Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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