China's not the only Internet bad boy; a new UN report (PDF) calls out even developed democracies for slapping restrictions on the Internet.

An official appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council has released a new report on the state of online free speech around the world. In addition to calling attention to long-standing censorship problems in China, Iran, and other oppressive regimes, the report devotes a surprising amount of attention to speech restrictions in the developed world—and it singles out recently enacted "three strikes" laws in France and the United Kingdom that boot users off the Internet for repeated copyright infringement.

Dragging ISPs into the fight

The report was written by Frank La Rue, whose official title is "Special Rapporteur." He's an independent investigator appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to study and report on free speech abuses around the world. The report focuses heavily on the growing frequency and sophistication of Internet filtering by governments. La Rue criticizes China for filtering content with words like "democracy" and "human rights" in them, and he condemns countries like Egypt that cripple or shut down their networks during times of political crisis. China is also singled out, along with Vietnam and Iran, for jailing bloggers.

Governments of all kinds are compelling ISPs and website operators to help with their censorship efforts. In Turkey, ISPs are required to assist in blocking several categories of content, including “insulting” the long-decesased founding father of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. And even nominally advanced countries have gotten into the act. In Italy, Google executives faced criminal liability for hosting an insensitive YouTube video despite the fact that Google complied promptly to the takedown request.

"Holding intermediaries liable for the content disseminated or created by their users severely undermines the enjoyment of the right to freedom of opinion and expression," La Rue writes. "It leads to self-protective and over-broad private censorship, often without transparency and the due process of the law."

Obviously, this has big implications for the contemporary copyright debate. The report gives mixed marks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's notice-and-takedown system and its counterpart in Europe. He praises them for shielding intermediaries from liability. However, "users who are notified by the service provider that their content has been flagged as unlawful often have little recourse or few resources to challenge the takedown." La Rue praises Chilean law, which only requires intermediaries to remove content in response to a court order.

Strikeout

La Rue saved some of his strongest criticism for the "three strikes" laws recently enacted by France and the UK. He writes that he is "deeply concerned" about proposals to create a centralized system for cutting people off from Internet access as a punishment for copyright infringement. France has such a system, which was approved by the courts in 2009 and is reportedly getting 25,000 complaints a day. The United Kingdom passed a Digital Economy Act in 2010 that contained similar provisions.

The Special Rapporteur is "alarmed" by these regulations, writing that cutting off Internet access as a response to copyright infringement is "disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." He notes that Internet disconnection language has been removed from recent drafts of the ACTA treaty, but writes that he "remains watchful about the treaty’s eventual implications for intermediary liability and the right to freedom of expression."

The report also has a section on privacy. La Rue condemns governments that use social networking sites to spy on their citizens. And he urges states to provide stronger protections against government or private-sector snooping on e-mail.

Then, in a section that's likely to divide civil libertarians, La Rue faulted nations, presumably including the United States, that have not enacted European-style privacy regulations. He argues that states should "regulate, through clearly articulated laws, the recording, processing, use and conveyance of automated personal data" and "protect those affected against misuse by State organs as well as private parties." In particular, he says that "data protection laws must establish rights to information, correction and, if need be, deletion of data and provide effective supervisory measures."

It's unclear how much impact the report will have. The Special Rapporteur plays an advisory role, and doesn't have any direct leverage over the world's governments. Still, the United Nations provides a useful soapbox, and policymakers should pay attention.

Listing image by Photo by Australian Human Rights Commission