See also:
"Will Canada's Internet providers become spies?"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03922.html
--
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 10:02:15 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan_at_well.com>
From: Jason Young <jyoung_at_lexinformatica.org>
Subject: Canada to licence ISPs?
Declan,
A recent private member's bill (Bill C-234) introduced in Parliament calls
for licencing of Canadian ISPs as a measure to prevent child porn. The bill
has almost no chance of passing, but in the context of other activity in
the House - namely the CoE cybercrime amendments - deserves scrutiny.
I've written a brief but accessible legal analysis piece on it, which I
excerpt below.
Also relevant:
Matt Skala's weblog http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lw/?id=2002102601
Bill C-234 story on Slashdot
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/10/23/1739253.shtml?tid=158
Lawful Access proposals http://www.lexinformatica.org/cybercrime/
Sincerely,
Jason
---
On October 21st, MP Peter Stoffer (NDP, Sackville-Musquodoboit
Valley-Eastern Shore) re-introduced a private member's bill that would
require all ISPs to be licenced by the CRTC.
The Internet Child Pornography Prevention Act, first introduced in 1998 by
former MP Chris Axworthy, defines ISPs as "a person who provides a service
that facilitates access to the Internet, whether or not the service is
provided free or for a charge." It would include non-profits and
intermediaries who provide services ancillary to necessary access, such as
caching, or those which facilitate access to the substance on the Internet,
rather than the infrastructure, such as web hosting.
The definition embraces a potentially much larger number of intermediaries
than that recently contemplated by the Federal Court of Appeal. In SOCAN v.
CAIP et al., [2002] F.C.A. 166, the court reviewed a Copyright Board
decision and found that the role of an Internet intermediary is prima facie
passive because they do not have the practical capacity to exercise control
over the content of the material that is transmitted. The court set out a
three part test for determining eligibility for limitation of liability -
often termed a 'safe harbour' - for ISPs. First, the intermediary's
activities must amount to the provision of "the means of
telecommunication"; second, these means must be "necessary" for enabling
another person to communicate a work to the public; and third, the
activities in question must constitute the intermediary's "only act" with
respect to the communication. Bill C-234 contains no such safe harbour.
Full story:
http://www.lexinformatica.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=37&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
--
---
http://www.lexinformatica.org
http://www.privaterra.org
http://www.epic.org
830F AE11 91C5 946E CF80 684C F13C 79C3 46E1 1518
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Received on Oct 27 2002
Intro
