[NetBehaviour] instead of democracy we get Baywatch

[marc]

*Thanks to corporations, instead of democracy we get Baywatch*

The Guardian
George Monbiot

It was claimed that the internet and satellite TV would topple 
dictators, but commercial interest are making sure they don't

'Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, 
leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements 
on my head." Thus Gulliver describes his first encounter with the 
Yahoos. Something similar seems to have happened to democracy.

In April, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was 
sentenced to 10 years in prison for "providing state secrets to foreign 
entities". He had passed details of a censorship order to the Asia 
Democracy Forum and the website Democracy News.

The pressure group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was mystified by the 
ease with which Mr Tao had been caught. He had sent the message through 
an anonymous Yahoo! account. But the police had gone straight to his 
offices and picked him up. How did they know who he was?

Last week RSF obtained a translation of the verdict, and there they 
found the answer. Mr Tao's account information was "furnished by Yahoo 
Holdings". Yahoo!, the document says, gave the government his telephone 
number and the address of his office.

So much for the promise that the internet would liberate the oppressed. 
This theory was most clearly formulated in 1999 by the New York Times 
columnist Thomas Friedman. In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 
Friedman argues that two great democratising forces - global 
communications and global finance - will sweep away any regime which is 
not open, transparent and democratic.

"Thanks to satellite dishes, the internet and television," he asserts, 
"we can now see through, hear through and look through almost every 
conceivable wall. ... no one owns the internet, it is totally 
decentralised, no one can turn it off ... China's going to have a free 
press ... Oh, China's leaders don't know it yet, but they are being 
pushed straight in that direction." The same thing, he claims, is 
happening all over the world. In Iran he saw people ogling Baywatch on 
illegal satellite dishes. As a result, he claims, "within a few years, 
every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his 
own ... government and the one next door".

He is partly right. The internet at least has helped to promote 
revolutions of varying degrees of authenticity in Serbia, Ukraine, 
Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Argentina and Bolivia. But the flaw in 
Friedman's theory is that he forgets the intermediaries. The technology 
which runs the internet did not sprout from the ground. It is provided 
by people with a commercial interest in its development. Their interest 
will favour freedom in some places and control in others. And they can 
and do turn it off.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1568613,00.html
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