The Global Politics of the Internet

So. Hotmail and Yahoo have both withdrawn access to their free webmail services from Iran. No surprise that Google's policies regarding this country haven't changed.

I believe we are seeing something of a cultural or political shift towards a have and have-not global society where countries are being either denied access externally or are internally filtering the Internet and its related services, such as email and the web.

Both of these situations are of course undesirable.

I'm happy to live in a country where I can openly write on a blog things that might portay my government as selfish, misguided or less than competent. It's called free speech and it's such a fundamental building block for an open, constructive society that it would go without saying if it weren't for lawyers. My Internet — once I've admitted a monthly usage charge — is essentially free. I use it like water. It's part of the make up of my life. To know that the greatest educational and social tool on the planet was being even partially denied me would be a massive issue, I'm sure most people would agree.

However, Hotmail and Yahoo's motivations here are the American Government, not the Iranian Government. This is essentially America saying 'Deny this part of the world access to that Internet resource.'

What does America think it's playing at here? It's only two out of countless services, but they are two of the largest in the world. If this isn't an proclamation of global superiority — even a very specialised and subtle one — I don't know what is.

In Iran, information denial is in place in the shape of Internet filtering as well as, more famously, the Great Firewall of China, but at least these policies are their country's own. Looks to me as if we are seeing the symptoms of the start of a cultural split on a scale hitherto unimagined in human history.