Freedom of speech is essential in a liberal democracy, and indeed an informed citizenry is critical to the functioning of a democracy.  But is information in countries like Canada free?  Or is it controlled by publishers for their own profit?

The recent suicide of  internet activist Aaron Schwartz has brought the Open Access movement back into the news, but as this recent article in al-jazeera points out, freedom of access to scholarly articles is about more than just being able to read a news article or a paper published by an academic researcher free of charge.  It can be a life and death issue for people in less free nations. 

The article describes how the government of Uzbekistan created a fictional terrorist group in order to justify the shooting of civilian protesters.  Yet the first article published about the event was posted behind an academic firewall- that is, posted in a journal that only people affiliated with a university could access.  Scholars receive no money for these articles- the only profit goes to the website publishers.  So the article was also published in an open access journal where it has since been used  to help obtain freedom for political refugees.

Aaron Schwartz downloaded articles from JSTOR, an academic digital archives at MIT,  because he believed information should be free.  Before he committed suicide, he faced 4 million dollars worth of lawsuits and 30 years in jail .   

Yes, it costs money to produce websites such as JSTOR.  But who owns information?  If knowledge is power, who should control it?  What is the price of freedom?

In the news this week we read the story of two teenage girls.  Both bullied and tormented: one girl dead and the other clinging to life.  

Amanda Todd of British Columbia took her own life after a string of events led to her public humiliation at the hands of a sexual predator and subsequent acts by her peers over social media.  Malala Yousufzai, a fourteen year old youth activist in Pakistan was shot in the head by the Taliban for her much publicized attempts to encourage education for girls.  The media has played an important role in both of these cases.

Watch  Malala Yousufzai in the clip below. This is a girl who is passionate about her rights.  A girl whose bravery cannot be ignored.  As the clip below shows, her views were broadcast around the world over the media- and for these views, she was shot.  She has been flown to Great Britain where there is a good prognosis for her recovery.

Malala used the media to promote her views around the world.  Most of us think that is a good thing.  On the other hand, it was the abuse of social media that contributed to Amanda Todd's death.  As a 12 year old girl, she was lured into exposing herself on camera and these images were broadly and anonymously shared to a wide audience, leading to her depression and death.  I think  everyone believes that is a bad thing.  

We like to think that girls experience all the same rights and freedoms as boys, but do they?  How likely is it that a boy would be shot for his views on education?  How likely is it that images of a boy's private parts would be spread over Facebook without it being reported as abuse?  One person exerting power over another is what politics is all about.  Ideologies were invented to curb the abuse of such power.  In our media today, why is more attention paid to one of these girls over the other?   

So the other evening I was randomly googling images of myself, (don’t ask why) and what should I find but the photo of another Nicola Ramsey on the South Carolina Mugshot Database.


The other Nicola Ramsey lives in South Carolina.
The other Nicola was arrested for accepting stolen property.
I am not THAT Nicola Ramsey. 
 

But the site got me thinking.  
What if I was THAT Nicola Ramsey?

That would have been MY face plastered over the internet in an orange jumpsuit, looking like some kind of convict, when in fact I had not been tried or found guilty.

That would have been ME who would have to pay some unknown and unnamed corporation $99 to have my image removed from their site. 

Oh yes, the fine print might say THAT Nicola Ramsey is presumed innocent- but the big print suggests otherwise.

There aren’t any similar websites in Canada, although the Canadian press does publish pictures of people who have been arrested in high profile cases.  Governments in Ontario and Alberta maintain galleries of images of people who have failed to provide child support payments. Is that any different?  For a commentary on the Alberta Maintenance Enforcement site, see this column from the Calgary Sun. 

What about “innocent until proven guilty?” What about a person’s right to privacy? Who owns your image anyway? Is it in the public interest to publish photos of people who have been charged with a crime, if they have not been convicted?  And how does it relate to the role of government in liberal democracies where elected officials and those who vote for them struggle to find a balance between individual rights and the common good?