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IN
FOCUS:
The Internet Is Not Government's to Regulate
Jim Harper, The Cato Institute
Imagine that Congress passed a law setting
up a procedure that could require ordinary citizens like you to remove telephone
numbers from your phone book or from the "contacts" list in your phone. What
about a policy that cut off the phone lines to an entire building because some
of its tenants used the phone to plot thefts or fraud? Would it be okay with you
if the user of the numbers coming out of your phone records or the tenants of
the cut-off building had been adjudged "rogue" users of the phone.
Cutting off phone lines is the closest familiar parallel to what Congress is
considering in two bills nicknamed "SOPA" and "PIPA" -- the "Stop Online Piracy
Act" and the "Protect IP Act."
Simplify put, every computer and server has an IP (or "Internet Protocol")
address, which is a set of numbers that uniquely identify its location on the
Internet. The IP address for the server hosting Cato's Spanish language site,
elcato.org, for example, is 67.192.234.234.
Now, these numbers are hard to remember, so there is a system that translates IP
addresses into something more familiar. That's the domain name system, or "DNS."
The domain name system takes the memorable name that you type into the address
bar of your computer, such as elcato.org, and it looks up the IP address so you
can be forwarded along to the IP address of your choice.
One of the major ideas behind SOPA and PIPA is to cut Internet sites that
violate copyright out of the domain name system. No longer could typing "elcato.org"
get you to the website you wanted to visit. Much of the debate has been about
the legal process for determining whether to strike out a domain name.
But preventing a domain name lookup doesn't take the site off the Internet. It
just makes it slightly harder to access. The government would require
law-abiding citizens to "black out" phone numbers -- or Internet service
providers to do the same with domain names. It doesn't make sense. The practical
burdens on the law-abiding Internet service provider would be large.
"Blacking out" an entire building -- just like a website -- would cut off the
lawful communications right along with the unlawful ones. It's
through-the-looking-glass information control, with enormous potential to
obstruct entirely lawful communications and impinge on First Amendment rights.
That's why many websites on Wednesday were "blacking out" in protest.
In various ways, sites like Craigslist.org, Wikipedia and many others are
signaling to their visitors that Congress is threatening the core functioning of
the Internet with bills like SOPA and PIPA. And threatening all of our freedom
to communicate.
The Internet is not the government's to regulate. It is an agreement on a set of
protocols -- a language that computers use to talk to one another. That language
is the envelope in which our communications -- our First-Amendment-protected
speech -- travels in hundreds of different forms.
The Internet community is growing in power. (Let's not be triumphal --
government authorities will use every wile to maintain control.
Hopefully the people who get engaged to fight SOPA and PIPA will recognize the
many ways that the government regulates and limits information flows through
technical means. The federal government exercises tight control over the
electromagnetic spectrum, for example, and it claims authority to impose
public-utility-style regulation of Internet service provision in the name of
"net neutrality."
Under the better view -- the view of freedom behind opposition to SOPA and PIPA
-- these things are not the government's to regulate.
Jim Harper is director of information policy studies at
the Cato Institute.
See originally published article here |
