Tech Policy Summit blog

Appeals Court Rules COPA Is Unconstitutional

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling today, affirming that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is unconstitutional.

It's the latest development in the legal saga surrounding COPA, the 1998 law that would make it a crime to publish online content that is deemed harmful to minors unless it's protected behind an age-verification or credit card screen. According to the Associated Press, the appeals court found COPA to be "overly broad and vague" and agreed with opponents who claimed it violates First Amendment protections.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), which had filed a briefing in the case opposing COPA, released a statement praising the ruling. Meanwhile, the AP reports that the Department of Justice will review the ruling before deciding what to do next, which may include taking COPA back to the Supreme Court.

ISPs Make Deal with NY to Fight Child Porn

Internet service providers (ISPs) Sprint, Verizon and Time Warner Cable are the latest Net companies to respond to pressure from state lawmakers involved in combating child porn. Following a lengthy investigation by his office, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo announced today that he's reached "landmark agreements" with the three companies to "shut down major sources of online child pornography."

As part of the agreements, the companies will for the first time ban customers' access to all child porn newsgroups. In addition, they will delete known child porn sites from their servers using data provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and they'll increase the speed with which they react to customer complaints about offensive material.

New York's attorney general's office and NCMEC will also receive a total of $1.125 million in funding from the three ISPs. NCMEC chief exec Ernie Allen applauded attorney general Cuomo and credited his office with developing a "new and effective system that cuts online child porn off at the source, and stops it from spreading across the Internet."

As for the Attorney General's investigation, it remains "ongoing." Which means other companies may be making similar moves in the future.

Chinese Sites "Volunteer" to Self-Censor

According to Reuters, China has asked Web site owners to voluntarily pledge to censor their content as part of its ongoing effort to regulate online video and audio. Eight Chinese media organizations including the Xinhua news agency and The People's Daily have already signed on to the pact to remove pornography and violent material from their sites.

Which begs the following question: If the Chinese goverment asks you to sign a "voluntary pact," is it really voluntary?

While you contemplate that koan, here is an excerpt from the announcement by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television:

The signatories should actively disseminate healthy, beneficial audio-visual programs meeting socialist moral norms...Decadent, backward thoughts and culture must be boycotted by all.

Also, if you haven't already seen it, check out this in-depth article by Atlantic correspondent (and Tech Policy Summit advisor) James Fallows about how the Chinese government controls Internet activity within its borders. Fallows has been reporting from China for over a year now and offers an interesting perspective on the topic.

Bringing Net Neutrality Back

Coverage of the net neutrality issue may have quieted down for a time. But rumblings about Comcast allegedly interfering with file-sharing traffic late last year sparked a new round of debates, and Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) made it official today by introducing legislation called the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008."

Congressman Markey, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, was quick to refute claims that the bill sought to regulate the Internet. In a statement announcing the legislation, he said, "It does no such thing...It does, however, suggest that the principles which have guided the Internet's development and expansion are highly worthy of retention, and it seeks to enshrine such principles in the law as guide stars for U.S. broadband policy."

It requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a thorough evaluation of broadband providers' practices in areas like traffic management, pricing and parental controls. The Commission would also be required to organize eight regional summits on broadband and to report their findings to Congress within 90 days of the last one.

The bill's introduction coincides with Comcast's FCC filing yesterday in which it explains and defends its network management procedures. You can read more about the report at Ars Technica; the Progress and Freedom Foundation also submitted comments supporting the use of network management techniques.

The Wall Street Journal summed up the kerfuffle with this observation:

"Regulators now face a challenge to set rules in a rapidly shifting market where changes in technology and consumer tastes are running faster than Washington's ability to react."

It's a familiar observation.

The Countdown to China's Video Crackdown

Tomorrow is the day when new regulations on Internet video content go into effect in China, and it's still unclear what the full impact of the rules will be.

Never one to shy away from monitoring its citizens' online activities, the Chinese government announced late last year that it would require any Web site that features video content to censor its users and to report content violations to Chinese authorities (or face stiff penalties).

The new policy also forces site owners to get a license that is only available to companies that qualify as state-owned. That includes video sharing sites where the majority of the content is user-generated. According to the Associated Press, it's "a break from other online content rules, which compel private companies to enforce censorship but let them operate on their own."

While the AP's report suggests that site owners will find ways to circumvent the rule about state-ownership in order to keep operating, it remains to be seen how the new rules will be applied when it comes to individual Web users who want to share videos within China. For more, check out the AP article here and visit our Tech Policy Central site for other policy-related news and research.

Govt.'s Fight Against Terrorism Hitting Net

"If we are ready and willing to take action to stop the grooming of the vulnerable young on social networking sites, then I believe we should also take action against those who groom vulnerable people for the purposes of violent extremism."

That statement was part of a speech given last week by Britain's Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in which she spoke about efforts to combat terrorism.

Reuters reported that Smith, whose agency is in charge of immigration and domestic security for the U.K., also discussed the idea of filtering online content to remove "militant material" from the Internet. In fact, she's planning to meet with industry representatives soon to solicit their support. A prospect that alarms free speech advocates.

In the U.S., the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others have spoken out against proposed legislation that would establish a national commission to study how terrorists become terrorists. We wrote about the bill last November, following a Congressional hearing in which members of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment heard testimony about the dangers of the Internet in breeding "homegrown terrorism."

To read the rest of this post, please visit our Tech Policy Central site.

UN's Internet Governance Forum Meets Again

The United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is hosting its second annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil next week. The four-day event, expected to attract about 2,000 people, is supposed to focus on extending Internet access to more people around the world and tackling challenges associated with security, privacy, free speech and child safety.

According to the Associated Press (AP), though, "debate over U.S. control of core Internet systems threatens to overtake" the meeting.

For the rest of this post and more on other policy-related topics, check out Tech Policy Central.

WSJ: Yahoo! Exec Apologizes to House Committee

The Wall Street Journal (sub required) reports that Yahoo!'s executive vice president and general counsel Michael Callahan has apologized to members of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA).  Callahan was among those who testified in front of the committee in February of 2006 to answer questions about what type of information Internet companies including Yahoo! and Google might have turned over to the Chinese government.

Read more about this and other tech policy news at our new Tech Policy Central site.

Senators Call for Hearing on Content Blocking Claims

The Associated Press is reporting that Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have written a letter to Senate Commerce Committee chair Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) asking for a hearing to explore concerns they have that cable and telecom companies are using their market "power to discriminate against content."  The hearing's purpose, according to AP, would be to "investigate whether such incidents were based on legitimate business policies or unfair and anticompetitive practices and if more federal regulation is needed."

Sen. Dorgan and Sen. Snowe, both members of the committee, have co-sponsored a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act that would mandate net neutrality legislation. For more, check out the full AP article.

ICANN Meeting Considers Privacy of Domain Reg Data

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is preparing for its 30th international public meeting in Los Angeles next week (disclosure: Tech Policy Summit is one of the event's sponsors). Among the topics that ICANN will be considering is whether or not it should revamp the WHOIS system that is tied to all Internet domain registrations.

If you've ever registered a domain, unless you paid for some type of proxy service to hide your details, chances are that your personal information such as name, address, email and phone number is available to anyone who searches WHOIS. Which has led to a debate over whether or not WHOIS should be changed to better protect individual privacy rights.

Professor and Berkman Center fellow Wendy Seltzer blogged yesterday about the current proposal to replace personal information in WHOIS with info on an Operational Point of Contact (OPOC). She writes:

While all [of registrants'] private information would still be collected, it need not be published. Instead, the OPOC would route messages to the right recipient, for operational, technical, or legal inquiries. Thus OPOC would simultaneously make WHOIS a better technical contact resource and improve domain registrants’ privacy options. Even OPOC doesn’t go so far as I would like — I’d allow anonymous registrations, rather than insisting that data be collected if not displayed — but it’s better than the status quo."

ICANN is seeking public comments through 5pm PDT on October 30th. If you'd like to voice your opinion just email ICANN. You can also view existing comments online.