#SaveTheInternet 101: Why It Matters More Than Ever
The Internet has proved to be one of the most impactful innovations of the 20th century and beyond.
With communication and information being exchanged at a rapid rate across the world (of such a scale which would have been unimaginable centuries or even decades ago), the Internet has ushered in a golden era of human history. There is digital information stored about pretty much anything under the sun somewhere on the Internet. The Internet has levelled the field for anyone with an internet connection and is curious to learn more.
We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.
-Stephen Hawking
Never before have so many humans been united by a common network, which we refer to as the Internet, and this has had a major impact on how the modern society works! The globalisation of human interaction has been accelerated by the Internet as companies could reach a wider audience through digital advertisements. Content creators could gain global recognition and lucrative livelihoods through publishing articles, videos and other content on the internet and the Common Man could gain more knowledge about the world around them with the Internet.
But the Internet as we know it today, is far from perfect. In fact, there are forces at play which threaten to bring about changes in how we browse the Web, to such an extent that we cannot use the Internet the way we do right now!
You may ask:
What is in this for me? Why should I be concerned about this?
For those who find themselves asking these questions, you have come to the right place! Here’s why I think we should all take part in the #SaveYourInternet movement!
Net Neutrality
You might have heard this phrase being used commonly across the media and the Internet. But what exactly is this mysterious entity that people keep talking about??
Simply put, net neutrality puts the onus on Internet Service Providers (like Reliance Jio) to ensure that all content flowing through their cables should be treated equally.
As a person who uses the Internet, I should be able to access any website on the internet and should not be blocked by the ISP, and I should not have to wait any longer for any particular website. Some examples are: my ISP shouldn’t block me from using Skype or slow down Netflix in order to encourage you to keep your cable package or buy a different video-streaming service.
So what if some services are favoured over the other??
Innovation would be stifled.
How?
For example, if I am someone who is aspiring to build the next Netflix. I have a great concept which I believe can replace the Netflix paradigm of keeping customers hooked onto their service. As I am just starting out, I am spending my money on getting my idea out there into the real world. If Netflix does see me as a threat, all they have to do is pay out all the ISPs and tell them to throttle my service (slow down internet speeds for accessing my service) and give their customers incentive to continue using Netflix. Once that is done, no matter how good my idea is, my idea will just remain a non-starter (unless Netflix steals that too like Facebook stole SnapChat stories!)
The greatness of the Internet lies in how it lets people come up with innovative ideas and gives it a chance to thrive! If the big giant corporations have their way, they will stay on top and no other new companies will never arrive to challenge them! This is why it is important to #SaveTheInternet by ensuring Net Neutrality is maintained!
But there have been attempts world wide to violate this fundamental principle. In India, Facebook tried to launch a free Internet service in rural areas (but only selected websites were available on this platform) and Airtel tried to bring about special charges for VoIP calls (essentially your WhatsApp voice/video calls) but since then has established some of the ‘strongest’ net neutrality laws present.
However this could all be affected by the USA’s Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) rules that propose to overrule all the good work done earlier to establish open internet laws and regulations and instead allow ISPs to offer discriminative pricing and availability of websites and services. Anything that the USA does has repercussions across the world, and there is no reason that ISPs across the world will pressurise governments to bring about laws that are in violation of the spirit of net neutrality. The longest fight of the advocates of #SaveTheInternet has been about ensuring net neutrality survives and we should not fall for any argument against this notion.
Online Privacy and Freedom of Expression
The most commonly quoted pop reference when the word ‘privacy’ comes to mind is George Orwell’s 1984. For those who haven’t read the book,
[the lead] Winston Smith wrestles with oppression in Oceania, a place where the Party scrutinizes human actions with ever-watchful Big Brother. Defying a ban on individuality, Winston dares to express his thoughts in a diary and pursues a relationship with Julia. These criminal deeds bring Winston into the eye of the opposition, who then must reform the nonconformist.[1]
Even though the book is considered dystopian by today’s standards, the fact is that each day we stray closer to this reality than ever before! We risk allowing governments and big corporations to have their own version of the Big Brother, who scours the Internet to find and remove any form of content that may have a negative impact on what they represent.
The idea of online privacy is something we have already lost. If you are using a Google account to access so many apps and websites (because it is so convenient to use the same login for multiple websites), you have already surrendered your data and your online presence to the Google behemoth. They can choose to make money by selling your data to companies that wish to know what you are up to so they can sell their new product to you, which you may or may have not asked for, but will leave you astounded at how Google’s algorithms know more about you than your family and friends!
The same goes with Facebook and the 2 billion people who use Facebook or their affiliated apps, Instagram and WhatsApp. Heck, they even collect data from any person with a smartphone as long as the Facebook app (you can’t uninstall it, conveniently enough) is present on your smartphone. I mean, it’s one thing to collect data from anyone with a Facebook account considering there is a thing called Terms of Services users may or may have not read before signing up.
But this…..this does not put a smile on my face!
With this, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai are two of the most powerful people on the planet without even leading a government, considering the power and value of what they have. But what about the actual politicians in power?
The Internet has reduced barriers to communication and enables the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. This needs to be protected and should not be destroyed by censoring by governments and corporations. The significance of #SaveTheInternet is clear from this.
Innovation and Creativity
This is something which was alluded to previously in the article, but we need to understand it a bit more, especially with respect to content sharing on platforms like YouTube.
Those who are avid YouTube watchers would have heard of the ‘subscriber battle’ between ‘controversial’ Swedish YouTube star Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie and the Indian music label company T-Series. While the competition between the two for having the most subscribers has taken on various hues, we saw the YouTube community worldwide stand behind PewDiePie by asking their fans to subscribe to his channel. This sort of unity has never been seen on YouTube before. They took such a stand to fight against the YouTube system which has been increasingly in favor of large corporations who are able to upload multiple videos a day versus individual creators who often struggle to upload daily and who don’t always make money on their videos.
YouTube has a system for ensuring copyrighted content does not get misused by people on YouTube. For example, I cannot expect to make money by uploading an entire movie on YouTube because the rights to the movie belong to the production company. Some of the rules include:
When a copyright owner formally notifies us that you don’t have their permission to post their content on the site, we take down your upload to comply with copyright law.
…….
When you get a copyright strike, it acts as a warning. However, copyright strikes may affect your ability to monetize. In addition, if your live stream or archived live stream is removed for copyright, your access to live streaming will be restricted for 90 days.
If you receive three copyright strikes:
Your account, along with any associated channels, is subject to termination.
All the videos uploaded to your account will be removed.
You won’t be able to create new channels.
As you can see, the rules are very tight on YouTube channels, leaving very little room for reformation. But these rules have been misused over the years, ranging from copy striking videos of YouTubers for extortion to corporations getting YouTube to remove videos that contain any form of criticism. The worst part is that you cannot use clips from films or TV shows, even if you comply with the fair use guidelines (editing or commentary over the video/audio) to ensure you can use these clips for creative videos, as the corporation can just take down your videos if they wish to do so and make money off it too! This will discourage creators from making really cool and fun videos as they need to make money off this YouTube platform!
Article 13 aka the Meme Ban
Essentially this is a follow-up of the previous point I made. Firstly, what is Article 13?
In the future, Internet platforms should assume liability for the content uploaded or shared by their users, unless the platform exhausts all possibilities to prevent the distribution of copyrighted material, User created content must already be checked for copyrighted material while being uploaded. Content for which no licenses are available should be sorted out during upload. However, the necessary upload filters are considered technically infeasible, error-prone and a first step towards Internet censorship. [2]
In simple words, the onus is on large platforms like Google and Facebook to take responsibility for any content uploaded on their platform by any user in the European Union.
So why is it called the meme ban??
Many memes or funny viral content often use images or videos of copyrighted content. Those who are for Article 13 argue that while memes will not be affected by this as they are parodies and cannot be censored out, the counter argument is that most of these ‘content filters’ will not pick up the difference between memes and other content and these memes will be filtered away.
The other big issue here is in the situation that these platforms build these filters, governments might use the existing software to censor content that gets uploaded in their region or country, which is a major violation of our Freedom of Speech rights.
Another dangerous law which has been proposed is Article 11:
The so-called ancillary copyright law requires that all pages referring to press articles must first conclude license agreements with all authors in order to receive the usual preview of a link. All others may show only the pure left. Already the heading is to be appreciated and remunerated as creative achievement of the authors. This, however, at the expense of the possibility for the readers to decide in advance whether they want to click on a news link or not.
Or in other words, news aggregating sites like Google and Facebook will have to pay publishers for using a snippet of the said publisher’s article (like BBC news articles) on their site (Google News/ Facebook trending section). Another issue which arises is what if we share links of articles on our Facebook page? Do we or Facebook pay the news site for posting their article on that platform?
Despite millions of people voting against these laws on the petition website change.org, the EU pressed ahead and voted for these two laws, leaving these directives to be implemented from 2020. There is a good chance Facebook and Google will just pull out of Europe, having already declared they cannot implement the content filter system required by law.
Between these issues, the Internet landscape will change drastically in the near to medium future. All these changes won’t be for the benefit of us and we need to realise the future of the Internet is in our hands! So its high time join together and take action to #SaveTheInternet!
