Via Slashdot, I see that France has decided to censor its citizens’ Internet access:

The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel [sic] Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday. […]

Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks.

Sites containing what appear to be blatant crimes will be referred to judicial authorities, the minister said.

I wrote about why this is a bad idea back in 2006, when Canada implemented a similar blacklist scheme for child porn. In brief:

• Filtering is ineffective.
• Blacklists can and will be abused to silence dissenting voices.
• ISPs are access providers, not content providers; they should be absolutely neutral with respect to what passes through their networks.

But enough about the issues. The real reason I’m writing about this is to make fun of French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie.

“We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedopornography,” Alliot-Marie said.

Cyber-pedo-what?

[Alliot-Marie] insisted that the plan would not “create a Big Brother of the internet” and pledged her support for the “fundamental liberty that is internet access.”

I’m guessing that Alliot-Marie has not actually read 1984, because those two statements constitute a classic example of doublethink. Either that, or Allot-Marie is really so unbelievably stupid that she honestly believes a state-maintained blacklist that blocks access to online information is somehow not a Big Brother-style restriction on the “fundamental liberty that is internet access.”

Look, if you want to argue that child porn and hate speech are so odious that we need the state to keep us from viewing them, go ahead. But at least admit that you are using state power to place restrictions on free speech. To do otherwise demonstrates an utter lack of concern for the truth — and, well, philosophers have a technical term for that sort of thing.

(Originally posted to The Information Policy Blog.)

The provincial government’s internal Internet filter is affecting ordinary Internet users in Tahsis, a small community on Vancouver Island.

An attempt to visit a pornography site, for example, would return a red screen with a British Columbia logo and a “** WARNING **” message: “This connection has been refused. The Internet site you are attempting to access has been designated by a web classification service as containing material that contravenes the BC Government’s Internet usage policy.”

The warning linked to a page that said, “Users must not access Internet sites that might bring the public service into disrepute or harm government’s reputation, such as those that carry offensive material.”

The local ISP is blaming the problem on “crossed wires” somewhere. Apparently, the ISP’s Internet connection is routed through the government’s network (presumably because Tahsis got Internet access through a provincial government rural broadband initiative). The filter is being incorrectly applied somewhere along the way.

According to the article, the same problem once affected the nearby town of Woss. It took six months to get the filter removed.

Joy Smith, a Conservative MP, has introduced a private member’s bill called the Clean Internet Act (Bill C-427). It’s a private member’s bill and therefore unlikely to pass, but still, it’s a scary piece of work. Here are the highlights:

• All ISPs would have to be licensed. Since the bill defines an ISP as “a person who provides a service that facilitates access to the Internet, whether or not the service is provided free or for a charge,” that would apparently include libraries that offer free public Internet access, not to mention Internet cafes, your workplace, and possibly you yourself if you let other people use your Internet connection. More generally, as Russell McOrmond notes, “ISPs should not need to be licensed any more than owners of photocopiers or computers should be licensed” — they’re access providers, not content providers.
• ISPs would be required to block access to hate speech, material that incites violence against women, or child porn. It would also be an offense, not only to post such material, but to possess any of this material if you got it off the Internet — even though we already have laws governing hate speech and child porn.
• ISPs would be required to deny service to anyone who “has used the Internet within the previous seven years for a purpose that would be an offence under this Act.”
• The executives of any ISP that violates this law would be subject to a fine or jail time. In addition, as Ars Technica points out, the bill would allow the government to revoke an ISP’s license — thus presumably cutting off Internet access for all of that ISP’s customers — if one of the ISP’s executive officers is convicted of committing violence against women, inciting hatred, or possessing child pornography. No, seriously — it’s section 4(3) of the bill.

An expert quoted in CBC’s article on the bill put it best: “The sentiment’s right, but the practicality is out to lunch.”

Incidentally, when she introduced this bill in Parliament, Joy Smith said, “We must all keep in mind that we need to stop the human trafficking that is happening in our country now and this bill makes a strong statement about that part of the Internet.” Needless to say, the bill doesn’t have anything to do with anything you or I would understand as human trafficking.

[UPDATED. See end of post.]

Canada’s big ISPs have agreed to block access to websites listed on a child pornography blacklist. The goal is laudable, but the devil, as usual, is in the details.

First, the facts: The initiative is called Project Cleanfeed Canada. It’s based on a similar project in the UK and has the blessing of the federal government. The blacklist will be maintained by Cybertip.ca, a group that already has a system in place for receiving and analyzing reports of child pornography online. Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Telus, and Videotron have all signed on.

It’s clear that everyone has their hearts in the right place here. No one wants to help creeps get access to kiddie porn. Aside from the obvious moral issues, child pornography is illegal in Canada — creating it, distributing it, and accessing it are all against the law. But a mandatory blacklist implemented at the ISP level is not the solution, for a whole bunch of reasons.

First off, there’s the question of effectiveness. As any good librarian can tell you, Filters Don’t Work. The history of internet filtering is rife with false positives and false negatives — sites get blocked when they shouldn’t be, and sites that should be blocked get missed. This system is going to miss out on a ton of child porn sites; inevitably, people are going to find the ones that haven’t been blacklisted yet. To an extent, false positives aren’t a big deal, since most people don’t encounter kiddie porn online to begin with and this initiative will make it even less likely. It’s also true that those who really want to get the stuff will find ways to circumvent Cleanfeed — even the RCMP have admitted that. So this is really just a way of protecting those of us who don’t want to be exposed to child porn.

I’m okay with that. But what about the false positives? What happens when sites get blacklisted by mistake? Michael Geist notes that there will be an appeal process, and also mentions that the blacklist will be kept secret to prevent it from doubling as a child porn directory. However, Cory Doctorow argues that this approach is flawed. There are several problems: a secret blacklist makes it hard to figure out that you’re being blocked like this; many non-Canadian website owners won’t go to the trouble of appealing — even if they figure out they’ve been blacklisted, which is unlikely; and even for Canadians, if they manage to find out what’s wrong, the appeal process can be a huge obstacle. (Cory, who has been a victim of wrongful blacklisting in the past, gives a great example of this last problem.)

Then there’s the question of precedent. At the moment, as I understand it, Canadian ISPs essentially bear no responsibility for the lawfulness of the content they transmit. (The full story is a bit more complicated, but for the purposes of this discussion that’s how things stand.) They can’t be sued for what their clients choose to look at or make available, and they don’t have to monitor or regulate the content that passes through their systems — in fact, they’re apparently not allowed to block access to content that doesn’t break the law. This is good for privacy (because the ISPs have no reason to monitor what you look at online), good for free speech, and good for the ISPs’ bottom lines. But now the ISPs are assuming the role of content watchdog, and that opens the door to pressure for increased access restrictions. How long will it be before we start seeing proposals, from either the government or the less civil-libertarian elements of the public, for blacklisting other types of objectionable content?

Now, to be fair, Michael Geist says that child pornography is a special case because of its legal status (it’s more restricted than anything else, even hate speech), and that it’s unlikely ISPs will start blocking other content. Dr. Geist knows what he’s talking about, so I’m willing to take a benefit-of-the-doubt stance. But on the other hand, it’s not like ISPs are bastions of intellectual freedom. In fact, we’ve already seen one major ISP block access to a website set up by its union — and, inadvertently, 766 unrelated sites (PDF) — during a lockout, purely because it didn’t like the content of the site. So if the pressure mounts for other blacklists beyond child porn — well, I for one won’t be surprised if the ISPs give in.

Finally, there’s the underlying assumption that this is something that should be imposed by the ISPs. There is a basic philosophical problem here. It’s not exactly censorship in the traditional sense that’s the issue — it’s not like, in Canada, child porn is protected speech and people have a right to look at it if they want to (it’s not, and they don’t). I’m saying that it’s wrong for ISPs to be doing this, because of their particular role in the transmission of information. ISPs are not content providers but access providers. To put it another way, it’s not their job to choose what content they make available; it’s their job to provide access to the content that others have chosen to make available. It sounds like a minor distinction, but it’s not — it means that those who control our ability to communicate online will now be in a position to choose, based on what we have to say, whether others get to hear us. Giving ISPs a veto over the content they transmit is inherently a major structural change in the free flow of information in this country, and the potential for adverse consequences is too great to ignore.

(I’ve linked several times to the excellent discussion of Project Cleanfeed Canada on Michael Geist’s blog. The comments touch on more aspects of the initiative than I’ve been able to cover here. The whole discussion is highly recommended.)

UPDATE, 4 December 2006: Michael Geist has written a Toronto Star column on Cybertip.ca. He addresses some of the concerns that have been raised, noting, for example, that there will be an appeals process with an independent review mechanism. Dr. Geist also mentions the slippery-slope issue, but concludes that despite some potential risks, “the project deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

As I said earlier, I’m willing to give Cybertip.ca the benefit of the doubt. They’re showing every sign of good faith (although it would be nice to see more information on the initiative on their website), and they are clearly responding to some of the potential pitfalls of their approach. However, several grave concerns still haven’t been adequately addressed:

• The accessibility of the appeals process is still an open question. How exactly will the process work? Does Cybertip.ca notify the site administrator when a site is blacklisted? How will Cybertip.ca ensure that the appeals process is open to everyone, including anonymous site owners and non-Canadians?
• The ISPs are still setting a bad precedent. Dr. Geist feels that the benefits of the initiative outweigh the risks of seeing the blacklist expanded to other types of content. But we’ve already seen that ISPs can’t be relied on to stand up for intellectual freedom, and I for one don’t think that the unique legal status of child pornography makes for a reliable safeguard.
• After all is said and done, this is still a case of ISPs regulating content — tentatively and at arm’s length, I know, but that’s still what they’re doing, and it’s a historically new role for them (at least in Canada) and a structural change in the flow of information online. That’s cause enough to be concerned.