DI Digest Idea 4 May 96

About Di Digest | Back Issues | Mailing List | Email DI | On Line Features

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
LitScan Press Review

4.	Cyber-Rights
	Does the Internet herald a bright, new era of information democracy or will it, as some critics fear, merely enrich information flows to a few while by passing the 80% of the world's population that lacks even the most basic telecommunications? As the saying goes, without a computer and a phone line you're nothing but 'roadkill' on the Information Highway. So powerful a technology promises to have immense implications for human rights as we currently know them. On the positive side, community activists worldwide point to the tremendous power of electronic communication to lift the veils of secrecy surrounding decision-making, from local City Council sessions to international Group of Seven summits. Some Internet insiders are actively working to bring the technology to those without. Among the cyber-privileged, questions are flowing fast and furious about issues like freedom of information (what to do about pornography, cyber-stalking, hate literature and participation in on-line discussion groups, for instance) and copyrights (specifically, who owns electronic information). Across borders and cultures, there are thorny issues of national and cultural sovereignty when most electronic information is Northern, Western, English-speaking and Consumer-Culture-driven. But outside cyberspace, there are worries that the Internet is speeding up the privatization of information in an era of globalized intellectual property rights. Some say the greatest challenge will not be the exercise of cyber-rights in the highly self-aware 'surfer culture', but the exercise of cyber-rights by those who may not even realize what cyber-rights are.[ensuring information democratization and access in the Electronic Age]
	cyber-Luddites n. rebels against an electronic futur e cyber-privileged n. the 20% of the world's population that can 'plug-in' cyber-challenged n. the 80% who can't 'plug-in' (and those of us still having trouble) information democracy n. the idea that equal access to information will empower all people, including the non-cyber-privileged
	Koers, A.W. Rights and Obligations of the Individual on the Electronic Highway. The Hague: Rathenau Institute, 1995. 48p. Panos, London. The Internet and the South: Superhighway or Dirt-Track? Panos Media Briefing No.16. London, GB: Panos London, 1995. 14p.
NOT HOT -	Damming the International Info-Flow
	Singapore and China have something in common aside from their Asian geography. Each has announced plans to control the information which the Internet brings to their territories. How exactly they plan to do this is unclear, however, as the Internet was initially designed as a post-nuclear, censor-free zone. In China, it is now a crime to transmit financial information across the electronic frontier, whether this originates from inside or outside the country. And in Singapore, though the nation is moving full-speed ahead to promote computer literacy, it is aggressively building walls around Internet access across its borders. As Internet access increases in other censorship-prone regions like the Middle East and Vietnam, look for further attempts to stem the info-flow.
*Virtual Ideas*	A discussion group on the link between communications technology & development