Pre-class Discussion for Jan 16

Filtering

Robert Faris & Nart Villeneuve, Measuring Global Internet Filtering

• There is an important means of filtering that the article seems to ignore: pressure on private companies. The article discusses how some countries block keywords URL paths, a strategy that "most often affects search queries in search engines" (pg. 15). But a much more direct way of doing this is simply forcing the company that provides the search engine to filter itself. Google's corporate philosophy is to "make money without doing evil," but it nonetheless agreed to create a special, censored search engine for china. How does this sort of strategy compare to the more direct filtering strategies discussed in the article? (Mshacham 13:55, 15 January 2008 (EST))
  • This may relate to the discussion of the "Proposal" below, although the issue may be more broad. A government could use private companies as a point of control by imposing direct regulation with the force of law (this seems implicit in the Proposal). But it may not need to do this, since economic incentives may suffice. (Mshacham 17:44, 15 January 2008 (EST))

• Are there ever situations where filtering should be considered appropriate? Filtering of the sort discussed in this article would generally not be legally feasible in the U.S.: blocking political content would obviously violate the 1st Amendment, and while obscenity is not protected, attempting to block such content (which the authors categorize as "social") would run into the overinclusiveness problems we discussed earlier in the course. But suppose we had a hypothetical way of blocking only websites that provided only obscenity, without affecting access to legitimate material; or suppose we had a way of filtering pure "hate speech" or defamation, without in any way affecting political speech -- what would be the arguments against such filtering? (Mshacham 13:55, 15 January 2008 (EST))
  • It would be especially interesting to consider this in light of the comments of Danielle Citron, which we read for the previous class. If certain online environments "accelerate[] dangerous group behavior," and if such environments have a disproportionately negative effect on women (which the author compares to the effect that the KKK had on racial minorities), would it be acceptable for the government to attempt to remedy this problem through filtering (again, assuming you could get around the overbreadth problem)? Cf. Beauharnais v. Illinois. (Mshacham 13:55, 15 January 2008 (EST))

• On a related note, how does the filtering discussed in this article compare/relate to state and federal laws that require internet blocking software in schools and libraries? (Mshacham 14:08, 15 January 2008 (EST))

• A few technical questions
  • Can someone elaborate on the concept of an "international gateway"? This article focuses primarily on a point of control that is very familiar to us at this point (ISPs), but the notion of filtering at the "international gateway" seems different -- and perhaps more particularly relevant to the U.S-context. (Mshacham 13:55, 15 January 2008 (EST))
  • One fairly simple way to get around some of the more common filtering techniques, such as IP blocking and DNS tampering, would be to use a proxy server that allows for anonymous web browsing; if I understand it correctly, such services allow a user to browse to other sites through the proxy site, thus circumventing any direct blocks. The article notes that fourteen countries use filters to block access to such sites (pg. 12). But isn't this effectively impossible? That is, a country may block sites that are known to provide proxy services -- but can't any computer basically serve this same function? A person in the country that implements the filtering could connect directly to a computer that is outside that country, and then use that computer as a proxy to get whatever material he or she wants. As such, all it would take is a friend in another country who is willing to help out. Am I understanding this correctly? (Mshacham 13:55, 15 January 2008 (EST))

Proposal To Use Search Engines To Administer the Internet and Suggested Next Steps

• I must admit, I'm rather confused about this piece. Neither the syllabus nor the paper itself lists an author (unless I'm completely missing something), so it's very difficult to put this in context. A search on "Ministry of Information Industry" reveals a Chinese government website, and ditto for the Market Administration Department, so my best bet is that this is a plan for effective internet filtering in China. If this is the case, then it connects well to the comment I made above, relating to how private companies can be used as a powerful point of control. If I'm wrong about China, then my only other guess is that this is intended as a parody -- a sort of reductio ad absurdum for internet control; the whole thing sounds ominously 1984-ish (the ministry names, and the stated goals of "control[ling] bad information" and achieving a "clean network"). (Mshacham 17:41, 15 January 2008 (EST))

• As the title suggests, this piece is a proposed method for harnessing search engines and government oversight in order to cleanse the net of "bad information." The basic idea is that internet search engine companies will perform day-to-day monitoring of internet content (by scanning "all content in the websites to which it is connected"); when it discovers a "problematic link," it must immediately delete that link and "report the relevant particulars (including the name of the offending website, the internet address/IP address, etc.)" to the government. The search engines companies must coordinate among themselves and must meet regularly to share information (so that if one missed a site blocked by the others it can take corrective action). The government, meanwhile, will perform regular evaluations to see whether each search engine has met its goal of reducing bad content; the results are measured by the number of links that each search engine returns on a set of "bad" keywords. The ultimate goal, presumably, is that none of these keywords will produce any results in any of the available search engines -- a "clean" internet environment. (Mshacham 18:02, 15 January 2008 (EST))