Two different views on filtering by ISPs

This week, the New York Times has been running a series on various issues related to the transfer of information over the internet. Saul Hansell, in his "Bits" column, has touched on copyright, content filtering, digital fingerprinting, piracy and fair use.

I found the discussion of controlling piracy via Internet Service Providers (ISPs) particularly interesting.

Mr. Hansell sought input from two lawyers: Tim Wu, of Columbia Law School, and Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal. They spent some time on this subject in yesterday's blog:

Mr. Wu says that imposing filters on the internet, regardless of reason, is a potential threat to free speech. He believes that the internet is public infrastructure and as such, ISPs have "a duty to the public to carry our information without messing with it along the way."

He also states that the entertainment industry is not an industry in crisis; he sees one that is after more income - which is understandable, but "not worth hijacking the internet for." He also reminds readers that their concern should be for creators, not the creative industry, and cites the writers strike as an illustration of the difference.

Mr. Cotton, on the other hand, focuses on what he calls the "extraordinary deluge of illegal pirated material being accessed over the broadband ecosystem." He cites studies from 2005 and later that state that peer-to-peer (P2P) networks (the primary method for individuals to obtain and share large files with others) represented 60% of internet traffic at the end of 2004.

In order to control the widespread abuse of copyright infringement, he believes that those in control of the communications - ISPs - need to apply content protection technology.

Mr. Wu disagrees, stating that "tolerating the routine inspection of all content, in the search for 'forbidden' content, is a fast road to a private police state."

Mr. Cotton responds with the question, "Are technology protections aimed at reducing viruses, spam and hacker attacks part of the fast road to a private police state?"

Although I, personally, think that Mr. Cotton is comparing apples to oranges in this statement, both men make good points that we need to be thinking about. It's a perpetual dilemma of librarianship to protect the revenues of the creator of a work of art yet encourage freedom of information.

The thought that my ISP may be slowing the transfer of information from a source to my computer makes me uncomfortable. Yes, I can live with it - but if this is the first step, what's the second?

Currently Reading: still on Stargate Atlantis
Currently Listening to: "Duncan Hills Coffee" by Dethklok (metal & Guitar Hero II)