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UK Wants ISPs To Be Responsible For Third Party Content Online
An anonymous reader writes "A key UK government minister, Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), has ominously proposed that internet service providers should introduce a new Mediation Service that would allow them the freedom to censor third party content on the Internet, without court intervention, in response to little more than a public complaint. Vaizey anticipates that Internet users could use the 'service' to request that any material deemed to be 'inaccurate' (good luck with that) or privacy infringing is removed. No doubt any genuine complaints would probably get lost in a sea of abuse by commercial firms trying to attack freedom of speech and expression."
I am reminded of the world of Farenheit 451 and the plethora of Sci-Fi books and movies in which the Nazis won World War II. The free world is shackled with fascism on every level, censorship is enforced with capital punishment, and the secret police are in your head.
If truth really is stranger than fiction I can see Germany invading England again in the future to free the world of a great threat against freedom. In the end it will be like D-Day, but in reverse with a coalition of forces eating buttery croissants before leaving Normandy for the shores of England.
Thats the great thing about TFA - the minister never mentions ISPs. He uses the Internet Domain Name charity as an example of a funtioning mediation service, thats it. From then on it's all about the internet industry, which includes every single online business out there. TFA claims this is about ISPs but frankly he's going off the exact same lack of info' that I am, only I'm using a little basic common sense and not surrendering to the hysteria. It appears simply that TFA is trying to drum up a little drama.
Wow. 10 years or so into the 21st century, and the Earth is still covered in a uniform 100 foot layer of bullshit. It's never going to end, is it?
Back in the early days of commercial ISPs, when an ISP was an Internet Service Provider and not a phone company or cable company that drove the ISP specialist companies out of business, and when there weren't "safe harbor" and the DMCA, ISPs cared about the images of their respective companies and tried to do business with customers using the services legitimately.
ISPs would take down obviously scam sites when people complained not because they had to, but because they didn't want those sorts of sites on their servers or using their bandwidth. ISPs responded to complaints about email abuse. ISPs would cooperate openly with law enforcement when they wanted to stop a specific crime and would tell the officers to take a hike until they had a subpoena when their was a fishing expedition for user data.
How do I know this? I worked in the field as an employee and a consultant for a number of ISPs back when an ISP was a service provider like the name implies rather than a utility trying to charge extra for certain data.
Why?
Take a private citizen. There are, in some places, specific requirements for specific private citizens to report certain felonies, (i.e. a schoolteacher being required to report suspected child abuse) but they don't translate to those same entities having to report all misdemeanors, traffic violations and torts. So why should the standard for ISPs be so much all or nothing.
There are also other cases where specific knowledge limits are observed by law. Somewhat to my shame, I once participated in a program where local law enforcement dogs were trained to sniff out drugs. I personally planted drugs in various containers (i.e wrap the brick of dope in three layers of oil soaked plastic, and stick it in the middle of a half full coffee container, seal it, put it on the highest kitchen shelf, wipe down the area, then see if the dog can alert on it when the handler didn't know where I hid it either and couldn't give the dog subconsious cues.). This included attending a controlled burn and such, so if I were to testify that I smelled Cannabis, it would count as expert testimony, and that testimony could not be impeached with questions about how I happened to know for sure that what I smelled was pot, say from an opposing lawyer. Most citizens can't make that claim - they either have to admit they know what pot smells like from illegal use, or all they can say is they thought whatever they smelled might be pot. I could theoretically be compelled to testify if subpoenaed, but most people can't. That pesky 'truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth' bit means, in the US at least, you don't generally have a legal obligation to say what you don't know to be true, but only suspect.
In addition, most ISPs don't employ someone who could make a determination, say, whether a person in an erotic photo was of legal age or a year or two under, or whether those nuclear bomb diagrams have anything classified in them (or would even work) or not. Most ISPs don't employ anyone who is a recognized specialist in copyright law either. Yes, it can be argued that common knowledge should cause employees to suspect a current piece of popular music or TV show is copyrighted and a violation is likely taking place, but expecting that to translate to knowing the status of 30 year old TV shows or music is another story. There's also the normal limits of age and obscurity - a typical 20 year old may have no reason to know whether Woody Herman recorded that file in the 1990's or the 1930's, and a typical 50 year old may have no idea who A Flock of Seagulls or Front 242 was, let alone whatever's popular now. If a person has no idea if the music comes from a commercial source and not a garage band sharing its own files, how can the law demand that person follow up on suspicions they may simply not have?
Who is John Cabal?
It's a debate. They're discussing the nature of internet privacy. Here's why this is a good idea; here's why it's a bad idea.
By talking openly and by being willing to say something stupid, they can avoid putting the stupid stuff in the actual legislation.