Utah governor signs Net-porn bill

Tue Mar 22 20:59:20 UTC 2005

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 11:57:43AM -0800, Steve Gibbard said something to the effect of:
> 
> On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> 
> > Uh, yes, I was joking.  Unfortunately, I do believe, on credible evidence,
> > that there are people stupid enough to be trying to legislate the
> > operation of the Internet without having first understood how it's done
> > right now.  Case in point.
> 
> Can ISPs get around this by declaring themselves to be private clubs? ;)

Good point..!  Could they charge a membership fee and be forgiven 
compliance?  Because ISPs certainly don't reap the government bail-outs
or assurances (yet) that are afforded to public utilities, either...
Regulated as public, levied against as private...where *is* the safe zone
or loophole for ISPs?  :?

<speculative_musing>
I'm unclear as to how this level of regulation can be applied to the
rolling fields of porn and not swiftly expanded to accommodate other
categories of information deemed to be objectionable.  (I haven't 
yet read the complete bill, but will be interested to see how clearly
codified the parameters for branding content as "adult" are.)  

On the other hand...what doors will this open for the converse...for
entities who wish to have the government step in and mandate that the
ISPs restrict delivery of content *from* them, of their content, or 
of content to others?  This hydra could have many heads...one that looks 
like the DMCA, one like the RIAA, one that looks like pr0n-haters not 
wanting anyone to view it, one for each religious or political zealot 
group out there, one for each brand name...  Poorly-conceived bills like 
this may set precedent for a number of slippery slopes.
</speculative_musing>

How, exactly, *did* this pass, anyway?

--ra

> 
> There was a rather poorly attended NANOG meeting in Salt Lake City a
> couple years ago.  Between bars, er, private clubs, that required (very
> cheap) memberships to get in the door, the no more than one watered
> down beer on the table at a time rule, the guys who looked like secret
> service agents video taping the the gay pride people (all three of
> them...) outside the Temple, and the repeated "you want to rent a car?  On
> a Sunday?!?" responses from people in the viscinity of the closed car
> rental counters, it was a cultural expeience.  Regardless of the legal and
> technical merits of the plan, requiring a watered down web doesn't seem
> inconsistent.
> 
> Ignoring the legal and commercial questions and focusing on the technical
> requirements, there are several ways they could have done this.  China and
> Saudi Arabia accomplish this (China for political content, and Saudi
> Arabia for "porn") with national firewalls.  So, if the same content were
> going to be blocked for all users in Utah, and if porn sites could somehow
> be prevented from operating in Utah, a monopoly transit proivder for all
> Utah ISPs with a big porn blocking firewall in front of it might do the
> trick.  I hear it works in Saudi Arabia...
> 
> But in this case, Utah hasn't chosen to use China or Saudi Arabia as its
> model, nor have they copied the first round of attempts at this sort of
> thing by various US states, which tended to give ISPs the burden of
> figuring out whether packets flowing through their network were
> "indecent" and imposed requirements on people in other states.  I suspect
> this will make Utah different enough that a lot of national networks will
> decide it's not worth doing business there.  But for Utah-focused ISPs who
> can figure out how to make a firewall or proxy server speak the same
> protocol as the state-run database, this should be an opportunity to
> charge higher prices in the face of reduced competition.  This seems like
> something that could be implemented on a per-user basis with a little bit
> of policy based routing.
> 
> Is it a good idea?  Certainly not.  Is it legal?  I hope not.  But is it
> so badly conceived as to be unimplementable if it ever gets to the
> enforcement stage?  I don't think so.
> 
> -Steve

-- 
k. rachael treu, CISSP                           rara at navigo.com
               ..quis custodiet ipsos custodes?..
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