Senator Diane Feinstein added an odd amendment to the stimulus package aimed at forcing ISPs to regulate copyright infringement (and child pornography) on their networks.  The content filtering amendment has been pushed off the stimulus bill, but more for procedural issues than merits making it likely we’ll see it again.

Feinstein’s amendment is a dream for copyright holders with little regard for consumers and service providers (ironic Feinstein’s from California, right?). Her amendment calls “for reasonable network management practices such as deterring unlawful activity, including child pornography and copyright infringement.” These being the most heinous things one can do online.  Congress almost regularly puts up these “stop child pornography” bills that chill free speech and are struck down by the courts, but no members of Congress are likely to vote against protecting our children.

Content filtering, for all the grandstanding done by copyright holders (and attorney generals against child pornography), are wholly ineffective.  No technology has been shown to know what’s copyrighted material or even pornography, legal or otherwise.  So this reasonable network management is pie in the sky meant to put the responsibility of policing everyone on ISPs who are protected under various safe harbor provisions.  The only way they could even attempt this is with deep packet inspections which lead to serious privacy concerns.  Public Knowledge brought great attention to the issue, which is quiet for now, but likely to return again.