FC: Canada considers licensing Internet service providers

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

See also:

"Will Canada's Internet providers become spies?"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03922.html

--

Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 10:02:15 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Jason Young <jyoung () lexinformatica org>
Subject: Canada to licence ISPs?

Declan,

A recent private member's bill (Bill C-234) introduced in Parliament calls 
for licencing of Canadian ISPs as a measure to prevent child porn. The bill 
has almost no chance of passing, but in the context of other activity in 
the House - namely the CoE cybercrime amendments - deserves scrutiny.

I've written a brief but accessible legal analysis piece on it, which I 
excerpt below.

Also relevant:
Matt Skala's weblog http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lw/?id=2002102601
Bill C-234 story on Slashdot 
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/10/23/1739253.shtml?tid=158
Lawful Access proposals http://www.lexinformatica.org/cybercrime/

Sincerely,

Jason

---

On October 21st, MP Peter Stoffer (NDP, Sackville-Musquodoboit 
Valley-Eastern Shore) re-introduced a private member's bill that would 
require all ISPs to be licenced by the CRTC.

The Internet Child Pornography Prevention Act, first introduced in 1998 by 
former MP Chris Axworthy,  defines ISPs as "a person who provides a service 
that facilitates access to the Internet, whether or not the service is 
provided free or for a charge." It would include non-profits and 
intermediaries who provide services ancillary to necessary access, such as 
caching, or those which facilitate access to the substance on the Internet, 
rather than the infrastructure, such as web hosting.

The definition embraces a potentially much larger number of intermediaries 
than that recently contemplated by the Federal Court of Appeal. In SOCAN v. 
CAIP et al., [2002] F.C.A. 166, the court reviewed a Copyright Board 
decision and found that the role of an Internet intermediary is prima facie 
passive because they do not have the practical capacity to exercise control 
over the content of the material that is transmitted.  The court set out a 
three part test for determining eligibility for limitation of liability - 
often termed a 'safe harbour' - for ISPs. First, the intermediary's 
activities must amount to the provision of "the means of 
telecommunication"; second, these means must be "necessary" for enabling 
another person to communicate a work to the public; and third, the 
activities in question must constitute the intermediary's "only act" with 
respect to the communication. Bill C-234 contains no such safe harbour.

Full story: 
http://www.lexinformatica.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=37&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
--

---
http://www.lexinformatica.org
http://www.privaterra.org
http://www.epic.org
830F AE11 91C5 946E CF80  684C F13C 79C3 46E1 1518




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------