http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/02/21/internet.blocking.ap/index.html
Plan to block porn sites sparks outrage
Friday, February 21, 2003 Posted: 2:54 PM EST (1954 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A pioneering strategy to stem online child pornography is
threatening Internet stability because it blocks Web surfers visiting innocent
sites located in the same virtual neighborhoods as those peddling illegal porn,
a prominent civil liberties group says.
In a precusor to a possible legal challenge, the Washington-based Center for
Democracy and Technology said it will try Thursday to compel Pennsylvania’s
attorney general to disclose new details about unusual efforts in that state
forcing Internet providers to block visits to Web sites containing child
pornography.
Lawyers for the group compared the technique to disrupting mail delivery to an
entire apartment complex over one tenant’s illegal actions. At least 423 sites
blocked
Pennsylvania’s attorney general, operating under a highly unorthodox state law
passed last year, has so far instructed Internet providers with customers in the
state to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world.
The law is unusual because it places risks of a $5,000 fine on companies
providing Internet connections to Web sites with illegal photographs, not on the
pornography sites themselves.
“It’s sort of this weird world where we’re not prosecuting the people producing
child pornography,” said Alan Davidson, associate director at the Center for
Democracy and Technology.
Attorney General Mike Fisher, a Republican, has defended the law and his use of
it as an effective method for preventing citizens from viewing child
pornography. Citizens can file an online complaint using a form on Fisher’s Web
site.
“It has worked in nearly every case,” said Sean Connolly, a spokesman for the
Pennsylvania attorney general. Undermining the Internet?
Only once has an Internet provider disputed Fisher’s instructions, and a county
judge ordered WorldCom Inc. in September to comply. WorldCom’s lawyers, while
saying they abhor child pornography, had objected that filters placed on behalf
of Pennsylvania citizens would affect all their subscribers in North America
from visiting thousands of Web sites “completely unrelated in content and
ownership” as the pornographic material.
Lawyers for the civil liberties group and some technology experts said the
strategy in Pennsylvania undermines the Internet’s global connectivity by
regularly blocking Web surfers visiting harmless sites that may be located on
the same server computers as sites with child pornography.
They said they will seek information Thursday from Fisher about his use of the
law under that state’s open records statute. Finding specific sites
In a new study to be published Thursday — coinciding with the group’s move — a
Harvard University researcher, Benjamin Edelman, determined that more than 85
percent of Web addresses ending in “com,” “net” or “org” share computer
resources behind the scenes at Internet companies with one or more other Web
sites. That is a far higher figure than previously recognized.
Edelman, who said he analyzed 30 million Web addresses over six weeks, said some
Web sites share a single numerical Internet address with dozens of other sites.
He said this level of sharing, which uses an increasingly common technique
called “virtual hosting,” interferes with blocking efforts by governments.
In one extreme case, a single Web site, www.a000.net, shared its numerical
address with 970,411 other sites.
Connolly, the spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general, said that in such
cases involving a Web site with a shared address, authorities contact the
Web-hosting companies and order them — under threat of legal action — to pinpoint
and shut down the illegal pornographic sites.