Is Julian Assange damaging the Internet?

There is doubtless an important and wide-ranging debate to be had about the relationship between governance and transparency in the age of almost ubiquitous digital media.

Liberal democracies, for example, while preaching transparency struggle more than ever in the digital age to balance public accountability with diplomatic discretion.

However, such a debate, whenever it takes place, must not be allowed to centre around the interests of specific individuals.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, tweeted from the stage at the opening of London's Olympics: 'This is for everyone'. He referred to the Games, of course, but this was also a nod to the medium he popularized.

This, it appears, may not have occurred to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks and self-proclaimed activist for internet freedoms. He seems perfectly happy to have debates about internet freedoms centre around his personal interests, agenda and somewhat erratic behaviour.

In the process, he poses a potential threat, at least where some governments are concerned, to the very medium he uses to promote his brand of reform.

There are governments aplenty who worry about the growth and pervasiveness of the internet. Some of them would like nothing more than to curb or control its power.

The OpenNet Initiative is an alliance of academic and consultancy bodies set up to investigate internet filtering and surveillance powers worldwide. In 2010 it documented Internet filtering by governments in over 40 countries worldwide.

The Initiative ranks Iran's as the worst government when it comes to using pervasive filters to block online political and social content and personal communications tools.

In China, a police service devoted to filtering the web reportedly consists of at least 30,000 officers.

In July, the Russian parliament introduced bills that create a blacklist of websites deemed unsuitable. The bills, which will become law in November, demand that servers to take these sites down.

In the beginning, the Russian laws will deal mainly with sites carrying images of child abuse and other overtly illegal material. However, dissidents fear that the legislation will soon extend to ban or curtail political criticism.

Given the Putin government's heavy-handed response to the Pussy Riot incident their fears do not seem far-fetched.

It is not just recognisably repressive governments that seem inclined to increase their control of the web.

In the USA, concerns have been raised about the growth of what the New York Times calls the Great Firewall of America.

Late last year, bills were introduced into both the Senate and the House of Representatives which would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of websites.

Internet service providers (ISPs), search engines, payment providers and advertising networks would then be required to block these sites, without recourse to court hearings or other due legal processes.

Similar government filtering controls have been discussed in Australia and the UK.

Even within some liberal democratic governments, there remains a lingering suspicion that at the very core of internet culture, among those who shape it most, there are a group of cowboy individualists who lean more toward anarchism than activism.

Indeed this is a charge that some government leaders level at Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks - with some justification.

His supporters argue that he and his colleagues are champions of free speech. Some claim that they are defenders of press freedoms or brave advocates of the true culture of the internet. There are good reasons to be wary of all three arguments.

In any society, true freedom of speech requires that citizens take responsibility for what they say. Acclaiming individual rights without recognising concomitant social responsibilities is the beginning of anarchism.

What's more, when the authority you claim is of the moral variety, you must be seen to be above reproach. This requires that you allow yourself to be measured by some standard beyond yourself.

The WikiLeaks crew have demonstrated very little answerability except to their own internal culture and their individual consciences.

Of course, a certain level of regulation is vital to security, the maintenance of order and social cohesion. Regulation can protect us from the unscrupulous use of the web to invade what little privacy we have left, or turn our screen-fitted gadgets into invasive advertising billboards.

The actions of WikiLeaks have already suggested that the internet might naturally be an enemy of the state and therefore something governments must tightly controlled wherever possible.

What's more, as a power broker in the internet world, Mr Assange's unstable personal behaviour of late potentially makes the internet seem a more ramshackle, Wild West entity than it really is - and one that either now or in the near future may be in need of government control.

Of course, Julian Assange is not directly responsible for the way some governments are try to curb internet freedoms. But he certainly isn't helping the netizens' cause.