Jeff Jarvis Quotes

Is any blogger out there saying anything—do they deserve First Amendment protection? These are the issues of our times.

There is no country on Earth where Internet and telecommunications companies do not face at least some pressure from governments to do things that would potentially infringe on users' rights to free expression and privacy.

In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.

There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government's attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable.

Allowing a handful of broadband carriers to determine what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the features that have made the Internet such a success, and could permanently compromise the Internet as a platform for the free exchange of information, commerce, and ideas.

People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the 'Net' doesn't become the site for technological book burning.

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

All forms of government ultimately are not going to succeed in trying to control or censor the Internet.

There's a fundamental difference between people who want to see the Internet and say - 'Let's lobotomize and censor parts of it because we need to control it' - and those like us who see the Internet as a method of growing the economy and innovating in front of the world. And we have to actually reconcile those two positions. And we believe that it is much better to protect this crown jewel of civilization, which is the ability for us to communicate and express our ideas freely, than to try to lobotomize it.

The user in China wants the same thing that any Internet user wants - privacy in conversations, maximum access to information, and the ability to speak their minds online.

Google is a private company. It has the capacity to utilize its massive power for whatever political agenda it chooses. But for it to pretend to be an advocate for Internet freedom while simultaneously disadvantaging messages it finds politically incorrect is deeply hypocritical.

If the U.N. were to be successful in its efforts to control the Internet, countries where human rights records range from questionable to criminal could be put in charge of determining what is and is not allowed to appear online.

While the Internet can't be controlled 100 percent, it's possible for governments to filter content and discourage people from organizing.

Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.

Net neutrality is such an important principle for the Web and for the Internet. It's how the Internet's operated for all this time.

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

If net neutrality goes away, it will fundamentally change everything about the Internet.

Speech within the kingdom of Amazonia - run by its sovereign Jeff Bezos and his board of directors with help from the wise counsel and judgment of the company's executives - is not protected in the same way that speech is constitutionally protected in America's public spaces.

I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.

Google attempted to run a search engine in China, and they ended up giving up.

The key thing for us at Twitter is to recognize our role as the provider of this open platform for free expression ... to recognize that the speech is not our own.... We feel we have a duty to respect and to defend these voices on the platform. The platform of any debate is neutral. The platform doesn't take sides.

It is time the international community took a stand on Egypt's repeated violations of press freedom and the rights of Internet users…the United Nations should respond by disqualifying Egypt from hosting an Internet Governance Forum in 2009.

The Internet is unpoliceable essentially.

Pirate Party