16
Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain
particularly acute around major events and traumatic political episodes. Ramasoota
documents how an emerging online public sphere in Thailand quickly became threatened following a military coup in the country with the introduction of more restrictive
laws and regulations. However, civic groups have challenged these laws vigorously and
through various methods in ways that demonstrate a continued vitality of the civil
society sector.
In the access-contested phase, the regulation that states imposed in the earlier
phases is giving rise to strong responses from civil society, from other states, and also
from the private sector. Companies are implementing new strategies for coping with
the spread of regulation and liability that they face as Internet intermediaries. And as
we described, in response to mounting pressure from states including China and
Vietnam, companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have joined together with
human rights groups and academics to establish an organization, the Global Network
Initiative, to help implement a code of conduct for handling such demands in a
manner than upholds civil liberties.
20 And companies compete, directly and indirectly,
in how extensively they carry out censorship online. Search engines, for instance, vary
in terms of how and to what extent they fi lter keywords. Regulation online is increasingly a blend of the public and the private.
21 In her contribution to this volume
(chapter 10), Rebecca MacKinnon compares pressures companies face in authoritarian
China over surveillance and censorship to those in the democratic regimes of South
Korea and India. Through this comparison she explores the challenges for corporate
social responsibility and upholding universal principles of free expression and privacy
in the region.
States, too, are now actively engaged in a contest with one another over cyberspace.
Military offi cials increasingly think of the online environment as a strategic domain
and a potential zone of warfare. The militarization of cyberspace indicates how states
have built up offensive information-warfare capabilities in recent years.
22 Not surprisingly, there have been a growing number of incidents of computer-network attacks for
political ends in recent years, including those against Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan
human rights organizations, as well as political-opposition groups in former Soviet
Union countries. Two chapters look at these issues from different levels of analysis. In
chapter 8, Nart Villeneuve and Masashi Crete-Nishihata trace the evidence around
attacks on prominent Burmese-related independent media and reach some surprising
conclusions that muddy the waters around attribution. For their part, Hal Roberts,
Ethan Zuckerman, and John Palfrey take a more comprehensive view of the global situation regarding distributed-denial-of-service attacks against civil society groups and
fi nd the frequency and qualities of such attacks a growing concern (chapter 7).
Citizens around the world are beginning to awaken to some of these issues. Public
reaction to Internet regulation also points to the contest that is beginning to play out
in public arenas globally. For example, demonstrators in Pakistan in 2010 made plain
Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain
particularly acute around major events and traumatic political episodes. Ramasoota
documents how an emerging online public sphere in Thailand quickly became threatened following a military coup in the country with the introduction of more restrictive
laws and regulations. However, civic groups have challenged these laws vigorously and
through various methods in ways that demonstrate a continued vitality of the civil
society sector.
In the access-contested phase, the regulation that states imposed in the earlier
phases is giving rise to strong responses from civil society, from other states, and also
from the private sector. Companies are implementing new strategies for coping with
the spread of regulation and liability that they face as Internet intermediaries. And as
we described, in response to mounting pressure from states including China and
Vietnam, companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have joined together with
human rights groups and academics to establish an organization, the Global Network
Initiative, to help implement a code of conduct for handling such demands in a
manner than upholds civil liberties.
20 And companies compete, directly and indirectly,
in how extensively they carry out censorship online. Search engines, for instance, vary
in terms of how and to what extent they fi lter keywords. Regulation online is increasingly a blend of the public and the private.
21 In her contribution to this volume
(chapter 10), Rebecca MacKinnon compares pressures companies face in authoritarian
China over surveillance and censorship to those in the democratic regimes of South
Korea and India. Through this comparison she explores the challenges for corporate
social responsibility and upholding universal principles of free expression and privacy
in the region.
States, too, are now actively engaged in a contest with one another over cyberspace.
Military offi cials increasingly think of the online environment as a strategic domain
and a potential zone of warfare. The militarization of cyberspace indicates how states
have built up offensive information-warfare capabilities in recent years.
22 Not surprisingly, there have been a growing number of incidents of computer-network attacks for
political ends in recent years, including those against Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan
human rights organizations, as well as political-opposition groups in former Soviet
Union countries. Two chapters look at these issues from different levels of analysis. In
chapter 8, Nart Villeneuve and Masashi Crete-Nishihata trace the evidence around
attacks on prominent Burmese-related independent media and reach some surprising
conclusions that muddy the waters around attribution. For their part, Hal Roberts,
Ethan Zuckerman, and John Palfrey take a more comprehensive view of the global situation regarding distributed-denial-of-service attacks against civil society groups and
fi nd the frequency and qualities of such attacks a growing concern (chapter 7).
Citizens around the world are beginning to awaken to some of these issues. Public
reaction to Internet regulation also points to the contest that is beginning to play out
in public arenas globally. For example, demonstrators in Pakistan in 2010 made plain