[Chapter-delegates] [Pubpol-wg] Internet censorship in Poland: ISOC Poland joins the debate with the Prime Minister TODAY - watch live at 1400 CET

[Marcin Cieslak]

On Fri, 5 Feb 2010, Andrew Cormack wrote:

> Marcin
> In case it helps. I'm trying to highlight what seems to me a strong
> practical argument against using the same technology both to filter
> content that users want to be protected from (malware, harmful content,
> etc.) and to try to block content that users positively want to reach
> (gambling, copyright, etc.).

We are using a very simple argument against it: once the filtering
infrastructure is widely deployed (centrally controlled or not)
there is no problem with amending filtering rules as one wishes.

There is no guarantee that the next government will not wish to expand
the scope of filtering to include, say, nazi, generic pornographic,
libellous etc. content. Actually neo-fascist content was included
in the earlier draft but was dropped at the council of ministers
meeting.

Our concern is that once filtering infrastructure is there, 
the policy will be adjusted to current needs. For example
in Finland there is a problem - you can't discuss the list
of filtered sites themselves - because it's secret - so 
all websites mentioning the banned sites will be banned as well.
The Polish list is about to be secret as well.

We just believe that there can be no open society with
such widespread filtering infrastructure in place.

Besides, filtering is always wrong for the network - it imposes
creation of single points of failure and hinders widespread
connectivity (less peering points for example, since some
ISPs may need to filter egress traffic). To visualise that,
if we imagine DVD content being streamed over 10Gbit/s
link it would take 6 months for a human to watch one second
of the transmission. I don't believe advanced
filtering technology will scale up to those levels.

So, in effect, we are all worse off, as a society and as
infrastructure providers.

--Marcin