Don't like it, order the ISPs to block it

Mon Sep 29 18:47:08 UTC 2003

Continuing the trend of holding ISPs morally responsible for all things,
India's Computer Emergency Response Team ordered all ISPs in India to
block a Yahoo bulletin board for "promoting anti-national news and
containing material against the government."

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60628,00.html

ISPs are not very good at fine grain control.  In India the ISPs
initially blocked access to all Yahoo discussion group servers.  But
I'm sure they will improve monitoring of the actions of their subscribers,
to adapt the blocks.  What's interesting is in order to block less, the
ISPs will have to invade the privacy of their users' traffic more.

Making the ISP the personal firewall for every user or country is an
growing concept.  Talk about cost shifting.  Some countries are willing to
pay for it (e.g. China), increasing the costs.  The Internet may end up
costing more than private point-to-point lines after ISPs install
all the firewalls to implement all the personal controls desired by
governments.