The battle for Internet Freedom

While here in America we have the EFF to govern Internet Freedom and much much more, including the regulation of all sorts of technological rights. With the EFF's help, the government might have a hard time getting a hold of anyone's information unless they have committed a very serious crime. They have filed lawsuits against the government ranging from cell-phone tracking the to raids of suspected video-game hackers, almost always resorting back to their motto of freedom of speech and information on the internet. While it might be nice that we have such a strict legal team to back up all of our internet rights, other countries cannot say the same. In my presentation this week, I briefly touched up the cases of China vs. Google and the litigation of the Italian government. This is the link to the website that I showed in class http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20000415-38.html. I have also found more information on these issues regarding internet freedom. In Italy, the government (specifically president Silvio Berlusconi) has gone forward in setting up the government's ability to veto violent or pornographic content from YouTube. Google (which owns youtube) has filed a lawsuit against the government that says they are violating freedom of speech. This article further explains http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/22/italy-internet-regulation_n_433386.html. Just in the last week, google has shut down its search engine in China because of censorship, and has routed its users to Hong Kong instead. According the the Chinese government, this violates Chinese law and the promise google made to filter its search engine. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

These are just two examples of many more that happen all across the world. Although freedom organizations do their best to stop it, government involvement in the internet seems like it will never end.