Lately Internet users in the U.S. have been worried about censorship, copyright legalities and data privacy. Between Twitter’s new censorship policy, the global protests over SOPA/PIPA and ACTA and the outrage over Apple’s iOS allowing apps like Path to access the address book without prior approval, these fears have certainly seemed warranted. But we should also remember that Internet users around the world face far more insidious limitations and intrusions on their Internet usage -- practices, in fact, that would horrify the average American.
Sadly, most of the rest of the world has come to accept censorship as a necessary evil. Although I recently argued that Twitter’s censorship policy at least had the benefit of transparency, it’s still an unfortunate cost of doing global business for a company born and bred with the freedoms of the United States, and founded by tech pioneers whose opportunities and creativity stem directly from our Constitution. Yet by the standards of dictatorial regimes, Internet users in countries like China, Syria and Iran should consider themselves lucky if Twitter’s relatively modest censorship program actually keeps those countries’ governments from shutting down the service. As we are seeing around the world, chances are, unfortunately, it won’t.
Consider the freedoms -- or lack thereof -- Internet users have in Iran. Since this past week, some 30 million Iranian users have been without Internet service thanks to that country’s blocking of the SSL protocol, right at the time of its parliamentary elections. SSL is what turns “http” -- the basic way we access the Web -- into “https”, which Gmail, your bank, your credit card company and thousands of other services use to secure data. SSL provides data encryption so that only each end point -- your browser and the Web server you’re logging into -- can decrypt and access the data contained therein.
UPDATE: Sumner Redstone has changed his mind about next week’s Viacom annual meeting. The media giant’s executive chairman has reworked his schedule so that he can attend the gathering in New York.
On Thursday, company spokesman Carl Folta said Redstone had an “unavoidable commitment” that would force him to miss the shareholder meeting. “He was able to change his commitment and will participate in the meeting,” Folta said on Friday.
The previously planned absence had nothing to do with the health of the 88-year-old media mogul, Folta said. Redstone, who has majority control of Viacom as well as CBS, was seen publicly as recently as Sunday, at the Academy Awards in Hollywood.
Photo Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson
