Net neutrality suffers another blow. I liked Congress when they had no idea what the internet was, now they've progressed to "still have no idea but like to pretend." Jeff On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> 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
-- Jeffrey Lyon, Leadership Team jeffrey.lyon@blacklotus.net | http://www.blacklotus.net Black Lotus Communications of The IRC Company, Inc. Platinum sponsor of HostingCon 2010. Come to Austin, TX on July 19 - 21 to find out how to "protect your booty."