[Chapter-delegates] content filtering around the world

Sat Jul 4 00:49:28 PDT 2009

Hi,

As you are probably aware, the French Hadopi law just entered into force.

This law should have given an administrative body (the Hadopi) power to
cut off the connection of internet users from one month to up to a year on
the basis of violations of a duty to monitor one's connection (in order to
prevent copyright infringements).  This part was declared unconstitutional
by the French Constitutional Counsel.

Still the rest of the law remains: collecting societies can monitor p2p
networks to identify infringements, then report them to the Hadopi which
will request from ISPs that they identify the person to whom the internet
connection corresponding to the IP address logged by collecting societies
is registered (all this without a Court ruling).  Finally the Hadopi will
send a cease & desist letter to the person to whom the internet connection
is registered enjoining him to "secure his connection" in order to prevent
copyright infringements.

It is important to note that, officially, this law doesn't target
copyright infringers as, under French law, the burden of proof would be
upon the right holders and the Hadopi to establish that the person to whom
the internet connection is registered is the actual infringer.  To
establish who the infriger really is is not an easy task whereas the
Hadopi was intended to send around ten thousand cease and desist letters a
day.

After the decision of the French Constitutional Counsel, a new draft law
has been presented a week ago.  We haven't formally reviewed it until now.
 My first understanding is that it intends to reintroduce the cutting off
of internet connections, this time as a sentence applied to infringers. 
Before going to Court, alleged infringers will be "encourage" to enter
plea bargainings with the Public Prosecution.  The aim remains the same as
with the Hadopi law: to leap-frog Courts and sentence thousands of
internet users a day on shaky grounds in order to induce fear in the
general public.

There is also another draft law (together with a Decree) coming up, called
Loppsi 2.  It intends to introduce a secret State-managed blacklist at the
network level, officially to fightback child porn but precedents outside
of France have shown that this kind of provisions were prone to misuses.

ISOC-FR was amongst a host of organisation to oppose Hadopi.  A document
we released setting out what could happen in case the Hadopi was adopted
(false positives, more cryptography...) got more than 50.000 downloads and
our various statements got a good exposure from media outlets.

As New Zealand was often taken as an example by the French government has
a place where regulations similar to the Hadopi law were already in place
(Section 92A of the NZ Copyright Act), we contacted Internet-NZ which is
not an ISOC Chapter per se but an ORG member following all of ISOC
principles.  When Section 92A was withdrawn, we immediately issued a
statement which had a great impact as the discussion re the Hadopi draft
law was to kick off again before Parliament a week later.

As ISOC-HK, we do not consider it sufficient to simply say no to any
attempt to control, and refuse to provide any alternative solutions. 
However to this date no formal forum has been set up in France to discuss
this, even though there is ongoing discussions to do so.

We also hope that the work initiated by the Public Policy team of ISOC-HQ
will allow us to get a clearer view of what is going on in other countries
and to come up with a strong statement from ISOC-HQ to back up the action
of Chapters at the local level (especially regarding the solutions which
would make sense from a technical point of view, apart from cutting off
internet connections and filtering at the netework level which we consider
inept as do pretty everyone we talk to).

Looking forward to further discussing these issues, especially with those
in the ISOC-HQ Working Party.

Charles

> The Hong Kong SAR Government conducted the phase one of a review of the
> Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance (*www.coiao.gov.hk*) in
> the end of 2008 to early 2009. The further control of such materials on
> the
> “new media” was a major part of the consultation, and also
caught the
> biggest share of attention from the public, as well as concerned parents.
>
> Among the government “proposals” (despite that the authority
denied that
> these are actual proposals but merely information provided for
> consideration) were mandatory filtering at the ISP level, age verification
> using credit cards, and similar ideas which made Internet users,
> journalists, human rights advocates etc all very concerned. Internet
> Society
> Hong Kong (ISOC-HK) took on the leading role of organizing Internet users,
> Internet service providers and other NGOs against measures that may become
> tools of censorship by government. I and other folks at ISOC-HK attended
> over 20 forums and public meetings organized by various groups including
> all
> the official government consultation forums and relevant focus group
> meetings, and other meetings organized by associations, schools,
> universities, churches and youth associations.
>
> We worked with the local IT and Internet community to unite in telling the
> Government that technically such filters at the Internet service providers
> level was a plain bad idea. However, the Government initially insisted
> that
> mandatory filtering at the ISP level is a viable option, and that the
> Australian government has legislated to such effect. After we conducted
> detailed research and made contact with EFF Australia to find out the
> exact
> situation down under, we had been able to rebut the government's false
> claims, forcing it to at least stop misleading the public by saying that
> such methods were viable and implemented in Australia. This experience has
> convinced me that it is of the utmost importance for the global Internet
> governance concern communities to share accurate and up-to-date
> information
> about various issues, and be able to dispute false claims by our
> respective
> governments with authority.
>
> In order to back up our lobbying effort and provide sufficient background
> and arguments for building public awareness, I have written extensively on
> this topic (mostly in Chinese) with over 20 articles appearing in various
> newspapers and magazines, and been interviewed by print, electronic and
> online media numerous times on this issue. ISOC-HK also organized a number
> of forums and invited the responsible government officials to join us.
> Generally ISOC-HK took the role of the users in this issue, but we worked
> very closely with the Internet and IT industry, including the Internet
> access and online service providers.
>
> Of course, we do not consider it sufficient to simply say no to any
> attempt
> to control, and refuse to provide any alternative solutions. Working with
> the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association (of which I was an
> ex-chairman) and the Hong Kong Council of Social Services (the alliance of
> social service organizations and NGOs here), we came up with the proposal
> for “Parental Control on the Internet,” consisting of the
sourcing and
> development of an open-source filtering program which we hope to be
> provided
> for free or nominal charges to any parents on a voluntary basis, with the
> establishment of a sustainable body for coming up with and maintaining a
> community blacklist of pornographic links, with the participation of
> parents, teachers and social workers, with transparent operations and
> appeal
> mechanisms. We are in the process of engaging the stakeholders and
> obtaining
> the necessary financial resources for this program.
>
> Some of the written materials on this subject in English:
>
> ISOC-HK Response to the Review of the Control of Obscene and Indecent
> Articles Ordinance –
*http://www.isoc.hk/ISOC-HK-COIAO-final-response.doc*
>
> Hong Kong's Latest ICT Initiative: Project Net Respect (Published in
> Computerworld Hong Kong, April 2008): *
> http://charlesmok.blogspot.com/2008/04/hong-kongs-latest-ict-initiative.html
> *
>
> An 'Obscene' Hyperlink? – *
> http://charlesmok.blogspot.com/2007/05/obscene-hyperlink.html*
>
> The HKSAR government will move on to the second phase of the consultation,
> likely in August or September, and in this phase they will probably list
> out
> one or more actual government proposals for public comment. We will have
> to
> prepare for the worst – such that they will attempt to implement
stricter
> control including mandatory ISP-level filtering that was mentioned
– in
> light of the worrying trends of such attempts in other countries such as
> Australia, Germany, China, etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Rimon Levy <Rimon at sapir.ac.il> wrote:
>
>> Following Sivasubramanian request:
>>
>> In Israel, a bill proposal (declared to aim "the protection of
>> children") was submitted 3 years ago, proposing to make mandatory for
>> ISP to filter any content on "gambling, violence and pornography" - the
>> original proposal even included the need for any user to identify
>> himself biometrically as an adult every time he asked to access such
>> content. After many protests, leaded by ISOC-IL, a more moderated
>> version was approved on first call (to be accepted, a law in Israel must
>> be pass 3 votes in the parlament), 2 years ago. The bill in its actual
>> form does not mention biometrical identification, but still is opt-out
>> (that means that the default for ISP is to provide filtered content).
>> And the wording permits the Ministry of Communications to nominate the
>> commission that will decide on filtering policy and the mechanism [Rimon
>> Levy] of identifying an adult (and potentially permitting him later to
>> use biometrical identification).
>> ISOC-IL is making every effort to avoid the apoval of the proposed bill,
>> and offering an alternative self regulation model. We hope that in the
>> next month we will able to crystalise an agreement between ISPs and
>> content providers that will provide a voluntary mechanism to protect
>> children from offensive content without the need of government
>> regulation
>>
>> Rimon Levy. ISOC-IL
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>> Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 12:43:50 +0530
>> From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy <isolatedn at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [Chapter-delegates] content filtering around the world.
>> Could Chapter-delegates write in on this thread about what is happening
>> on
>> the Content Filtering front in their countries with what they feel about
>> similarities ( though other Governments wouldn't issue directives like
>> how
>> China did) of the underlying software of the China Green Dam Youth
>> Escort,
>> to gain a global perspective on content filtering?
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> www.charlesmok.hk
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