Vassar Technology Today | Internet no longer immune to censorship

Matthew Leung Columnist

Censorship on the Internet by the government and large corporations is a familiar concept for countries such as China, Korea and Syria. But over the past few years, accumulating evidence from corporate Internet service providers (ISPs) and the government shows that this concept has been settling down in the United States as well.

On Aug. 5, audiences viewing a live Pearl Jam concert via AT&T’s online Webcast were restricted from hearing two lines sung by Eddie Vedder. The two lines in the anti-Bush song were “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush, find yourself another home.”

AT&T subsequently apologized to the band and explained that its subcontractor, hired to monitor the content for profanity, mistakenly censored the two lines.

Verizon had a similar problem in late September, when it blocked text messages sent from Naral Pro-Choice America’s Web site from reaching Verizon customers who had signed up to receive them. Verizon rescinded its decision after members of the media pointed out that political groups such as the Republican National Committee have been allowed to use text message campaigns with Verizon customers.

E-mail was also curbed by censors last April, when AOL blocked the delivery of e-mails to its customers that contained links to the Web site DearAOL.com. The site is a coalition against AOL’s plan for “certified mail,” which allows third-party companies to bypass AOL’s spam filters and guarantees delivery to AOL users in exchange for payment. AOL also promptly lifted the block after it received media attention.

A small number of major corporate ISPs such as Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon provide broadband access for 83 percent of the market. As a result, each household, on average, only has two broadband providers from which to choose. These corporations can easily censor parts of the web for the majority of Americans if they do not provide fair access to all content on the Internet.

As of late October, two senators have called for a congressional hearing to investigate several ISPs’ plans to charge Web sites for preferential bandwidth to its customers. Similar to preferential trade agreements in globalization, popular Web sites such as YouTube may pay ISPs so they can download data faster from sites that pay than from sites that have not paid. Such a system would mean, for example, that YouTube videos would download faster than videos from its rival sites, since YouTube would have paid the ISPs for preferential traffic.

This kind of content discrimination is a form of censorship because it would make non-mainstream sites that cannot afford to pay for preferential treatment less accessibile to the consumer. It is also a move to increase the dominance of mainstream content providers on the supposedly free Internet.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) communication is also partially censored by Comcast, the second largest broadband provider in the U.S., with 12.9 million customers. In late October, Comcast admitted to delaying and interrupting P2P traffic. If other ISPs adopt the same practice, P2P networks could be crippled.

Users might also find their complaints about their ISPs censored. Up until September of this year, the terms of service (TOS) agreement of AT&T stated that it reserves the right to terminate service of customers who disparage the company. But since the media has pointed this out, AT&T has revised its TOS agreement.

While we may turn to Congress to regulate the ISPs, the government itself has itself censored the Internet in certain ways.

A month after the Sept. 11 tragedy, the government shut down myriad Web sites that it deemed as posing a threat to national security. Many government Web sites removed public information that security officials thought could help terrorists plot an attack. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Environmental Protection Agency shut down their sites altogether in October 2001, and did not reopen until several weeks later, after they had filtered out public information in the name of national security.

The FBI also requested ISPs to delete the unedited video of the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl from their servers.

Despite increased censorship, the Internet still has more freedom than are granted to media such as television and newspapers. But more of the regulations that at one time restricted only broadcast and print media are also aimed at the Internet. The free-flowing network once considered ungovernable by government and corporate forces is gradually entering into an era of tamed regulation.