SAFE act
David Littlebear
Does anyone think this will impact the wifi downtown?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071206/023423.shtml
Congress Rushes Through Law To Protect The Children... And Make Open WiFi A Huge Liability
from the congress-folks-at-work dept
Congress was apparently busy on Wednesday moving forward with
incredibly bad laws that are designed to look good to certain
constituents, but are highly questionable in real terms. We already
discussed the new PRO IP bill, but the House also
rushed through approval of the SAFE Act, which is one of those ridiculous bills that everyone feels compelled to vote for to "protect the children."
Only two Representatives voted against the bill (and, yes, for his
fans, one of them was Ron Paul). As Declan McCullough's report makes
clear, the backers of this bill rushed it through Congress for no clear
reason. They used a procedural trick normally reserved for
non-controversial laws -- and made significant changes from an earlier
version, never making the new version available for public review prior
to the vote.
So what's so awful about the law? Well, like most "protect the
children" legislation, it goes way overboard in terms of what people
are expected to do, and like most legislation having to do with
technology, seems utterly clueless about how technology works. The bill
would require anyone providing an "electronic communication service" or
a "remote computing service" to record and report information any time
they "learn" that their network was used for certain broadly defined
illegal activities concerning obscene images. That's double trouble, as
both the illegal activities and the classification of who counts as a
service provider are so broadly defined. McCullough notes that anyone
providing an open WiFi network, a social network, a domain registry or
even a webmail service probably qualify under the law. Glenn Fleishman
describes what the law could mean
in practice, points out that anyone who runs an open WiFi network for
the public is now basically required to snitch on anyone they think may
be doing anything deemed "illegal" in this act, including viewing or
transmitting certain obscene drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or
paintings. As Fleishman notes, it "sounds like viewing an Abercrombie
and Fitch catalog could qualify." Even worse, part of the snitching is
that beyond sending a report and the images to the gov't,
you're supposed to retain the "illegal" image yourself -- which would
seem to open you up to charges of possession as well if you somehow
screw up (if you follow everything exactly to the letter of the law,
you are granted immunity).
If you don't snitch on anyone suspected of viewing or
transmitting these images, then you, as the network "operator" are
suddenly liable for huge fines. Honestly, the liability is so big that
anyone offering WiFi is probably better off no longer doing so. This is
one of those laws that politicians love to pass, because they think it
makes them look like they're protecting children -- when all they're
really doing is creating a huge and unnecessary headache for all kinds
of service providers, from open WiFi operators to social networking
sites to webmail offerings. But, of course, it moves forward -- with no
public scrutiny and no discussion -- because almost no politician wants
to allow a politician to accuse him or her of voting "against"
protecting the children.