One of the beauties of the Internet is how it has democratized information, making it easily available to anyone with a computer and a connection, and allowing anyone with an idea, crazy or not, to distribute it to a worldwide audience.
Which is why dictatorships, from Beijing to Havana, hate and fear the Internet so much, and do whatever they can to limit access and to censor what their people read on their computers — that is, if they are allowed to have a computer.
It's as if by instinct, they know their philosophies and world-views cannot survive in a marketplace of ideas made so accessible by technology.
So they limit access and arrest those in whose hands that access can do them the most harm.
The dictators, like Cuban Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, know that if they leave the Internet unfettered — which is one of the its defining qualities — they put at risk their own survival.
Of course, they can't come out and say that, so they portray their censorship, and the accompanying repression, in ideological terms or as Valdes did Monday, as if they actually are doing their people a favor.
"The wild colt of new technologies can and must be controlled," Valdes said at an international conference on communication technologies in Havana.
Because if that horse is allowed to run free — he didn't say, but he fears — it will trample the dictatorship and help free a nation.
What Valdes either doesn't know, or chooses to ignore, is that the Internet is not built to be controlled, with easy access points for censors. Yes, totalitarians, sometimes, as in China, with the compliance of companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, have been able to restrict what their citizens call up on their computers.
And the Cuban regime, in which Valdes is a key player, harrasses and arrests independent journalists who with great courage and determination, and more than a little ingenuity, are able to get their stories out on the World Wide Web.
But the very essence of the Internet, its ever-evolution and how it puts users in charge of information, in the end makes such efforts futile.
The insurrmountable will of people to live freely — a freedom that always is at home on the Internet — will always triumph.
In his comments, Valdes parroted previous Cuban government statements about how the U.S. embargo forces the regime to restrict access to the Internet.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) took issue with that.
“The US embargo prevents Cuba from connecting to the Internet by underwater cable and this obviously does not favor development of the Internet, but we published a report in October that shows that the authorities deliberately restrict online access,” the press freedom organization said.
“It would anyway have been astonishing if a country that has no independent radio or TV station or newspaper did allow unrestricted access to the Internet,” Reporters Without Borders continued. “We await the creation of a better Internet connection via Venezuela, as the minister announced, and we will then see if the government finally allows its citizens access to an uncensored Internet.”
The RSF report released in October states:
"An investigation carried out by Reporters Without Borders revealed that the Cuban government uses several mechanisms to ensure that the Internet is not used in a 'counter-revolutionary' fashion. Firstly, the government has more or less banned private Internet connections. To visit websites or check their e-mail, Cubans have to use public access points such as Internet cafes, universities and “Youth computing centers” where it is easier to monitor their activity. Then, the Cuban police has installed software on all computers in Internet cafes and big hotels that triggers an alert message when 'subversive' key-words are noticed."The regime also ensures that there is no Internet access for its political opponents and independent journalists, for whom reaching news media abroad is an ordeal. The government also counts on self-censorship. In Cuba, you can get a 20-year prison sentence for writing a few 'counter-revolutionary' articles for foreign websites, and a five-year one just for connecting with the Internet in an illegal manner. Few people dare to defy the state censorship and take such a risk."
Read the whole thing here.
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