[IP] Re: House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Seth Finkelstein [mailto:sethf@sethf.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 10:08 PM
To: Dave Farber
Cc: ip; EEkid@aol.com
Subject: Re: [IP] House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites

[For IP, if worthy]
Sigh. Another "WOLF!"-type article, that needs to be taken with a whole
salt-shaker. 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=916

December 6th, 2007

We need to calm down over the SAFE act

  Posted by George Ou @ 7:52 am Categories: Mobile/Wireless, Networking,
  News, Technology policy Tags: Bill, Child Pornography, George Ou

  Slashdot had this eye-popping headliner "House Bill Could Criminalize
  Free Wi-Fi Operators" which linked to Declan McCullagh's story "House
  vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites".  The bill in
  question H.R.876 would enact huge fines for any wired or wireless ISP
  including home users with open Access Points who fails to report child
  pornography users.

  I must admit after reading that story I was pretty furious and about to
  write a blog blasting the bill and Congress, but now I'm not so sure.
  Reader "faboidea" wrote this very intelligent rebuttal to McCullagh's
  story which forced me to go and read the text of the bill.

  The following is an excerpt from the bill.
    __________________________________________________________________

H.R.876 section 2258A

  (f) Protection of Privacy- Nothing in this section shall be construed
  to require an electronic communication service provider or a remote
  computing service provider to-
   1. monitor any user, subscriber, or customer of that provider;
   2. monitor the content of any communication of any person described in
      paragraph (1); or
   3. affirmatively seek facts or circumstances described in subsection
      (a)(2).
    __________________________________________________________________

  So as you can see, no one is going to be required to monitor their
  infrastructure.  You simply need to report any incidents of child
  pornography if you happen to come across it.  So they only
  controversial part of the bill that I can see is that it has some
  retention rules that forces the private sector to retain child
  pornography images even after they've turned over the obscene
  material.  These provisions probably need to be reexamined but we all
  need to calm down and read the bill before we freak out.

  George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and
  disclosure of his industry affiliations.


"faboidea"'s rebuttal:
http://www.news.com/5208-13578_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=33466&messageID=3
40002&start=0

See also:
http://www.news.com/5208-13578_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=33466&messageID=3
40075&start=0
http://www.news.com/5208-13578_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=33466&messageID=3
40109&start=0


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