Roland Perry - "is an ISP a 'Person'?"

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <B9C15BF5.24A5E%zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk>, Peter Fairbrother
<zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk> writes

>Richard Clayton wrote:
>
>> Peter Fairbrother writes:
>> 
>>> It doesn't stop virus scanning, it doesn't stop (most) spam scanning, it
>>> just stops things like autoscanning for eg political content. ISP's can scan
>>> or autoscan for "purposes connected with the provision or operation of the
>>> (telecommunications) service". That they should be able to autoscan for
>>> other purposes would make a mockery of the intent of RIPA.
>> 
>> I think you should consider the law of contract as well. The ISP may
>> well be being paid for a particular type of scanning and everyone is
>> relying on the Lawful Business Practice Regulations....
>
>Criminal law overrides the law of contract. The LBPR's don't apply to
>ISP's... 

I don't agree :(

Where an ISP is acting with the "express or implied consent" of the
system controller (usually the ISP would have a contract with the
business to do some sort of filtering of communications) then the ISP
will indeed have the full protection of these Regulations.

>> .... and then (in true 4-horsemen mode of argument) consider an ISP that
>> sells a service that purports to filter out "adult" material so as to
>> provide a product that parents might consider purchasing for the use of
>> unsupervised offspring.
>
>I don't know of any such service,

The "child-friendly" ISPs probably haven't spent their advertising
pounds in such a way to reach you ! (or the message didn't register)

>> Move on from there to consider the sort of range of filtering that we
>> see in web-based systems (which go way beyond pictures of naked bodies
>> to health information, some political views, non-mainstream views of
>> religion... etc etc). Then reread your paragraph again and consider the
>> political realities of your views.
>
>I'm unsure what you mean by web-based systems. Could you give some examples?

Much of what I wrote was intended to be about email filtering (reception
of unsolicited "adult" material by children is quite a "hot topic" at
the moment).

The parallel I was drawing was with "Net Nanny" type software that
prevents access to some parts of the web. This is generally sold as
preventing access to explicit sexual material, but researchers have
found that the people generating the stop-lists seem to using a much
wider set of criteria than that. A good starting point for learning more
would be http://www.peacefire.org/ though of course if you're running
blocking software then you'll find the site is blocked!

>Where is the filtering done?

This type of software is usually placed on end-user systems though there
have been some attempts to provide services based around transparent
cache systems that would enforce it at the ISP.

Many businesses now run similar software in "firewalls" -- though I've
not seen any research saying whether the agenda extends beyond X-rated
material...  some businesses, to take an example, might wish to prevent
access to employment agencies, competitors help wanted pages or just
(for productivity reasons) to holiday booking sites!

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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