ISSUES in INTERNET RIGHTS:
CENSORSHIP CASE STUDIES
INTERNET CENSORSHIP CASE STUDIES
Biwater
Plc (Britain
and South Africa)
BACKGROUND
Water
supply is an important public issue in South Africa. Apartheid
left behind a water supply system that, while giving most
white South Africans access, leaves many black townships
with woefully insufficient water services.
A
major debate has been taking place on how to create adequate
water supplies for these areas. The issue of privatisation
has been at the centre of this debate. Arguments have been
advanced that the capital for expanding the municipal water
supply systems can only come through selling them off to
multinational corporations. This has been strongly opposed
by those who argue that equal development and access can
only be ensured by keeping water in public hands.
The
South African Municipal Workers' Union (SAMWU), many of
whose members work in water supply, has been in the frontline
of opposing water privatisation. It has used the Internet
very effectively to publicise its campaign.
In
1997, the conflict between the opposing views focused on
the town of Nelspruit, where the Town Council decided to
take bids for a 30-year contract to run water supplies.
Whoever won the contract for this first sell off would be
in a very strong position to ultimately take over other
major parts of South Africa's water supply. Competition
was fierce. The frontrunner in the bidding was a British
transnational corporation, Biwater Plc.
THREAT
On
17th April 1998,Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, a company
renowned for handling libel actions, sent a letter to the
British ISP, GreenNet, over a press release by SAMWU that
was on the LabourNet website on the GreenNet server. Carter-Ruck
was acting on behalf of Biwater. They indicated that unless
the press release was removed immediately and this reported
to them within seven days, legal action would be taken against
GreenNet. They claimed the press release contained allegations
that had already been the subject of court action against
the Independent in 1994 and Private Eye in 1996. In both
cases, the defendants had paid substantial damages and legal
costs to Biwater and apologised for the allegations.
In
fact, the press release simply referred to allegations that
had been carried in the South African newspaper, Mail &
Guardian in an article on April 11, 1997 entitled "Thatcher's
pals bid for SA water". Legal action had not been
taken against this article although Biwater had made threats
against it in May1997. The central allegation in the article
was that:
"Biwater
was among a select group of civil contractors and defence
manufacturers which benefited from a secret network that
controlled the supply of British aid and arms to, and
trade with, overseas countries initiated at the start
of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's rule."
It
soon emerged that, simultaneous with the letter sent to
GreenNet, a letter had also been sent to the South African
ISP, SangoNet. This made a similar threat of court action
unless the M & G article was removed immediately from
its online archive, which was on the SangoNet server.
ISSUES
INVOLVED
The
attempt by Biwater to remove the M & G article from
an online archive and eliminate reference to it from the
Internet was reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. If they
had succeeded it would have imposed a greater restriction
on the Internet than exists at any public library in a democratic
country.
On
24th April, Chris Bailey, webmaster of LabourNet, appealed
for support from the Internet community to defend the
Mail & Guardian article.
"It
is the attempt to remove all traces of the Mail and Guardian
article from the Internet, including even archives, through
intimidating people with threatened law suits that is
totally unacceptable. This must not be allowed to happen
and must be fought by the Internet community as a whole.
Biwater
has the power of money, we have the power of the Internet.
We must use this to the full. The pages forced from the
Internet by legal threats and intimidation must be given
a much wider audience than they would otherwise have had,
by disseminating them as widely as possible. This is our
ultimate defence of Internet democracy."
MEASURES
TAKEN TO COUNTER THE THREAT
At
an early stage it was decided that the main issue was to
defend the M & G article. The SAMWU press release simply
referred to this article and did not add anything new. It
was removed from LabourNet with an announcement of what
had happened and a link to the M & G article. SangoNet
was prepared to defend this article. But now a problem arose,
the Mail and Guardian itself decided to comply with the
lawyers’ instructions. SangoNet could hardly insist
that a customer keep material on its website if it did not
want to.
At
this point, LabourNet set out to trace the journalist who
had written the article, Eddie Koch, to find out his position.
Koch, who no longer worked for the Mail & Guardian,
did want to defend his piece. He was adamant that it was
accurate and truthful. It was in this context that LabourNet
decided to defend the article and appealed for help to do
so.
Both
GreenNet and SangoNet are members of the Association for
Progressive Communications (APC). They discussed their situation
within APC. As a result of this, two other APC members,
Inform in Denmark and Antenna in the Netherlands, approached
LabourNet offering to help. They set up LabourNet Biwater
mirror websites on their servers where the material removed
from GreenNet and SangoNet could be placed. At the same
time they issued a joint
statement saying:
"APC
has enabled communications between people during war,
under dictatorships, and in areas of poverty where the
financial means makes it hard to communicate at all. And
to create a space for NGOs in the industrial and democratic
countries, where normal freedom of speech is used to express
various facts and opinions without problems.
We
believe all people should have the right to use the Internet
in order to seek out the truth. It's by sharing of information
the truth can be reached."
Within
days, it became clear from the server logs of Inform and
Antenna that they now also faced a legal threat. Carter-Ruck
and lawyers based in their respective countries were making
frequent visits to the Biwater mirror sites. Inform and
Antenna informed other APC members that they were not prepared
to continue mirroring if they were the only ones. They appealed
for other APC members to also make Biwater mirror sites.
Their appeal was answered, eventually 13
APC members around the world mirrored the Biwater website.
Meanwhile
LabourNet’s appeal for help was also being answered
elsewhere. Other websites outside APC began to produce mirror
sites. The online magazine Corporate
Watch publicised the case.
Important
international trade union organisations began to lend support
too. The Public Services International (PSI), an international
trade union federation with 513 affiliated trade unions
in 137 countries around the world, issued a press
statement condemning Biwater’s attempt to remove
the M & G article from the Internet.
Besides
reproducing the M & G article, those opposing Biwater’s
censorship attempt made more extensive inquiries into some
of the more dubious aspects of the company’s activities
and publicised these on the Internet. A journalist working
for LabourNet, Greg Dropkin, produced the first
of these reports. The PSI commissioned an in
depth report into Biwater from the Public Services Privatisation
Research Unit (PSPRU). In a co-ordinated action between
PSI, SAMWU and LabourNet this report was released simultaneously
on all the mirror websites, on a number of trade union websites,
including that of the 125 million member International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions, and in printed form in a number of
countries around the world.
RESULTS
ACHIEVED
Biwater’s
attempt to censor Internet debate on an issue of public
interest was successfully opposed and seriously backfired
on them. The article they tried to remove was widely reproduced
and publicised in many countries around the world with no
legal action taken anywhere. In addition, new detailed reports
criticising their activities were produced and widely publicised.
The resulting bad publicity over the role of the company
and its attempts at censorship found its way back to the
South African press, thus having the opposite effect to
what they had intended.
LESSONS
LEARNED
The
Biwater case highlighted a need for a core international
network of websites to be able to come quickly to the defence
of threatened content. It showed there is considerable strength
in numbers, particularly when support is spread widely around
the world. Serious threats of legal action existed while
only one or two sites were defending the threatened material
against censorship and this was the most critical stage.
As soon as support got beyond a certain point it grew rapidly;
the threat of legal action against any one organisation
receded and became largely irrelevant. The Hydra like quality
of the opposition Biwater faced, with its attempt to censor
information on one website meaning it was soon reproduced
internationally on a dozen more, could be used as an example
to deter other censorship attempts, as was shown later by
the Nu-Skin case.
As
a result of the experience of the Biwater case APC began
to consider the need for a Rapid Response Security Network
that could quickly mirror websites threatened with censorship
in a number of different countries.
November
2000.
ICT Policy & Internet Rights