is being used. Business to business commerce, for example, is more than one Trillion dollars in size. Business to consumer commerce, even though much smaller in size, is extremely popular. Email is clearly abundant, convenient and free. Millions of new sites popup daily throughout the world with minimum cost and supervision.

This brings us to the subject at hand, Internet filtering. It is safe to assume that content in all of its forms is controlled in some manner. In some cases the control exits directly from an external source, and in others it is exercised voluntarily by the individual. Some content is controlled by the nature of its medium, while other content is controlled by availability, or, more accurately, by the lack thereof. In any case, be sure that filtering exists and that there is no such a thing as a filtering free Internet experience anywhere, only degrees of filtering.

The global nature of the Internet puts us face to face with issues of global nature. Do all the nations of the world share the same sets of values and priorities? Clearly, they don’t. What is acceptable in one culture is unacceptable in another. Similarly, what is essential for one nation could be only secondary for another. Therefore, each nation’s leadership is free to protect its citizens’ values and to promote their best interest. The problem that arises from this simple truth is that not all leaderships are created equal.

In some nations, the leadership works tirelessly to solve the nation’s problems, while in others, the leadership is the nation’s biggest problem. Some leaderships are inclusive and representative, while others are neither. Some are far sited while others are inadequate. Therefore, and not to stray too far from Internet filtering, the Internet experience of citizens around the world will vary based upon who is actually doing the filtering. The best a global observer could do is hope and try to minimize this variation.

As to who should be intrusted with this monumental task, I see no difference between Internet filtering and other concerns like economic planning, political development and civil liberties. All these matters should be delegated to capable and representative bodies that are held accountable to the citizens they try to serve.

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