Re: Congress may require ISPs to block fraud sites H.R.3817

[Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>]

IANAL, but I wouldn't set too much stock by that order - there are 
numerous errors of fact in the opinion, and much of it relates to the 
lack of due process in the maintenance of a secret blacklist. It was 
also a state law, not a federal one, so there was a large jurisdictional 
question (the Commerce  Clause concern.)

As people in Washington are saying around the net neutrality debate 
these days: "anything goes is not a serious argument."

RB

Steven Bellovin wrote:
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 7:44 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>
> > I think the idea is for the government to create an official 
> > blacklist of the offending sites, and for ISPs to consult it before 
> > routing a packet to the fraud site. The common implementation would 
> > be an ACL on the ISPs border router. The Congress doesn't yet 
> > understand the distinction between ISPs and transit providers, of 
> > course, and typically says that proposed ISP regulations (including 
> > the net neutrality regulations) apply only to consumer-facing service 
> > providers.
> >
> > If this measure passes, you can expect expansion of blocking mandates 
> > for rogue sites of other kinds, such as kiddie porn and DMCA scofflaws.
> It's worth looking at hhttp://www.cdt.org/speech/pennwebblock/ -- a 
> Federal court struck down a law requiring web site blocking because of 
> child pornography.
>
>         --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC