Famous privacy professor Michael Geist rings the alarm on Quebec’s new law. The law requires Internet service providers to block access to gambling websites. Geist explains that:
Rather than opening the market… Quebec is instead seeking to censor the Internet for its own commercial gain by ordering Internet providers to block access to any unregulated sites. The plan is likely to face a legal challenge, both on free speech and jurisdictional grounds, since the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over telecommunications regulation.
It is troubling that Quebec is using the power to censor the Internet for profit. Censorship should be used only in the most extreme circumstances to avoid normalizing government restrictions on free speech.
Censorship is bad for democracy. A healthy democracy demands the free flow of information. And in 2015, the Internet is the highway that information flows on.
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