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[ NNSquad ] Re: ISPs agree to block access to child porn Web sites and Usenet groups


Lauren Weinstein wrote:
In practice, of course -- as I've written many times -- effective
censorship of the Internet is impossible.  You can make access more
difficult or more of a hassle, but in the end censorship efforts --
even for seemingly laudable goals -- will drive the materials of
interest ever deeper underground into forms that make them even
more difficult to track.  That's just the way it is, like it or not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/nyregion/10internet.html

Ack!
> The agreement is designed to bar access to Web sites that feature child pornography by requiring service providers to check against a registry of explicit sites maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children."


In other words, sites will be blocked based on a blacklist maintained by an NGO. No trial, not even a trace of due process. If you discover your site is being blocked, what is your recourse? The Center is a "private" entity (albeit gov't funded), and so are the ISPs that are doing the blocking, hence the 1st amendment might not apply.

Or if you are trying to access one of these sites, you don't get any indication of what's wrong, just an NXDOMAIN as if the site had simply vanished from the net. You can't even hit the front page to report the problem via "contact us" (if any).

What a nightmare.

From the same article:
> Last year, a bill sponsored by Congressman Nick Lampson, a Texas Democrat, promised to take “the battle of child pornography to Internet service providers” by ratcheting up penalties for failing to report complaints of child pornography. The bill passed in the House, but has languished in the Senate.
>
>"If we can encourage — and certainly a fine would be an encouragement — the I.S.P. to be in a position to give the information to law enforcement, we are encouraging them to be on the side of law enforcement rather than erring to make money for themselves," Mr. Lampson said.



I wonder if these people have ever heard of a Denial of Service attack. Assume this law is passed, and ISPs (and search engines?) are required to report _every_ complaint of child pornography. How long before people start manufacturing bogus reports (millions of them, at computer speeds) and copmletely flood the system, bogging down both the ISPs' reporting mechanisms and the law enforcement agencies that have to respond to them?


Feh!  Idiots all!