If anyone interested, these are my comments that I sent to my Maryland senator.
Dear Senator,
My understanding is that the Senate Judiciary Committee is currently
considering the newly proposed Internet Censorship and Copyright bill. I am a
Maryland ISP, and writing this letter to strongly appose this bill.
Implementing this bill, would force Internet Access Providers to compromise
their DNS (Domain Name System) to blacklist and censor Internet Domain Names.
Such an act could destroy the USA's dominant ownership and control position of
the Internet, both in the US and World Wide, for numerous reasons.
1) If DNS censorship were to be implemented, the US would look like
Hypocrite. How can we promote an open and free Internet, and then
simultaneously mandate practices that do the opposite, and censor content and
content providers.
2) ISPs are accountable and liable to their customers, both ethically and
contractually. It is inappropriate for an ISP to block content or compromise
their customer's Internet experience, based on the claims made by third party
blacklisting companies, because the ISP would have no reasonable way to verify
the accuracy of the provided blacklist data. Simply asking ISPs to trust the
data is inappropriate.
3) ISPs should not be forced to determine what is and what isn't legal
content. That is the job of the courts and/or trained law enforcement. Access
Providers have systems in place to "pass data", and in most cases are agnostic
to the actual content that passes. In some cases, privacy policies prevent
ISPs from even looking at it. It therefore is inappropriate for ISPs to be
forced to blacklist domains in DNS, when they may not have a reasonable way to
verify whether content is legal or not.
4) What's most important is that we do not lose sight that we play in a
GLOBAL market place, not only a US market place. The US currently has the
majority market share of in Internet hosting collocation, and hosting Broadband
traffic. This market share leverages the US to maintain significant control of
the Internet, both politically and competitively. If the US were to impose
anti-neutral conditions on broadband providers and ISPs, such as to force them
to censor domains in the DNS system, Content providers would likely move their
servers oversees. If the US loses its hosting market share, it could result in
the US and US carriers losing control of the Internet, both politically and
competitively.
5) The US is a World Wide symbol of Freedom and Openness. The US must
continue to live up to the standard that we preach to the world, if we want to
be respected by the world as a leader. To lead the Internet, we must stay
Neutral, if we expect the World to trust us as the leader of the Internet. I
just don't see the world taking it well, for the US to self-elect themselves to
be the one passing judgment on what is and isn't legal content on the world
wide web, considering that many blacklists today prematurely and overzealously
block non-US content.
6) Lastly, forcing Censorship of the DNS system in the US will not help
solve the problem anyways, since it's a global market place. If DNS becomes
compromised and censored, the world will just turn to alternative Name
Resolution services or providers. There is no technical limitation that
prevents Internet users or Internet Content providers from turning to use new
protocols for name resolution, or preventing consumers and ISP from turning to
unregulated ISPs operating in other countries to perform their DNS resolution.
For the above reasons, we strongly urge that you vote against the bill. Thank
you for your consideration.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: Bret Clark
To: WISPA General List
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:42 AM
Subject: [WISPA] Fwd: EFF needs your help to stop the Senate's DNScensorship
bill
This came on the NANOG list for those who don't subscribe to that
list...thought I'd pass it along here. Looks like you need to respond to Peter
by today 4PM EST.
Bret
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: EFF needs your help to stop the
Senate's DNS censorship bill
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:40:25 -0700
From: Peter Eckersley <p...@eff.org>
To: na...@nanog.org
Dear network operators,
I apologise for a posting that contains some politics; I hope you'll agree
that it also has fairly substantial short-to-medium term operational
implications.
As you may or may not have heard, there is a censor-DNS-to-enforce-copyright
bill that is going to be passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee this
Wednesday. It will require service providers to censor the DNS entries of
blacklisted domains where piracy is deemed too "central" to the site's purpose.
Senators are claiming that they haven't heard any opposition to this bill, and
it is being sponsored by 14 of the 19 committee members. We believe it needs
to be stopped, and we need your help.
What EFF needs right now is sign-ons to an open letter, from the engineers who
helped build the Internet in the first place. The text of our letter is
below. If you agree with it and would like to sign, please send me an email
at p...@eff.org, with your name and a one-line summary of what part of the
Internet you have helped to design, implement, debug or run.
This is URGENT. I need your sign-ons by 4:00pm, US Eastern time (1pm
Pacific), tomorrow. Unfortunately, the civil liberties community has been
ambushed by this bill.
You can find out more details on the bill here: https://eff.org/coica
---------------------------
Open letter from Internet engineers to members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee:
We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called
the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and
protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're
just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the
Internet, has brought with it.
We are writing to oppose the Committee's proposed new Internet censorship and
copyright bill. If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the
Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of
tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously
harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key
Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce
censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers
while hampering innocent parties' ability to communicate.
All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to
restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because
it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or
files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be
blacklisted under this bill. These problems will be enough to ensure that
alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside
the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens.
Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current
global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate
the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites
other than those blacklisted by the American government.
The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open
Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can't have a free and open Internet
without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and
objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US
has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because
America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free
expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS
for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the
consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.
Senators, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be
endangered in this way, and implore you to put this bill aside.
--
Peter Eckersley p...@eff.org
Senior Staff Technologist Tel +1 415 436 9333 x131
Electronic Frontier Foundation Fax +1 415 436 9993
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