ISPs Soon To Act Like Internet Cops

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.p2pon.com/2011/07/02/isps-soon-to-act-like-internet-cops/ ..... (via ArsTechnica)

Two days ago a major internet conference was held in Paris and ended with the release of an official Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making.

According to this act, ISPs are to be empowered, based on a “voluntary agreement” with content owners and other groups, to act like internet cops.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is only one of the enthusiasts of “civilizing” the internet; last month, for example, he led the e-G8 summit followed by US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron who agreed on the need for Internet “rules of the road” to be debated upon next year.

However, OECD held a meeting of its own at its Parisian HQ at which Internet Policies were discussed by a host of government leaders (including bosses of the FCC, NTIA, a European Commissioner and regulators from across the world), some corporations and a group of civil society groups and academics.

The resulting document contains a lot of noncontroversial material regarding freedom of speech over the Internet and user’s rights. However, according to the same act, ISPs are summoned to take a stand against piracy and become a part of the “solution”.

“Sound Internet policy should encompass norms of responsibility that enable private sector voluntary cooperation for the protection of intellectual property,” says the text. “Appropriate measures include lawful steps to address and deter infringement, and accord full respect to user and stakeholder rights and fair process.”

The end result of these voluntary agreements could be “enforceable under appropriate governmental authority.” And governments should ensure that “sufficient government enforcement resources” are available to “ensure that Internet-based activities comply with law.”

Such measures already took place both in the U.S. and the U.K with similar disastrous results.

The OECD proposal stirred some digital rights groups; in the U.S. the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the document could “encourage states to use Internet intermediaries to police online content, undermining freedom of expression, privacy and innovation across the world” so it refused to sign on. Same happened with the OECD’s Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council, who said: “CSISAC members were concerned about the text’s overemphasis on protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, even at the expense of fundamental freedoms, and without adequate discussion of the other factors that have allowed the Internet to flourish and innovation to take place to date.”

Moreover, the French group La Quadrature du Net declared that “the text’s good opening principles are deeply undermined by copyright-related provisions calling for Internet actors to participate in an endless ‘war on sharing’ and granting them private police and justice missions.”

However, the communiqué was finalized and is to be debated at the London’s conference in November.

Once again we see something bulldozed through by the French.