[ih] Fwd: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

[Nigel Roberts]

Obviously, this is a Bill of the United States, not the United Kingdom 
or any other European country.

But, purely for comparison if there were legislation in Europe that (to 
borrow Vint's elegant formulation) "that could end up blocking far more 
than the portion of a web site that is said to infringe".

Such actions by a Government would therefore appear clearly to be an 
impermissible infringement of the right to free expression set out in 
the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 
and thereby in most European states would be unlawful. (You would 
probably say 'unconstitutional').

Even if the test of necessity were passed, it would fail the test of 
proportionality. If this were an English Bill, it would appear to be 
susceptible to a legal challenge claimng a Declaration of Incompatibility.

And given the number of European companies and individuals using 
American domain names (which is really what gTLDs are), this is of some 
significant concern.

But this is all off the topic of Internet History, a bit, isn't it?


On 12/19/2011 09:22 AM, Vint Cerf wrote about the proposed legislation:

> that could end up blocking far more than the portion of a web site