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In The Name of Blocking Child Porn, Another Barrier To Entry
If the carriers determine that they want a marketplace free of competition, it's in their interest to support government initiatives, no matter what they are, that make it more expensive to start up an ISP.
Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable have agreed to act as an arm of the government, blocking access to child porn websites and bulletin boards worldwide.
No filter can be perfect. Legitimate sites will be blocked. Innocent people will be accused of child porn -- not by a human being but by a flawed computer system.
This is a significant change in government, and nobody's complaining.
Well, a few people are complaining.
David Isenberg writes, "This is, in my humble opinion, a populist wedge issue to undermine the Internet's neutrality. I wish the carriers would stay the &^%$ out of content."
In the past, the carriers have defended their neutral status. Blocking child porn is an expensive responsibility, and these carriers are bound to fail. No filter will be perfect. This business decision makes no sense except in this: it will cost a greater proportion of revenue for smaller ISPs to do this than it will cost the monopolies.
More bureaucrats
I tried to speak to this National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Do you know about the great things that local ISPs are doing to assist police with Amber alerts?"
They: "ISPs are in violation of the law and will go to jail if they don't get the message."
Me: "Aren't you interested in learning what real businesses are doing already?"
They: "ISPs are in violation of the law and will go to jail if they don't get the message."
It's just another government bureaucracy whose purpose is to reinvent the wheel, wasting time and money doing only things that others have done before (and issuing threats). ISPs are already working with law enforcement in productive ways, but the Center isn't interested in learning about them. It's raising money (through casino nights and golf tournaments) but it doesn't do much. It has very few success stories to tell.
While I agree in principle with the rant, one caveat: the NCMEC is not a government bureaucracy. It's a non-profit organization created by John "America's Most Wanted" Walsh. Think MADD, just focused on child exploitation.