Last year marked a decline in internet freedom in numerous countries, as indicated by a report released by the Freedom House. The study analyzed 65 countries in terms of user access to internet and laws governing the World Wide Web. The report shows that web freedom has corroded for the fourth back to back year. The document highlights administrative endeavors to ban applications and tech advances by putting cutoff points on content, sites’ filters and infringement of clients’ rights by peeping in their online log.
The report also warns that 2015’s dares in terms of web freedom will increase as Russia and Turkey plan to increase controls on foreign-based internet organizations.
Many countries already put major American internet businesses into odd circumstances. Among them: Twitter, Facebook and Google, who were challenged by problematic regulations. Overlooking these laws has led to their services being hindered. For instance, Google’s engineers retreated from Russia while China blocked Gmail, after the company refused to give the national governments access to its servers.
This Wednesday, Vladimir Putin, Russian President approved the law obliging organizations to store Russian clients’ information on servers located on Russian grounds. But only a few countries approve of this new legislation. As a result it is expected that the law will spur some international debates not long from now.
Most of tech experts believe that pieces of legislation and other state measures will not be able to actually stop information from rolling on the internet.
For instance, a year ago Russian powers asked Facebook to shut down a page setup against the government, advancing anti-government protests. Despite the fact that Facebook consented to the request and erased the page, which had 10 million supporters, different replica pages were immediately set up.
The Turkish government was also slammed by internet power when it attempted to stop the spread of leaked documents on Twitter in March. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government at the time requested the shutdown of Twitter inside Turkey after the organization declined to erase the posts revealing information about government authorities accused of corruption. The result of the government action was that while Twitter was blocked, Turkish users started to evade the ban. Comparable demands were registered in nations like China, Pakistan, and so forth.
According to a popular Russian blogger, Anton Nosik, governments are delusional to think they can remove an article or video footage from the web when materials can easily be duplicated and posted somewhere else.
Most Internet users militate for a free and limitless system, where individuals are permitted to openly navigate whatever they want. Governments on the other hand, are not really fans of this idea. Tech analysts say it is likely to see an increase in clashes between internet surfers and authorities in various countries throughout 2015.
Image Source: The Wall Street Journal
