Criticism
ICPA cannot be enforced internationally. As is problematic with other Internet legislation, the US does not have extraterritorial rights to force compliance among entities outside its borders.
It also assumes that the most important attribute of all material content distributed on the Internet is whether or not it is "adult" or pornographic (presumably matching some criteria in the minds of the proposers). These are the only forms of content that could be censored by the US Government consistent with the US Constitution. However, many find depictions of violence, intolerance, extremist views, sexist messages or racist content more problematic. The ICPA as a government mandate cannot provide a practical mechanism whereby a myriad of other attributes of material could be assessed and categorised for suitability. This is contrasted with the voluntary Platform for Internet Content Selection which fully enables individuals to voluntarily screen content consistent with their personal world-views.
The current proposal, concentrating as it does on "pornography", does not address any of these aspects, or the presumable requirement to address different combinations of unsuitable materials, dependent on local, cultural, or individual preferences or views. In the absence of any common view as to what attributes of content, if any, require regulation, the most pragmatic approach would appear to be eschew censorial categorisation of any form, and allow individuals to filter their own access.
The ICPA seeks to criminalize obscenity sent over "community ports". Obscenity is already illegal pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 1460-1466 to 47 U.S.C. § 223(a) & (b). Certainly no publisher of content would have an incentive to label their content "obscene" for purposes of not being put on "community ports" where such an announcement would subject them to criminal liability.
Critics have also likened the proposal to the "evil bit" of RFC 3514 due to problems of defining what types of content qualify.
Read more about this topic: Internet Community Ports Act
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)