14.4 Conclusions

In general, censorship refers to the official suppression of information as published in specific media, such as newspapers, films , and books. In the past, many states have developed a highly refined system of censorship. Although most information is allowed to flow freely , certain kinds of information are censored nationwide . In particular, we mentioned propagandistic material from the radical left or right-wing and child pornographic images or video sequences as examples.

More recently, the question has arisen whether there is need for censorship on the Internet and the WWW. If this question is answered with a yes, the next question to ask is about technologies that can eventually be used to enforce censorship on the Internet and the WWW. This question was addressed in this chapter. In fact, we addressed two technologies, namely content blocking as well as content rating and self-determination. ^[5]

The issue of content blocking is a difficult and, at times, emotional issue. Based on a thorough analysis of content blocking technologies, the previously mentioned Australian report concluded that content blocking implemented purely by technological means will be ineffective , and neither of the two approaches (IP address- or packet-level blocking and URL- or application-level blocking) should be mandated [3]. Instead, the report argues that ISPs could be encouraged to offer differentiated services to their subscribers, based on access to the Internet through a proxy server. The following two services may be considered :

A clean service for which the proxy server includes a list of permitted URLs. Requests for URLs found on the list should be served , whereas requests for URLs outside the list should be refused .
A best-effort service for which the proxy server includes a list of refused URLs. Requests for URLs found on the list should be refused, whereas requests for URLs outside the list should be served.

Obviously, the distinction between a clean service and a best-effort service is similar to the distinction between the two stances of a firewall policy (what is not explicitly allowed is refused and what is not explicitly refused is allowed). In either case, ISPs may incur some costs in setting up differentiated services. These costs could either be passed on to clients in increased fees, or an ISP may see some competitive advantage in providing such an environment to clients . Alternatively, the governments may consider providing some incentives to ISPs to offer such differentiated services.

In either case, international cooperation is needed to determine jurisdiction. Locally hosted content that is either illegal or considered to be offensive is best handled by a direct approach to the ISP or the organization that hosts the material, requesting that the ISP or hosting organization take appropriate action. However, most content on the Internet resides on foreign servers. In fact, the content in question may be entirely legal in the jurisdiction in which it is being hosted, as a result of differences in international regulation. Consequently, the authors of [3] propose

international forums to create the necessary infrastructure, so that organizations that host content could determine the jurisdiction of the client software making the request. Having determined the jurisdiction, the server could find out whether the requested content was legal in the client s jurisdiction.

Finally, at the time of this writing it is not clear whether any form of censorship on the Internet or WWW ”either content blocking or content rating and self-determination ”will be accepted by Internet users at all. Statistical investigations will have to clarify this point. Also, statistical investigations must be done to quantify the costs that are involved in any censorship technology.

^[5] Note that the proponents of content rating and self-determination technologies often argue that their technologies do not enforce censorship (but, rather, some more sophisticated access control). In either case (and whatever the claims of the corresponding proponents are), content rating and self-determination technologies are being designed for building censorship software, and, as such, represent technologies that can be used to enforce censorship.