Global Information Society Watch 2015: Sexual rights and the internet
Steering committee
Coordinating committee
Project coordinator
Editor
This edition of GISWatch presents stories from around the world on how the politics of sex and sexual rights activism takes place online. We want to research how generally accepted sexual identities, as well as marginalised sexualities, are expressed, regulated and moralised on the internet. We also want to show how this relates to the threats of surveillance, censorship and online violence.
Adult video production is often regarded as controversial and culturally taboo. Due to social stigma concerning sexuality, including criminalisation and institutionalised offences prohibiting pornography, its industry remains largely unregulated and under-researched.
When the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) first raised the issue of internet content regulation and how it impacts on sexuality, in internet governance and policy spaces, we focused on building understanding that sexuality is a critical component of freedom of expression. APC, along with Hivos and our respective partners, challenged the assumption that sex was always about porn, and that porn was always bad.
#PornBan. It’s like a rash, this impulse to ban porn all over the world – despite protests that are going viral. The Twitter hashtag #pornban sprung up in July 2015 as the Indian government blocked 857 porn sites, 1 and then backtracked a bit, 2 asking internet service providers (ISPs) to unblock those that don’t contain child pornography. Which makes service providers the arbiters of our constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression, deciding what we may or may not see.