Re: [ProgSoc] Fwd: LL:URL:the government's Internet Censorship proposed legislation

[Telford Tendys <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

> The ABA would be responsible for rating messages on the list that
> generate complaints and adding the RC and X-rated ones to filtering
> lists. All the talented programmers who are prepared to implement the
> impossible should fwd their resumes to Alston pronto...
> 
> Of course, the more likely scenario is that somebody will say "if we
> can't rate it, filter it and block it we have to shut it down." Seems
> unlikely? Well so does coming up with an implementation that can
> enforce a WWW blocklist that Alston predicts will contain 8.5 million
> sites, but he still insists that we do it. Closest guess as to how
> many minutes that adds to each request on a 1000-user-loaded proxy
> server wins the jar of jellybeans...

Yeah, reading through the ammendments, it seems like they leave a lot
of issues open to interpretation. In one place it says that they are not
going to burdon ISPs but in another place it says that ISPs will be 
expected to implement technical solutions such filters. It seems to me
that the storm of complaints and takedown orders and filter lists will
be a major burdon on everyone and cannot possibly hope to keep up with
the range of content. In the end, it will push up the price of internet
access to help pay the legal fees and insurance premiums, we will all
pay the overhead and the big boy ISPs will be the only happy ones.

It doesnt even really sit down and explain how a take-down order must
detail what the content is. Is is one file per take-down order?
can a whole domain be specified in a single take-down order?
What if similar content turns up again under a different name or
from a differnt host? Is that covered by the same take-down order?

In short, a bucketload of issues are going to have to be left to the
discression of the ABA and whatever judges have to rule over the
first few prosecutions. Eventually the govt will have to slowly wake up
and realise that simplistic mind-control techniques don't work properly
in the modern world (you need sophisticated mind-control techniques
to get the job done these days).

I can at least say that the complaint system is better than the
``kill on sight'' system that has been turning up in the USA where
BBS operators have been set up for a crime that they didn't even
realise they were comitting and never got a warning notice at all.

	- Tel


> 
> -- 
> screen so pure and blue
> this computer is at peace
> control alt delete
> 
> matthew beauregard
> viper communications
> systems programmer
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