Policing the Net
Saturday, February 10, 2007
A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police. The proposal made by Sen. John McCain also would require ISPs and perhaps some Web sites to alert the government of any illegal images of real or "cartoon" minors. Failure to do so would be punished by criminal penalties including fines of up to $300,000.
The Arizona Republican claims that his proposal will aid in investigations of child pornographers. It will "enhance the current system for Internet service providers to report online child pornography on their systems, making the failure to report child pornography a federal crime," a statement from his office said....
Net Neutrality in Canada - Tory government selling out?
Friday, February 9, 2007
Canada appears to give in to telecoms lobby groups and give up on network neutrality.
Apparently the Canadian press has dug up information that the Tory government is not going to introduce network neutrality.
Frankly, as a Canadian, I am disgusted.
Any company opposing network neutrality is doing nothing but trying to impose taxes on data traffic they do not own, and trying to make sure that 'small voices' do not get heard equally. I am sure the RIAA would love net neutrality going down in flames as it would allow them to get ISPs to tax 'mp3' file transfers (it could be done - stateful packet inspection of data streams; all the governments would have to do is outlaw encrypted streams or mandate encryption they and the ISPs have keys to, which would make encryption useless)...
