Opponents of class internet in a meeting of the same name in Innotex 2023, described this plan as unworkable and leading to a knowledge gap. According to the explanations of Internet experts and activists, this plan will not be implemented despite the network paradigm, and discrimination in Internet access will have far-reaching consequences.
“Mohammed Kishori”, the director of Tefem think tank, “Hamid Bedi”, the director of Karzar Startup, and “Mohammed Hafez Hekami”, a member of the board of directors of Duniya Ekhtaz business company, discussed the problems and harms of the internet class at the Innotex 2023 class internet meeting. Of course, it was supposed that “Amirreza Bagharpour Shirazi”, the director of the cultural and social group of the research institute of the National Center for Virtual Space, would also attend this meeting, but this did not happen.
Class internet and elite managers on it
In the first part of this meeting, Kashiri said: “First of all, class internet is an immaterial logic and in fact it is a transversal logic. This means that the regulator expects the Internet to be like the cinema, the press, and things like that.” According to the director of the Spectrum think tank, what the rulers prefer to have about the Internet is an Internet that, like other cultural affairs in the country, is completely under the aristocracy, politics and internal governance.
He also said that this is not possible and continued: “The international part of the Internet is something that does not originate domestically and cannot be limited; External sites and platforms are an inseparable part of the Internet, and on the other hand, it should be noted that aspects of social networks are also emerging and developing significantly. There are no more than two ways in this process; One is that there is access, and the other is that this access does not exist.”
Kashiri believes that social networks and external platforms have important effects on people.
Foundation for the formation of class internet with children’s internet
The director of the Spectrum think tank continued his explanation about the formation of the class internet concept: “Naturally, when social networks are filtered, you cut off an important part of applications. In this regard, it is obvious that a concept called class internet is emerging.
Referring to the example of children’s Internet, which is always announced about the creation of Internet restrictions, he said: “The beginning and foundation of separation from the Internet is the child and it spreads to other parts as well. Special Internet branches are constantly increasing. “The Internet is reserved for programmers, journalists, and other groups, and people are labeled as lacking the capacity to access it.”
Kashiri further said: “The spread of this concept causes this access, which normally exists everywhere in the world, to be closed here, and to open a legitimate way to access the free internet, in our opinion, which ultimately leads to the idea of a class internet.”
Explaining that the supporters of this idea are divided into two groups, he said: “Some say that this idea is inherently good, and some say that since we cannot, it is desirable that we do not have the same thing.” But for now, we have to provide the internet to the user, so it is better to provide the internet limited to certain people.”
According to Kashiri, a consensus has been formed among the supporters of this plan with the title that every group with a valid reason should be provided with internet. But the question of feasibility is raised, which is basically not possible. Therefore, in the real world, with the implementation of class internet, we will face a problem that the government will eat both the stick and the onion if the plan is implemented.”
According to Kashiri, we have seen this unsuccessful experience before regarding the third generation internet.
Close the channels of message transmission, close the way of communication
“The truth is that policy makers have a problem with the networked world and believe that the input of data and information should be controlled,” Hakimi said, stating that supporters of the plan believe that messaging channels should be completely closed.
According to him, concepts and topics are constantly falsified during planning. It is in this process that the ax is thrown at the root of innovation and the country reaches the protection plan. According to the ruling explanations, the idea makers of class internet intend to give people the natural right to access the internet as a special privilege.
According to Bedi, the discussion of class internet should be seen in a general context with regard to governance and arrangement of system components. In this regard, it should be seen what the class internet designers are looking for in the end? Are they worried about programmers and university professors? In response to this question, Biddy said: “The class internet is one of the stages of the road map that will eventually lead to the interruption of the internet as a global network.”
Controlled and manageable internal network with fully authenticated users; These are the things that class internet is looking for. By saying this, Hamed Bedi announced that in this process, the verified people will be questioned and questioned if they act outside the defined rules.
According to Bedi, this narrative started from the beginning with an attractive view: “Foreign servers were brought in, the Internet of children was brought up, now that we are banned, so let’s build a bunch of services ourselves. In the next stage, it was decided to build the existing foreign platforms in an Iranian way.”
According to the explanation of the CEO of the campaign, the decision-makers believe that an illiterate person should not have free access to the Internet.
Continuing his explanation, he said: “They believe that people do not have the intelligence to use any news and a decision should be made for them. On the other hand, we will finally come to the conclusion that the domestic Internet will be provided with defined frameworks.
Explaining that some people such as programmers, university professors and journalists always raise their voices in this process, Bedi said: “This is what prompted the owners of the idea of limited internal internet to provide usable internet to these groups. This is while in the next stages, access to the same internet will be more under the microscope and it will become more and more difficult to get the internet with this feature.
Hamed Bedi emphasized that none of these comments are blackmail and that the documents about this process are available: “We announced two years ago that this process will be implemented, and today, after two years, they are implementing the same plan.”
According to Biddy, the process of obtaining Internet licenses for certain groups is becoming more and more difficult to the point where these licenses cannot be obtained anymore.
In the continuation of this meeting, referring to the document of the National Information Network as the authority for the development of the Internet in the country, Hakemi said: “This document clearly mentions that access to the global Internet network is one of its basic services.”
According to him, there is no place in the upper and legal documents of the country to limit access to the Internet. All the infrastructure categories are seen in these documents, and as far as the discussion reaches the content layer as the most controversial part, like any other cultural category, other parts also enter.
No interruption, limitation
However, referring to the wise decision-making core, Kashiri said: “Currently, this wise core believes that if the restrictions are widely and fully implemented, there will be negative consequences.”
Pointing out that platforms have challenged governments all over the world, he said: “Given this challenge, we can accept part of the government’s concern. “One of the parts is related to the fact that anyway an international platform earns money from within the country without paying taxes.”
According to him, however, there is a part of the global red line that is based on international agreements, such as inappropriate content for children and terrorist content: “But we have to accept that every country has its own red line.”
Kashiri compared Iran and the world in this regard and said: “Now we have to see how the world has faced this global challenge?” Facing this issue in Iran is formed from two perspectives. Some proposed filtering and then left a space open for users to use the Internet using a filter breaker, and some proposed a method based on which filtering is widely applied and permission to access the same filtered content is re-issued by the filterer. It will be.”
According to Kashiri, the second method of filtering, which is associated with the provision of a filter breaker by the filterer, has not been implemented anywhere in the world. He believes that there is no country that considers access to the Internet illegal and provides a solution for its access. Since this method has not been established in any part of the world, according to Kashri, it can be a reason for the failure of this method.
He also said: “On the other hand, this failure will make the filtering situation even worse, because it discriminates, and this discrimination may have further negative consequences.”
Lack of effective international communication and management of social networks
In the continuation of the conversation, Hakemi emphasized that we cannot expect social networks to tax Iran and said: “Our challenge is not the challenge of infrastructure; The challenge is in the content layer, and in the content layer, we cannot demand something like a tax when we are facing international agreements and laws.”
According to him, basically, an issue plan like its tax is not working in the situation where Iran is experiencing sanctions in the process of international economic relations. In a situation where there is no interaction, we cannot expect our demands to be taken into account by international social networks.
Emphasizing that Twitter is a business like a Benz car, he said: “Due to the lack of international interaction, one of the roots of our inability to manage cyber space is the problems of international relations. “Another part of the problems of managing this space is related to the amount and type of prohibitions, which are never clear and we are constantly faced with new criminalizations.”
Is normal discrimination implemented?
In another part of the meeting, Bedi said, stressing that the problems of class internet are quite clear: “In this process, the question is how we can prescribe discrimination in broad daylight.” You can’t end up with the slogan of equality and justice to discrimination resulting from a specific type of access to the Internet.”
Explaining about the paradigm change resulting from online life, he said: “Digital life and online life have introduced a new paradigm, and in order to use it, we have to review every single rule and stereotyped tradition.” We need a new law that includes this paradigm.”
Bedi also emphasized that the country’s Internet infrastructure flow is going in the wrong direction and said: “Infrastructural ideas are also based on totalitarian ideas. That’s why all internal social networks have problems with outages and problems in a data center.
According to him, the goal and strategy of Internet management is wrong, and in this process, one cannot claim to monitor content for children: “Currently, it is children who install filter breakers for parents. It is not possible to raise the concern of the child with this process.
Biddy also believes that the one-sided view was feasible before the digital paradigm, but now with the digital paradigm, such a program cannot be implemented.
Kashiri also emphasized that the implementation of class internet is associated with extensive implementation challenges and it is not even technically possible to implement this method of internet access properly.
In the final summary of this meeting, Hakkami also expressed concern about the gap of knowledge and information that will be created after the implementation of classes, and called this issue leading to apartheid in the country’s education category and very worrying.
