The West's Coming Internet War

On matters of Internet freedom, the Western world can’t even begin to make up its mind, and its two biggest transnational institutions may soon fall into a complex, ideological struggle over people’s rights to digital expression. Last Friday, the United Nations declared an audacious new right to the Internet in a long report, as The Atlantic’s Nicholas Jackson chronicled. In the wake of Middle Eastern revolutions of the Arab Spring, the UN states that the Internet acts as a catalyst for a variety of other human rights, for free expression and the democratic exchange of ideas. This expression can “offend, shock or disturb” as well as attack governments and high-profile figures, but people must be able to raise their voices online.
[ theatlantic.com ]