Cybersieves

Abstract:     
This Article offers a process-based method to assess Internet censorship that is compatible with different value sets about what content should be blocked. While China's Internet censorship receives considerable attention, censorship in the United States and other democratic countries is largely ignored. The Internet is increasingly fragmented by nations' different value judgments about what content is unacceptable. Countries differ not in their intent to censor material - from political dissent in Iran to copyrighted songs in America - but in the content they target, how precisely they block it, and how involved their citizens are in these choices. Previous scholars have analyzed Internet censorship from values-based perspectives, sporadically addressing key principles such as openness, transparency, narrowness, and accountability. This Article is the first to unite these principles into a coherent methodology. Drawing upon scholarship in deliberative democracy, health policy, labor standards, and cyberlaw, the Article applies this new framework to contentious debates about sales of censorship technology by Western companies, public law regulation of these transactions, and third-party analysis of Internet censorship.

Keywords: Internet censorship, censorship, Internet filtering, filtering, China, Web, Internet law, information law, cyberlaw

Accepted Paper Series