UK Wants ISPs To Be Responsible For Third Party Content Online 158
An anonymous reader writes "A key UK government minister, Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), has ominously proposed that internet service providers should introduce a new Mediation Service that would allow them the freedom to censor third party content on the Internet, without court intervention, in response to little more than a public complaint. Vaizey anticipates that Internet users could use the 'service' to request that any material deemed to be 'inaccurate' (good luck with that) or privacy infringing is removed. No doubt any genuine complaints would probably get lost in a sea of abuse by commercial firms trying to attack freedom of speech and expression."
Truth is stranger than fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
I am reminded of the world of Farenheit 451 and the plethora of Sci-Fi books and movies in which the Nazis won World War II. The free world is shackled with fascism on every level, censorship is enforced with capital punishment, and the secret police are in your head.
If truth really is stranger than fiction I can see Germany invading England again in the future to free the world of a great threat against freedom. In the end it will be like D-Day, but in reverse with a coalition of forces eating buttery croissants before leaving Normandy for the shores of England.
Re:Impressive Spin (Score:3, Interesting)
The bill will save some schools! (Score:2, Interesting)
Schools like this Singapore school which claims that its "genuine" parents are "distressed" by the internet and they needed to do something about it. So they have engaged lawyers, of course paid for by the parents themselves without their consent (or manufactured consent).
Read at Techdirt: Indian School in Singapore sues parent for anonymous comments on his blog [techdirt.com]
I have been following this for a while. The most recent censorship attempt takes the form of a request to the CERT of India government to ban blogs in Singapore, Malaysia and India:
Techgoss story: Indian school asks CERT to ban three blogs in three countries [techgoss.com]
View the blogs before they are vaporized ! Archive them at your risk of course !
Blogs under censorship attack: Blog 1, from Singapore [blogspot.com] which is a "Parents Forum/Blog",
Blog 2, from Malaysia [blogspot.com] which is a "GIIS Malaysia Parents" blog, and
Blog 3, from India [blogspot.com] which is a "RSK Parents Forum" blog.
I am sure the school will argue that private education in India needs such drastic measures !
Re:Impressive Spin (Score:4, Interesting)
You can tell by the smell (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow. 10 years or so into the 21st century, and the Earth is still covered in a uniform 100 foot layer of bullshit. It's never going to end, is it?
Re:Which attacks on freedom of speech? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure that is better at all. Either an ISP has an editorial function, or it does not.
This is a bit black-and-white. ISP's host lots of data and services for customers, and there are many valid reasons to pull data or services.
1. Malware. If the service is causing problems for other ISP's and services, yours will be blacklisted. Get the malware off.
2. Overuse of limited resources. A script that is monopolizing the resources of a server will need to be dealt with.
3. Spam. ISP's hate spammers as much as everyone else, if not moreso, and for exactly the same reasons.
4. Legal tussles. Very few ISP's look forward to getting pulled into expensive legal battles. Part of the tradeoff with the DMCA in the US is that ISP's are explicitly not responsible for infringing material presuming they take content down promptly upon notification. Before the DMCA, ISP's were potential lawsuit targets.
5. Hack sources. Similar to Malware, but if one of your machines is hacking the ISP, you can bet it's getting booted off of the network.
Some ISP's refuse to host racist, sexual, or other types of websites for moral reasons. Also, depending on the inflammation level they tend to draw DDOS and hack attacks, which make it more difficult to conduct any business. While I tend to have problems with common carriers refusing to host information for moral reasons, there are currently no shortage of ISP's willing to do so. Most are pretty broad about what they will accept. So in practical terms it's not very problematic.
Re:Which attacks on freedom of speech? (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the early days of commercial ISPs, when an ISP was an Internet Service Provider and not a phone company or cable company that drove the ISP specialist companies out of business, and when there weren't "safe harbor" and the DMCA, ISPs cared about the images of their respective companies and tried to do business with customers using the services legitimately.
ISPs would take down obviously scam sites when people complained not because they had to, but because they didn't want those sorts of sites on their servers or using their bandwidth. ISPs responded to complaints about email abuse. ISPs would cooperate openly with law enforcement when they wanted to stop a specific crime and would tell the officers to take a hike until they had a subpoena when their was a fishing expedition for user data.
How do I know this? I worked in the field as an employee and a consultant for a number of ISPs back when an ISP was a service provider like the name implies rather than a utility trying to charge extra for certain data.
False or Misleading Advertising. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Which attacks on freedom of speech? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why?
Take a private citizen. There are, in some places, specific requirements for specific private citizens to report certain felonies, (i.e. a schoolteacher being required to report suspected child abuse) but they don't translate to those same entities having to report all misdemeanors, traffic violations and torts. So why should the standard for ISPs be so much all or nothing.
There are also other cases where specific knowledge limits are observed by law. Somewhat to my shame, I once participated in a program where local law enforcement dogs were trained to sniff out drugs. I personally planted drugs in various containers (i.e wrap the brick of dope in three layers of oil soaked plastic, and stick it in the middle of a half full coffee container, seal it, put it on the highest kitchen shelf, wipe down the area, then see if the dog can alert on it when the handler didn't know where I hid it either and couldn't give the dog subconsious cues.). This included attending a controlled burn and such, so if I were to testify that I smelled Cannabis, it would count as expert testimony, and that testimony could not be impeached with questions about how I happened to know for sure that what I smelled was pot, say from an opposing lawyer. Most citizens can't make that claim - they either have to admit they know what pot smells like from illegal use, or all they can say is they thought whatever they smelled might be pot. I could theoretically be compelled to testify if subpoenaed, but most people can't. That pesky 'truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' bit means, in the US at least, you don't generally have a legal obligation to say what you don't know to be true, but only suspect.
In addition, most ISPs don't employ someone who could make a determination, say, whether a person in an erotic photo was of legal age or a year or two under, or whether those nuclear bomb diagrams have anything classified in them (or would even work) or not. Most ISPs don't employ anyone who is a recognized specialist in copyright law either. Yes, it can be argued that common knowledge should cause employees to suspect a current piece of popular music or TV show is copyrighted and a violation is likely taking place, but expecting that to translate to knowing the status of 30 year old TV shows or music is another story. There's also the normal limits of age and obscurity - a typical 20 year old may have no reason to know whether Woody Herman recorded that file in the 1990's or the 1930's, and a typical 50 year old may have no idea who A Flock of Seagulls or Front 242 was, let alone whatever's popular now. If a person has no idea if the music comes from a commercial source and not a garage band sharing its own files, how can the law demand that person follow up on suspicions they may simply not have?
Re:Impressive Spin (Score:3, Interesting)
I get the impression it was supposed to be a step below those options, a cheaper alternative
So, something like a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office [ico.gov.uk], then?
It's not a law or even a proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
By talking openly and by being willing to say something stupid, they can avoid putting the stupid stuff in the actual legislation.
Storm in Teacup? (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, he is talking about a mediation service - censorship is neither directly quoted or implied.
A Mediation service simply means that if you find someone publishing content on the web you do not want them to, you can write to the ISP, who will forward the complaint to the site owner. in that respect it is quite useful that the privacy of the site owner is actually maintained.
Most responsible site owners already have a contact address to receive any complaints - and if the site does it is likely the ISP's 'mediation service' will simply tell the plaintiff to email the site master first.
In terms of ISPs censoring information - they already do that. Every ISP product comes with terms and conditions and it is possible right now to complain to an ISP about content online, and they may well remove it if it breaks those terms and conditions (a big one is not using your connection to incite racial hatred) without needing to provide a re-mediation service.
ISPs are not in the business of cutting people off their networks. Every user they cut off loses the business of that user and all potential business from that user refusing to recommend them. Since the 20% of users using 80% of the bandwidth are the same 20% of the users who give advice to 80% of the population when choosing an ISP: the ISPs are more than happy to allow their extra traffic.
Re:You got it all wrong! (Score:1, Interesting)
I hesitate to ask, but what is zippocat? I don't want to google it, since they sometimes have images returned to normal text searches.
(I know what goatse is, but have never seen it - I have a preternatural ability to avoid dangerous links ;)
Re:You got it all wrong! (Score:2, Interesting)