Increasing global demand for an uncensored Internet - how the U.S. can help defeat online censorship by facilitating private action

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Jan, 2008 by Andrew W. Lloyd

Lin Hal's frustration in promoting freedom of speech from within China is an example--particularly given his relative success after moving to the U.S.--that individuals outside of China must be involved in such efforts. His story also hints that the Chinese government is not immune to buckling under pressure for change, both from within China and abroad. Lin Hai's time in jail was shortened due to the attention given to the matter by the media and outside human-rights organizations. (32) This lends additional credence to an idea put forth by Bill Xia: "[T]echnology alone will not decide the future of China's cyber-wall, but people do. If all Chinese people would like to obtain uncensored information, the cyber-wall will be broken from the inside." (33)

The Lin Hal story suggests that the Chinese government will go after citizens who attempt to spread the word of anti-censorship technology. The more important question for Internet freedom in China is to what extent the government will pursue mere users of such technology. Under the "Measures for Managing Internet Information Services," made law in 2000, ISPs are required to record every website a subscriber visits, along with the telephone number used for access. (34) ISPs must maintain records for sixty days and submit them to the government on demand. (35) Thus, the Chinese government could at the very least look back at records once the URL becomes known by the authorities to learn which citizens are accessing the internationally-run sites that allow firewall circumvention. This threat is obviously even greater in other countries where ISPs are under the monopoly control of the government through state control of the telecommunications systems. (36)

China's censorship technology is only part of its formula for content control on the Internet; as mentioned previously, the government also relies heavily on self-censorship resulting from the public's fear of possible punishment. (37) Other countries use more direct, forceful methods of censorship. In Cuba, Fidel Castro only allows Internet access through government-approved institutions, (38) places high taxes on email accounts, (39) and banned the sale of personal computers to the general public in 2002. (40) The Internet essentially does not exist in North Korea because Kim Jong-Il has banned access to any websites outside of the country. (41)

Reporters Without Borders calls North Korea "by far the worst Internet black hole." (42) The computers available to some students and researchers at universities in North Korea are only connected to each other through what is essentially a countrywide intranet. (43) The government monitors this intranet. (44) According to the New York Times, "[a] handful of elites have access to the wider Web--via a pipeline through China--but this is almost certainly filtered, monitored and logged." (45) Such use by one country's citizens of another country's less strict Internet regulations will be seen in this Note as the typical method around government firewalls and censorship.