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))

• 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))

• 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))