[IP] Why Congress can't code good tech laws

[Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1014_3-5209091.html

Bad laws, bad code, bad behavior
May 10, 2004, 10:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

A congressional hearing on Internet porn last week illustrates what happens 
when politicians try to ban technology they don't like or understand.

The topic of Thursday's meeting of the House of Representatives' consumer 
protection subcommittee was a bill intended to require that programs like 
Kazaa and Grokster obtain parental consent before installation. 
Peer-to-peer software is starting "to lure our children from the perceived 
safety of the family living room out into the dangers of the Internet 
wilderness," subcommittee chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., warned.

The only problem: The bill that Stearns and his colleagues suggest as a 
solution is so broadly worded that it regulates far more than just 
peer-to-peer applications. Anyone distributing instant-messaging programs, 
File Transfer Protocol software or Internet Relay Chat clients would have 
to follow a complicated set of regulations to be published by the Federal 
Trade Commission, which might as well be renamed the Federal Software 
Regulatory Commission.

Software distribution sites like those of SourceForge and the Comprehensive 
Perl Archive Network would be outlawed, if they did not follow these 
byzantine legal rules, which include obtaining "verifiable parental 
consent," if the downloader is a minor, ensuring that the software can be 
readily uninstalled, keeping "records of its compliance" and so on. Anyone 
running such a Web site outside the United States would be required to hire 
a "resident agent" and file reports with the FTC--hardly a boon to the 
burgeoning global open-source movement.

The so-called Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act is just 
one example of politicians attempting to write rules for software--often 
with a worthwhile goal in mind--that end up hurting legitimate programmers, 
network administrators and end users. In other words, state and federal 
laws regulating technology often invoke an even more powerful rule: the law 
of unintended consequences.

[...remainder snipped...]
_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/