regulation

This note considers regulation of cybercafes and some issues.

It covers -

• regulation
• the digital divides

     regulation

Cybercafes are located at the intersection of regulation of online content, places of entertainment and hospitality.

Regulatory regimes thus vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with models that range from licensing of coffee shops (centred on public health) to supervision of amusement arcades (protecting the susceptible from "hotbeds of juvenile delinquency"), restrictions on privacy or maintenance of public order (eg quarantining the wider community from exposure to subversive or inflamatory content).

Regulation by particular national, regional and local jurisdictions thus encompasses -

• restrictions on access to some content through mandatory use of filters
• making cybercafe operators responsible for newsgroup postings or other online activity
• surveillance of online activity (eg in China) or video surveillance of customers (eg Vo v. City of Garden Grove in US, PDF)
• proposals (eg in Malaysia) for licensing of cybercafe customers
• local 'entertainment' taxes for cybercafes
• requirements that operators limit unauthorised downloading, copying and distribution of intellectual property
• zoning of cybercafes by preventing their operation in some locations
• restrictions on entry by 'under-age' customers (eg a 2004 Los Angeles ordinance and proposed legislation in Spain, Greece and India)
• recurrent visits by law enforment agency representatives in search of gangs or truants
• official warnings about the perils of cyber-addiction (critiqued in detail elsewhere on this site).

In 2007 Mumbai police announced progress in installation of keystroke logging software at over 500 cybercafes in the city, with an enthusiast claiming the force "needs to install programs that will capture every key stroke at regular interval screen shots, which will be sent back to a server that will log all the data".

     the digital divides

In discussing various digital divides (overview here, details here) we have noted that in many emerging economies much of the population is offline because people cannot afford personal computers and phone lines or because communications infrastructure to the home/workplace simply is not available.

One response has been to bridge such divides by providing access through community centres (telecottages) operated on a not-for-profit basis or through commercial cybercafes.

Advocates have accordingly suggested that cybercafes will reach their maximum extent in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Some divide initiatives have centred on plans to deliver state-of-the-art facilities to remote regions, with MIT for example gaining attention for plans to airlift telemedicine and e-learning gear in shipping containers to the Amazon, or use of volkscomputers and proposed 'thin client' devices such as the Ndiyo.

A 2002 study by Boase, Chen, Wellman & Prijatelj notes that in the West public venues

disproportionately provides a place for disadvantaged groups to access the Internet. Although the different percentages are not large, to some extent public terminals give disadvantaged groups, such as women, the unemployed, newbies, and those from developing countries, a place to be. Not surprisingly, the variable most strongly associated with the use of public terminals is employment status: The unemployed are most likely to use public terminals. This suggests that public terminal users are not disproportionately high-income road warriors or young gamers.

In 2007 China Youth Daily - an official publication - echoed government warnings about cyber-addiction in reporting that a Shanghai court ordered operators of an net cafe to pay US$11,200 to the family of a 15-year-old boy who collapsed and died after playing online games for two straight days. Chinese net cafes are supposed to limit the number of hours that minors are online.

   next page (studies)