Who Owns Information?

What is cencorship? "Cencorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication

which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body." (Wikipedia)

Yesterday Econsultancy published a very interesting article about the power struggle between WikiLeaks and the Guardian newspaper. It seems that WikiLeaks has signed an agreement with the Guardian whereby the Guardian is privy to their information but only for review, it is forbidden from publishing any content without the consent of Julian Assange or an authorised WikiLeaks representative.

This case perfectly highlights the barriers journalists and newspapers are currently up against. The free and open platform that is the internet has not only made it near impossible for newspapers to be the first to publish stories but it has removed many of the censorship barriers that have been applicable to the industry for centuries. The power has been given back to the people. They have the ability to disseminate information as much as anyone else and they aren't interested in having important details kept from them.

There is no end to the number of examples there are exemplifying this point. The Chinese government giving in to social media, London riots being set up over Facebook and the Arab Spring being facilitated by connected networks of people across the Middle East. Clearly we have entered the 'modern revolution'. Digital Strategist, Andy Williamson, attributes this revolution to digital tools. "They achieve significant things; first, they bring together otherwise remote and disparate groups. Second, they create channels to bypass traditional state control of the media so the outside world can see what's going on The underlying complexity of the network is an important factor too. Whilst regimes would like to simply turn off the internet, this is very difficult to do completely. Activists on the ground and net-savvy supporters around the world are able to implement proxy techniques to evade detection and bypass the controls of states. Flows of information can be slowed but not stopped; the world is now simply too porous." (Hansard Society, eDemocracy)

Heather Brooke, journalist and author of 'The Revolution will be Digitised' believes that the internet has decentralised power. It could mean the greatest democracy the world has ever seen, or it could mean the greatest totalitarian state. It will be interesting to see what comes of the next few years. Will governments let go of their control or pull their socks up even higher?

by: Tamara Jacobs

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