[IP] net filtering in Japan

Dave, for IP, if you wish.

The government here is proposing mandating filtering of the Internet for
child porn. See an article about the proposal at
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080502TDY01304.htm
and the WIDE Project's position on the proposal, attached below.

               --Rod

http://www.wide.ad.jp/news/press/20080429-e.html

The Liberal Democratic Party has been discussing what can be
translated as "the bill regarding prevention of browsing harmful
information on the Internet for sound rearing of minors" ("the bill"
hereafter) that may be submitted to the ongoing National Diet.

Since 1988, the WIDE Project has been aiming for construction of
public information infrastructure that can contribute to a wide
variety of social activities including medicine, industry, education
and government. Through global connection among computers and other
equipment, the construction of a distributed system on such connections
will serve a useful purpose from an individual and social
viewpoint, and bring to the fore the relevant issues and problems
in order to bring this to fruition. From this standpoint, we are
strongly objecting to the bill.

The bill states that the following measures will be taken for
protection of minors from harmful information:

  1. Setting of criteria for harmfulness by a cabinet council and
ministerial enforcement of them
  2. Mandating web site administrators to delete harmful information
  3. Mandating cellular phone service carriers to install filtering for
minors

The WIDE Project indicates their objections as follows.

1. Danger of the government's setting criteria for harmful information
and having rights to enforce them

The meaning of information is decided through interaction between
senders and receivers of the information. The bill suggests that the
government decides the meaning of information, and restricts the
access to it uniformly, which will lead to removal of wide
possibilities in the information space and prevention of sound
development of the information society.

2. Danger of mandating deletion of "harmful information"

If it is mandated for the administrators of online space for sharing
and exchanging information to delete "harmful information" based on
the governmental standards, situations will arise where people of this
country cannot even discuss which information should be regarded as
harmful by citing examples. This would endanger the sovereignty of our
people.

Also, from the viewpoint of security management, the bill will give
attackers new opportunities for attacking information security. It
would be possible for the attackers to deprive site administrators of
their freedom to operate the sites or even of their ability to earn a
living, by repeatedly posting "harmful information" on the target
site, as the administrator will have to continuously respond to the
posts, and will be punished if they neglect to do so.

3. Danger of mandating service providers to install filtering

We have learned through experience that users need to be able to
flexibly operate on filtering.

Among widely used filtering technology today are spam filters to
distinguish nuisance e-mail messages.

Although natural languages such as Japanese or English have polysemy,
today's filtering programs are not intelligent enough to handle this
property of the languages. Day to day, many useful pieces of
information are filtered by spam filters so that they do not reach the
correspondents who need such information.

We are afraid that this type of problems will be promoted by the
mandated filtering by the cellular phone service carriers that the bill
requires.

Filtering is an important and useful technology for improving
productivity of individuals by automating selection of incoming
information. However, if users cannot turn on and off the feature
accordingly to their present needs, or if they cannot access the
filtered information when needed, their productivity will inevitably
deteriorate.

Towards sound social application of digital technology

The Internet has proliferated as both a technically and a socially
distributed system where many computers and other pieces of equipment
can be connected and where various individuals and groups can
participate in a personal manner. By fully utilizing the
characteristics of digital technology, becoming indispensible
infrastructure. The best way to tackle problems in this distributed
system is to do it in a distributed manner. If a central entity
tackles those problems in a uniform way, it might lead to loss of
advantages of digital technology or distributed systems themselves.

We cannot expect minors to learn if we do not solve problems
surrounding them where the problems arise.

If we are to think that sound rearing of minors will be achieved by
the central force that silences information and controls inputs for
the minors, it would mean that we are neglecting the power of
families, the power of education and the power of industries. Should
this be realized, the power of families, education and industries in
this country will continue to be lost.

It should be our principle that problems are to be solved where they
arise.

Otherwise, the people of Japan will not be able to competitively
survive in the world by improving their problem-solving abilities as
the global environment in the 21st century changes rapidly.

The WIDE Project will by all means cooperate in applying the digital
technology's characteristics as being an infrastructure for solutions
in a distributed manner against social problems happening in the
distributed system, and contributing in planning and executing such
solutions.

The WIDE Project members

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