CyberLaw Blog

Archive for January 17th, 2009

China Strengthens Internet Porn Crackdown With Arrests, More Closures: “The Chinese government’s crackdown on online adult content has strengthened even more today to now include 28 arrests, several newly targeted areas and a total of 277 website shutdowns over the past 11 days.”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

The Register: Demon ends porn-less Internet Archive block

Be, Virgin – collateral damage

By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Telecoms, 16th January 2009 19:34 GMT

British ISP Demon Internet is no longer blocking access to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, after working in tandem with the IA to correct a ‘technical issue’ with its child-pornography filter.

Earlier this week, multiple Demon customers complained they were unable to access the Wayback Machine, an 85-billion-page web history dating back to 1996. Attempts to retrieve archived webpages were met with error pages whose urls pointed to Demon’s child porn filter, based on a blacklist compiled by the not-for-profit Internet Watch Foundation.

The IWF soon confirmed that its blacklist contains at least one image hosted by the Wayback Machine. But although IWF filters are typically designed to block individual pages, Demon’s filter seemed to be blocking the entire archive.

In a statement tossed our way, Thus Cable & Wireless – the owners of Demon Internet – now say they have resolved the problem. ‘We will continue to work closely with the IWF and others to ensure the safety and security of all web users and address any technical issues, should they arise, in order to deliver the best service to our customers,’ the statement reads. ‘In this instance, the technical issue, an obscure software bug brought to light by the interaction of our filtering technology and the Internet Archive’s servers, has been identified and resolved.’

The company did not elaborate, but a senior engineer with the company has provided an explanation on a newsgroup where users have discussed the blocking. According to this post, Demon customers were unable to access large parts of the Wayback Machine because of the way Demon’s IWF filter interacted with the web cache used by the IA to speed access.

Because at least one Internet Archive page is blacklisted by the IWF, Demon uses a proxy server each time a user requests info from the IA’s servers. If a user requested a page that had not been cached by the IA, Demon’s proxy had a way of mucking with the caching process. When creating a url for the cached page, IA servers were inserting the proxy’s name: iwfwebfilter.thus.net.

This created cache urls that did not point to webpages. And so, more often than not, Demon customers received error pages when attempting to access the Wayback Machine. And because the bogus urls remained in the IA cache, it meant that error pages appeared when surfers on other ISPs attempted to access the same content.

Which explains why some Be Unlimited and Virgin Media customers were having problems with the Wayback Machine.

‘A page with the iwfwebfilter.thus.net URLs could be cached and then served up to non-Demon customers, which explains…other reports of people who’d not been anywhere near the Demon caches seeing ‘iwfwebfilter.thus.net’ where they’d been expecting ‘web.archive.org,” reads the post from that Demon engineer.

Be and Virgin have both told The Reg that their IWF filters have not causing problems with Wayback access. The Internet Archive has not responded to requests for comment.

Last month, IWF-based filters created a similar problem with Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia/online cult. But this issue was resolved when the IWF decided to remove a controversial Wikipedia url from its blacklist. ®

The Register: IWF confirms Wayback Machine porn blacklisting

Be and Virgin mimic Demon censorship

By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Telecoms, 14th January 2009 21:13 GMT

Update Following complaints that its child-porn blacklist has led multiple British ISPs to censor innocuous content on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the Internet Watch Foundation has confirmed the blacklist contains images housed by the 85-billion-page web history database.

But this fails to explain why Demon Internet and other ISPs are preventing some users from accessing the entire archive.

‘The IWF can confirm it has taken action in relation to content on www.archive.org involving indecent images of children which contravenes UK law (Protection of Children Act 1978). The URL(s) in question were added to our URL list according to IWF procedures,’ an IWF spokeswoman told The Reg.

‘Details of every URL on the IWF list are shared with international law enforcement agencies, partner INHOPE Hotlines and some IWF member companies to enable the investigation of those involved in the production and distribution of indecent images of children as well as to help protect the public from inadvertent exposure to this content.’

According to IWF guidelines, blacklisted URLs ‘are precise web pages’ chosen so that ‘the risk of over blocking or collateral damage is minimised.’ But multiple Demon Internet customers say they’re unable to view any sites stored by the Wayback Machine. And in response to our original story on this blacklist snafu, customers of additional ISPs – including Be Unlimited and Virgin – say they’re experiencing much the same thing.

That said, other customers say they’re not experiencing problems. And still others say that access is blocked only intermittently.

The telco that owns Demon Internet, Thus, has not responded to requests for comment. Nor have Be Unlimited and Virgin Media.

Last month, the IWF blacklist sparked another snafu involving the cult of Wikipedia. After a complaint, the IWF blacklisted an image housed by the Wikipedia entry dedicated to Virgin Killer, a mid-1970s record album from German heavy metal band The Scorpions.

In a roundabout way, this led to Wikipedia banning large swathes of the UK from editing the ‘free encyclopedia anyone can edit.’ But just days later, the IWF agreed to lift the Wikiban, though it continued to say the Virgin Killer image is ‘potentially in breach’ of the UK Protection of Children Act.

When we asked the IWF what archive.org images are blacklisted, why ISPs are blocking access to the entire Wayback Machine (in some cases), and whether the organization could put us in touch with blacklist handlers at the ISPs in question, a spokeswoman declined to help. ‘The content involved indecent images of children,’ she said. ‘The aspects of list implementation are distinct from IWF’s role in providing the URLs.’ ®

Update
Thus has worked with the Internet Archive to resolve this problem. You can read all about it here.

The Register: Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history

Demon blacklist muzzles Wayback Machine

By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Telecoms, 14th January 2009 06:24 GMT

Updated A further update to this story an be found here

Four weeks after birthing a nationwide Wikipedia edit ban, Britain’s child porn blacklist has led at least one ISP to muzzle the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine – an 85 billion page web history dating back to 1996.

According to multiple customers of Demon Internet – now owned by Brit telecom Thus – the London-based ISP is blocking access to all sites stored in the archive. When they query the Wayback Machine, hoping to retrieve archived pages, customers are met with generic ‘not found’ error pages. But judging from their urls, these pages are generated by a web filter based on the blacklist compiled by the Internet Watch Foundation, a government-backed organization charged with policing online pornography.

One Demon customer tells us he was unable to visit archived versions of websites run by the BBC, Parliament, the United Nations, the Internet Watch Foundation, Demon Internet, and Thus. In other words, this customer points out, Thus is blocking its own web history. ‘It is nuts,’ he says.

His experience is confirmed by other Demon customers posting to a Demon newsgroup here.

We have contacted both Thus and the Internet Watch Foundation, but they did not receive our messages until after UK business hours. When they respond, we will update this story.

It is unclear why Demon’s IWF filter would block the entire archive. Presumably, the archive is housing images flagged by the IWF, and in an effort to censor these images, Demon has censored everything. But it appears the problem does not extend to all ISPs. One Demon customer says he has no problem accessing the Wayback Machine from his Vodafone mobile internet service.

Another user calls the archive blockage ‘yet more ‘unintended collateral damage’ from the IWF. Didn’t they actually learn anything from their Wikipedia disaster just before Christmas?’

In early December, under IWF instructions, at least six UK ISPs censored the Wikipedia entry dedicated to Virgin Killer, a mid-1970s record album from German heavy metal band The Scorpions. The album’s original cover depicts a naked prepubescent girl.

The IWF had received a complaint about the Virgin Killer image, and after deciding the image may violate the UK Protection of Children Act, the British net censor added Wikipedia to a blacklist designed to shield ISPs customers ‘from inadvertent exposure to a potentially illegal indecent image of a child’.

To block the image, those six ISPs began routing all Wikipedia traffic through a small number of transparent proxy servers, and in a roundabout way this resulted in Wikipedia banning edits from large swathes of the UK.

Because ISPs were squeezing all Wikitraffic through proxies, most editors appeared to be coming from the same IP range. If Wikipedia admins banned one editor for ‘vandalizing’ the site, they banned untold thousands more.

But days later, after complaints from across the web, the IWF removed Wikpedia from its blacklist. ‘The IWF board has today considered [its previous] findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case, and – in the light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability – the decision has been taken to remove this web page from our list,’ the net censor said. ®
Update

The IWF has responded to say ‘We’re investigating the issue more fully at the moment and will discuss it with Thus to get a better understanding of what has happened.’

The not-for-profit wants to make it clear that ‘we only add URLs to our list and blocking is implemented by our member companies to ensure only access to specific URLs is blocked. ‘

Customers of ISPs Be Unlimited and Virgin have also noticed some Internet Archive blocking.
Update 2

The IWF has now said that it has indeed blacklisted images housed by the Internet Archive. But its guidelines say that blacklisted URLs ‘are precise web pages’ chosen so that ‘the risk of over blocking or collateral damage is minimised.’ And the organization will not speak for ISPs that seems to be blocking the entire archive (in some cases).

Turks circumvent YouTube ban – The National Newspaper

Thomas Seibert, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: January 16. 2009 9:30AM UAE / January 16. 2009 5:30AM GMT

ISTANBUL // Two months ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, stunned the public by admitting that he has joined hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens in doing something that the country’s courts say is forbidden: watch clips on the internet video portal YouTube.

Commenting on a decision by the main secular opposition party to accept women in strict Islamic clothing into its ranks for the first time, Mr Erdogan told reporters accompanying him on an official visit to India in November they should ‘get on YouTube’.

The website had clips showing earlier opposition meetings in which women wearing Islamic dress had been criticised, he said. When a reporter remarked that access to YouTube is blocked in Turkey, Mr Erdogan replied: ‘I get in, you can do so as well.’

Access to YouTube in Turkey was blocked in May, following a decision of a court in Ankara that reacted to a clip allegedly insulting Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Comments like the one by Mr Erdogan show that the ban is very unpopular and widely ignored, but observers say the blockage is unlikely to be lifted as long as the law behind it is still on the books.

‘The law was a mistake and the implementation is flawed,’ said Ibrahim Sarioglu, general secretary of the All Internet Association, or TID, an internet lobby group that has several leading telecommunications companies among its members.

Mr Sarioglu said the law, officially known as the Law Concerning the Regulation of Internet Broadcasts and the Fight against Crimes Committed via these Broadcasts, which came into effect in late 2007, has ‘put Turkey on the list of countries that practise censorship’.

YouTube is not the only popular website that has been a victim of a ban in Turkey: Wordpress, Geocities and the Turkish Google Groups were also hit with temporary bans in the past, triggering fears Turkey’s image abroad may be damaged.

‘I do not want to see Turkey among those countries in the world that ban YouTube,’ Abdullah Gul, the president, said in a recent television interview.

Mr Sarioglu said the internet law made it difficult to get rid of bans as courts in Turkey can without a hearing close down access to a website if the website or it content is deemed to cause offence.

To get access re-established, the owner of the website or a Turkish citizen who argues that the ban causes him harm can apply to the judiciary. In the case of YouTube, no one has filed a case yet to get access cleared, Mr Sarioglu said. ‘This is Turkey. People are afraid of the state.’

The TID has applied to the Danistay, the top administrative court in Turkey, to get the law revoked. The Danistay could also decide to ask the constitutional court to declare the law null and void, Mr Sarioglu said. But the legal battle will take time. It may take two years or even longer for the Danistay to reach a decision in the TID’s case.

The transport minister, Binali Yildirim, whose responsibilities include telecommunications, admitted last month the application of the law was causing trouble. ‘There are mistakes stemming from the interpretation of the law,’ Mr Yildirim said, referring to the frequent court decisions to ban websites. ‘Unfortunately, the YouTube matter has reached a point beyond the original aim’ of the ban. The minister said Turkish judges would become more knowledgeable in internet matters over time and would start handing down ‘proportionate’ sentences.

Mr Sarioglu said the aim of the religiously conservative government of Mr Erdogan was to stop pornography and strengthen the protection of minors, ‘but the law can be misused’. Last year, a Turkish newspaper estimated that access to more than 800 websites is blocked.

Reasons for orders to block websites vary. Some bans deal with websites connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish rebel group that has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule since 1984. Last year, Adnan Oktar, a controversial Muslim author and creationist who writes under the name of Harun Yahya, successfully applied to a court in Istanbul to block access to the website of Richard Dawkins, the author of the global bestseller The God Delusion. According to news reports, Mr Oktar felt his personal rights had been violated by comments Mr Dawkins made about one of his books, the Atlas of Creation, by speaking about the ‘breathtaking inanity’ of the book’s contents.

Mr Erdogan’s comments, however, showed that many Turks have found ways to get around the bans. Following the prime minister’s advice to the reporters on board his plane to India, several Turkish media provided tips on how to beat the YouTube ban. The website is believed to be the 9th most popular in Turkey and the television news channel CNN-Turk estimated last year that about 1.5 million access it every day.

tseibert@thenational.ae

US – Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies: “(Berkman Center)
Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force’s inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users – including parents – can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.”

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

EU privacy watchdog laments weakened privacy proposals: “

Council of ministers ‘watering down’ protection

The European Union’s Council of Ministers has weakened proposals to overhaul EU privacy laws and left people with fewer protections for their personal information, the privacy watchdog for EU institutions has warned.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Child porn in the age of teenage ’sexting’: “

Two cases show right, wrong way to prosecute

Analysis An international child pornography ring that traded more than 400,000 illegal images and videos – some depicting pre-pubescent children in sexual and sadistic acts – is the kind of heinous behavior that makes you glad there are strict laws against such things. Seven US men were convicted of the crime on Wednesday.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Online advertisers team up on privacy principles: “

Self-regulation to head off Phorm backlash

Advertisers and agencies in the US have promised to create a code of practice to allay fears about increasingly intrusive forms of online advertising. Four major advertising trade associations said that they will work together on self-regulation.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Germany pushes IWF-style child abuse blocklist: “

What could possibly go wrong?

The German government has proposed regulations that will oblige local ISPs to apply a government-mandated block list.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)