Despite claims for free speech on the Internet, state control of the media is now spreading to censorship of cyberspace. The Milosevic regime in Serbia, for instance, has closed independent newspapers and radio stations in an attempt to control the flow of information - and censorship legislation, which effectively bankrupts any publication deemed to be in violation, has been extended to the Internet.
But the Internet is the achilles heel of the Serbs - they cannot prevent the heart-wrenching emails coming out of the towns and villages of Kosovo. This testimony by witnesses, combined with the outpouring of grief, has done much to build international support for the Kosovars. Milosevic is not alone in wishing the Internet had never been invented - for many governments, the electronic democracy of the Internet is their Room 101. Repressive regimes, whether political or religious, fear the freedom of speech and lack of censorship inherent in discussion groups and email lists and are responding with draconian measures to attempt to control free access and expression.
In China, hundreds of police patrol cyberspace 24 hours a day to keep track of Internet users and over 100 sites have been banned, including the BBC, CNN and Playboy magazine, as well as politically sensitive sites which express dissident views or deal with issues such as Tibetan independence. In January this year, businessman Lin Hai became the first person to be convicted for "subversive" use of the Internet. He was sentenced to two years in prison for providing 30,000 Chinese email addresses to a US-based online magazine, VIP Reference News (www.come.to/dck), run by dissidents.
In Vietnam, the government has installed a firewall to screen out news from dissidents and strictly controls who has Net access - legislative, judicial and research organisations are forbidden to go online. In Burma, the repressive military regime has outlawed the use of the Internet and ownership of an unregistered computer with networking abilities can result in a prison sentence of up to 15 years. Islamic countries are nervous that websites and discussion groups might contravene their strict religious laws. Many Gulf states have instituted software blockades of national proxy servers, to prevent access to certain areas of the Net - like a Net Nanny for the nation.
The Singaporean government goes several steps further: all websites and discussion groups (even Internet Service Providers and political parties) are controlled by the Singapore Broadcasting authority and must abide by its strict controls, or have their Internet licence revoked. State censors surf the Net on the look out for illegal content - which includes anything that "excites disaffection against the government", promotes gambling or occult practices, or involves "sexual perversions" such as homosexuality - and heavy penalties are imposed on anyone who downloads banned material.
However, free speech and human rights groups are increasingly combating state control and "guerrilla journalists" are fighting back. The politically and ethnically independent Belgrade radio station, B92, which was closed down by the Yugoslav government in March, continues to broadcast intermittently via a Netherlands-based Internet site (www.helpb92.xs4all.nl).
"The Internet is impossible to control completely. Information can get through even the toughest government censors and filters," says Bobson Wong, executive director of the Digital Freedom Net- work, a website and action group set up to combat censorship and to protect human rights (www.dfn.org).
Writers and journalists circumvent state censorship by putting their banned material on the US-based DFN website - which hosts an archive of banned newspaper articles, essays, speeches, cartoons and poetry from over 20 countries. The site includes a message from the last Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo before it was shut down by Serb police in March. Other material includes the pro-democracy article which resulted in the conviction of the writers, four Cuban dissidents, and the Turkish cartoon which landed the cartoonist in jail.
Journalists in the Middle East have established a London-based website where they can exchange hard-to-get local information and also file the originals of news stories, which can be compared to the printed version (www.amin. org/En/). Net-savvy surfers in China are able to reconfigure software to access banned sites through a proxy server, while in Malaysia, international economic pressure is forcing the government to relax its control over Net access.
Authoritarian governments, however, are not the only ones attempting to control cyberspace - academic institutions are also guilty of censorship. Controversy ensued earlier this year when a US student was barred from a university computer lab after she viewed an erotic site, followed by a website entitled Hitler was a Pagan, as part of a research project on the censorship of offensive words and images. The University policy bars students from viewing "objectionable material", even if it covers material available on the library shelves in book or journal form.
Free speech activists argue this censorship breaks the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech, and, until recently, US judges agreed. However, in February, a US judge found against the Nuremberg Files website, which listed names of medical staff who perform abortions and awarded over $100 million to the doctors and nurses who were targeted. Ironically - despite their "repugnance" at the website - many Internet libertarians support the right of the anti-choice campaigners to use the Web for such activities. "The truth is that free speech lies at the heart of any defence of democratic rights. The belief that restricting what people express will somehow restrict what people do (and thus will stop attacks on doctors) is sadly mistaken," says Chris Ellison, founder of Internet Freedom. "Thus it is that those who value free speech must defend this repugnant site."
In Ireland, the government working group on illegal or harmful uses of the Internet acknowledges the inherent difficulty in policing it and recommends self-regulation by Internet Service Providers rather than the introduction of legislation. Free speech is under threat in Australia - a bill to introduce the Singaporean model of Internet censorship may be passed next month, despite widespread opposition. The Web content to be censored includes information on sex, drug addiction, crime, cruelty or violence.
"Were the Australian government to successfully close off Internet access, then it would have succeeded in significantly reversing the general commitment that adults should have freedom of speech and action that doesn't harass other people," says University of Sydney professor, Andrew Jakubowicz.
However, as Milosevic could tell the Australians, however hard governments may try to enforce censorship, the Internet is the last bastion of free speech - and likely to remain so.
smarriott@irish-times.ie