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Fighting for free speech on the Net

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Computer programmers say the only way to avoid censorship in any country is to operate anonymously.

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(CNN) -- Scottish bookseller Joe Gordon once used his blog to let off steam after a hard day's work behind the counter.

But in January this year, his online diary got him into trouble after he complained about his bosses to the cyberworld, and ended up getting fired.

Gordon had worked for an Edinburgh branch of Waterstone's bookstore for 11 years, and lost his job after calling his boss "evil."

Though he never named his boss or the company, he did hint at its identity, which was enough for Waterstone's to take action.

Gordon was the first person in the UK to be sacked for blogging, raising questions about an employee's rights to be a private citizen in cyberspace versus an employer's right to protect its reputation.

Gordon still writes a blog, and he was snapped up to work at a rival book company who liked his writing.

But he told CNN that he is increasingly worried about the power of big corporations and their control over what is written about them on the Internet.

"Until now, people have thought freedom of speech was a legal or government thing. People (were) worrying about governments. Now we're waking up to the fact that a bigger threat to people may come from companies, so you have to think, 'Will my boss read what I do?'"

While getting into trouble with an employer can result in serious consequences, they are usually not as severe as those paid by people living in oppressive regimes. In China and Iran, for example, citizens face arrest -- or worse -- if they make a wrong move on the Internet.

Chinese journalist Shi Tao was arrested in November 2004, and sentenced to 10 years in prison last April, in a case underlining the stringent censorship regime that controls Chinese media.

He was convicted of sending foreign-based web sites the text of a "top secret" government message that had been sent to his newspaper. Information supplied by Yahoo! to Chinese intelligence aided the conviction.

Computer programmers say the only way to avoid censorship in any country is to operate anonymously.

California-based company Anonymizer specializes in developing technology that helps people protect their online identity.

CEO Lance Cottrell, who set up the company 10 years ago, told CNN that automatic privacy on the Internet was a common misconception.

"There's this perception of privacy on the Internet. You're sitting at home in your pajamas in front of the computer, you feel anonymous. But the reality is that it's probably the least anonymous time you spend all day," he said.

This is because every computer has an Internet Protocol (IP) address that other computers can see -- his company's technology blocks the identification of that address.

"Just like you have caller ID, we can have caller ID blocking on the Internet, so if you are out there visiting Web sites they don't know who you are."

Anonymizer is selective about who gets access to its service and strictly vets its users, by performing a credit and additional checks.

"Consumers are actually double or triple vetted before they have access to the service," he said.

For some, that doesn't provide enough cover.

Ian Clarke invented Freenet, software that makes you practically invisible on the Web.

Clarke told CNN that he designed Freenet for people living in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, to help political dissidents in those countries.

"I was studying computer science at Edinburgh University. It was the mid-1990s and people thought the Internet was going to be a bastion of freedom of speech," he told CNN.

"But understanding how Internet works, I realized that instead of being a bastion of freedom of speech, it could be the opposite because it's so much easier to control people's e-mails. I tried to think about technology that could prevent you from being censored."

Freenet is decentralized, which means there is no central server and no one knows who's using it so it can not be shut down. It also opens the service up to abuse, potentially by pedophiles, terrorists and other criminals.

"People are using the software for things we agree with and that we don't agree with, but if we could control that (it) defeats the purpose of freedom of speech. And in return most people recognize, they accept you need to be able to do what you want to do," Clarke said.

Clarke believes the Internet is the biggest boost to free speech since the printing press -- governments may try to censor information, but where there is a message it is likely to find a medium.

-- CNN's Linzie Janis contributed to this report.

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