From the Soapbox

Vaughan Jones,28,from the UK,like many of us,recently bought a book from Amazon,titled The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need to Know. He then went online,and wrote a review which was far from flattering,calling out the weaknesses of this self-published book and recommending that other users,who might be thinking of buying the book,might want to spend their time and money on something more fruitful like watching webcasts of reality TV shows and obsessing about celebrity pregnancies and child-births.

All of us who depend on online user reviews for the choices we make,would want to tip our metaphorical hats to Vaughan Jones for being a good Samaritan who saved us from a dud purchase,or at least warned us that the book we might have bought has (to use really mixed metaphors) feet of clay. It hence,came as a shock to many,not least to Jones,when the author of the book,Chris McGrath,sued Amazon and Jones for libel,leading to the removal of the review from the website and resulting in a potentially ruinous defamation case against Jones.

The ability to express opinions,unfiltered by broadcasting agencies,not motivated by monetary gains,is one of the biggest strengths of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. In the heyday of the broadcast technologies,in heavily mediatised worlds,the voice of the user or consumer was largely a murmur. As Noam Chomsky,the guru of media theory demonstrated,heavy editing and filtering of content by media houses guided by market and government lobbying and gains,had resulted in an impoverished public sphere that paid more attention to expert voices carefully crafted by PR agencies rather than individual voices. Digital and internet technologies of interactivity and peer-2-peer information exchange have ensured that the user was no longer a passive consumer but had the right to express opinions and express his/her voice through decentralised and uncensored platforms.

Free speech activists and critiques all agree that the ability to transmit information and share expressions,fearlessly has been one of the fundamental structural units of cyberspace as we understand it today. Authoritarian governments that have tried to curtail the free speech of individuals have received severe criticism from across the world. And yet,even in some of the more developed countries in the world,we continue to have libel and defamation laws that are so archaic and expensive that they threaten to freeze any voice that does not serve the larger interests of market and state corporations.

The recent directives by the government of India,under the Information Technologies Rules 2011,that allow for intermediaries (like Amazon or your Internet Service Provider) to take down content that is found objectionable by any unverified authority,promotes similar gagging of independent voices online.

Amartya Sen coined the term The Argumentative Indian in his eponymous book,to mark how,we are a nation that takes our freedom of speech and expression seriously. Think of the last casual Sunday conversation you had with your friends vocally expressing your disapproval or dissatisfaction and arguing about it without any fear of consequences. It is sad that we are moving towards an online space that does not reflect the freedom we get in our physical lives. It is scary to imagine a world,where,the next time we read a book,or watch a movie,or hear a song,we will have to whisper our opinion,mute our response and look over our shoulders before expressing a view,lest we get punished for it. Vaughan Jones is not alone in this persecution. Tomorrow,it might be you. Or me.

digitalnativeexpressindia.com