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

III. ANALYSIS

A. Is Anti-Jamming Software a Good Approach to Defeat Censorship?

The question of whether the U.S. should fund anti-jamming software initially requires a decision about whether even privately funded anti-jamming technology is a worthwhile effort. The operation of servers that support anti-jamming technology, as discussed above, has varying costs, depending on the nature of the technology used. The more a system can act as a true peer-to-peer network, the more the costs, largely consisting of the Internet bandwidth use, can be distributed to the volunteering general public of host users in non-censoring countries. If two systems had the same amount of page requests from censored users, a peer-to-peer system like Peekabooty would require less explicit operation funding than a system like Anonymizer, which uses central servers with company-funded bandwidth. This assumes that enough members of the noncensored public are willing to serve as host users to fulfill all the incoming page requests; otherwise, the service would either not fully function or require the overflow to be handled by company-funded bandwidth.

Due to the varying operating costs of anti-jamming software and the constantly changing technology, it is difficult to do any sort of general cost-benefit analysis. It would be possible to determine costs of specific programs, but quantifying the corresponding benefit would be too speculative. To say that the benefit is confined to the actual users' downloads and page views is likely shortsighted in ignoring the possible further spread of the ideas read about on the websites viewed. A possible effect down the line, though tenuous, might be that a censoring government feels enough pressure from such programs--from both domestic demand for the uncensored content and the government's own frustrations in blocking the technology--that it takes its firewall down. This Note will discuss that possibility further below.

B. Government Funding of Anti-Jamming Technology under GIFA and GOFA

GIFT was established on February 14, 2006, (140) the same day that GIFA was referred to the House Committee on International Relations. (141) Both rely on the same basic premise and background: that the U.S. government should have some additional involvement in the efforts to defeat Internet censorship. Of course, the striking difference between GIFA and GIFT is that GIFA would appropriate $50,000,000 per fiscal year to its established office. (142) Based on the title of the section that includes the appropriations of funds language, GIFA could be interpreted as stating that this money would go specifically to develop and deploy anti-jamming technologies. (143) However, the subsection itself simply reads that the money is "to be appropriated to the Office," with no further qualification on the use of the funds. (144) Based on GIFA's various broad goals, an attempt "to bring to bear the pressure of the free world on repressive foreign governments," (145) it is possible that this appropriation could be used in efforts that only peripherally touch upon Internet jamming.