April 22, 1996 Electronic Buyers News, Page 2. A Closer Look column, by Jack Robertson "bigbrother.com" Orwell would have loved it. National tyrants are helpless to control the free flow of information within their borders. And if they do succeed in closing down ramps to the global data superhighway, their economies crumble. Not that some folks aren't trying to rein in the Internet. Strong-arm governments--including China, Vietnam, Singapore, and some African military dictatorships--want to control domestic access to the Net. Even democracies such as Germany want to censor the Web, and the European Union is debating regulation of it. The United States itself could end up trying to control the Net in well-intentioned but dubious efforts to censor content deemed obscene. The censor's club could be provided unwittingly by the movie industry and by consumer-electronics manufacturers. Their rigid copyright protection plan for DVD would require that every computer I/O interface be designed to block out the copying of any copyrighted motion picture. Once in place, others could sieze the I/O block to bar access to any content thought to be objectionable. Uncle Sam could also end up giving ammunition to Internet censors in a yet-to-be-released proposal to the G-7 economic powers pertaining to copyright protection on the Internet. The Clinton administration will submit the plan to the next G-7 conference in Lyon, France, in late June. The administration's earlier copyright plan for the U.S. National Information Infrastructure has stirred plenty of controversy in th is country over its potential shackling of the free flow of information. So far, the unruly and ubiquitous Internet has defied almost all restraints. Governments, businesses, politically correct factions can't get their arms around this amorphous giant. Stalin could jam out the BBC and the Voice of America. Iran can bar newspapers and periodicals. Singapore can threaten judicial to try to keep the press in line. But how do you cordon off the Web? Some regimes envision their own national gateways to control Net traffic acrosss their borders. Fat chance. Even if police states could build an Internet firewall, it would take the resources of a National Security Agency to monitor the traffic and ferret out noxious communications. In a first thrust to control electronic data, China is regulating all foreign news services through its Xinhua News Agency. That way, Big Brother can lower the boom wherever a central node can be hit. But the anarchical Internet has no central control points--In fact, very little control at all. A grassroots paradigm, the Net is a totally free democratic voice. Like it or not, we need to keep it that way. [end of article.]