User:Theinyou

= Freedom of Expression in Information Technology =

In order to promote and protect human rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights was brought into the realm of international law in 1948. Along with many articles of human right, the article 19 states “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.″ Since expression can be done through speech, writings, media such as art, music and videos, and demonstrations, freedom of expression simply refers as the right to express one's perspective through any form of media through radio, televisions, and internet.

Is every expression protected?
It is human desire in nature to express its own ideas, experiences and expressions. However there is a debate that human-beings really deserve the freedom of expression, or the governments should control it, or it is the public who should control and practice it. Though freedom of expression protects the hold and express opinions in general, there are some limitations which are not protected by law. Expressions with defamation, fraud, obscene,incitements can cause false images resulting public order, health and moral problems. Expressions using fraud and sedition can cause troubles for national security. Thus those types of expressions which can give false information to nation and public are not protected by law.

Internet
Throughout the evolution of communication concepts and technologies from cave paintings to telegraph, radio, telephone, television, internet came in handy for the purpose of global exchange of information such as news, innovations, and beliefs and so on. Especially after the development of web 2.0, in which information is very dynamic and can be updated easily, the rate of flow of exchange of information to public becomes very fast and the power of internet becomes massive. Most importantly since internet is very powerful and censorship is weak, anyone on earth can spread any information, whether right or wrong, successfully and very quickly.

Contents and Responsibilities
In order to explain about freedom of expression on internet, contents on internet and responsibilities resulted based on contents cannot be neglected. The very first factor about contents on internet is how much reliable the information is provided in it. Followed by from where the information or source flows, and to which audience the information is delivering for. Based on the three factors, it can be decided which contents are appropriate or not, which contents fall into the limitations of article 19, and which contents are just under the freedom of expression. Examples of contents which are not appropriate or which can damage to others
 * 1) Pornographic or adult materials or crime scenes are not appropriate for children.
 * 2) Frauds and defamation to brands, people or organizations can create suspicions and loss of trust.
 * 3) Leaking classified information can cause serious damage to national security.

Based on the providing contents, the consequences will be either good or bad. Hence it is really important to acknowledge the moral responsibility and social responsibility which are already embedded in the contents. If something goes wrong because of some contents on internet, the question of "who will be responsible?" can't be neglected.

Regulations and Tools
Therefore to emphasize, to promote and protect such responsibilities, it is very essential to put regulations on the contents on internet. However depends on different governments, the practice of internet censorship is different. Diversity of users, business, and governments create challenges on the impact of how internet is managed. This is why how the Internet is governed is a critical one.

For example before the current government was elected on 2011 in Myanmar, under the military rule accesses to YouTube, some news agencies, Facebook were banned from time to time depending on the political situations happening at that time, and most of the pornographic sites were and are still banned. At that time, since amount of internet users compared to nowadays was relatively very small, and businesses were ran mostly local, such internet regulation was not a huge obstacle to the public.

To effectively apply such regulations, there are several tools which can be used from individual to nationwide. They are called content-control softwares and a range of home use to nation wide can be controlled.

=Case Study= The following case is a good example to discover freedom of expression was violated and also misused within the same country.

Incidents in Myanmar
After the uprising in 1988, Myanmar was ruled under military government. The government used closed door policy in which freedom of expression was the most difficult thing to be practiced inside the country. After a long period of suffering, in September 2011, public demonstrated a protest to the government. The event got bigger as the government opened fired in public. Since that time, public started giving pressure to practice freedom of expression, and in fact they started practicing. Local journals or newspapers were filled with the images and news about the protest. Later spread through Facebook, and internationally hosted local news agencies to international news agencies such as BBC, CNN and so on. As soon as the news got spreading, government violated freedom of expression by arresting the journalists, blocking ISPs and filtering websites and blogs which expressed about the incident. However because of the international pressure, new election was held within a few months, a new government was reformed and its violation to freedom of expression was ended. It was until July 2014, a riot between two religious groups was occurred in Mandalay city in Myanmar. Before that there were religious clashes happened in bordering cities between Bangladesh and Myanmar; however, the case in Mandalay was started all because of the misinformation from a social blog on internet. Without any reliable information of what actually happened, the blog stated as rape case from a religious group to different religious person. It went all viral on Facebook and other news agencies. Due to the previous clashes between two religious groups, hatred was involved and the city was torn apart within an evening. Later on martial law was ordered and it took almost a week to calm down the crowds from both sides. After that investigations were conducted and found out that the actual event was totally different from the information provided by that blog. At this time, social websites, news agencies, or the blog itself didn't even take any responsibility. Overtime the event was forgotten, but the current government didn't even try to violate the freedom of expression again dealing with that case.

=Conclusion= It is a very honorable thing to practice freedom of expression as a human right. Especially in this IT age, with a proper use of freedom of expression, we can create brighter future from information we use and we are fed. However, since practice of freedom of expression in a wrong way using the IT can also result unnecessary chaos much quicker, it will be very difficult to decide in which way such technologies will be governed. Hence the responsibilities of practice of freedom of expression with the help of IT will grow stronger and more debatable topic in the future.

=References=