NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Knowledge as Sacrilege: The Criminalizing of Links and Search Engines
Knowledge as Sacrilege: The Criminalizing of Links and Search Engines
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000853.html
"The slaves were killed, and the soldiers who killed them were also
slain, so that no unholy person should ever know the exact location of
the burial site." -- The Mummy (1932)
In the classic 1932 film "The Mummy," the character of Imhotep,
portrayed by Boris Karloff, commits what is considered to be a
terrible sacrilege, and is condemned to be mummified and buried alive.
In an attempt to assure that his grave is never found, all of the
slaves who conducted the burial were killed by soldiers, and those
soldiers were themselves killed, despite the fact that none of them
had in any way participated in Imhotep's supposedly blasphemous acts.
All except Imhotep were slaughtered not for actions taken, but for
"forbidden" knowledge possessed.
In the Orwellian world of "1984" even "wrong thinking" was
theoretically punishable as "thoughtcrime" -- but in the real world of
the United States at least, punishable crimes are usually associated
with specific acts intended to break the law. Mere knowledge, and in
most cases even the dissemination of knowledge when a crime is not
intended, are typically not punishable.
Some persons -- including various important and powerful
politicians -- now appear to have forgotten, or are simply ignoring,
these key principles of free speech.
While the reactions to my recent discussions regarding link
criminalization and government-imposed search engine results
censorship ("'Free Speech Be Damned!': Congressional Bill Would Censor
Search Engines": http://bit.ly/jCbZxY [Lauren's Blog] -- and
"Censorship, Governments, and Flagellating Google" [White Paper]:
http://bit.ly/l9SKEU [Lauren's Blog]) were overwhelmingly positive, I
did receive a few responses that suggested significant confusion
regarding the differences between knowledge and crime.
Quoting from one message that arrived a few days ago, from a book
author upset that it was possible to find torrents containing his
work:
"Most ring leaders and people at the center of organized crime are
just talkers. They're just moving their lips, but somehow the crime
is completed. Should all prosecution be treated as 'censoring' the
lip movers? Is Google much different from the other ring leaders?"
The implications of that statement and question are both incorrect and
dangerous, in that they attempt to directly equate knowledge itself
with the commission of crimes.
In the non-Internet world, despite occasional government attempts to
exert broad censorship control over ideas, the very "high bar"
appropriately set for any government intrusions on free speech in the
U.S. have been quite clear.
It's illegal in most places to pimp prostitutes. But if someone
casually asks if you know where they can find a call girl, you do
indeed happen to know, and you then provide that information -- have
you committed a crime?
Back in the days of phone phreaks, friends would occasionally ask me
if I knew how to build a so-called "blue box" for making free
long-distance calls. I was a student of the telephone networks. I
knew how to build blue boxes and much more. Did I commit a crime if I
simply told someone how to construct such a device?
In 1971, Abbie Hoffman published "Steal This Book" -- a veritable
cookbook for illicit activities ranging from cheating AT&T to building
pipe bombs. The book ended up on Best Seller lists. Was it criminal
to publish that knowledge?
In all of these cases, and innumerable more that I could list, the
answer is no.
Economically participating with a call-girl ring may be a crime.
Actually using a blue box to commit toll fraud was clearly illegal.
Detonating a pipe bomb could be a major offense.
But simply discussing these topics would virtually always
appropriately fall under free speech protections, unless those
discussions were part of an intent to make actual use of that
knowledge in a criminal manner.
When we apply these concepts to Web links and search engine results,
we move even further away from any possible automatic association with
criminality, particularly in the latter case. Now we're normally not
even talking about directly providing information that might be used in
"illicit" ways, we're dealing with where information perhaps can be
found.
With major search engines, their indices can include link references
to billions of Web pages on every conceivable topic. It would be
ludicrous in the extreme to suggest that search engine query results
could somehow rise to the level of criminal intent and participation.
What's happening today is that various players, in government and
assorted interest groups, are attempting to leverage Internet
technology and the centrality of search engines such as Google, to try
impose censorship regimes on the Web that they could not
successfully impose in the "brick and mortar" world.
It is doubly ironic that the most visible of these efforts now are
attempting to use intellectual property economics as the means to
impose massive government censorship, rather than, say, national
security concerns -- though perhaps this particular prioritization
could be explained by "following the money" of political campaign
contributions back to their sources.
As I've mentioned before, depending on the courts to block such
egregious censorship attempts may be a risky proposition at best.
Ultimately, it's up to Internet users themselves -- around the
world -- to fully understand what is at stake in this battle, and how much
they each individually, and all of us collectively, have to lose. As
both history and current events teach us, ultimately the people, not
governments alone, really do have the final say.
There are forces who desperately wish to use government censorship of
links and search engines to impose their own version of eliminating
"undesirable" knowledge -- just as brutally as was done to poor
Imhotep.
In our case, however, we still have time to fight back. If we really
do care about free speech on the Internet, we will not permit it to be
buried in the desert of totalitarianism like a struggling mummy, its
witnesses mangled by the spears of those who would restrict knowledge
for their own distorted ends.
We must not allow censorship to become the Internet's tomb.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com