Technology and Crimes Reform Bill - 11 July 1996
Submission to the Commerce Select Committee
by Roger Hicks
on behalf of
the Council of the Internet Society of New Zealand Inc
July 1996
Summary
This submission is made on behalf of the Internet Society of New Zealand, Inc. The Society has been formed since the introduction of the Bill as an organisation to assist with the coordination and administration of the Internet in New Zealand.
The document presents discussion to support the following conclusions
- that the Bill does not address the technologies it is attempting to legislate, thus making parts of it impossible to comply with or to enforce
- that the Bill is not consistent with attitudes and controls on other forms of communication
- that the Bill's contents will soon require replacement as its basic premises are overtaken by new technology and international events.
Our recommendation is that the Bill be revised to address the above issues and to make its provisions aware of the technologies and other activities designed to support the purposes of the Bill, such as the Platform for Internet Content Selection. We also recommend that support be provided to industry initiatives addressing these issues.
Further we ask that amendments to the Bill be made available for public discussion.
Background
The Internet Society of New Zealand was formed in November 1995, following the request from a public meeting held in the previous May. The Society is a non-profit common interest society whose purpose is to maintain and extend the availability of the Internet and its associated technologies and applications in New Zealand, both as an end in itself and as means of enabling organisations, professionals and individuals to more effectively collaborate, cooperate, communicate and innovate in their respective fields of interest (The full objectives of the Society are listed in the Appendix). It is intended that the Society be the principal organisation representing the interests of Internet users and Internet Service Providers in New Zealand.
As the Society was formed after the call for the submissions to the Technology and Crimes Reform Bill it was not possible for a submission to be made. However the Bill is of significant importance to the Society's members and will have major impact upon them and upon all current and future users of the Internet. The Society requests that this brief submission be accepted as it reflects the views of the major voluntary Internet organisation in the country.
Discussion
A major promoter of the formation of the Internet Society of New Zealand was the Tuia Society. The Tuia Society has presented submissions to the Select Committee on this Bill. Further, since the Bill was first introduced there has been much public discussion concerning its contents. It appears that many of these arguments have been accepted by its sponsor and that amendments may be proposed. As this Bill has generated significant interest, the Society requests that these amendments be made available for public discussion. For these reasons this submission addresses two general topics on the subject addressed by the Bill.
The Bill, Existing Technologies and Current Practice
The Internet is a multi-level multi-service international communications system. The Bill appears to be in ignorance of the technologies that enable this communication system. For example the reference to definitions in the Telecommunications Act 1987, the requirement to "prohibit telecommunication with .. (Clause 15) and "..prohibit telecommunication from within..." (Clause 18), and the concept of the network service provider (Clause 10) all result in situations that are impossible to comply with or impossible to enforce.
The Internet is a communications medium with similarities to and differences from other communications media such as television, radio, film, paper and telephony. However many of these communications media are converging through the changes in technology. For example live radio can be heard through an Internet connection, televisions can be bought with Internet communication capabilities and voice conversations can be held across the Internet; all these capabilities have become available since the original introduction of the Bill in 1994. Through existing legislation (for example: the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act, 1993) New Zealand society has defined its requirements for the control of information and has consolidated a range of communications media together. This Bill provides a different, and more restrictive, requirement (Clause 12) yet the technologies used may be inter-related.
The Bill and Future Technology
The nature of the Internet means that control of objectionable material requires international cooperation. Activities are taking place to address these issues. The rapid development of technologies in this area means that legislation that does not clearly address the complex technological environment and provide for the international developments in this area will rapidly become obsolete , even if it is not obsolete before enactment.
For example: The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) is a project currently underway that may, for example, provide support for the need to regulate objectionable information. In the television technologies field there has been acceptance of the V-chip as a means of identifying content and allowing the viewer, or those in authority such as parents, to control what can be seen. Similarly, but more comprehensively, PICS provides a means to identify the content and for automatic 'viewer' controls to be implemented. (A brief discussion of PICS is provided in the Appendix).
This approach to the management of content will completely change the Bill in its approach to these matters and may well necessitate the review of existing legislation
Conclusion
There are three major concerns about the Bill
- that it does not address the technologies it is attempting to legislate, thus making parts of it impossible to comply with or to enforce
- that it is not consistent with attitudes and controls on other forms of communication
- that it will soon require replacement as its basic premises are overtaken by new technology and international events.
Our recommendation is that the Bill be revised to address the above issues and to make its provisions aware of the technologies and other activities designed to support the purposes of the Bill. We also recommend that support be provided to industry initiatives addressing these issues. These initiatives include, but should not be limited to, moves by the Internet Society of New Zealand to establish an industry code of practice, evaluation and research into the PICS work and its implementation into this country, investigation and promotion of technological solutions and associated educational activities and the assessment of existing legislation as it applies to this form of communication.
Further we ask that amendments to the Bill be made available for public discussion.
Appendix A
Extract from the Articles of Incorporation of the Internet Society of New Zealand, Inc
2. OBJECTS
The Internet Society of New Zealand Incorporated ("the Society") is a non-profit common interest society to maintain and extend the availability of the Internet and its associated technologies and applications in New Zealand, both as an end in itself and as means of enabling organisations, professionals and individuals to more effectively collaborate, cooperate, communicate and innovate in their respective fields of interest. It is intended that the Society be the principal organisation representing the interests of Internet users and Internet Service Providers in New Zealand.
The Society's objects are:
2.1 To promote the competitive provision of Internet access, services and facilities in an open and uncaptureable environment.
2.2
To develop, maintain, evolve, and disseminate standards for the
Internet and its inter-networking technologies and applications.
2.3
To develop, maintain, evolve and disseminate effective administrative
processes for the operation of the Internet in New Zealand.
2.4 To promote and conduct education and research related to the Internet and inter-networking.
2.5
To coordinate activities at a national level pertaining to good
management of centralised systems and resources which facilitate the
development of the Internet, including but not limited to the Domain
Name System.
2.6 To collect and disseminate information related to the Internet and inter-networking, including histories and archives.
2.7
To develop and maintain formal and informal relationships with the
international Internet community, including the Internet Society.
2.8 To represent the common interests of the wider New Zealand Internet community both nationally and internationally.
2.9 To promote widely and generally available access to the Internet.
2.10
To liaise with other organisations, New Zealand Government authorities,
and the general public for coordination, collaboration, and education
in effecting the above objects.
Appendix B
These paragraphs are taken from PICS: Internet Access Controls Without Censorship, Copyright 1996 by A.C.M. Inc (see note)
" With its recent explosive growth, the Internet now faces a problem inherent in all media that serve diverse audiences: not all materials are appropriate for every audience. Societies have tailored their responses to the characteristics of the media: in most countries, there are more restrictions on broadcasting than on the distribution of printed materials. Any rules about distribution, however, will be too restrictive from some perspectives, yet not restrictive enough from others. We can do better - we can meet diverse needs by controlling reception rather than distribution. In the TV industry, this realization has led to the V-chip, a system for blocking reception based on labels embedded in the broadcast stream.
On the Internet, we can do better still, with richer labels that reflect diverse viewpoints, and more flexible selection criteria. PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection, establishes Internet conventions for label formats and distribution methods, while dictating neither a labelling vocabulary nor who should pay attention to which labels. It is analogous to specifying where on a package a label should appear, and in what font it should be printed, without specifying what it should say.
The PICS conventions have caught on quickly. In early 1996, Microsoft, Netscape, SurfWatch, CyberPatrol, and other software vendors announced PICS-compatible products. AOL, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe, and Prodigy provide free blocking software that will be PICS-compliant by the end of 1996. RSACi and SafeSurf are offering particular labelling vocabularies through on-line servers that produce PICS-formatted labels. In May 1996, CompuServe announced that it will label all web content it produces using PICS-formatted RSACi labels. "
Note: This article has been accepted for publication in Communications of the ACM. Copyright c 1996 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by other than ACM must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept, ACM Inc, fax +1(212)869-0481, or permissions@acm.org.
Citation reads:
Paul Resnick, AT&T Research, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, presnick@research.att.com
James Miller, World Wide Web Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer
Science, Room NE43-355, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139,
© 1997 The Internet Society of New Zealand
Submission to the Commerce Select Committee
