Is Julian Assange damaging the Internet?

Given the Putin government's heavy-handed response to the Pussy Riot incident their fears do not seem far-fetched.

It is not just recognisably repressive governments that seem inclined to increase their control of the web.

In the USA, concerns have been raised about the growth of what the New York Times calls the Great Firewall of America.

Late last year, bills were introduced into both the Senate and the House of Representatives which would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of websites.

Internet service providers (ISPs), search engines, payment providers and advertising networks would then be required to block these sites, without recourse to court hearings or other due legal processes.

Similar government filtering controls have been discussed in Australia and the UK.

Even within some liberal democratic governments, there remains a lingering suspicion that at the very core of internet culture, among those who shape it most, there are a group of cowboy individualists who lean more toward anarchism than activism.

Indeed this is a charge that some government leaders level at Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks - with some justification.

His supporters argue that he and his colleagues are champions of free speech. Some claim that they are defenders of press freedoms or brave advocates of the true culture of the internet. There are good reasons to be wary of all three arguments.

In any society, true freedom of speech requires that citizens take responsibility for what they say. Acclaiming individual rights without recognising concomitant social responsibilities is the beginning of anarchism.

What's more, when the authority you claim is of the moral variety, you must be seen to be above reproach. This requires that you allow yourself to be measured by some standard beyond yourself.

The WikiLeaks crew have demonstrated very little answerability except to their own internal culture and their individual consciences.