Gerard Goggin paper, presented at Fifth Asian Conference on Cultural Studies, hosted by International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Kobe, 28 to 31 May 2015

1. The Rise of
Internet
Freedom
Activism
Gerard Goggin@ggoggin
Department of Media &
Communications,
University of Sydney
Fifth Asian Conference on Cultural
Studies, hosted by International
Academic Forum (IAFOR), Kobe,
28 to 31 May 2015

2. • as the internet has become a central delivery
platform across contemporary mediascapes,
activism around internet access, freedom,
censorship, and openness has become more
pronounced
• groundswell has seen terms coined such as
‘internet freedom’, ‘digital freedom’, and, a
term with an older genealogy, the ‘digital
liberties movement’ or DLM (Croeser 2012;
Ziccardi 2013) as convenient, global terms to
encapsulate struggles for the democratization
of the internet

3. • as internet freedom gathers momentum as a
global media policy concept and movement, it
is important to interrogate the terms in which
it is constructed and understood
• strong, normative sense in which North
American concepts of internet, media,
activism and even ‘freedom’ shape the
boundaries and modes of contemporary
debates, policy frameworks, and action

4. emergence of Internet
freedom as concept

5. first US law on Internet freedom - as
content protection issue
Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act,
introduced as a bill in 1995
Became section 230 of the 1996
Communications Decency Act
Gave immunity for providers & users of
“interactive computer service” for info provided
by another content provider

6. Second US law on Internet freedom
- as market issue
‘It is therefore the purpose of this Act to provide market
incentives for the rapid delivery of advanced
telecommunications services-- …(3) by ensuring that
consumers can choose among competing Internet service
providers; and (4) by ensuring that Internet service providers
can interconnect with competitive high speed data networks
in order to provide Internet access service to the public’
US Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act of 2001
‘The purpose of H.R. 1542, the Internet Freedom and
Broadband Deployment Act of 2001, is to deregulate the
provision of high speed data, Internet backbone, and Internet
access services, while ensuring that the regulation of
telephone exchange services is not disturbed.’ Internet
Freedom Act Report

7. So who will protect Internet freedom?
Apparently, a band of philosopher-
technologists stands ready to sound the
alarm and take up the cause, if only they
could agree on the precise nature of the
threat or its resolution
Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (2002)

8. Utopian visions of Internet
as zone of/for freedom
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary
giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace,
the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I
ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not
welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where
we gather … I declare the global social space we are
building to be naturally independent of the
tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no
moral right to rule us nor do you possess any
methods of enforcement we have true reason to
fear.
John Perry Barlow (1996) Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace

9. Internet freedom as US foreign policy
‘We will continue to defend Internet
freedom, including by addressing
internet repression directly with the
foreign governments involved ...’
2006 declaration by Under-Secretary for State
Paula J. Dobriansky
Source: (P. Figliola et al., U.S. Initiatives to Promote Global
Internet Freedom: Issues, Policy, and Technology,
Congressional Research Service, 2011, p.11)

10. Internet freedom as US foreign policy
2010 - Secretary of State Condolezza
Rice establishes the Global Internet
Freedom Taskforce (GIFT), to provide
US response to violations by repressive
regimes
Source: (P. Figliola et al., U.S. Initiatives to Promote
Global Internet Freedom: Issues, Policy, and
Technology, Congressional Research Service, 2011, pp.
13ff.)

11. Secretary Clinton on "Internet Rights And Wrongs: Choices & Challenges In A
Networked World”, George Washington University, 15 Feb 2011

12. On their own, new technologies do not take
sides in the struggle for freedom and progress.
But the United States does. We stand for a single
internet where all of humanity has equal access
to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that
the world’s information infrastructure will
become what we and others make of it.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton ‘Internet
Freedom’ speech, 21 January 2010, Newseum,
Washington, DC

13. ‘a free, widely accessible Internet stands at the
heart of both global communication and global
commerce. Internet freedom enables dialogue
and direct diplomacy between people and
civilizations, facilitating the exchange of ideas
and culture while bolstering trade and economic
growth. Conversely, censorship and other
blockages stifle both expression and innovation.’
Shanthi Kalathil, ‘Internet Freedom: A Background Paper’,
Aspen Institute, Oct 2010

15. critiques of Internet freedom

16. Internet circumvention is hard. It’s expensive … it
doesn’t address domestic censorship, which likely
affects the majority of people’s internet behavior.
The US government should treat internet filtering –
and more aggressive hacking and DDoS attacks – as
a barrier to trade. The US should strongly pressure
governments in open societies like Australia and
France to resist the temptation to restrict internet
access, as their behavior helps China and Iran make
the case that their censorship is in line with
international norms …
As we embrace the goal of Internet Freedom, now
is the time to ask what we’re hoping to accomplish
and to shape our strategy accordingly.
Ethan Zuckerman, ‘Internet Freedom: Beyond Circumvention’, 20 Feb 2010

17. ‘Internet freedom is a long haul policy, and the
resources Congress is allocating towards it are
no match for those China, Russia and others
are allocating to counter its advances. Still
there is a lot of valuable work State can do in
this space. Working to stop Western exports of
surveillance equipment to human rights
abusing regimes is one area in the traditional
diplomatic space. It also makes sense to
continue to fund the development of
circumvention tools that will mitigate potential
risks to activists.’
Fergus Hanson, ‘Internet Freedom:
The Role of the U.S. State Department’,
Brookings, 2012

18. Acknowledging and discussing the power
component of Internet freedom is important for
a number of reasons. First, a particular set of
norms is being built into the institutions,
processes and principles that, to a significant
extent, determine the way the Internet
functions, is governed and develops. In this
context, the promotion of Internet freedom has
become not only a dimension of US foreign
policy, but also an expression of US structural
and institutional power.
Madeline Carr (2013) Internet freedom,
human rights and power, Australian Journal
of International Affairs, 67:5, 622

19. To salvage the Internet’s promise to aid the fight
against authoritarianism, those of us in the West
who still care about the future of democracy will
need to ditch both cyber-utopianism and
internet-centrism [… what I call the Net
Delusion].
Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion:
The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2010) , p. xvi

20. Anyone working on a ‘radio freedom’ policy in the
1920s would have been greatly surprised by the
developments -- many of them negative - of the
1930s. The problem with today’s Internet is that it
makes a rather poor companion to a policy planner
… [The Internet’s] essential unpredictability should
make one extremely suspicious of ambitious and
yet utterly ambiguous policy initiatives that demand
a degree of stability and maturity that the Internet
simply doesn’t have …
Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion:
The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2010), p.283

21. From a global twenty-first century perspective,
Internet freedom is not yet achieved. The same
exact technologies that increase possibilities for
economic and communicative freedom are also
used by governments and private industry to
restrict these freedoms … Even in democratic
countries, degrees of Internet freedom related
to privacy, expression, and individual autonomy
are constantly negotiated against conflicting
values of national security and law enforcement.
As goes Internet governance, so goes Internet
freedom.
Laura De Nardis, The Global War for Internet Governance
(2014), p. 244

22. Imaginaries, practices,
circuits & circulations,
memes of Internet freedom
activism

29. Wikipedia, ‘Imagine a World without Free Knowledge’, 18 January, 2012

33. • against this backdrop, this paper seeks to reframe
contemporary notions of internet freedom, their
politics, publics, actors, and movements
• by a investigation of the histories of internet
activism, stretching decades back to the 1960s
and 1970s to the hacking and technological
counterculture moments of that era;
• it takes a comparative, cultural historical
approach to tracking the roots of internet
activism, documenting, and analysing these, and
considering their significance for how we
understand such activism focused on the internet
today.

34. drawing from the wider project on Asia-Pacific internet
histories, this paper looks at conceptions & framing of
Internet freedom in Australia
– How did activism for the internet develop in Australia?
– How was it related to existing activist movements as well
as key social and cultural identities and problems?
– Was its emergence and characteristics related to particular
infrastructures, internet cultures and histories, and specific
cultural dialectics and social functions?
– How did/are strands of internet activism relate to regional,
international, and global internet activists movements?
About the project: Australian Research Council (ARC) project on Asia
Pacific Internet historiesGerard Goggin, Frances Shaw (Usyd) Mark
McLelland (UoW), Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki (Tsukuba); Takanori Tamura (Hosei),
Tadahishi Hamada (Tokyo),Haiqing Yu (UNSW); Kwang Suk-Lee (Seoul Tech)
http://internethistories.net/

35. Australia
• arises from history of struggles against censorship,
stretching back through second half of 20th
century
• history of BBS & internet censorship moves in the
early 1990s, when Australian internet was
becoming a public medium, and its adoption and
use began to raise questions about its rich
capacity for cultural expression and exchange –
especially of previously difficult to obtain and
distribute ideas, materials, and practices

36. ‘The issue is very simple: Labor either supports
measures to protect children from paedophiles
and drug pushers on the internet or Labor does
not support the need to protect children.
Which is it?’
Richard Alston, Minister for Communication,1999
• from 1995-2007 there is a bipartisan concern with
internet and mobile content regulation that is broadly
consistent across different governments
• Introduction of self-/co- regulation for Internet in 1995
appears to be first time Internet freedom is mentioned in
Australian press (in report on US 1995 Internet Freedom
bill)
• Generates a movement against censorship/Internet
content regulation - e.g. Electronic Frontiers Australia is
formed in 1994 (‘Your voice for digital freedom, access
and privacy since 1994’)

37. ‘clean feed’
• 2007: new Labor Rudd govt introduces National
Broadband Network &
• policy of a mandatory Internet filter (‘clean feed’)
• list of banned/blocked websites
• policy was confused; and issues of technical
feasibility were never satisfactory addressed
• catalyzed widespread activism & was opposed by
Internet industry (esp. Google)
• quietly dropped in April 2010
• momentarily re-adopted by Coalition govt in
2013 election, before now Minister Turnbull
managed to have it dropped

40. Australian responses to
SOPA/PIPA legislation
• the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & Protect
Intellectual Piracy Act (PIPA) in 2011-2012
brought widespread reaction & rallies in Australia
• Australia was bound by the Free Trade
Agreement with the US
• so local Internet providers & industry were
concerned about unwieldy requirements
• activists and many everyday users protested new
controls on their use of digital content &
networks

41. ‘The American copyright bill attacks the very
basis of the internet.
AUSTRALIANS face a threat to their online
freedom and security as pernicious as it is out of
their hands.
US legislators are set to pass contentious
copyright legislation with which even US
President Barack Obama says he has problems.
This proposed legislation affects internet
governance around the world.’
Nate Cochrane, The Age (Melbourne), 19 Jan 2012, p.13

42. conclusion
• ‘Internet freedom’ - as an imported US term -
has gained increasing resonance in Australia,
reaching its height in the SOPA/PIPA
worldwide protests of 2011-2011;
• struggles for the Internet as zone of freedom
have steadily deepened over past 2 decades -
latest being in protests against 2015 metadata
legislation
• But Internet freedom as organizing global term
is jarring & doesn’t quite fit

43. conclusion
• Part of the reason that Internet freedom is a solecism in
Australia that the cultural traditions, histories of activism, &
media/political traditions are distinct in Australia - so the
widespread, reflex images of the ‘great Australian Internet
firewall’ (2007 - clean filter) or Australia as the ‘village idiot
of the Internet’ (1996 - content regulation) are just as
misleading as they are for China’s ‘great firewall’ moniker
• Also ‘net neutrality’ as policy issue doesn’t apply so neatly
to Australia - as discrimination among types of Internet
traffic is not such a key issue
• Australia case provides further impetus for need to rethink
information political & movement struggles about Internet
from ground of specific imaginaries & histories of activism
for Internet in particular place

44. references
Gerard Goggin & Mark McLelland (eds), Internationalizing
Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms (Routledge,
2009)
Gerard Goggin & Mark McLelland (eds), Routledge Companion
to Global Internet Histories (Routledge, 2016)
Gerard Goggin, Mark McLelland, Kwangsuk Lee, and Haiqing
Yu, with Leslie Tkach-Kawaski, Tamura Takanori, Tadahisha
Hamada, Frances Shaw, and César Albarrán-Torres. Asia Pacific
Internets: Culture, History, Technology. Asia Pacific Internets:
Culture, History, Technology, forthcoming &
‘Imagining the Web in the Asia Pacific: Regional Histories
Shaping a Global Technology’, forthcoming.