New Zealand's Section 92A

The last few months have seen interesting developments in New Zealand in regard to controlling copyright infringement on the Internet. New Zealand's 1994 Copyright Act was amended last year to accommodate new technologies, with the most controversial amendment being the new Section 92A, which states, "An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat [copyright] infringer."

Originally the new law was scheduled to take effect on February 28, but objections from Internet service providers (ISPs) and alliances of creative artists (but not from New Zealand's creative industries, which generally welcomed the law) forced a delay. ISPs noted that the law did not require proof of infringement, just an accusation of infringement, before an account is disconnected. Libraries pointed out that, as written, the law would require ISPs to disconnect them from the Internet if a number of rogue library users abused copyright restrictions. The Creative Freedom Foundation called for a nation-wide Internet blackout to protest Section 92A, which they referred to as the "Guilt Upon Accusation" law.

The law is now due to take effect on March 27 if two non-governmental groups—the Telecommunications Carriers Forum and selected copyright holders—agree on a policy. One of the largest ISPs, TelstraClear, has withdrawn from the negotiations protesting the law as unworkable.

UPDATE, March 24, 2009. Yesterday the New Zealand government decided to rewrite this legislation. Commerce Minister Simon Power said, "Allowing section 92A to come into force in its current format would not be appropriate given the level of uncertainty around its operation."

Children and the Internet: Not so bad?

Two recent developments seem to indicate that children might not require as much protection from the Internet as public policy makers once thought.

On December 31, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force released its Final Report. This group was created in February 2008 by the "Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace" to consider technologies that industry and end users, including parents, could use to help keep minors safer on the Internet. The Final Report concluded, however, that the problem of bullying among children (online and offline) is a more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of children by adults, and that minors are actually unlikely to be propositioned by adults online.

Then on January 21, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was enacted by Congress in 1998 and immediately challenged in the courts, died a quiet death when the US Supreme Court rejected the Act without comment. COPA would have required US-based websites displaying anything that might violate "contemporary community standards" to block minors from accessing the material, but the court system repeated found that COPA was over-broad and violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

Australia's Internet filtering in the news

Australia's plan to mandate nationwide Internet filtering is attracting a lot of attention and significant opposition.

The proposed system filters the Internet at two levels. First, all Australian Internet service providers (ISPs) must block access to around 10,000 Web sites on a list maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Second, ISPs are required to provide an optional filter that individuals could use to block other Internet material deemed unsuitable for children. The government has allocated 45 million Australian dollars ($30.7 million) for the filtering.

Now, however, some Australian ISPs have expressed reservations about participating in tests of the filter system. Two of the largest ISPs have refused altogether to join trials and others will only commit to testing less extensive filtering.

Additionally, a government report commissioned in 2007 and released just before Christmas points to many difficulties with implementing such a scheme. Children's safety organizations seem to be split in their opinions of the plan, with some supporting it while others question its effectiveness and cost.

Other nations have other approaches to controlling dangerous content on the Internet. In Egypt and Iran, bloggers have been imprisoned; in North Korea there is virtually no Internet access; China has a pervasive filtering system; and Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have filters, but they are voluntary. In the United States, Pennsylvania briefly imposed requirements for ISPs to block child-pornography sites, but a federal court struck down the law because the filters also blocked legitimate sites.

It looks now like the Australian filtering plan, mentioned in this blog last February, will be mandatory for all Australians. In response to public outcry last February, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said that the filters would be enabled by default but consumers could request unfiltered connectivity if they wished to opt-out of the program. Now it appears there is a core blacklist of "illegal" sites that will always be blocked for everyone.

Ars Technica points out that, "'Illegal' is a broad definition, leaving users wondering exactly what kinds of content will end up falling prey to the government's apparently mandatory filtering restrictions."

Britain creates new web watchdog

In the United Kingdom, the Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has been created to teach children about web dangers, target harmful net content, and establish a code of conduct for sites featuring material uploaded by users.

The council, which will report to the prime minister, will have a membership of more than 100 organizations, including technology companies such as Microsoft and Google, websites such as Facebook, and mobile phone companies. Their goal is to create a child internet safety strategy that will establish a public awareness safety campaign, establish measures to protect children and young people, promote responsible advertising to children online, and establish voluntary codes of practice for web sites.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that it will be a "...challenge for us is to make sure young people can use the internet safely and do so with the minimum of restrictions but the maximum of opportunities."

Comcast dumps Usenet

The trend toward banning Usenet news groups, begun early in the summer as a result of actions by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, continues with the announcement by Comcast that they have become the latest Internet Service Provider to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups as part of a voluntary agreement to try and fight child porn online. The voluntary measures were part of an agreement among the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG).

Seventeen other cable providers across the US have now taken similar action. Critics worry that these actions are overzealous and could turn into a trend that enables governments to regulate content that is arbitrarily deemed harmful to the public good.

Circuit Court Strikes Down Children's Online Protection Act

On July 22 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion in ACLU v. Mukasey affirming the District Court and holding that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is unconstitutional. The court held that COPA is vague and overbroad, and that it does not constitute the least restrictive means of protecting children. In reaching these conclusions, the court also confirmed that COPA does not apply to websites outside the U.S.

New York Attorney General gets agreement to limit child pornography

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced this week that Time Warner Cable, Sprint, and Verizon will take aggressive steps to limit access to child pornography over their networks.

Mr. Cuomo's office began an investigation of online child pornography over six months ago. Undercover agents from his office would pose as subscribers and complain to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography even though they had customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. When the providers' responses did not satisfy the AG's office, they threatened legal action.

Cuomo's office uncovered 88 internet Usenet newsgroups used by child pornographers, as well as more than 11,000 "sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children." The agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers' access to Usenet -- which began nearly 30 years ago and was one of the earliest ways to swap information online -- even though only a handful of the 100,000 Usenet discussion groups contain illegal material.

Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas." The agreements will affect customers not just in New York but throughout the country.

The three service providers will also pay $1.125 million to the Attorney General's office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to fund further efforts.

While government watchdog groups in other countries have succeeded in getting Internet service providers to limit the kind of traffic available on their networks, this seems to be the first significant agreement in the United States, where protected speech is an important civil liberty. Britain's Internet Watch Foundation estimates that nearly 80 per cent of the world's commercial child pornography is hosted on web servers located in the United States, but only a handful of service providers have signed on with NCMEC. (Federal law requires service providers to report child pornography to the National Center, but it often takes customer complaints to trigger a report.)