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On the face of it, this is a welcome move where the UK is taking a lead internationally. But like a controversial US bill earlier this year, it has lead to much scorn and hostile reaction on the Internet, seeing it as both heavyhanded and ineffective. Are the critics justified?
But what is its real purpose? There is an important distinction between absolute prevention, which is probably impossible, and making it that bit more difficult to access the offending material, so that only the really determined will find it. It won't stop the inquisitive, the semi-addicted, or the competent hacker who revels in challenges to beat the system. But it might just be enough to deter someone on the margins, who might end up with a problem habit which they would not otherwise have got into. For that reason, at the very least, the banning of the newsgroups is justified.
But is the free speech ethos valid any more? Much has been said of the Net as the ultimate post-modern community, with an appeal to the slightly anarchic tendencies in all of us not to want anyone to tell us what we could and couldn't do. At last, here was a medium where everyone could let it all hang out, and no one could stop them. But the problem is how this new community (with its own rules) relates to the other, more conventional communities in which human beings live, work, play and conduct public life - with a "civil society"? The two are almost like interacting galaxies crossing over each other at an angle. What happens, as with the alt.variously-pornographic newsgroups issue, where the two interact?
The very success of the Net is in a way the downfall of its own ethos. As it becomes more and more a universal medium of communication, its usership is less and less identified with the particular set of ideals of those who started it. If it becomes used by just about everybody, then they bring with them different views of the free speech question. Gradually, whether it likes it or not, the civil society "galaxy" impinges on the Internet "galaxy", because people live in both worlds. Are these vociferously defended values truly representative of the Net any more?
By the very nature of the Internet, that question is probably impossible to answer. How would we know one way or the other whether today the majority of Net users agree with the free speech philosophy, or whether it is only an articulate minority who wish for no controls of any kind? It would also vary from country to country, region to region. local community to local community. But what can be said is that the civil society of that country, region, or local community has surely some right of comment on how the Internet "galaxy" imposes its values on their "galaxy".
With the technology, we have created a phenomenon which now transcends the control of any one country or society. It has developed its own values. "Free speech", ironically, is itself an absolute value, and is apt to be highly intolerant of any alternative view. Whether or not it is held by a majority of Net users (which personally I would doubt), it does not remove the right of a civil society to moderate the influence which the Internet's assumed values have on its own people, if its people so wish.
Go to SRT Internet Ethics Pages
We'd also welcome any comments you may have. We don't claim to have said the last word!
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This page was last revised on 4 January 1999 in content and in March 2006 in layout.
