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
