Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Censorship

Pennsylvania Law Requires ISPs to Block Child Porn 529

Posted by timothy from the here's-your-whitelist-for-the-day dept.
feed_me_cereal writes: "Salon has an article describing a new law in Pennsylvania which requires ISPs to prevent access to child pornography on the internet. Under this law, the government can give ISPs a list of websites to block. Failure to do so can result in fines from $5,000 to $30,000 + jailtime. While stopping child pornography sounds noble, it seems that these powers will do little to meet this goal and much to allow the government to decide what websites are suitable for public viewing." Reader lightspawn provided this link to the law itself as well as another story at freedomforum.org.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Pennsylvania Law Requires ISPs to Block Child Porn More

Pennsylvania Law Requires ISPs to Block Child Porn

Comments Filter:

  • oh great.. nationally blocked sites now? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hikeran ( 561061 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:43PM (#3189710)
    aka if a stat says you can't see this... and isps have to follow .. then everyone ealse who has a net connection provided for others must follow as well...

    now the question is what if somone in pensilvenia uses some sort of web proxy to view such pages.. hrmm makes the isp still liable? does that mean that the isp has to block all web proxies out there .. oh what a mess this will be..

  • Quick fix (Score:5, Funny)

    by -=OmegaMan=- ( 151970 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:45PM (#3189717)
    Stop providing internet service in Pennsylvania.

    No internet, no kiddie porn websites.

  • Two things... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:45PM (#3189722) Homepage
    First, this is obviously a kneejerk reaction to Candyman [cnn.com].

    Secondly, who's to decide what's what? Is the ISP supposed to just carte blanche kill off anything that even resembles child porn? What happens to people trying to look at Anne Geddes [annegeddes.com] images? Who do you appeal to if an improper decision is made, and how does it work?

    This seems like too much idealism and not enough rational thought.

    • Re:Two things... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Australian werewolf ( 567345 ) <benconNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:49PM (#3189770)
      This may be slightly offtopic, but one of the links under this story at cnn was "Child sex trade: a form of terrorism". Yet another crime becomes terrorism. How long before the word loses its meaning?

      • Re:Two things... (Score:5, Funny)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:04PM (#3189919)
        Future Headlines:

        Overdue Library Books: Terrorism in the heart of our community

        Right Turn On Red: Legitimate Liberty or Terrorist Vulnerabilty? Congress contemplates cracking down

        I'm sure the list goes on.

    • Re:Two things... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Stonehand ( 71085 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:51PM (#3189790) Homepage
      No, it's not. Read the law; it was prepared roughly two months ago, and it's just going into effect 'round now care of the 60-day delay.

      And the state AG is the one that makes the blocking decisions; the law explicitly states that the ISPs are under no obligation to go searching on their own, to monitor content (to decide what to block), or to otherwise search for affirmative evidence of wrong-doing.

      Now, the proxy issue... the law says "disabling access", which could be interpreted as either accessing directly (which makes a certain degree of sense, as the law mentions that banning requests should include URLs -- so ban the URL might be sufficient under that) or even banning indirect access (proxies, mirrors, and other foo).

      I'd be inclined to think that the former was meant (ban direct accessing of the specific URL), but... you'd probably have to check the debate records to find out.

    • Re:Two things... (Score:4, Informative)

      by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:51PM (#3189791) Journal

      Is the ISP supposed to just carte blanche kill off anything that even resembles child porn?

      Please retract knee from jerked position.

      NOTHING IN THIS SECTION MAY BE CONSTRUED AS IMPOSING A DUTY ON AN INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER TO ACTIVELY MONITOR ITS SERVICE OR AFFIRMATIVELY SEEK EVIDENCE OF ILLEGAL ACTIVITY ON ITS SERVICE.

      It's really simple. If the government notifies you that you're distributing child pornography, and you don't take it down within 5 business days, you get fined. If you do it three times, you go to jail.

    • Bzzt! You (of course) didn't read the article. The law was passed a month ago. Candyman was just a coincidence.

      OK Both wrong. The State is to give and update a list of sites for ISPs to block. However, the articles do not state just how that list is drawn up or kept up to date. Maybe they'll have a new beaurocrat in charge of surfing for kiddie pr0n?

    • I disagree that this is a knee-jerk response to Candyman. The timing is all wrong: news of Candyman is only breaking today (19 March 2002), and the original version of the law was submitted on 29 May, 2001. (Follow think link in the original story to "the law itself".)

      Furthermore, it's clear here who's to decide what's what. The Salon story states that "the onus [is] on the state attorney general's office to notify ISPs of what should be blocked." So the state AG office is the one who is going to have to pour over all those god-awful pictures of kids dressed up like bunnies and flowers and whatnot.

      It's definitely a reactionary bill, though, and I do not expect the law to survive a Supreme Court challenge. (At least, I pray that it won't, as a PA resident.)

    • Give me a break... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slugfro ( 533652 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:04PM (#3189918) Homepage
      First, this is obviously a kneejerk reaction to Candyman.
      Yeah, Candyman was announced two days ago. You expect us to believe that the government/lawmakers suddenly wrote and got passed a new law in two days, somehow skipping all the normal beaurocracy required.

      Oh, but then the article goes on to say that the law was passed last month:
      "Under the law,
      signed last month, prosecutors would, after obtaining a court order, give ISPs a list of Web sites and other items to block."
      And reading even further, we see that this has been in the works for years:
      "
      Two years ago, a congressional commission called for law enforcement agencies to develop a list of Web sites, newsgroups and other Internet destinations that contain child pornography."
      Please, read the facts before starting your rant! Now on to the important issue..this does seem to be a dangerous opportunity to for the government to begin censoring/banning web sites at will. I'm all for getting rid of the child porn websites, but I would rather it be done in a way that does not remove the freedom of surfing the web.

      Rather than ranting and raving about how bad this is, why don't we try to come up with an alternative solution.
    • to answer your question, the article says who's to decide what's what: the state attorney's office.

      i just can't believe how stupid the whole thing is. if the law enforcement officials KNOW a site is child porn then wouldn't they be much better off going after the site itself rather than alerting the site owners by putting them on a hunted list?

      moreover, wouldn't it be more useful to LET people access a known child porn site? a swift enough equipment seisure could offer further leads in email, log files, and so on.

      i got all huffy when the french decided to sue some american companies for not blocking access to nazi paraphanalia sales when the sites, themselves, didn't control the sales. i see this as the same thing, though the subject matter is an order of magnitude more detestible. still, i say pennsylvania's going after the wrong people.

      • if the law enforcement officials KNOW a site is child porn then wouldn't they be much better off going after the site itself rather than alerting the site owners by putting them on a hunted list?


        Except US law officials can't do anything about the sites in Russia or Singapore. But they can certainly stop the post office, UPS or Fed Ex from delivering those videos you ordered. So what's the difference with stopping the ISP's from delivering the content?



        If ISP's are common carriers, like UPS, USPS, FedEx and the phone company, then just like the Government can intercept shipments of contraband shipped through the above carriers, it should be able to intercept delivery of information through an ISP.



        Of course, this just means that the non-stupid pedophiles will visit the sites through proxy servers or similar.



    • I dunno.. I'm inclined to think that Anne Geddes is a pedophile pervert and should be locked up.. but thats just me. Anyone that would dress small children like sunflowers and stick them in giant flower pots obviously has something wrong with them.

  • not quite... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nicedream ( 4923 )
    While stopping child pornography sounds noble, it seems that these powers will do little to meet this goal and much to allow the government to decide what websites are suitable for public viewing.

    The gov't has already decided that child porn is not suitable for public viewing. This is just one way of enforcing that decision.

    While I'm as big a conspiracy theorist as anyone, I do think this could actually stop some child porn.

  • This is so unrealistic, (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:46PM (#3189729)

    That I almost suspect its not supposed to be a real law, but rather something to make mothers feel better.

  • What a nightmare.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:46PM (#3189735)
    Glad I don't live in Pennsylvania, this type of web blocking is notorius for being inaccurate.

    We have an extreme version of this at our school - originally put in place to block porn, it was later extended to terrorism (fair enough), but then also anything under the "fun" category, the "online sales" category, and finally the "personal" category - laughably this last one includes ANY address with a ~ in the url.

    Needless to say, the potential for abuse here, as well as complex legal arguments, is HUGE

    • Well, the law specifically mentions URLs, so it would seem that ISPs will be allowed to target specific URLs instead of, oh, regular-expression-based methods.

      Of course,

      a) No block list will ever possibly be complete. Instead, perhaps investigators will search over time, and "concerned citizens" might send tips as well.

      It is a logical question to ask, "how concentrated is child porn" -- that is, could one block several major sites and stop a significant percentage, or is it more widely distributed and hidden? I would suspect the latter, since due to illegality it's not in their interests to be prominent, major providers, but...

      b) There will be a "grey area". Will the state AG go "judge shopping" to find a court that's more aggressive in labelling content as porn?

      c) How the ISP blocks URLs... hm, filtering the HTTP requests as they pass through the routers, perhaps? Dropping connections entirely based on the IP won't work too well, since some may be dynamically assigned, and with hosting providers numerous innocent services would get whacked as well.

      d) They need a list of ISPs and their contact information, including proxy servers since the latter could provide access. Ouch.

  • The precedent (Score:2, Informative)

    by praedor ( 218403 )

    I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...


    If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...

    • The law specifically says that a site has to be kiddie porn, as defined by their statutes. So:
      Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow...kiddie porn, then...kiddie porn!

      Not only that, but a judge has to sign off on EACH AND EVERY SITE to EACH AND EVERY ISP. That's a pretty safe system.

    • Re:The precedent (Score:4, Interesting)

      by J. J. Ramsey ( 658 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:03PM (#3189907) Homepage
      "Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then..."

      "once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder..."

      That is the classic slippery slope fallacy.

      In this case, the slope isn't all that slippery, anyway. Child porn is unique in that it is fairly straightforward both to define (as depiction of minors engaged in sexual activity) and to establish the harm that it causes (since engaging kids in sexual activity tends to harm them, whether or not the activity is recorded or not). For most other kinds of porn, the definition and establishment of harm are a lot more ambiguous.
      • Child porn is unique in that it is fairly straightforward both to define (as depiction of minors engaged in sexual activity) and to establish the harm that it causes (since engaging kids in sexual activity tends to harm them, whether or not the activity is recorded or not).

        Except that in American anyone under the age of 18 is considered to be a 'child'. In most other First World nations the age is between 12 and 16.

        Your child porn might be Holland's 17 Magazine.

        Of course, if Pennsylvania feels like pulling these sorts of shenanigans then who am I to say otherwise? I don't live there, and with this sort of knee-jerk legislative response to a perceived problem, now I never will.

        Max
    • I am all for killing off kiddie porn and the purveyors of kiddie porn but I nevertheless find this a little bit disturbing as a precedent. Today it is kiddie porn, tomorrow adult content sites, then sites that provide birth control information, then...

      If it can be absolutely restricted to ONLY blocking kiddie porn and NOTHING else, then OK, but once the toe is in the door, it is hard to stop the leg, then the shoulder...

      Except this slippery slope only works with things that are already illegal. They are banning kiddie porn, an illegal activity. There is no correlation with this being transferred to legal activities being banned. First they would have to make adult content illegal, and then they could ban it. The law can only even potentially be used to block illegal material. So the bigger problem would be these activities becoming illegal, not them becoming banned.
  • "The law has the blessing of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Larry Frankel, the chapter's executive director, said someone whose material is cut off could seek a court hearing."

    Isn't this contrary to the ACLU's positions on previous issues? I'd like to know the exact quote and the context.
    • How is this counter to the ACLU's goals?

      We are talking about pornography involving actual children, not stories or drawings. "Sexual abuse of children" != "Free speech". The ACLU would throw a hissy fit (and rightly so) if erotic stories or drawings were affected, but this law seems harmless enough to me.
    • No decent person likes to hear of, much less come accross, child porn on the internet.

      The problem is not the commendability of trying to legislate the issue. Rather it is the problem of forcing upon an internet service purveyor the monumental task of filtering THE ENTIRE INTERNET: an at-best prohibitive task fraught with missfires and at worst a constraint that will severely hamper other very proper and honest internet usages.

      Legislation of this type is a copout that makes internet connection providers responsible for monitoring content they not only have no control over; content that rightly is the domain of law enforcement agencies to investigate and control-- but, it's much cheaper to foist the problem onto the back of already financially weak ISPs than give more money to law-enforcement.

      It is totally realistic that the punitive damages ordained by this legislation will drive most ISPs in that state out of business, leaving customers with few choices for access. This, while at the same time totally failing to solve a problem which is quite badly exagerated in my opinion. Exagerated and used as the riding horse of people who would like the internet to be generally censored against everything they dislike.

  • Okay.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sc00ter ( 99550 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:48PM (#3189753) Homepage
    Well lets see, while researching this somebody must have to look at child porn. If the site is in the US, I'm sure they'll go raid the site, or contact the proper people to raid the site and shut it down. If the site is outside the US, they should also notify the local government where the site is hosted and request that they be shut down if they have a law against child porn.



    As long as there's a decent oversight so they only block access to child porn I don't have a problem with this. If they start blocking other stuff, that would be bad. It would also be bad if they used some kind of automated system, because that can go wrong. A person must verify these sites before they get put on the ban list.



    Of course the big problem with this.. There is now a nice and complete list of child porn sites.. and you have people looking at this stuff all day.

    • Another problem with this is you have "freehosts" (aka Geocities and similar) where the child porn will end up. Maybe it'll be there an hour, but that might be enough for a Pennsylvania censor to see it and add the entire freehost to the list for a month.
      • I think it would be more likely that they would notify geocities or the other free host to remove the site or they will notify the authoritites.. Geocities (Yahoo!) is a US company. If it's outside the US, then they'll probably block that specific user.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:51PM (#3189789)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • When comcast started briefly monitoring their customers' web site viewing habits i was unconcerned. Why? Because I don't look at many web sites. I just download gigs of files from Kazaa/Morpheus and Audiogalaxy. Cracking down on the more visible sites will just force kiddie porn viewers to use secure non-centralized distribution networks like Gnutella. Where it will be much much harder to find the identities of the users.

      This isn't just ineffective. It will be counter productive: forcing the underground further underground and making secure peer to peer file sharing the standard way of sharing/trading/distributing this material.

      • Re:The real clinchers are Kazaa and Gnutella (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:57PM (#3190713)


        > This isn't just ineffective. It will be counter productive: forcing the underground further underground...

        Kinda makes you want to jerk a knee with "Prohibition" or "War on Drugs" tatooed on it, donit?

        These laws probably aren't supposed to be effective. At best they are a cynical attempt to get votes by giving the politicians something to point to as "evidence" that they're Doing Something About It. At worst, they become another black hole for tax money, a source of corruption in law enforcement agencies, further erosion of our traditional liberties from the legislatures and courts, and a huge revenue boost to criminal organizations.

  • What Is The Standard? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @03:52PM (#3189799) Journal
    I am a little unclear on the standards of child pornography. It seems to me that if you put such a broad block, you can lose a great deal of meaningful content. Example. You're doing research on rain jungle aboriginies and there are pictures of children unclothed as they frequently are. (Ever watch a National Geographic?)

    I admit this is a weak argument, but this is part of a larger issue. No Internet content ought to be blocked. The only filter should be your own brain. If you find this image [goatse.cx] offensive, don't look at it! It's just that simple. I agree, child pornography is absolutely sick, and the government should take steps to eliminate it and prosecute those who produce it. They should not on the other hand, enforce tactics for trying to regulate the flow of information to clients. This is impossible.

    Consider the choices: regulate content flow to a billion+ clinets, OR, eliminate a few thousand content sources. *sigh*

    • I am a little unclear on the standards of child pornography.

      Example. You're doing research on rain jungle aboriginies and there are pictures of children unclothed as they frequently are.

      Definition - As used in this section, "prohibited sexual act" means sexual intercourse as defined in section 3101 (relating to definitions), masturbation, sadism, masochism, bestiality, fellatio, cunnilingus, lewd exhibition of the genitals or nudity if such nudity is depicted for the purpose of sexual stimulation or gratification of any person who might view such depiction.
      • Definition - As used in this section, "prohibited sexual act" means sexual intercourse as defined in section 3101 (relating to definitions), masturbation, sadism, masochism, bestiality, fellatio, cunnilingus, lewd exhibition of the genitals or nudity if such nudity is depicted for the purpose of sexual stimulation or gratification of any person who might view such depiction.

        Thanks for the definition, but incidently, this is where my problem with the standard lies. First of all, any person can view anything with a mind for sexual gratification. Someone could get aroused by looking at pictures of aboriginies. On the other hand, how many know of little kids running around their lawn naked. How many people here have played in their little tot's swimming pool naked, in public display? This is not uncommon and there's nothing wrong with it. Little chilren are innocent and enforcing a sense of shame over their body is not constructive. Now, what if someone else in the neighborhood sees this and gets sexual gratification from it? Are the parents guilty of proliferating child pornography?

        • Now, what if someone else in the neighborhood sees this and gets sexual gratification from it? Are the parents guilty of proliferating child pornography?

          No, because the nudity was not depicted for the purpose of sexual gratification.

          The law is not a computer program. You can't set definate black and white principles for every single possible scenario. That's why we have judges and juries who determine these issues such as intent. Computer programs can't do that.

          Nearly all laws work this way. If you give someone a pencil for the purpose of killing someone, you've committed conspiracy to commit murder. OTOH, if you give someone a pencil for the purpose of writing a note, and they use that pencil to kill someone, you haven't committed a crime at all.

    • Probably the same as the pornography standard "I'll know it when I see it." IANAL, but I think the Supreme Ct. has given jurisdiction over these things to the locality.

      In this case, the locality is PA. It will probably hold up, as porn in general is banned by several states (go to the Adam and Eve website to see where they can't ship).

      My problem is: does someone register childporn.com? (Okay, yes. Someone in Belize:) But seriously, does someone in the US register any of these domains, or is most child porn traded through the Usenet, P2P file sharing, etc.? I don't know the community, have no desire to know the community. But it seems to me that:

      a. This is a small problem, and the law was passed to appease the soccer moms;
      b. This is a decentralized problem that can't be solved with a master list;
      c. This is a big problem in PA because it is so full of pedophiles.

      Probably some combination of a and b.

    • If you find this image [goatse.cx] offensive . . .

      A legit link to goatse.cx that fits into the context of a /. discussion? Either our standards have gone way down or Satan needs some tire chains.
  • I used to take an extreme free-speech position as an argument against government sensorship of this sort. Personally, I'd rather not see certain sites but I'd prefer to choose which sites to ignore, on my own.

    Having said that, it's important to recognize that the lawmakers who came up with this legislation are trying to do a noble thing, but their efforts are misguided and are doomed to failure, simple because of the mechanism through which they attempt to achieve their goal.

    This is our fault. We need ot better educate our representitives with regard to technical issues, understanding of which is of great importance in drafting legislation in recent years. We need to teach our representitives about the technologies they wish to control through legislation or to legislate out of existance, before too many mis-steps are taken.

    --CTH
  • This is a flagrant abuse of free speech rights. While we can all agree that child pornography should be stopped, this seems absolutely unreasonable. I mean, some effort should be made to minimize the intrusions of personal liberty while maximizing the effectiveness of stopping child porn (or at least significantly cutting it back).

    This proposal, however, does neither.
    1. An unnacceptable amount of government intrusion into people's affairs. I mean, the government could deem Arab web sites as harboring threats against the US and ban all the Arab servers they wanted. The government will always "err" on the side of deprivation of liberties.

    2. Not stopping the problem. There are plenty of other ways to do this. Password-protected ftp sites, AIM/chat clients, Gnutella network to just name a few.

    In conclusion, this law is probably the least effective way to do this: It threatens personal liberties much more than providing for the public good.
    • *sigh*

      The ol' slippery slope.

      "If the government outlaws rocket launchers today, they'll be outlawing slingshots tomorrow? Where will it end?"

      You might as well say "Well, if the government outlaws murder, it's only a small step for them to outlaw all *depictions* of murder. Next year we won't even be able to play Quake!" Murder has been outlawed since, well, forever, and yet our rights to enact it in movies, stories, and pictures remain unaffected. Not all slopes are slippery.

      Erotic stories are one thing, but sexual predation of children is not free speech. Child pornography is illegal, and this law merely makes it a bit more difficult to distribute. Where's the harm in that? As far as not stopping the problem -- existing laws against child pornography obviously didn't stop the problem. Perhaps we should just repeal them all? For that matter, why is murder illegal? It still happens anyway.

      Please convince me that a credible threat to innocent bystanders' personal liberties exists, and that the (threat * damage) is greater than the any positive effect this law could have. So far, I'm siding with the lawmakers.
  • Anyone got a link to the definitions referenced at the end of the law? That state website seems designed to prevent easy searches.
  • Failure to do so can result in fines from $5,000 to $30,000 + jailtime.

    For what it's worth, I think all ISPs should be regulated just like any other type of public utility. I see no problem with this. If certain ISPs don't like it, there's a void that needs to be filled in the pshycic friend market.

    Yes, I know, they could be giving out a list of sites like bushsucks.com and stuff like that, but I doubt it. Call me naive :)

    Ultimately, in this case, this state government is attacking an earwig by drilling through the elephant's neck. I don't think this is an effective solution, but I don't think it's going to cause much damage on the ISP side either.
  • Under the law, signed last month, prosecutors would, after obtaining a court order, give ISPs a list of Web sites and other items to block.

    Whilst it's well intended and it's not that much of a bother blocking out websites from a list (which will most likely be out of date), but I think they're pointing in the wrong direction. Shouldn't they be going after the places where these sites are hosted instead of just ISPs? It's a lot easier checking someone's webpage content than it is going through tons of a luser websurfing logs. I can understand blocking for places where there's no jurisdiction, but there's gotta be something done about the places that host child porn as well because that's the place that holds the content.

    Just my 2 scents.
  • They are considering having the US mail/FedEx/UPS/etc
    cease to deliver mail, unless they stop distributing parcels from a certain list of adresses?

  • Technical implications of ban - no anonymity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:04PM (#3189914) Homepage Journal
    People discussing this topic might be interested in my anticensorware reports [sethf.com] about the TECHNICAL implications of prohibiting access to Internet content - it gets into banning privacy, anonymity, language translation sites, caches, archives etc.

    See:

    SmartFilter's Greatest Evils:
    http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/greate stevils.php [sethf.com]

    BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs. privacy & anonymity):
    http://sethf.com/anticensorware/bess/loophole.php [sethf.com]

    The Pre-Slipped Slope - censorware vs the Wayback Machine web archive
    http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/slip.php [sethf.com]

    All of them, and a few others on http://sethf.com/anticensorware/ [sethf.com] , deal with this issue of the technical requirements for the control system.

    The short version is that "disable access" arguably entails banning anonymizers/privacy sites, language translation sites, and more, since these all can act as a means of escape from the blinder-box.

    Maybe access through these sites doesn't count as "accessible through its service". But I sure wouldn't want to be the ISP facing child-pornography charges over that argument ("You mean you allowed access to this anonymity service, which is used by CHILD MOLESTORS?!")

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • On the one hand, disgusting piles of shit who look at little kids and do whatever it is they do absolutely disgusts me. I would prefer that they be locked away forever. Absolutely sickening topic.

    On the other hand, once you start forcing ISPs to block access to sites, then the sheeple get used to it, and it becomes easier to do it again. And of course, it is almost always for a good reason, right? Mom and Dad in Middle America(TM) don't see past the "Oh, they want to block sickos from looking at naked children? Good." They don't realize what this can lead to.

    Why is it that the minority always seems to be the most vocal, while the majority seem to sit back and just shake their head?

  • Bass Ackwards... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArcadeNut ( 85398 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:08PM (#3189946) Homepage
    If they know of a site that has child porn on it, why in the hell are they not going after the site instead of just blocking it?

    I understand that its not as easy as it sounds, but there are other remidies that I would think would be much more effective such as having the DNS entries yanked, the ISP of the site hosting killing the site. Maybe even the FBI raiding the place (obviously not feasible if located outside the US).

    But to require ALL ISP's to block sites seems like a band-aid approach to the problem.

    • If they know of a site that has child porn on it, why in the hell are they not going after the site instead of just blocking it?

      Jurisdiction

      But to require ALL ISP's to block sites seems like a band-aid approach to the problem.

      You're probably right. But at least this law puts the onus on the government to maintain the list of blocked sites. What's most likely going to happen here is that a small number of major sites outside the U.S. will be blocked, and most will be ignored. Maybe this will help, or maybe it won't, but if it doesn't the government will now see first hand exactly why it is impossible to use this type of blocking technology.

    • Jurisdiction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 )
      If they know of a site that has child porn on it, why in the hell are they not going after the site instead of just blocking it?

      Sure, if the site is in the US. Try to start shutting down Web sites that may be perfectly legal in other countries but that those of us in the United States find offensive, and you're opening an ugly can of worms.

  • Hasn't somebody noticed the true headline (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:08PM (#3189948)
    State of Pennsylvania to distribute list of known and verified child porn sites

    Damn, and I used to work at an ISP in Pennsylvania. That list could be worth money to lazy pedophiles that don't know how to use Google.

  • First of all, ISPs are under common carrier status. I don't think they are liable for anything illegal. I'm also sure that's a federal law which will trump that state law. In any event, in the US free market system (well, just about a free market), corporations should not be held liable to enforce federal law. Not only does this cost the ISP more, but those costs get passed down to the consumer. The consumer is the one getting hosed here. Let's not become a police state. I have a solution: Just lock up the people that break the law. When you try to prevent it from happening, the citizens get hosed with more costs and the government starts becoming more of a thought police. I'm a Conservative, and even I disafree with the ramifications of this law. Hopefully someone takes this to the supreme court.

  • Poor ISPs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FleshMuppet ( 544521 )

    The way I see it, telling an ISP to block access to child porn sites is like telling Interstate 80 to prevent motorists from going to Texas.

    I feel sorry for the ISPs who are going to be jerked around by a government who has no idea how to implement an unworkable law. This is just another case where uniformed legislation is going to raise price for the public and make life difficult for private business.

  • You have to realize, laws as ineffective as these (mainly because they do not go after the source of the problem, namely, the illegal content sources, and those are already illegal under existing law) are the product of the same state whose PUC once suggested long-distance fees be charged to ISP customers for their visits to websites.

    Yes, I know it does not make any sense.

  • Blocking clients (Score:2, Insightful)

    by roberto0 ( 242247 )
    From the definition of ISP in the bill mentioned in the article:
    2 "INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER." A PERSON WHO PROVIDES A SERVICE

    3 THAT ENABLES USERS TO ACCESS CONTENT, INFORMATION, ELECTRONIC
    4 MAIL OR OTHER SERVICES OFFERED OVER THE INTERNET.
    Kazaa is a person who enables users to access internet content as well...does that mean that Pennsylvania will have the right to block uploads from specific users sharing p2p?

  • Wrong approach (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rsklnkv ( 532866 )
    This, unfortunately, could be the first step on a long stairway of censorship. No, I do not believe that blocking CP sites is censorship (if you think it is, you are indeed a fool), but this may just be an easy stepping stone for authorities to block other questionable materials. How about pushing education, stemming the tide of new materials and more active attempts to bust the actual child pornographers before throwing a blanket over the issue? These brush-it-under-the-rug tactics are so typical of existing government when dealing with this problem. There needs to be a worldwide agreement on the issue, which may never happen. We all need to take control of this problem, stop bitching and actually do something, rather than let government do it their way. Are they really so blind to the sub-culture out there? This is merely a stumbling block in the fight against CP, not a valid solution. Educate yourselves, take action, and fight what we all know to be wrong. Do it before the we are all punished for the actions of some twisted pukes. I encourage you all to take some responsibility.
  • Ineternet Service Providers should be required to focus on effectively providing a link to the network and thats it. Routing and reliability is the job that I look to my ISP to perform. The governement threatening an ISP as a means to force their misunderstanding on the people is not something I welcome and I hope the message gets across soon.

    If someone is hosting something that is illegal then go after the someone and not their ISP or even worse the ISP of someone else that just happens to be linking to the same internet. If you can't get to that someone then deal with it. The internet is much bigger than Pennsylvania and the narrow views of whatever government entity that gets to tell my ISP what I can see.

    I for one will always be in favor of deciding what filtering needs to be done on my connection to the internet and think that the voters in Pennsylvania should let there representativers know that this heavy handed attempt is nothing short of an attempt to control something that can not be controlled in this manner.
  • Since the onus is on the state Office of the Attorney General to notify the ISP which sites to block, why don't they just shut the sites down in the first place? It seems easier to stop it at the source, especially if you know the source. This is just going to require more work for all involved and probably won't help the situation. This law will be struck down; it's only a matter of time.
    • If the source is out-of-country, has no operations within the United States, and does not intend to have such, they may simply laugh at the State AG, and the Federal gov't probably isn't going to cause a major international confrontation over a child porn site or two. I mean, there ARE other tools such as trade barriers and so forth that could be used to bludgeon some countries into passing similar laws, but it's not worth it to the Feds to try, I suspect.

      ISPs, however, that operate here likely are US-based, and would generally have offices and employees and all sorts of things that make it easier to go after them if they do not comply.

      Proxies are a problem; an anonymous redirector in an international site, hosted by a country that has different views on government versus network traffic (or simply likes irritating the United States, say) would probably also be beyond the effective reach of the state AG.
  • They have a list of Child porn websites for the ISP to block. Why dont they just take down the damn Child porn sites?!!!

  • This law does not demand vigilance on the part of the ISP.

    Nor does it demand the ISP police its users.

    Nor does it hold the ISP responsible for the actions of those who circumvent the measures.

    In short, it is reasonable.
  • Let's see, how is this going to play out:

    1) Parent, nosy churchlady, or someone who couldn't pass the tests to become a postal inspector finds something on the web they don't like. They write a letter to the AG.

    2) Nearly all the real kiddie porn will be gone within hours. So how is the AG going to collect evidence to go before the court and ask for an order to close it down?

    3) Probably the AG has political ambitions, so he'll still try to find _something_ to block. Maybe purveyors of "barely legal" pictures. Maybe a URL that repeatedly gets complaints, even though there's nothing there when they look. Maybe Planned Parenthood sites; because these stay put, they'll probably log more complaints from the religious kooks than any actual porn site....

    4) Compliant judge will sign the orders without actually looking at the "evidence".

    5) Hundreds of lawsuits will be filed for violations of civil rights.

    Folks, the 1st Amendment does not prohibit censorship by private parties of items passing through their servers. It does prohibit government censorship (with exceptions that I seem to be unable to find in the actual text)... By designating the sites to be blocked, the State of PA is putting itself right in the targets of every hungry lawyer that can find an innocent, or sleazy but legal, client on the block list.
  • A point to ponder, regarding this law:

    The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
    -- John Gilmore (famous quote)

    What if censorship is in the router? -- Seth Finkelstein

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • What about newsgroups (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dgb2n ( 85206 ) <dgb2n&yahoo,com> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:20PM (#3190051)
    It may seem obvious but newsgroups seem to offer the relative anonymity that encourages distribution of this type of material.

    Websites have to be hosted someplace. Content can be identified and prosecuted.

    I'm still not sure why some newsgroups are carried by ISP's. What possible legal use could there be for alt.binaries.sex.children or similarly named groups?

    This is not a flame or a troll but I think there's general concensus that certain material should be prosecuted and every effort made to eliminate its presence from the net. I'm not referring to all porn but pornography involving the exploitation of children.

    Banning these websites may be a particularly ineffective way to achieve that goal but at a minimum something should be done about the newsgroups.

    • Only works for show... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Because many ISPs block them already, or the groups are getting spammed/bombed to death, but the people just move to some less explicitly named groups, wreaking havoc on those actually looking for normal or artistic or nudist pictures by mixing it with hardcore stuff. It's been done, and it doesn"t work...
  • i mean, sometimes it's easy: prepubescent is obviously kiddie porn. but what about 14 year olds that look 25? who decides? how do you tell if it's an 18 year old, or are they going after the really twisted child stuff only?

    as for the comment about "someone has to look at all the porn to find it", well, maybe they can just hire the convicted felons to scan the archives and whatever turns them on is removed. partially sarcasm, partially serious.
  • at least they are providing them with a list of sites to block instead of expecting the isps to just broadly block anything that might have to do with kiddie porn like those laws in germany that prevent the sale of nazi memorabelia(sp?)

    PN isp's can just change their dns to point those websites at 127.0.0.1 or something.

  • Some thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)

    by confusion ( 14388 )
    1) If the AG goes to the trouble of getting a court order to ban a site, the AG apprently knows something about the site and therefore could/should just as easily go after the supplier, not the consumer [there are already laws for this]
    2) Left up to the discretion of an AG, judge, angry mom, sites like pampers.com, johnsons & johnsons, and all other manner of sites that have infants in 'explict' nude or semi nude pictures would be blocked.
    3) As others have stated, this opens the door to more restriction. The next to come will be other 'offensive' sites, such as:
    - Information on strange fetishes
    - Information on hate groups (race/orientation/etc)
    These sites could be considered indefensible. Once we have those out of the way, then we go after:
    - Information on abortion
    - Information on contraception
    - hardcore pornography
    - Gay/Lesbian information

    Then, of course, it's not a big stretch to include other things like political information, like anarchy, communism, etc.

    This isn't something that happens overnight, and it isn't something that most people will realize is happening. It took a long time to get the rights we have here in the US, and it's taken a long time to pull back some of those rights.

    It's unfortunate, but the legislators, law enforcement and judges don't have the foresight to see how a seemingly legitimate act can contribute to the downfall of a society over an extended period of time.
  • Step 1 - Buy web hosting services from someone. Set up web proxy that lets you view any URL.

    Step 2 - View banned site through proxy. Demand that ISP be fined.

    Step 3 - Repeat steps 1 & 2 until ISP is out of business (might take longer with Comcast, just keep trying).

    Step 4 - Get new ISP and goto step 1.

    When there is no internet in Pennsylvania, perhaps the voters wiill vote in somebody with common sense.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Maybe Constitutional, Maybe Not (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Artagel ( 114272 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @04:28PM (#3190108) Homepage
    John D. Ashcroft, Attorney General, et al., v. The Free Speech Coalition, et al. will decide whether virtual child pornography can be treated as the real thing. It was argued in the Supreme Court last October, and they still have not issued an opinion.

    If you can treat the virtual like the real, then it becomes much easier for the AG of Pennsylvania to do something. He doesn't have to care about the difference. Otherwise, sorting out whether it is virtual or real could pose difficulties.

    Interesting that CANDYMAN happened while the Supreme Court was noodling over the issue. I wonder if they know.
  • You just know that someone will be wrongfully placed on that list, suffer some loses, get a landshark^WLawyer, then sue the pants outta PA.
  • I also want to start a service keeping the list of banned urls from the Attorney General's office (distributed with a nominal fee for value added, of course...).

    I also have to make sure to get the best value for my salesforce dollar, so I will donate to a non-profit group of little old ladies who's only thought is to protect the children of PA from the evils of these horrible smutmongers. In gratitude I am sure they will return a list of non-complying ISP's to me...:)

    I wonder who in PA is already set up like this? I also wonder if they had anything to do with the passage of this law?

  • IANAL, but isn't child porn illegal? If it is (if it isn't it should be) and they can identify the URL, hence the company, why not just prosecute them?

  • Yeah, PA is going down the toilet. (Score:3, Informative)

    by evilpaul13 ( 181626 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @05:20PM (#3190398)
    We've got a law that allows 'dangerous people' to be arrested and held indefinitely without being charged or brought to trial. If that doesn't sound like it has potential to be abuse, I don't know what does.

    This latest one will be another with enormous potential for abuse. It'll censor unfairly many sites that don't have child pornography on them. It would also be possible for someone saying something that isn't liked to be put on it 'accidentally.'

    But, I'm probably just paranoid, there's no reason not to trust the gov't. They are here to protect us.

    (I live in PA, btw)

  • what else wil they block then? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:01PM (#3190751) Journal
    First I think child porn is discusting. My concern is when sites start to block content when will they stop? What about if the government decides that sites that provide infomation on sexuality and sexuality for minors are considered pornographic cause they make mention of certain words or express certain ideas? When does it become pornographic? Was Robert Maplethorpe's (sp?) exhibit pornographic? Granted they are now going to be going after sites that probably have pictures of specific acts or such, but what if they just 'say' that you are a child pornographic site? What is to stop any site from being essentially blacklisted? Are they blocking servers or actual URLS? Yahoo has groups and clubs and one of these clubs or groups or some of them (I am not clear on all the details) had child porno on them. Could this result in the total ban of clubs.yahoo.com and groups.yahoo.com from ISP's in Penn? I'd say possibly!
    And while some ISPs now market themselves as "family friendly," they often do so by restricting access to legitimate sites as well.

    This is slowly becoming the end of the information highway. It is turning into the censorship highway. Of course someone will moderate this down as being overrated, and maybe it is a little bit, but I have been on the internet since 94 and it is not as free as it used to be. We now have more ads then ever before. There are now more spammers then there were and more people online. There are more sites and people using 'family safe software' that blocks 'bad content'. But who is defineing this bad content?

    Well believe it or not much of this is being driven by religious conservatism and right or wrong how long will it be before a site that you visit that is NOT pornographic or bad is blacklisted because it is considered 'subversive' or a terrorist threat? in France they are demanding the blockage of the sale of all Nazi memorabilia (sp), asia they block some western ideas. Soon it will be up to those in power to determine what content they want you to read.

    Fantasy, well most people are young here and will live to see if this is going to be more real than fantasy.

    • First I think child porn is discusting. [sic]

      Isn't it interesting how so many people feel the need to state the obvious before criticizing the government on this issue?

      Don't apologize for your opinion, especially when you go on to make some good points that have nothing to do with kiddie porn, and everything to do with government-sponsored censorship. THAT is the issue here, not whether some loser thinks you get off on kid sex because you failed to provide a disclaimer. You play into their hands when you apologize for a well-reasoned opinion.

  • This is BS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dh003i ( 203189 ) <dh003i@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:12PM (#3190837) Homepage Journal
    (1) ISP's, nor the government, should not be in the business of banning certain websites, or blocking access to them. There's no difference between that and banning, or burning, books. Fucking nazis.

    (2) In regards to "simulated child pornography", if its simulated, who does it harm? In such a case -- i.e., an 18+ woman who looks younger, or a computer-generated image -- no one's privacy is voilated, nor was anyone's rights violated in producing the image. Banning that is just christian bullshit where they want to control your mind. It's a victimless crime in that case.

    (3) In regards to real pornography, which was actually derived from children, there are three classes: (a) Forced; (b) Exploitative; (c) Self-done. Here's my take on each of them:

    a. Forced. If a child is forced (raped) into sexual poses/positions/whatever, and the image of that taken is distributed on the web, there's no reason the government shouldn't be able to take down that image from the website, in protection of the child. Every minute the image is up there is a VIOLATION of the child's rights to privacy, self-dignity, and her body.

    b. Exploitative. When the child is not "forced" per se, but nevertheless is taken advantage of by an adult. The act itself should be illegal in most cases; I don't think we should be ardent about "exact" age limits. The legal age for consentual sex with older people is 18 most places; if a guy has sex with a girl a month away from being 18, so what? Of course, we need to have precise laws, so people know exactly what they can and cannot do. I suggest keeping the legal age at 18, but varying the punishment for statutory rape depending on the age-difference of the "victim" and of the adult. There's a big difference when a 60-year old man sleeps with a 16-year old girl, as opposed to a 19-year old man doing the same.

    c. Self-done. When an underage person engages in sexual poses/sex, and photographs themselves; then they either post it online immediately, or wait until they're older (18) and publish it then. There's nothing wrong with this, though current laws prohibit it. If someone took pictures of themselves having sex at 16 and wants to post it on the web later on, that's their right: it is their body.

    Even in case (a), where I feel the government does have the obligation to -- in protection of minor's rights -- stop the distribution of child-pornography, that doesn't justify any means. The government is free to do so via any means that are non-draconian. They are not permitted to, for example, take down an entire P2P network to stop some porn, nor to spy on what all of us put on the web.

    I really think that child-molestation laws are unneeded. They are redundant with rape laws. The standard in rape law is, "could/did the person give informed consent". Obviously, a 6-year old child can't give informed consent, as that person doesn't even know what sex is. Obviously, a woman who says "no" can't give informed consent. Obviously, a woman passed out drunk can't give any kind of consent.

    But there are some sticky situations where its a little vague. What about when the person is 16-18? When can they give informed consent? Obviously, some people make better sexual decisions at 16 than others do at 30. Well, maybe you can have a "sex license" sort of like a drivers license, which verifies that you know about basic sexual issues. Sounds kinda stupid, huh, a "license to have sex"? But its alot better than setting unmeaningful absolute standards which don't apply uniformly.

    What about a case where a woman is drunk and is the sexual aggressor? Should the man be charged with rape if he has sex with her? I don't think so. Another consideration is, "who was the initiator"? Was it the man, the woman, or both? I think that if there is an "initiator" and the other person accepts the advances, it should never be considered rape (unless the other person was purposefully stoned to make them "easy"), except in cases where the person doesn't have their "sex license".

    But even that has problems. For example, do we really want to say that a person mentally retarded can't have sex, except with other mentally retarded people?

    It is clear to me that this society has not thought enough about sex; all of our answers the a complicated issue are black/white, clearly goaded on by Christian humbug.

    • Re:This is BS (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Reziac ( 43301 )
      And what about when the local culture has no such concept as child exploitation? I once met a guy (friend of a friend) who spent a couple years in Belize, and he told of how any adult male who was perceived to have money (ie. pretty much any foreigner) was constantly pursued by a gaggle of 8 to 12 year old girls, all offering their bodies in exchange for money, food, protection, status among their peers, etc. Translation of this cultural business model to the internet, and any resultant attempts to censor it, are left as exercises for the reader.

      (The more-depra^Hived geekset may want to think twice before rushing down there.. he also told of how floppies and CDs molded in mere days, and how hard disks rusted solid in a matter of months.)

  • This will never, never work. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Qrlx ( 258924 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @06:49PM (#3191038) Homepage Journal
    Blocking child pornography is essentially impossible. Blocking any sort of "content" or "IP" is an extremely difficult task. It's one thing to block port 25; unfortunately the IETF has yet to standardize on a port number for kiddie porn.

    First, there's the problem of deciding what to block: Let's take the obvious example, of blocking a jpg. This means someone has to determine the age of the person in that jpg. I looked at about 1,000 jpgs last nite, and I pity the fool who has to monitor my drunken pr0n surf.

    Perhaps it would be possible to use some VERY sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm, but, like spam filtering, you're never gonna block 100% of the bad stuff while letting 100% of the good stuff through. Nevermind the incredible resource hit of scanning each downloaded jpg, or the fact that your CRC-matching database of known jpgs ain't worth shit once I take the 640x480 jpg and save it as 644x483.

    But that's not even the real problem. No, the real problem is THE DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY. Basically it depends on things like "community standards" and such which don't really make sense on the Internet. With child pornography, the definition gets even more complicated; things that are otherwise acceptable become pornography when the subject is under 18, such as a picture which shows the outline of the vulva through clothing isn't porn if the girl is 23 but is porn if she's 9.

    (In fact the entire laws about kiddie porn in this country are totally fucked. The gov't can offer to sell you kiddie porn, say from an ad in the back of a magazine, and then sell it to you, and then bust you for possession. This would normally be entrapment, but the Supreme Court decided that kiddie porn is such a scourge that normal constitutional protections are outweighed by the need to lock up pedophiles. Hmmm... "First they came for the pedophiles, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pedophile. Then they came for the Arabs..." But I digress.)

    To make matters worse, pornography doesn't even have to be a picture or movie. Text can be pornography. For instance,
    I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself from licking 15-year old Timmy's perineum as he lay unconscious.
    That could be construed as kiddie porn, believe it or not. Of course in this context I won't be going to jail (I hope) since my INTENT isn't prurient (but who can really tell my intent?). But if I logged on to some kiddy chat room and made that comment, I would be in big trouble, esp. if the moderator knows what a perineum is.

    So not only do you have to filter the content, which is a subjective process in the first place, you have to ascertain the context of that content. In other words you have to Meta-Moderate, and we all know how much fun that is!

    No, this will never work, and the "blacklist" that gets passed from the Penn. A.G. to the ISP's will have all the same problems as the anti-spam blacklists: How do you get off it, do you notify someone that they're on it, or would that just tell them it's time to get a new IP address, etc.

    Here are some links to interesting legal stuff:
    Supreme court def. of pornography (pdf, sorry) [coollawyer.com]
    has the famous "I know it when I see it" qoute from Justice Potter Stewart
    Google HTML version [google.com]
    [findlaw.com]
    Guy in jail for selling videos of girls in their panties
    [findlaw.com]
    Guy acquitted after gov't got him to order kiddie porn thru mail and then busted him. He was acquitted because the gov't hadn't proved intent, not because it was entrapment

    I am not a lawyer, but I play on on Slashdot.

  • URL blocking isn't something ISP routers can do (Score:3, Interesting)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @10:42PM (#3192032) Journal
    The law involves three parts, and some are technically hard to implement, independent of the dubious constitutionality.
    • Random politicians, cops, DAs deciding material is Officially Bad and notifying ISPs that they want it blocked. That's got some constitutional problems, but at least it's better than requiring the ISPs to proactively guess what things to block or use a commercial censorware package that's casting a much broader net and not only blocks Bad sites but also blocks any site that might let you evade their blocking mechanism (e.g. SethF's work on censorware blocking Google, Wayback, and anonymizers [sethf.com]).
    • Web sites being ordered to take down specific pages - again, there are problems, but no technical difficulties and it's based on specific notice.
    • ISPs being ordered to block their users' access to URLs that aren't on their site. This is technically difficult, and the legislators don't understand the technical implications. Some ISPs may provide their users with a complete package, browser and all, but the normal ISP configuration never sees the URL - the user types the URL into their browser, their system does a DNS lookup to get the IP address associated with the domain name in the URL, and the user sends IP packets which the ISP's routers forward strictly by IP address. Asking the ISP to block a given URL is similar to asking the Post Office to block mail-order requests for specific books - it requires ripping open any envelopes addressed to specific bookstores to see what's being ordered. Actually it's worse than that - it's more like asking the big mail-sorting centers to block the requests, when they normally don't handle individual envelopes - they deliver mailbags to specific zipcodes after the local post office sorts the envelopes into bags by machine. The only time a real human looks at the address to notice that the envelope is addressed to a bookstore is when something goes wrong with the sorting machine (like ISPs handling bouncemail) or when the destination post office delivers it (equivalent to the URL's web host in the previous case.)

      There are technical means that ISPs could use to implement Pennsylvania's orders - they could install proxy servers on all of their connections leaving Pennsylvania, either forcing users to explicitly proxy their browsers, or using transparent proxy servers. Some ISPs do this, to take advantage of caching and reduce their overall bandwidth needs, but except for local ISPs that happen to be entirely within Pennsylvania, most of them didn't build their network to easily keep track of state lines so they can enforce the "Banned in Boston" rules in Boston, "Banned in Philadelphia" rules in Philly, and "Banned in Pittsburgh" rules in Pittsburgh.



    Does anybody know if any national ISPs were consulted on the implementation issues? I suspect most of them are perfectly willing to comply with orders to take down web pages, but would have lots more trouble with the blocking requirements - it's much cleaner to implement on the edges of the network, in the user's browser where there's enough information to decide.

Slashdot Top Deals

I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it. - Joe Mullally, computer salesman

Close