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

[John Curran]

On Dec 19, 2011, at 8:33 AM, Nigel Roberts wrote:

> 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.

Unfortunately, the bill proponents have foreseen such challenges and one 
of the amendments already adopted now limits the scope of the relief to 
that of the infringement: 

<http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/12162011Goodlatte%20Amdt28%20-%20PASSED.pdf>

> 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?

Yes.
/John