The political momentum in Europe has favoured the Pirate Party throughout Europe. The question is, can the French Pirate Party become the third country to elect a pirate party member into office on a level of government. Already, the French Three Strikes law has caused significant political controversy, one flash point being that one man was fired from his day job for simply voicing his opinion about the law; a case that since sparked a lawsuit.

With the momentum from the German and Swedish counterparts mixed with the controversy of HADOPI, there is reason for optimism.

The French Pirate Party has issued a press release (Google translation) saying that “every vote counts”. From the press release:

On the occasion of the by-election of the 10th district of Yvelines, following the resignation of Christine Boutin from his post as Deputy, the Pirate Party presents its first candidate in a French election

23 years old, studying computer engineering specialty at the University of Orsay, a former adviser to the district centerville Rambouillet, supplemented by

33, Game Designer, member of the team coordinating the Pirate Party International commissioned by the Pirate Party in France.

Long awaited, this nomination is a strong signal across Europe in favor of free access to culture and information, respect the privacy of citizens and rewriting the code of intellectual property, patents and respond to copyright. This election takes place precisely in the period of voting in the web laws and precedes the opening of debate on the future law Loppsi: this application is the voice of citizens who wish to denounce the social choice account we require that the current government.

The LOPPSI 2 legislation was another major point of controversy. We reported on the new legislation back in May when it first hit French newspapers. The legislation basically would allow police to basically upload malware to a users computer.

There’s plenty of reasons to find the Pirate Party of France particularly appealing after HADOPI and LOPPSI 2. What we don’t know is his odds in actually winning that particular seat. Since it’s a new party, it’s difficult to tell whether or not the new rise in popularity for the party across Europe would boost his presence enough to contend with established parties. We will certainly know around the 20th whether or not 3 times is a charm.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Prosecutors are calling it a landmark decision when they successfully sued two web hosting companies and the owner of the websites for trademark infringement. The web hosting companies that were sued are Akanoc Solutions Inc. and Managed Solutions Group Inc.

Apparently, the web hosting companies were contacted by trademark owners over the website owner – who just so happens to be the same owner of the hosting companies – selling the counterfeiting material. When the website owner, Steven Chen, received the demands to take down the website, he refused to take action. That’s what prompted the lawsuit against the companies and the website owner.

On the surface, the case seems to have been a big victory against people who sell infringing material – something that many would celebrate over. However, the case has sparked interesting debate, particularly on Slashdot, over whether or not this has a chilling effect on free speech as well because of the precedent set.

On the international stage, contributing to infringement has been one of the weapons the copyright industry has been using with sometimes surprising success. OiNK, a while back, had legal troubles when their domain name registrar was threatened with legal action if they didn’t discontinued support for the domain name. The Registrar folded and users quickly found their website seemingly offline (although connecting directly to the IP address would reveal that the site was still operational. This caused the website to be forced to move to a different domain. More recently, the “ISP of the ISP” was pressured into blocking ThePirateBay. That was a case where the owners remarked how the copyright industry was going after people who contribute to who contribute to who contribute to who contribute to copyright infringement – a case that brought ThePirateBay down for a mere couple of hours.

Let’s say this latest case does cause a chilling effect in US web hosting companies. That chilling effect that websites are taken down on a mere allegation of copyright infringement or trademark infringement or being threatened with legal action citing this particular case. All it’s really going to do is cause many website owners to simply pack up shop and take their business off American shores – whether they have legitimate reasons or not. This will be at the detriment to American businesses because many will fear that their website will be here today, gone tomorrow. Clearly, then, it would be a court decision that is bad for business.

In this case, it seems a little less likely that such a precedent has been set that the safe harbour provisions have effectively been rendered moot. This is because in this case, the owner of the website was also the owner of the hosting company. Why this is important is because the web hosting owner had full knowledge of the activities of that particular website. In most other cases, the web hosting company doesn’t know what is going on in every given website – only that they receive money at regular intervals in time.

So, it’s really a murky ruling over whether or not free speech and the safe harbour provision has been harmed or not. What it probably will depend on is what future court cases would bring as a result of this ruling.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

His journey throughout all of this probably started off as a humble employee, working at Frances broadcaster, TF1. He probably had no idea that one day, he’d be the centre of a major political debate that the whole world is watching at the time.

Then, the HADOPI law debate came up. Three strikes and you’re out for copyright infringement online. At the time, the proposal would have no judicial oversight whatsoever – not to mention being forced to pay your subscription fee even though you have been, well, banned from the internet. Your name would be added to a blacklist so you can’t subscribe with another provider and the amount of time you were disconnected, at the time, was still being determined.

Not surprisingly, the law was just about as controversial then as it is now. For Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim at the time, he wasn’t exactly too keen on the law either. So, while at work, he sent an e-mail to his member of parliament to express his personal opposition to the “three strikes” law. His member of parliament’s office, who also happened to be part of the governing party, UMP, then forwarded the e-mail to the minister of culture who then forwarded the e-mail to his employer, TF1. Bourreau-Guggenheim boss then hauled him into his office where he was showed a copy of his e-mail before he was fired for “strategic differences”

His story hit several major French newspapers. He went from just a side-line employee to a front-line borderline celebrity who is against the French three strikes law. The story has since caused political waves.

Now, it seems, a new development has happened in this case. French newspaper, Le Monde, is reporting (Google Translation) that Bourreau-Guggenheim is suing his former employer, TF1, for discrimination. His lawsuit is based on article 225-2 of the penal code which addresses “violations of human dignity”.

The punishment for such a violation is up to three years in prison and a 45,000 euro fine. That article specifically deals with an employment dismissal based on a political viewpoint.

Le Monde makes an additional interesting point:

By revealing the affair in its issue of May 7, Libération had quoted from the letter explicitly refers to mail sent to Ms. de Panafieu. Including this clarification: “This correspondence was received through the office of the Minister of Culture, which has posed address the same day the company TF1. A path to strong symbolic resonance, given the suspicions about the relationship between power and sarkozyste audiovisual group, whose main shareholder, Martin Bouygues, is the near the head of state.

Another part of the article says:

It is true that the case has already made much noise but it has needed to add: wrangling in the Assembly, where the former Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel, has been strongly implicated by the opposition; sanction against the member of his Cabinet who had transferred to the TF1 mail received from Ms. de Panafieu (Le Monde, 12 May).

Now committed criminal in a long process, Mr. Bourreau Guggenheim-must adapt to circumstances. To live this matter without further destroying his career. Say they have had “some contact with elected representatives of the opposition, which (l ‘) were invited to participate in debates on Hadopi”, the former part of TF1 should also “reassure (the) future employers” when is invited to an interview. TF1 who denounced “positions (…) radical expressed publicly,” he defends himself on these two points: “I am loyal, I have nothing being published at TF1. And I am not an extremist free download.”

At this point in time, it’s not hard to see this as a no win situation for the UMP of France, not to mention TF1 who is neck deep in this political fiasco as well. It would appear that Bourreau-Guggenheim has a number of additional options should things go sour for him including referring to the European Court of Human Rights. Though one can only imagine how much additional political damage that would cause for the government who is not only intending on pushing through the three strikes law at all cost, but also changing around the French court system and giving judges only approximately 5 minutes to rule on each disconnection.

This case about a French employee fired for opposing the three strikes law, unfortunately for TF1 and the UMP, isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The bills in question are Bill C-46 and Bill C-47. Interesting that there has to be two bills, but we’ll go in numeric order here and devote this article, for the sake of length, to Bill C-46 (which is several pages long).

We should also note that this review of the legislation is made by someone who is not a lawyer, expert of the law or someone giving away legal advice by any stretch of the imagination. What this review strictly is is an average Canadians interpretation of the law who is not specifically or formally trained to be a law expert.

Bill C-46 – Quotes and Comments

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Also known as the Investigation Powers for the 21st century. Let’s look at some excerpts of the law:

327. (1) Everyone who, without lawful excuse, makes, possesses, sells, offers for sale, imports, obtains for use, distributes or makes available a device that is designed or adapted primarily to use a telecommunication facility or obtain a telecommunication service without payment of a lawful charge, under circumstances that give rise to a reasonable inference that the device has been used or is or was intended to be used for that purpose, is

(a) guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or

(b) guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

What we can see here is that this section is aimed people who want to start their own ISP. What this might also look like is something that will criminalize the activity of either stealing WiFi or offering open WiFi. The question that comes to mind is: does this criminalize the activity of setting up a TOR node or proxy in Canada? With this legislation, could it be illegal for someone to set up a proxy so, say, someone from Iran could anonymously provide information about what is going on in Iran? After all, that is generally offering, without charge, a telecommunications service.

372. (1) Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication.

(2) Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to alarm or annoy a person, makes an indecent communication to that person or to any other person by a means of telecommunication.

(3) Everyone commits an offence who, without lawful excuse and with intent to harass a person, repeatedly communicates, or causes repeated communications to be made, with them by a means of telecommunication.

(4) Everyone who commits an offence under this section is

(a) guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or

(b) guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

This is only the second excerpt we are looking at and already, stunningly, you could be locked up for up to two years in prison for being annoying on the internet. In a perfect world, the trolls of the internet would be at risk, but what about free speech. What if the copyright industry finds me annoying for posting their press releases and criticizing them on a regular basis? Should I, a reporter, be locked up for up to two years for being annoying under this circumstance? That’s not even touching general comments.

Since this activity will be criminalized if this passes, better get this out of the way now: I think whoever wrote this law is a fool who doesn’t know what the internet is like.

(5.1) Everyone who wilfully does an act or wilfully omits to do an act that it is their duty to do, if that act or omission is likely to constitute mischief causing actual danger to life, or to constitute mischief in relation to property or computer data,

Say what? Oh wait, here’s a definition of “Mischief” under this law:

(1.1) Everyone commits mischief who wilfully

(a) destroys or alters computer data;

(b) renders computer data meaningless, useless or ineffective;

(c) obstructs, interrupts or interferes with the lawful use of computer data; or

(d) obstructs, interrupts or interferes with a person in the lawful use of computer data or denies access to computer data to a person who is entitled to access to it.

Under the term “property”, does that include “intellectual property” perchance? As such, would altering data include the act of cracking software? This section is so vague, that could be possible. Anti-circumvention laws much?

487.012 (1) A peace officer or public officer may make a demand to a person in Form 5.001 requiring them to preserve computer data that is in their possession or control when the demand is made.

(2) The peace officer or public officer may make the demand only if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that

(a) an offence has been or will be committed under this or any other Act of Parliament or has been committed under a law of a foreign state;

(b) in the case of an offence committed under a law of a foreign state, an investigation is being conducted by a person or authority with responsibility in that state for the investigation of such offences; and

(c) the computer data is in the person’s possession or control and will assist in the investigation of the offence.

(3) A demand may not be made to a person who is under investigation for the offence referred to in paragraph (2)(a).

(4) A peace officer or public officer may revoke the demand by notice given to the person at any time. Unless the demand is revoked earlier, the demand expires 21 days after the day on which it is made.

(5) The peace officer or public officer who makes the demand may impose any conditions in the demand that they consider appropriate — including conditions prohibiting the disclosure of its existence or some or all of its contents — and may revoke a condition at any time by notice given to the person.

(6) A peace officer or public officer may not make another demand requiring the person to preserve the same computer data in connection with the investigation.

So really, let’s say, hypothetically speaking, I’m, a Canadian citizen, have been suspected of breaking the laws of the United States DMCA, does that mean I may be asked to preserve all data pending an investigation by, say, Sony BMG in the United States? All this and I have to preserve any data under conditions any police officer demands? Seriously?

Expiry of order

(6) Unless the order is revoked earlier, it expires 90 days after the day on which it is made.

So good news, preservation of data under a court order is 90 days… or about 3 months.

487.02 If an authorization is given under section 184.2, 184.3, 186 or 188 or a warrant is issued under this Act, the judge or justice who gives the authorization or issues the warrant may order a person to provide assistance, if the person’s assistance may reasonably be considered to be required to give effect to the authorization or warrant.

In essence, it looks like if you encrypt your data, you could be ordered to decrypt the data. Legally speaking, encryption is no excuse from the looks of things.

492.1 (1) A justice or judge who is satisfied by information on oath that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been or will be committed under this or any other Act of Parliament and that tracking the location of one or more transactions or the location or movement of a thing, including a vehicle, will assist in the investigation of the offence may issue a warrant authorizing a peace officer or a public officer to obtain that tracking data by means of a tracking device.

(2) A justice or judge who is satisfied by information on oath that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an offence has been or will be committed under this or any other Act of Parliament and that tracking an individual’s movement by identifying the location of a thing that is usually carried or worn by the individual will assist in the investigation of the offence may issue a warrant authorizing a peace officer or a public officer to obtain that tracking data by means of a tracking device.

(3) The warrant authorizes the peace officer or public officer, or a person acting under their authority, to install, activate, use, maintain, monitor and remove the tracking device, including covertly.

(4) A warrant may contain any conditions that the justice or judge considers appropriate, including conditions to protect a person’s interests.

So while the French model was to merely allow police officers to covertly track people, such an activity in Canada does actually require a court order. An important distinction at the very least.

Conclusion

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All in all, reading this bill from a standpoint of someone who writes news, this legislation can bring in a host of problems and open the doors for abuse. The “being annoying” section, for instance, brings in serious questions of free speech. What if someone is being critical of someone else and that someone else is being “annoyed” by it? That doesn’t require a court order. This bill is frightening to say the least for several reasons in spite of several decent provisions which actually accomplishes what some press releases said it set out to do.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The timing of the Iranian political turmoil couldn’t have been more peculiar. Many countries around the world have, at the same time, pushed for tougher surveillance or censorship laws. The 18th certainly contained news stories that would more than likely irk thousands of internet savvy users. TOR, in essence is for anyone wanting to protect their identity while on the internet from prying eyes including controlling governments. It begs the question, will the Pirate Party’s newly launched TOR nodes be used by mainly Iranians hoping to exercise free speech or by those fearing their government has thrown basic civil rights out the window in first world countries under the false claim of fighting terrorism?

Canada has already tabled legislation that would make warrantless ISP-level surveillance mandatory. Meanwhile, Germany is currently mulling mandatory DNS blacklist. In Finland, talking about the blacklist contents has seemingly become a criminal activity. Meanwhile, in the United States, sharing music online, regardless of what those songs could really be, could land you a nearly $2 million fine. All that on top of the fresh US allegations where the NSA was accused of improperly wiretapping possibly “millions” of Americans beyond the scope of the current wiretapping laws. Even Britain has opted to try port blocking, ISP blacklisting, protocol blocking and much more purely for the sake of reducing “internet piracy” by “70%”.

Many might look at the Russian police chief’s comment that internet anonymity should be abolished and say how ridiculous and draconian his comments. Yet after looking at todays news, one has to wonder exactly who in power secretly agrees with him on the international stage.

Then, on the day where all of this is going down, we have the Pirate Party that was once seen as the little political party that could to the political party that might to the major force that did after winning a seat in the European parliament – two once the Lisbon treaty is ratified. When news broke that Iranians are questioning the outcome of their own election and the government is using oppressive measures to quell civil dissatisfaction, the Pirate Party chose to launch two TOR nodes and a proxy server, saying that freedom of communication is global. While clearly pointed at Iranian dissidents, one wonders if the anonymous service offered by the political party one politician mistakenly labelled as rapists will eventually be used by people in supposedly free countries.

The world hasn’t gone completely big brother yet, but it certainly is taking steps in that direction where unnecessary surveillance is sold as being “in the publics interest”. Government mandated censorship already has a history of being abused and only a few countries have implemented such laws in question. One can easily look at “the Great Firewall of China” and criticize the Chinese government for using the blacklists as a means to suppress free speech. Similar criticisms can be made for Thailands infamous crimes of spreading mis-information about the king. Yet, here we are today, still living in countries that supposedly would never legislate our freedoms away, yet we have a long list of “western” and “westernized” countries pulling precisely the same stunts that have earned China the scorn from countries like the United States. Websites from political websites all the way down to dental clinics are being targeted by government mandated censors. “Of course these censorship tactics do little more than fight the horrific crimes seen on the internet! That’s what they are meant to do!” supporters would say. Unfortunately, actual practise says otherwise.

Maybe this will all somehow go away in the woodwork. Maybe a certain amount of civil disobedience and uprisings will make politicians think twice on this legislation. It certainly worked in Canada when the Liberal government tabled lawful access legislation before. Still, what if we won’t be so lucky this time around? Failing letter campaigns, petitions, protests and pro-civil rights lobbying, what then? Maybe then, we’ll have to look at the Chinese free speech movement not as a tragic tale of a government gone power mad, but rather as a lesson looking forward into the future. Maybe we can learn from Chinese civil dissidents as we survive government’s “protecting” us from the harms of an evil wild west internet that bring out psychopaths bent on targeting your children and “enemies of copyright”.

Of course, a dreaded future that sees such things happening hasn’t actually fully materialized yet even though governments have repeatedly said that they plan on going down this slippery slope into a butchering of civil rights. The war isn’t over yet. Far from it. In fact, it would have a long way to go before it was over. More people would rely on proxies and anonymous servers located in countries that have yet to consider legislation that would either blacklist websites or simply monitor every single web communication you have made. Plenty of governments could enact such legislation and civil disobedience would still exist. Sound familiar? It should to the file-sharing debate watchers. That whack-a-mole campaign that has frustrated the copyright industry for over a decade now. It’ll be an identical problem for the government hoping to block out or issue surveillance on suspected terrorism – thus highlighting the utter futility, once again, of controlling the internet.

In the mean time, we can all hope we won’t eventually be led to a Chinese-like internet controlled by a non-Chinese government – heaven forbid the US government unveils two cartoon police officers ready to tell us when we’ve connected to an unauthorized website. We can only hope that people who know a thing or two about the internet will prevail in bringing an inkling of sanity to the debates instead of having people like former car salesmen who like to think they know everything about the internet be the only voices in all of this. We can only that the last resort proxies set up by the Pirate Party won’t be necessary to enjoy a free internet tomorrow. We can only hope things will be as they were 3 years ago 10 years from now. We can only hope for better days ahead while governments spread their all-knowing and controlling tentacles deeper and deeper into the wonders that is the internet. We can only hope that resistance that dares to discuss free speech on the internet on sidewalks actually get their message across. We can only hope because this internet thing is great, sure would be a shame if something were to, eh, happen to it!

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Mosnews is reporting that the Russian interior minister is calling for an abolishment of any forms of an anonymous internet. He suggests that businesses should monitor all of the internet registrations to reduce the number of anonymous internet users. From the report:

“Violators of the law should stop abusing the openness of the Commonwealth of Intependent States’ borders,” Rashid Nurgaliev was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying Thursday.

“They should not hide in the territories where the legislation of the states pursuing them is not valid,” he said at the CIS Interior Ministries meeting in Yalta.

“Russia’s Interior Ministry has acquired enough experience fighting cyber-criminality to provide the necessary help to its CIS colleagues,” Nurgaliev said.

Of course, like the situation in pretty much every other nation around the world, tracking internet users and reducing online anonymity could prove difficult with the prevalence of services such as Tor and other anonymizing services available today.

Still, there’s an eerie resemblance to the often used argument in many other countries that says, “If you have nothing to hide, then you should have nothing to worry about.” While ignoring that there are legitimate reasons for people to use an anonymous service such as reporters covering sensitive issues, it also resembles the argument that only criminals would want to use such services. If this still seems to be an issue a world away from countries like the United States and bares little influence, there was a rather recent case known as the Calixte case might ring a bell where police seized someones computer on the basis of computer expertise – the police lost that case. To use an anonymous service does require a certain amount of expertise and just because you use such services doesn’t automatically make you a criminal.

While the student in the US can be thankful that his case won in the courts, it’s unclear whether Russian citizen rights will win out here.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

It is probably another piece of excellent news for the party who stands to win, at minimum, one seat in the European election. A posting on Copyriot shows that Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson, one of Swedens most prolific writers, is saying that his vote is going to the Pirate Party.

“It is odd,” Gustafsson writes (translated to English by Copyriot), “how strongly the situation spring 2009 – on the area of civil rights – reminds about the struggles over freedom of press in France, during the decades preceding the French revolution.”

He continues, “A new world of ideas is emerging and would not have been able to, were it not for an accelerating technology. Raids against secret printing houses, confiscated pamphlets and – even more – confiscated printing equipment. Orders of arrest and adventurous nightly transports between Prussian enclave Neuchâtel – where not only large parts of the Encyclopedia was produced, but also lots of daring pornography, between the atheist pamphlets – and Paris.”

“Between the 1730’s and 1780’s, the number of state censors in France was doubled by four. The raids against illegal printing houses was rising at about the same pace. In retrospect, we know it did not help. Rather, the increase of censorship and printing house raids had a stimulating effect on the new ideas and made them spread even faster.” He added.

For those wondering where Gutenberg was in all of this, Johannes Gutenberg was the first to use movable typeface printing in 1439, about 300 years earlier (which was, at the time, a controversial technology as well because, among other things, copies of the Bible could be made much more easily)

“So [far]” Gustafsson wrote, “this is shown by most historical experience – legislation has never been able to stop technological development.”

“Walter Benjamin wrote an influential essay, whose title usually is translated as “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction“, where he draws a series of interesting conclusions about what the radical changes that must follow on his time’s relatively modest degree of reproducibility. The digital revolution has brought about a reproducibility which Walter Benjamin could hardly ever have dreamt about. One could talk about maximal reproducibility. Google is about to build a library that, if is is allowed to grow, will make most material libraries obsolete or at least outmoded.”

He concludes, “This immaterialisation naturally threatens the material copyright.”

He then questions why it’s such a big deal that the internet threatens the concept of copyright and comments on how we, as a society, should be striking a balance between differing interests and any attempt to not do so is simply nonsense.

He also argues that free speech and any channel that is not controlled by a government of corporate interest is much more important than the interest of legacy industries. He also comments that the primary concern of artists is to be heard or read within their generation and how they do this is of secondary concern.

For those reasons, that is why his vote goes to the Pirate Party.

This also brings up another topic that has been floating around the political debates, does celebrity support actually help a given party? Whether or not it does, it certainly doesn’t appear to hurt the party they are supporting very much.

we do know that support for the Pirate Party has been growing quite a lot. Already, the most recent poll suggests that the Pirate Party has gotten 7.9% support, more than enough to win at least one seat. Yesterday, the party slammed a Swedish minister for applauding the guilty verdict of The Pirate Bay. The party, lately, seems to be on a roll for gathering good PR – something that is critical in an election.

[Hat tip: Cory Doctorow]

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The internet filtering plan from Australia seems to keep getting more and more disturbing. Clear back in 2007, the word from Australia said that the internet filters will become mandatory for all Australians following the trials currently taking place according to telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy. From the report:

“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” he said.

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

It was quite a remark because since then, new revelations came from the filtering. We now know that the filtering plan will include the filtering of p2p traffic and, while he talks about how filtering is successful in Europe and in the UK, since then, revelations of the EU filters failing miserably when they completely blocked Wikipedia didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Added to this was the performance degradation.

While the report at that time says that people can opt-out, a report from ComputerWorld (the latest word) says that this won’t necessarily be the case. From ComputerWorld:

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

There have already been public demonstrations against the censorship plan.

Clearly, the situation is getting even more heated now that these revelations are coming out into the open.

Correction: an observant reader points out that the first referenced article was posted in 2007, not 2008. Thanks!

Controversy erupted yesterday over a plan to classify internet websites in an effort to supposedly “save the children”. Now, Open Rights Group is pointing out that a British MP is now seeking feedback on the proposal. Since Britain is already negotiating with the Obama administration over bringing the idea to the United States as well, it will likely be of interest to American internet users as well.

While it seems rather odd that an MP who admits that internet policy is not his speciality is in charge of public feedback, at least someone is trying to limit the damage done by the ‘negotiate with other countries first, ask questions later’ style of legislating. As of this writing, the MP has already received 115 comments so far on the subject. Open Rights Group requests that users be polite when offering their thoughts on the matter.

We here at ZeroPaid have already already commented on why the internet should not be considered as little more than a ‘broadcaster’, but it’s worth pointing out again that the internet is so dynamic and expansive, it would really be an unworkable plan to begin with.

In effect, even if there is mandatory filtering, under such a system, it would punish more honest website administrators and award the less than honest website administrators. Even when one narrows it down to just filtering all that filthy porn from the computer screens of a younger audience, a) some porn is marketed towards people who are under 18 thus discouraging administrators from using a ratings system that would block minors altogether from their websites, b) countless websites are located outside of Britain (and the United States for that matter), thus showing that there would always be numerous administrators who would not be aware of such a system in the first place and c) todays younger generation is much more tech savvy then that of a younger generation 40 years ago. If they well and truly want to look at such content, they will more than likely find ways of circumventing pretty much any system they want to defeat (in a similar fashion to that of how the hundreds of different iterations of Digital Rights Management always failed to “protect” content from being copied) The most well known example is how a 16 year old in Australia cracked the governments $84 million dollar porn filter in 2007. In short, when one grows up with the technology, chances are, they will know much more about it to begin with and have a better chance at getting around supposed road blocks a government or company throws at them.

So really, it should be up to parents to control what their children see on the internet. Technology that regulates what a child sees already exists (some anti-virus companies bundle this sort of technology with their anti-virus programs). If parents are concerned, they can install such software on their own computers. If a government tries to take the parental roll and create a blanket system for the entire internet and for every user, it’s doomed to failure due to the sheer size of a task it’s attempting.

Last week, we posted a relatively thorough piece on why the internet should not be considered little more than a broadcaster mainly because we saw the government using the description to push internet censorship legislation. Now it seems as though even more governments around the world are using the argument that the ‘internet is little more than a broadcaster’ excuse to pass censorship legislation – and one of the next governments to use these arguments could be the government of the United States.

The latest wave of attempts to control the internet seems to be finally catching a headline or two in mainstream news outlets. The CBC is reporting that the British culture minister is in talks with Obama to implement a ratings system that is similar to that of normal film ratings. With this sort of system, it is being suggested that there should be legislation that forces ISPs to offer filtering technology to their customers.

Internet filtering has become a controversial idea from the get-go and isn’t exactly devoid of rocky public relations moments in this early stage. Britain was already under scrutiny for overly broad filtering. The big recent story from Britain over overly broad filtering involved the blocking of Wikipedia. It does raise the question, should a country listen to another country when they suggest something that they, themselves, can’t do successfully in practise?

Then again, when one wants to ask about how successful filtering is in the first place, one might not have to look farther than the debates going on in Australia. Last year, the government put in an 84 million dollar porn filter on their ISPs only to have it cracked by a 16 year old in a half an hour of his free time. That didn’t stop the extensive testing to see if filtering the internet would be a practical and workable solution. An extensive study was conducted in the country, and it suggested that filters might work for standard traffic, but not for p2p traffic. The problem was the public backlash that erupted as a result of the government trying to filter the internet in the first place. The protests that occurred throughout the country pointed out that the filters significantly slowed down their internet connections and that the government was going down a slippery slope on what was to be considered ‘inappropriate’ content. One of the examples they used when it comes to overly broad filtering was the blocking of Wikipedia. They also argued that even if one trusts the current existing government, what about future governments who might be more inclined to block websites that are critical of the government. One might point out that this is frighteningly similar to that of the ‘Great Firewall of China’.

The real question might be, will the proposals of filtering be an opt-in system (that which is proposed in Australia) or opt-out? Most of the programs that were proposed, if it was an option, was an opt-out system. It is reasonable to assume that the system that could be proposed would likely be an opt out system given that such web filtering technology already exists, so why bother making it part of the law to begin with?

Additionally, the CBC report suggests that it’s just a good idea to rate every single website. Given that millions of websites are created and taken down on a daily basis, is such a proposal even remotely possible in a practical sense? Sure, one could rate the top 100 most popular web pages, but not every single web page in existence. For such a system to even be remotely workable, one would have to control what websites are being created in the first place – thus implementing systems at the web developers level (like web registrars) So while there is the talking point of this not having anything to do with free speech, it’s next to impossible really to implement such a plan while avoiding a free speech issue. Not every web developer online will be willing to go along with the web ratings system.

Either way, it may seem like it’s an innocent little idea, but when one looks at who is asking for these things, why they are asking for these things, and a history of such actions, such a thing is still cause for concern.