Internet censorship -- it's real

It's happening. Governments are getting involved in Internet censorship, and that can't be good.

In today's Networking & Internet newsletter I included two stories that set off alarm bells: "Europe makes moves towards Internet censorship" and "China asks Web sites to eradicate porn, violence." (Of course, in China, you know what will happen to sites that don't comply after they're "asked" to do something.)

Sure, the goals are lofty and almost universally desired: eliminate child porn, aids to terrorism; illegal file sharing, etc.

But when has any government or any other authority succeeded in censoring the bad stuff without trampling on the rights of law-abiding parties and legitimate content providers? And who decides what the bad stuff is? And what about other "authorities" besides governments?

Take this blog post I'm writing right now, for example. If it's included in a newsletter, chances are that thousands of subscribers who voluntarily asked to receive that newsletter won't get it, because ISP filters will pick up on those bad terms I mentioned above and deem the content spam. Just by using that last word in the previous sentence I increased the chances of those newsletters not being delivered.

Yahoo Mail alone sometimes blocks more than 6,000 subscribers daily from seeing the Networking & Internet newsletter that they signed up for. And they don't even know it.

Another ISP, Comcast, has decided to "throttle" -- or block, in essence -- certain content such as BitTorrent traffic. Yet that network is used for legitimate purposes besides file sharing, and those legitimate users and content providers are suffering.

Other ISPs are following suit. It will supposedly be settled by FCC regulations, court decisions or government legislation.

The news out of China isn't so surprising, if you remember its strong-arm bullying of search sites not too long ago.

But now it's Europe, too. The Europe article mentioned above states Finnish authorities have a secret list of domains that are being censored to block child pornography. Activists say "legitimate" porn sites are being blocked, also.

And Denmark and Sweden have gone after The Pirate Bay site to block file sharing.

And a European Union commissioner has called for censorship of sites that explain how to make bombs (see Europe article mentioned above).

And Thailand, Morocco and Turkey have blocked YouTube because it hosted videos critical of kings or founding fathers or other nonsense.

And a U.K. official has called for action against sites that foster terrorism (see Europe article mentioned above).

And a California district court has shut down a controversial Web site in the U.S. that allows whistle-blowers to post corporate and government documents online anonymously.

But who makes the judgment calls on this stuff? When does a big fireworks device become a bomb? When do sites that object to government policies become backers of terrorism? Now that the erosion of free speech on the Web has started, where will it stop? How many innocent people and organizations will suffer?

Our government can't effectively block drugs, alcohol (Prohibition), illegal guns, illegal immigrants, terrorists or anything else. It spends billions of dollars and barely scratches the surface of these things.

I've never been an active privacy/free speech alarmist, but now the hairs on the back of my neck are tingling.

I remember talking to an older relative a couple years back about the Internet and he said it granted too much access to the bad stuff I talked about above because there was no governing regulation.

Half-jokingly, I replied, "That's exactly what I like about it." I meant the lack of regulation. I thought the wide-open nature of the Web and tremendous benefits and opportunities it provided -- including free speech for everyone -- outweighed the bad stuff, which will never go away even under hard-core totalitarian rulers.

Right now, I can write these things without fear of punishment or prior censorship.

Right now.