Enough is enough. Every now and again I’ll read Bill Thompson’s column on the BBC’s website. Every now and again he’ll make a point that, although usually slightly inaccurate, generally has some base in common sense. But then it’ll take a random slant that would not take too much to get the right wing loonies stampeding through the streets waving their copies of the Daily Mail shouting ‘Something must be done about this’ which will inevitably lead to some poorly though out bit of legislation.
A recent example of this is the bill that is currently attempting to be pushed through the US Congress by Senator Lamar Smith of Texas. Basically it says that if you give false information when registering a domain name, you will be liable to up to seven years imprisonment and a maximum $150,000 fine. The reasoning behind this as I understand it is to deter spammers from using fake WHOIS data associated with the domains they send email from and as such make them easier to track down and bring to (hopefully swift, bloody and painful) justice. Now, while any attempt to stem the flow of spam is good in my book, this is hardly going to help the problem while spammers use open SMTP relays (i.e. ill configured email servers which allow anyone to use them to send email) and compromised machines to inform and educate the world about alternative treatments for male impotence - because it has nothing to do with the details registered with registrars about domain name contact information. Add into the mix the fact that most spam originates outside the US and as such out of US jurisdiction, it all starts to seem a little pointless.
But back to Bill Thompson. In his column today entitled ‘How to control what is online‘ he comments on the recent tragedy of Brighton teacher Jane Longhurst who was murdered by Graham Coutts. I shall not go over the gory details here, but suffice to say, the victim’s mother claims ‘Jane would still be here if it wasn’t for the internet.’
Thompson jumps on this choice soundbite to put forth his manifesto on how the Internet should be regulated (although I’m sure he really means the World Wide Web).
He starts off well, pointing out that effective regulation of internet traffic at the packet transport level is rather difficult, with the task of filtering data packets being ‘decidedly non-trivial’ (a term used by serious programmers, apparently. One wonders what term a Sunday programmer would use. A pain in the arse, perhaps) without serious dedicated infrastructure type backup, as with the Great Firewall of China.
He comes to two conclusions. One is to give up the ghost and admit that the Internet (once again, the World Wide Web) is effectively unregulateable, while leaving the task of content filtering at to the user level with ‘parents and school teachers and youth clubs [installing] filters and blocking programs on their computers’.
But then he starts to lose the plot somewhat in suggesting that ‘part of the problem is that the net’s standards are controlled by bodies like ICANN and the Web Consortium (by which I can only assume he means the W3C) whose primary interest is technical stability and corporate interest’.
Now for a quick reality check. ICANN (the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit, private-sector corporation which coordinates the assignment of various bits and pieces the Internet requires to function. These include domain names, IP addresses, protocol parameters and port numbers. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is another not-for-profit organization that develops the language and framework standards that are the icing to ICANN’s cake. These include HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, DOM and a host of other important acronyms. The work of both ICANN and the W3C is influenced, but not dictated, by various industry players (Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, etc).
He then goes on to suggest that he ‘would rather see the network in the hands of governments who can be lobbied, replaced and argued with, than leave it in the hands of the large corporations who develop the programs or standards bodies who are blind to people’s real interests.’
And this is a perfect example of why Bill Thompson is a fucking idiot. Yes, the standards that drive the Internet (not just the WWW) are controlled by these organizations (and what is wrong with technical stability exactly?). However they have nothing at all to do with what content is available online. That kind of control is exercised by individual Internet Service Providers who have ‘fair use’ policies which control the content served from and often, via, their facilities.
Instead, he would rather see the content of the WWW regulated by governments of each individual country, even if said governments have a habit of censorship, media manipulation and human and/or civil rights abuse - but this is okay apparently because ‘not everywhere is the United States or China’. There are reasons why organisations and/or resources that would be very open to abuse by the powers that be have certain levels of, or complete autonomy - non-tech examples of the Bank of England and the judiciary spring immediately to mind.
The (sort of) self regulation the WWW has at the moment may not be ideal, but it’s a lot better than the short sighted alternative he suggests.
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