CONTESTING AND CONSTRUCTING THE INTERNET

This is the another type of Cyber activism. 

Contestation of the nature of Internet and its relation to inequality and democracy include:

1. Movements to democratically inform the structure, ownership, and technical aspects of Internet media and technology,
2. Activism to create wider access to the internet, crossing the digital divide, and
3. Planning and development of the social use of the net.

 Structuring the Net: The nature of the net has been and is continually being worked out by think tanks, government agencies and legislation, civil institutions, industry, venture capitalists, net administrators, policy wonks, programmers, and in social movements. To understand the social fabric underlying the potential of cyber activism, it is important to explore how Internet technology itself may be designed to facilitate or inhibit democratic interaction. One fundamental issue is the use of free (liberated) software, also more popularly known (and perhaps incorrectly) as open source software code.

         The open sharing of software was a key social practice in early programming cultures and is part of its continuing evolution. In the sharing of code, innovations spread across the net through a "gift" economy in which many functions were introduced that creators of the early computer networks did not envision. This evolved into a “hacker ethic” of sharing software.  The free software movement uses social practices of sharing code and seeks to formalize the hacker ethic with a copy left or General Public License legal strategy to make software a common resource, programming publicly available for modification. There are many types of free software applications, the makers of which hope to replace capitalist information economy with an electronic common. For instance, the open source code in the Linux operating system now has significant share of various operating system markets, decentralizes control of computer systems architecture, democratizing such, and is a major competitor of Microsoft Windows. The open source Apache web server is increasingly used to manage information services on the net. Lawrence Lessing (1999) argues that the ability of government to control the structure of the Internet is related to the nature of the code architecture of the net. Open code is less easy to regulate. The development and pursuit of electronic democracy in decision-making and public policy planning might depend in part on growing and maintaining a net based on robust open code and protocols. While the technical and legal criteria of software may seem distant from social movement activism, the free software movement is one place that activists may be proactive in guaranteeing some measure of public control over the development of the net. Social actors are addressing crucial matters of net development in legal debates over such topics as surveillance, taxation of Internet commerce, and copyright protection for media distribution.

Institutionalizing a democratic architecture of the net is a base from which to empower other types of democratic planning necessary for any sustainable type of democratic society and openness on other levels of net services such as in alternative and local community based media and the ability to monitor governments and corporations.

By:  ULAYA SIJALI A. (BAPRM 42681)

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