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Communications Decency Act Tipping Under Cuomo Kid-Porn Accord

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

It's commendable that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to curb online child porn. But his accord with Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint -- which more ISPs are likely to join -- opens up a Pandora's box of chilling side effects.

Among the most important is a challenge to the long-accepted notion that ISPs are generally immune from liability for content posted by users, under the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Under the Cuomo deal, the ISPs seem to acknowledge a moral role in policing the internet.

"We are committed to ensuring our users are not exposed to the horror that is child pornography," Verizon Deputy General Counsel Tom Dailey said.

Under the Cuomo plan, the ISPs would filter child porn on Usenet newsgroups via hash-marking technology, in which the same photos can be traced and blocked. But the three ISPs are voluntarily going much farther than that, largely curbing or derailing access to Usenet, a three-decade-old system designed to swap information electronically.

The ISPs have also agreed to purge their servers of web sites that are deemed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to carry child pornography. Child porn, quite properly, enjoys no First Amendment protection. But once this mechanism is in place, the companies will be sorely tempted to apply it to other types of content.

"Others are now likely to get in line asking to [filter] different material," said Wendy Seltzer, an online scholar at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

It's possible that Sprint's, Verizon's and Time Warner's move against kiddie porn is a salvo to head off congressional action that might lead to even broader censorship. We all know that bad facts make bad law, and there's nothing worse than producing and distributing child porn. But the Cuomo deal is an indication that the dynamic that's kept the internet largely free of government intrusion is beginning to crack.

Cuomo himself acknowledges that his plan, even if adopted by all ISPs, is not a panacea for child pornography -- that it's impossible to wipe out all kid smut on the internet, and that his plan does not target the makers or buyers of the illicit pornography.

Yet Cuomo said the participating ISPs should be applauded.

"These companies are leading the industry and instituting new and innovative ways to stop their service from being used by people looking to distribute and access child pornography. I call on all internet service providers to follow their example and help deter the spread of online child porn," he said.

The filtering regime comes as at least one ISP looks at using similar technology as an anti-piracy tool. AT&T has said it it's working with the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America on a plan to implement digital fingerprinting techniques to filter pirated content from the internet.

See Also:

• Former Prosecutor: ISP Content Filtering Might be a 'Five Year Felony'
• U2 Manager Wants ISPs to Filter File Sharers; Threat Level Calls ...
• Google Unveils YouTube Copyright Filter to Mixed Reviews
• OpenDNS Launches Free Porn Filter
• NebuAd Defends Murky System to 'Opt-Out' From Charter Snooping
• Computer Programs Decide Humans' Fates, Set Social Policy ...
• Music Label's Copyright Argument is Rubbish
• DDoS Packets are Two Percent of Net Traffic, Report Says

Full post as published by Threat Level on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).