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Business News/ Opinion / Dimensions of Internet freedom
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Dimensions of Internet freedom

We are at the beginning of a long journey of the Internet. This journey raises exciting possibilities as well as threats

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

A2013 report from Freedom House, a Washington DC-based research and advocacy non-profit, found that more than half of the countries assessed experienced a decline in Internet freedom, including the US.

In the manner of its governance as a multi-stakeholder organization where states participate on an equal footing with private sector and civil society groups, its architecture as an open network of computers, and its gift of voice to previously disenfranchised communities—the Internet has been a symbol of freedom.

In this context, the increasing assertion of sovereign rights over the Internet, and the encroachment on the privacy of citizens has justifiably drawn widespread attention. However, other aspects of Internet freedom need to be kept in mind as we negotiate an open Internet in the face of new concerns.

Net neutrality refers to the principle that creators of content and applications on the Internet should be free to interact directly with consumers without any intermediation by the owners of the transportation layer connecting the two.

Intermediaries argue, in contrast, that with the bandwidth hungry applications being developed, they need to adopt traffic management techniques and tiered pricing in order to provide users an acceptable experience and foster innovation.

Jurisdictions such as the US, distinguish between fixed line broadband providers with relatively high bandwidth who must not only fully disclose network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services, but also eschew any blocking of lawful content or applications or unreasonable discrimination; and mobile broadband providers who are only enjoined to provide full disclosure, and not allowed to block lawful content or applications that compete with their voice services, eg. Skype. In India, there is no mention of Net Neutrality in the National Telecom Policy 2012. It may be appropriate to use a model similar to that if the US where preventing blocking of competing applications and content is prohibited.

While content and application providers such as Google have long railed against the interference of intermediary telecom service providers in the neutrality of the Internet, they are themselves dominant players on the Web, capable of influencing the choices of Internet users. In October 2013, comScore reported that Google’s share of the US search engine market was 67% (measured as percentage of queries conducted), with Bing from Microsoft and Yahoo a distant second and third at 18% and 11.5%. The provision of the service of search has significant economies of scale in terms of data storage. However, the desirability of the market concentration from an efficiency point of view needs to be assessed against the danger of Google using its position as the pre-eminent gatekeeper of the Web to influence search returns.

In case Google is itself a content and application provider as in the case of the video sharing network, YouTube, there appears to be a manifest conflict of interest. There have been complaints about biases in search returns. Similar concerns exist in the case of social networks where Facebook occupies a pre-eminent position with close to 57% of market share in June 2013. A major competitive issue related to social networks is the ownership and portability of user information on a social media site. This is a technical challenge and a legal issue as firms need to be mandated to provide this service in order to enable new entrants to compete.

The Internet offers unprecedented opportunities for people to express themselves. There are risks that such unfettered communication can cause through the propagation of hate speeches, pornography, and even personal threats. Scholars have also argued that the Internet is a disaggregated collection of groups holding like views, resulting in group polarization and the absence of a shared political culture. Such a phenomenon was less likely in the days where all sections of the population got their news from a handful of newspapers.

Many countries such as the US have expanded the scope of existing free speech laws to address concerns on free expression on the Internet. Others such as India have included additional legal provisions apart from their existing laws on freedom of speech. The Information Technology Act 2000 includes section 66(A) prescribes punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc. According to some legal experts, the section is overly broad, and is patently in violation of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution relating to freedom of speech in India. The fact that some information is “grossly offensive" (s.66A(a)) or that it causes “annoyance" or “inconvenience" while being known to be false (s.66A(c)) cannot be a reason for curbing the freedom of speech unless it is directly related to decency or morality, public order, or defamation (or any of the four other grounds listed in Article 19(2) qualifying the fundamental right to freedom of expression enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The episodes of two women being arrested for Facebook activity condemning citywide strikes following the death of a political leader is an example of the kind of legal restrictions that can be in fundamental violation of the original spirit of the Internet and our Constitution.

We are only at the beginning of a long journey of the Internet. This journey raises exciting possibilities as well as new threats to human well being. Correct orientation at this stage will avoid us from going far afield in the future.

Rohit Prasad is associate professor at MDI, Gurgaon.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

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Published: 24 Jul 2014, 07:14 PM IST
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