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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Utah governor signs Net-porn bill
On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Bill Woodcock wrote: > Uh, yes, I was joking. Unfortunately, I do believe, on credible evidence, > that there are people stupid enough to be trying to legislate the > operation of the Internet without having first understood how it's done > right now. Case in point. Can ISPs get around this by declaring themselves to be private clubs? ;) There was a rather poorly attended NANOG meeting in Salt Lake City a couple years ago. Between bars, er, private clubs, that required (very cheap) memberships to get in the door, the no more than one watered down beer on the table at a time rule, the guys who looked like secret service agents video taping the the gay pride people (all three of them...) outside the Temple, and the repeated "you want to rent a car? On a Sunday?!?" responses from people in the viscinity of the closed car rental counters, it was a cultural expeience. Regardless of the legal and technical merits of the plan, requiring a watered down web doesn't seem inconsistent. Ignoring the legal and commercial questions and focusing on the technical requirements, there are several ways they could have done this. China and Saudi Arabia accomplish this (China for political content, and Saudi Arabia for "porn") with national firewalls. So, if the same content were going to be blocked for all users in Utah, and if porn sites could somehow be prevented from operating in Utah, a monopoly transit proivder for all Utah ISPs with a big porn blocking firewall in front of it might do the trick. I hear it works in Saudi Arabia... But in this case, Utah hasn't chosen to use China or Saudi Arabia as its model, nor have they copied the first round of attempts at this sort of thing by various US states, which tended to give ISPs the burden of figuring out whether packets flowing through their network were "indecent" and imposed requirements on people in other states. I suspect this will make Utah different enough that a lot of national networks will decide it's not worth doing business there. But for Utah-focused ISPs who can figure out how to make a firewall or proxy server speak the same protocol as the state-run database, this should be an opportunity to charge higher prices in the face of reduced competition. This seems like something that could be implemented on a per-user basis with a little bit of policy based routing. Is it a good idea? Certainly not. Is it legal? I hope not. But is it so badly conceived as to be unimplementable if it ever gets to the enforcement stage? I don't think so. -Steve
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