SleepyEgg

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech in which she made it clear that Internet freedom would be a major theme of the US government's attempts to get information to the citizens of repressive governments. Things haven't change much in the interim, with the conviction of Google executives in Italy serving as a reminder that it's not simply repressive regimes that put companies in legal hot water. With those events as a backdrop, the US Senate's Judiciary Committee heard testimony today on Internet freedom that emphasized how challenging it will be to find a way to open up the flow of information in repressive regimes.

The Google-Italy case did figure briefly, as an example of how even a country with values that have a significant overlap with those of the US can have significant legal differences when it comes to online activities (Italy lacks the US' safe harbor provisions for hosts of user-generated online content). Still, the hearings focused primarily on those nations, such as China and Iran, that exercise significant control over online content.