Global Free Trade Zone Labor via Internet

Today's NY Times "Technology" section ran an article that highlights how an internet security measure like captchas (a mechanism that forces the user to input a string of words to prevent the proliferation of spam) matters little when spammers outsource labor to willing workers in developing countries. Vikas Bajaj writes

Sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end deciphering convoluted characters and typing them into a box is monotonous work. And the pay is not great when compared to more traditional data-entry jobs.

Still, it appears to be attractive enough to lure young people in developing countries where even 50 cents an hour is considered a decent wage. Unskilled male farm workers earn about $2 a day in many parts of India.

Ariful Islam Shaon, a 20-year-old college student in Bangladesh, said he has a team of 30 other students who work for him filling in captchas. (The term is a loose acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.”)

Is Internet Democracy Just Code for American-Style Democracy?

This recent NY Times article about the proliferation of social networking sites in Indonesia suggests potential complications of assuming a universal ideology for internet users.

I'm the last person to suggest that someone's free speech should be limited, but after having lived in conservative communities in China and Malaysia, I'm aware that my view of free speech is politically, culturally, and geographically specific and naturalized, so it's easy for me to argue that anyone out to regulate content or use of the internet is wrong. Still, even if I can't escape my sense of democracy as a human right, it's important for me as a thinker and writer to consider the ways in which other countries are handling issues of internet democratization without hasty conclusions about people and places that are quite different from my comfort zone.

Below are the two major conversations occurring in Indonesia about Internet regulation:

1. “We want to limit the distribution of negative content like pornography, gambling, violence, blasphemy,” Mr. Tifatul (the minister of communication and information technology) said, adding that online content should be regulated in such a way as to preserve “our values, also our culture and also our norms.”

2. Similar to the discussions I've shared recently with colleagues in a graduate courses about computers and writing, Indonesian Ramadhan Pohan, a member of Parliament and a former newspaper reporter, aruges that "those online movements had deeply unsettled politicians, bureaucrats and even hospital administrators unused to such direct — and successful — challenges to their authority."

“The problem is that many officials in government are paranoid about this new online content,” Mr. Pohan said. “They are old-style politicians and bureaucrats who, if you ask them, don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. They don’t realize that in terms of democracy and freedom of expression, we’ve reached a kind of point of no return.”