Former Prosecutor Says ISP Content Filtering Might Be a 'Five Year Felony'

[Joanne98]

Wired, May 22, 2008
By Ryan Singel

Internet service providers that monitor their networks for copyright infringement or bandwidth hogs may be committing felonies by breaking federal wiretapping laws, a panel said Thursday.

University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm, a former federal computer crimes prosecutor, argues that ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Charter Communications that are or are contemplating ways to throttle bandwidth, police for copyright violations and serve targeted ads by examining their customers' internet packets are putting themselves in criminal and civil jeopardy.

"These ISPs are getting close to the line of illegality and may be violating the law," Ohm told conference goers at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference Thursday.

Charter's proposed test of a system that eavesdrops on the URLs its customers visit, in order to serve them targeted ads, has already spurred a powerful Congressman to question whether the scheme would violate the Cable Act. For its part, Comcast's heavy-handed throttling of peer-to-peer sharing by sending fake stop messages to its customers has the Federal Communications Commission holding hand-wringing public hearings over whether it should ban the practice as being inconsistent with its open network principles.

But Ohm thinks the legal quandary is simpler. These schemes all seem to violate the Wiretap Act, a federal statute banning eavesdropping that comes with criminal and civil penalties. That law has some exceptions for service providers to monitor content, but only when necessary to deliver service, or to protect the company's "rights and property."

In fact, Ohm thinks network system administrators could themselves be in legal trouble, just for following orders from their bosses to install monitoring devices.
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http://freepress.net/node/40171

[TomInTib]

1. Subscribe to Gmail and see what happens.

They read the emails you receive and tailor the ads on the page accordingly, sometimes with hilarious results.

[cstanleytech]

6. Yeah but Gmail is not an isp so the law might not apply to them

it might however apply to comcast, AT&T and any other isp but it will be interesting to see if the courts themselves would agree with the professor and his conclusions.

[ret5hd]

2. Well, I am glad to see Ohm put up a measure of resistance to this!!!

Get it? Get it?

Oh god, i kill me! :rofl:

[NCDem60]

3. Say watt???? :)

[ret5hd]

4. This thread has potential.

[NCDem60]

5. There will be resistance.

[cstanleytech]

7. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!!

*grin* Just interjecting a little star trek humor there.

[Doctor_J]

9. He has the capcitance to make an impact

OK, I'm reaching now.

[comtec]

10. that was a farad ballanced statement

ok THAT was reaching!

[Doctor_J]

11. Yes, but Ohm is a real ZERO - he's known in the field as a "jumper"

Let this be the last nail in the coffin of this subthread

[L. Coyote]

8. And civil litigation exposure follows on any felonious eavesdropping!!