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Canadian MP Calls For ISP Licenses, Content Blocks
An anonymous reader writes "A member of Canada's ruling Conservative party has pledged to "clean up"
the Internet with new bill that would mandate ISP licensing,
know-your-subscriber rules, and allow the government to order ISPs to
block content. ISPs that fail to block would faces possible jail time
for the company's directors and officers."
They tried this crap here in Australia a few years ago. Banned gambling sites so we all now send our casino $$s to Barbados. Right now there is a push to force ISPs to use content filtering, in fact the Fed Govt has a tender out now to evaluate effectiveness or otherwise of filtering technology. The more they try to muzzle the Internet public, the more foolish they look.
As if we didn't waste enough money on the gun registry debacle, now they want to create another registry? I'm guessing there are more internet users in Canada than gun owners. This would be a logistical nightmare; luckily, it has little chance of becoming law.
What was once true, is no longer so
Apparently, they will to be able to block material "that promotes violence against women"
I'm wondering about material that promotes violence against men. Or, hey, why not violence against people. Or, better yet, they could simply stop walking the authoritarian path of banning everything that moves and poke fun at people who promote violence against [insert group of your choice here] instead. People rarely want to emulate individuals who are widely derided.
Oh, sorry, poking fun requires wit. The folks who want these kind of laws only have half of what is required.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Especially the bit about violence against women (but not against men) being grounds for a license to be revoked. And the bit about censoring my access to information.
The internet loses value if we start filtering it. Granted there are laws that prohibit sexual exploitation (of minors) and violence against anybody, but this is not a reason to give anybody such a high level of control over our (not mine, not his, not yours, but our) medium.
I don't think this will make it through as law... I hope. But I worked as a Legislative Page for a while, and you'd be amazed what gets voted on.
will we humans learn that restricting something without any chance of respite only makes it worse?
What if I post the Holy Bible on my webpage? I'm a little blurry on details; (I haven't read it in, oh at least 10 years now), but I'm pretty sure there's explicit violence against women within it's sacred pages. If my online library(accessible through gnutella, usually) contains this work; will my hosting the Word of God cause me to be a criminal under this bill? To the point that I am essentially banished forever from connecting to the internet in Canada?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
a member of canada's ruling conservative party was voted out of office in the next election, no opposition attack ads were required.
canada is not like the US, canadians care about civil liberties and open society.. well at least enough to be outraged if their government tried what a certain other government has been doing.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Lets face it, there are good ISPs and bad ISPs. By that i mean that some will host anything (legal or not) as long as the money is right. How do you put the bad ones out of business? Lets see, self regulation? Hmm .. that always works. Once ISP X has been busted a couple of times all their legitimate users will go to someone a bit mor reputable/reliable.
I suspect though it will just drive the dodgy providers to some other country where no one can touch them.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Encryption is only legal anymore for businesses, and they have to provide the unencrypted data at request. You'll have to store it for, say, 7 years just in case...
Huh? What do you mean, "impossible"? Since when's that been an issue with laws concerning the 'net?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just recently I brought a wireless modem and connected it my ISP's modem. This enabled me to allow my son who is an avid gamer and myself to use my personal laptop and my work laptop without any interference. I actually am wondering why I did not do this sooner since the cost was under AU$90 and it is so flexible. In addition I also use my personal laptop (Linux only) to act as a file-share and backup controller.
What I noticed when using the wireless on our PC's to connect to my router was a few other wireless routers. All you would need is some method of joining each router via wireless and I know this works since I have friends who do this. So you end up with a small network dependent on neighbour cooperation that can easily be used for file-sharing (think videos or music) so you have a reasonably cheap fast "grey" network (one cost upfront then it is free) and an ISP (hopefully secure) Internet connection.
If an ISP is hobbled by government then many subscribers won't notice or feel powerless to do anything but once the government starts to try and control the grey networks everyone notices and this will insure political suicide for any government that tries to propose this. Of course if the grey networks grow you start to have another Internet and things could get interesting since you now have individual householders controlling the infrastructure. Of course I am not holding my breath on this but still it is feasible.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
As a Canadian who has some interest in these matters, I can tell you that there is at least one serious proposal for Internet regulation every couple of weeks. This week, it's licensing ISPs and demanding content be filtered. Two weeks ago, it was union demands that Canadian content regulation be enforced on YouTube and other online video services. (Broadcast media available in Canada must show at least 30% content developed in Canada). A month ago, it was yet another proposal to try and force Canadian companies to use the .CA TLD rather than .COM (fat chance).
Canadian governments at all levels love to float trial balloons such as this (as, I suspect, do governments everywhere). Fact is none of them ever really make it to the law books. Or in the occasional case where something silly does in fact make it into regulations, it is discovered to be silly and ignored from then onwards. An example? Because Canada spans 5 time zones, it is against the rules to broadcast interim election reports in those parts of the country where the polls have not closed. Theoretically, this includes Internet reports. But it is not enforced because regulators discovered, much to their annoyance, that servers in the Tonga Islands are not within the jurisdiction of the Canadian courts.
This will blow over, just like every other ill conceived Canadian government plan to stick its regulatory proboscis where it is not welcome.
The only way they can make this work is to have proxy servers that they themselves control. But the way that they seem to want it to be done is have the isp block the content themselves. Which would place more of a burden on an overburdened infrastructure and would mean that the cost for internet access would go up while the experience would be worse. I wouldn't be surprised if Canada was then banned from the internet. Which would actually make the internet a better place for the rest of us. Too bad for the Canadians unfortunately.
Send an email to Joy Smith (the MP who introduced this half baked bill). Here's mine:
I would like to voice my objections to the "Clean Internet Bill" recently introduced by Ms Smith. This bill will be totally unenforceable as any traffic can and will be encrypted on the Internet. And an ISP licence? I thought one of the goals of this government was LESS bureaucracy. This would be yet another arbitrary and unenforceable regulation. Do I become an ISP for sharing a connection with other members of my household? Canada currently has a reputation as a leader in the high tech field, but this reputation will be eroded by such poorly thought out pieces of legislation as this.
Though I'm not from Canada, the same nonsensical prattlings occur from time to time here in the U.S from our elected officials. From now on, whenever I hear this clap-trap being spouted, I'll reply with the following:
I'll give you my support for "cleaning up the internet" when you clean up the bribery, corruption and kickbacks in your profession.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Censorship is a word that causes many slashdotters to see red. I agree that an open Internet is a good thing. But where do you draw the line on obscenity issues. I don't want to see child prostitution shops set up in my country (I am Canadian) even if they are tucked out of the way. Neither do I want some obscene material on the Internet (personally, I don't want to see any obscene material on the Internet, but I also believe in supporting democracy because morals are relative and subjective, so the majority _must_ decide), so how is it that some laws against obscenity are "ok" censorship (i.e., no child-porn stores or child prostitution shops) but other kinds of censorship is "bad" (i.e., blocking a child-porn website).
I think a big part of the debate that needs to be discussed is what is the nature of the stuff that is being censored. Certainly big brother shouldn't get too big that freedom of speech is lost, but then anything goes isn't a good idea either.
(of course the Canadian strategy seems to be make everything legal but tax is to death.)