China Trying to Export Its Internet Censorship, Again

"1984" must be required reading for China's exporters of censorship, and the closing day of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, India, gave them yet another opportunity to prove it.

For many years, the Beijing regime, who have put together the most formidable censoring apparatus in history, has been trying to make both its word and thought control easier by convincing the rest of the world to adopt their censorship methods.

Of course, after so many unsuccessful attempts, they have learned to sell their bitter medicine along with a heaping spoonful of sugar.

For instance, today at an IGF workshop titled "Global Culture of Cybersecurity: Building Trust and Confidence on Internet," the Chinese delegation presented their third version of their idea of international censorship under the guise of a paper titled "A Proposal on World Internet Norm." First, the sugar:

Internet Governance is really a kind of system engineering and covers all aspects of openness, security, diversity, and access. As one of the bases to approaching the goal of governance, we purpose (sic) a Framework on World Internet Norm (WIN for short) based on ethics and moralities by consensus.  We expect it may maximally conform to the benefits of the most individuals and groups of people on the globe.

Notice all sorts of positive words such as "diversity," "access," "ethics," "moralities," and "consensus," which of course they all "may maximally conform to the benefits of the most individuals and groups of people on the globe."

After comforting us by saying that "all nations and individuals should open their doors for receiving trustworthy and valuable information," they add that the Internet is not about setting up "barriers for blocking information flows."

And here comes the medicine, scattered all over this 21-point recipe for Internet censorship with recommendations such as this one:

Universal architecture, framework, policies and protocols for the Internet should be established worldwide so that the openness and interoperability can be guaranteed.

The Internet, that wonderful organized chaos that has put the world literally at our fingertips, does not need any of this "architecture, framework, policies and protocols" proposed by the same people who for 10 consecutive years have sat at the very top of the list of the world's worst jailers of journalist and bloggers. They are also the number one sponsor of the Burma military junta, one of the world's most repressive regimes, who are currently handing down wholesale, mind-bogglingly long prison sentences to journalists, bloggers and artists.

The same crowd, in point D-2 of their proposal, tell us that "The users of Internet should strictly observe the related regulations when accessing and utilizing the Internet" because, as point D-4 reads, "All information created for, and contributed to, the Internet should be trustworthy and valuable [...] for maintaining human ethics and morality."

At the same workshop, Internet expert Dr. William Drake, of Geneva, Switzerland, politely warned the audience that it would be very difficult for content that requires norms that begin by talking about "trustworthy and valuable knowledge"  to achieve international acceptance.

"You can’t go to the population and easily force upon them approaches that are at odds with what they’re trying to do," he added. "There has to be a diverse, multistakeholder approach."
 
We all should take these repeated attempts by the Chinese regime to expand their Internet control powers throughout the world very seriously. WPFC Chairman Richard Winfield has warned us that China considers the Internet "as another tool to increase their power," and this control hunger is aiming at having a "harmonious Internet where all their censoring designs are respected internationally."

We all should be vigilant about this control hunger. If you ignore your freedoms, they will eventually abandon you.