Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Internet? How does that work?

Based on the anti-cyberbullying bill recently proposed to parliament, I think it's time our politicians went back to school and learned exactly how the internet works.

Under the proposed legislation, ISPs would be required to remove bullying content or shut down any site they hosted which refused to comply with a notice to take down such material.

That's fine and dandy -- for sites that are actually hosted by local ISPs but those are such a tiny percentage of potentially infringing content that the idea is ludicrous.

Reports seem to indicate that most cyberbullying takes place over popular social media sites and services such as Facebook and Twitter. This legislation would either be impotent or produce unacceptable (to many) censorship if it were enacted.

Imagine if someone posts a "bullying" comment to Facebook and someone invokes the law...

Which ISP would be called on to take down the content?

Well it would have to be whichever service provider is hosting Facebook -- which is Facebook itself. What if Facebook decides the content is okay? What does the law do then?

Well it can't do a damned thing, because Facebook operates outside the jurisdiction of NZ's courts.

Will all NZ ISPs then be required to block Facebook for its non-compliance and ongoing hosting of "bullying" content?

Can you imagine the public outrage that would occur if people logged on to the Net and found that attempts to access Facebook were met with a page that said "Under the provisions of the Cyberbullying Act 2014, this website has been blocked for hosting content deemed illegal"?

Of course that's just not going to happen!

Sure, if someone hosts stuff on a local website run by a local ISP then the proposed law would force the provider to disable that website -- but those sites haven't proven to be the problem.

I'm not about to suggest for one minute that cyber-bullying isn't a very real problem that can have some disastrous real-world consequences (Charlotte Dawson's suicide?) but if our legislators think that this feeble, ill-conceived response is anything more than "patting at it" then they need a kick up the backside.

It seems that too many of those who create the laws still just "don't get it" when it comes to the Net.

The borderless operation of the web makes it impossible to create laws that will allow control over content without some form of international accord -- as has been forged in the case of Copyright.

Unlike the USA, the NZ government just doesn't have the clout required to force its laws on other sovereign nations.

Please visit the sponsor!

(Sorry, forums are stuffed at present)

PERMALINK to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font