17 Aug 12 | Uncategorized
A recent World Bank report, Maximizing Mobile, offers some startling facts on the spread of mobile technology.
“…in some developing countries, more people have access to a mobile phone than to a bank
account, electricity, or even clean water. Mobile communications now offer major opportunities to advance human development—from providing basic access to education or health information to making cash payments to stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes.”
There are now over six billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world: even allowing for the many multiple subscribers, it’s feasible that everyone in the world who wants a mobile device will have one in the near future.
It is more appropriate to say “mobile device”, because the days when these things were used mainly for the making and receiving of phone calls is long gone. “Phones” are now used for a variety of purposes. This is particularly true in the developing world, where, in large swathes, desktop technology has been bypassed, and feature phone and smartphones now fulfil a huge amount of functions.
Smartphone sales were up 43 per cent in the second quarter of this year, despite a 2 per cent decrease in the overall sales of mobile devices.
While this boom is happening all over the world, a debate is raging in the UK which could have a significant effect on access to information in the developing world. Mobile phone companies here routinely filter web content considered “sensitive” for under-18s. Earlier this year, the Open Rights Group report Mobile Internet Censorship: What’s Happening and What We Can Do About It noted:
“We think there are a number of serious problems with how these systems work. These include a lack of transparency, mistakes in classifying sites the difficulty of opting out of the filtering. Together, these problems mean that people often find content blocked when it shouldn’t be.”
Well quite. On my own previous phone contract, I was unable to view this very site, which, while occasionally discussing controversial topics, is not exactly a hotbed of vice.
Sensitive information we now can get blocked also includes health advice, a massive issue in the developing world. If we accept the blunt instrument that is smartphone filtering, then there is no reason why phone companies would not make the technology universal. Which may be acceptable in the developed world, with our myriad ways of accessing information. But in parts of the world dependent on the mobile device, we could be denying information to people who need it most.
15 Aug 12 | Uncategorized
Among the many issues concerning freedom of expression, it becomes easy to forget illiteracy, even though it serves as one of the most basic barriers to freedom of expression. Illiteracy limits the ability to access and receive information as well as to share and pass on information in written form — on — or offline. As such it is a block to participation in social and political life including writing on or engaging with a range of issues and debates. UNESCO in 2008 reported that 796 million adults worldwide are unable to read and write — an 8 per cent increase in literacy globally in the past 20 years. In 1995 the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression said “the right to seek or have access to information is one of the most essential elements of freedom of speech and expression”.
Of the 796 million illiterate adults, 64 per cent of them are women, which not only reflects a deficiency in gender equality, but also reflects how in some cases lack of access can be a part of restricting the rights of women. According to UNHCHR resolution 2003/42, higher illiteracy rates can be a part of keeping them from being able to freely communicate, and contributes to constraining their rights to freedom of expression.
While a hindrance to freedom of expression, a high literacy rate does not necessarily correlate with a democratic and free society. While UNESCO estimates China’s literacy rate to be 94 per cent in adults, the single-party state is notorious for its extreme censorship of both the internet and the press, and has earned a ranking of “not free” from the US-based organisation Freedom House this year. Democratic India, meanwhile has a literacy rate of 62.8 per cent in adults.
Illiteracy is not only a problem in developing countries, but also an ongoing obstacle in developed nations. In 2010, the Literacy Trust estimated that 1 in 6 adults in the UK is illiterate. In the United States, the US Education Department released a 2009 report stating that 32 million American adults are practically illiterate — struggling with even the most basic of literacy skills. Lower literacy means less citizens engaged with major debates within a state, or even access to basic information.
Such shocking numbers only mean that a significant portion of the populations of both the United States and United Kingdom are unable to adequately access information about issues, making it difficult to be an informed decision maker — something crucial for every member of a democratic society.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship
02 Dec 09 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Judith Townend
It doesn’t sound likely but it’s true: Google is helping restrict access to free content.
Rupert Murdoch has flexed some muscle and forced a small concession by Google, it would seem.
Following the News Corp CEO’s threats to remove news content from Google’s search index and Google News, Google has updated its “First-Click-Free” system allowing publishers to restrict users’ free access to their sites.
Under the system, publishers who run closed content models — those Google calls “premium content providers” — can still be a part of Google News without releasing their content in full.
It was designed to allow users to access a news item via Google once — but of course, users could do this for lots of articles each day. Now, they will be limited to five items per day.
The publishers want to be part of Google, but they don’t want to disincentivise users from paying subscriptions and/or registering on the site.
Now, it looks like the closed content publishers can have their cake and eat it too, for the time being at least: Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen announced yesterday that publishers could charge for their content and still make it available via Google with the updated system. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he explained in a blog post.
But at the end of the day, it’s a small move: Google still holds the power in this search relationship. Murdoch and the other big publishers want its juice. And they know it. Why else spend so much time attacking it?
Note this little reminder in Cohen’s piece:
“Paid content may not do as well as free options, but that is not a decision we make based on whether or not it’s free. It’s simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it.”
And Murdoch’s bound to be even angrier about this: a Fair Syndication Consortium study in the US [PDF at this link] has revealed that Google accounted for 53 per cent of ad revenue attracted by “unlicensed” online news content.
He’ll be uneasy about the concessionary crumbs thrown down to him, well aware that the Google cake isn’t as good as it first looks. One loophole might have been closed, but it’s not goodbye to free and open access news content just yet.
Judith Townend is senior reporter for journalism.co.uk.
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