Where is Jon Solomon ?

Bill Horne, who has been running the Telecom digest for the past
couple of years, since Pat Townson became too ill to handle it, is
trying to put together a history of the digest.  It was originally run
by Jon Solomon, who handed it over to Pat around 1990.

Poking around on the net, I see lots of stuff by JSOL until the late
1980s, and nothing I can find after that.  Does anyone know what
happened to him, or where he is?

Regards,
John Levine, johnl <at> iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

On 12/21/2011 2:18 PM, John Curran wrote:
>    Despite the assertions of folks that Internet should "route around
>    censorship", there are actual children being harmed when we don't
>    use every measure at our disposal to pursue the creators of child
>    pornography.

Now that you've have landed solidly into the position of using this particular 
emotional appeal to justify "use [of] every measure at our disposal", please 
forgive me for feeling the need to remind you that the Constitution and its 
amendments actually require balancing these possibilities against minor matters 
such as violation of civil rights.

We often have measures at our disposal which would produce such violations and, 
therefore, are not permitted to use them.

d/
--

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

since this thread isn't about internet history i think i'll stop posting
beyond this note.

On 12/21/2011 10:18 PM, John Curran wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>
>>
>> I think you'd be wrong to support such a bill, whose positive impact
>> could never be more than to signify the government's displeasure toward
>> a certain kind of content -- it would not protect children from this
>> kind of abuse -- whereas its negative impacts would be far reaching. See:
>>
>> http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/199435-mandates-cant-alter-facts
> Paul - 
>  
>   ... I received numerous orders when
>   running two nationwide ISPs to take action with respect to child
>   porn, and while the due process was rather expeditious and there
>   were occasions of mistakes and compensated parties, I never had
>   any regret in acting on the orders nor do I expect did any of the
>   folks in law enforcement.

nor did i in the years i ran AS6461. but that's not the point.

>  ... and if pursuit of the culprits requires alteration
>   or blocking of DNS, in most states one can face being charged as 
>   an accessory for failure to act in preventing its distribution.

dns blocking isn't about pursuit of culprits, so, that's not the point
either.

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

On Dec 21, 2011, at 1:51 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

> My strong impression was that many in the USG (specifically the Clinton administration) saw the Internet
as an opportunity for a power grab by the US.   It's hardly surprising if Internet developers from all over
the world didn't share that vision.

  
   Strange - we seem to be talking about history of two different Internets...

   The development and management of Internet has always had some form 
   of USG involvement, initial starting with direct funding for various
   development as well as funding for management of critical resources.  
   Over time, this evolved into grants of key developmental work, and 
   from direct oversight (ICCB, 'IAB', FNC) to open multi-stakeholder 
   governance structures (IAB, IETF)

   In fact, the US Government has consistently supported the transition 
   from top-down contracting vehicles to more open bottom-up processes 
   for Internet governance.   In the IP world, this included the 
   decentralization of the IP address management with the delegations 
   to RIPE NCC and APNIC, the approval to move the remaining IP address 
   management from NSI/InterNIC to ARIN in 1997.  In DNS, steps include 
   the formation of ICANN to provide a more international and open process 
   for DNS policy coordination as well as the expiration & replacement 
   of the ICANN JPA with the Affirmation of Commitments framework.

   If someone can point out another organization (other than the USG) which 
   has been more active in consciously releasing its control over the Internet 
   in preference to multistakeholder mechanisms, I'd love to hear about it.
   The evolution to fully free standing certainly is taking a long-time, 
   but that's as much about the maturity of ICANN and multiple new players
   anxiously wanting control in this space as it is about USG letting go.

   Even now, I would not ascribe the actions of a congressional committee 
   bending to corporate lobbying as the general aspirations of "The US 
   Government". It is amusing that the current Administration is now caught 
   having to simultaneously say "the rights of individuals to express their 
   views freely on the Internet are universal" (H. Clinton, Dec 2011) and
   yet disavow that such conflicts with the censorship inherent in SOPA, but 
   again one of those actually reflects long-standing USG policy and whereas
   the other is just an expression of lobbying funds in a pre-election year.

/John

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

On Dec 20, 2011, at 7:23 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

> On Dec 20, 2011, at 6:40 AM, John Curran wrote:
> 
>> Failure to constructively engage with governments regarding their needs, 
>> however, will result in damage to the Internet architecture as they adopt 
>> initiatives (such as SOPA) to impose their requirements after the fact.
> 
> Perhaps, but we also have long experience that says that at least governments will impose "needs" that are
harmful to users (like the ability to censor traffic, or the ability to monitor everything that anyone
does).  So given that government does have some legitimate needs where the Internet is concerned, what
does "constructive engagement" look like?  

Directing them to participate standard developments and technical 
policy development activities to express their needs (e.g. IETF, 
ICANN, RIRs)  

Directing the Internet technical community to participate in the 
various Internet Governance activities, to help build frameworks of 
principles that reflect and respect to the nature of the Internet  
(e.g. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/58/49258588.pdf)

> I don't think it looks like cooperating with the US government when it wants to censor traffic, but not with
other governments when they want to do so.   And once a mechanism for SOPA is in place, regardless of its
ostensible purpose, it will be used to censor traffic.  I can't imagine that the USG would resist the
temptation to block access to WikiLeaks, for example.

I wasn't suggesting cooperating with the USG with respect to SOPA;
I was noting that SOPA is the type of outcome that occurs when we
fail to proactively engage governments.  For example, if we had a 
pervasive Internet usage/accounting framework, it would be possible
now to argue for after-the-fact billing and/or prosecution. We did
not perceive that as a requirement, and can't retrofit it now, so 
it should be expected that governments will try to meet their needs 
instead via controls up-front on content distribution and access.

/John

Re: Interesting correlation between RPZ and SOPA...

I'm not sure that IH is interested in this, but in case they are, I'm 
forwarding.

I think the discussion is off in the weeds at this point so I'm stopping.

RB

On 12/19/2011 9:43 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
> On 12/20/2011 3:51 AM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>> See comments in-line.
> ok. i'm not sure why you're responding privately; these issues deserve
> sunlight and oxygen. feel free to share, including publication.
>
>> On 12/19/2011 6:39 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>>>> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:35:28 -0800
>>>> From: Richard Bennett<richard <at> bennett.com>
>>>> To: internet-history <at> postel.org
>>>>
> ...
>
>>>> The implications of adopting a law that requires U. S. ISPs to alter
>>>> their response to certain DNS lookups depends to a great extent on the
>>>> expected user response to a lookup failure, which is a very interesting
>>>> discussion but not really technical.
>>> that's... utterly... fantastical.
>>>
>>> the response of the operating systems, libraries, and applications that
>>> users on the internet will be running at the time that a mandated dns
>>> response (or mandated nonresponse) occurs is both interesting AND
>>> technical. and it's central to understanding whether the adoption of
>>> SOPA or PIPA in its proposed form would preempt DNSSEC in the
>>> marketplace. therefore it's the place we'd have to start any serious
>>> inquiry.
>>>
>>> assuming for the purpose of this message that you were not serious,
>>> let's proceed.
>> There are facts to be had that help answer this question, most
>> significantly a Berkman Center study of user responses to DNS
>> filtering in the many nations that require it. Their survey finds that
>> 97% or so of affected parties don't engage in any circumvention
>> measures. [berk2010]
> that study does not answer this question. the question is, what happens
> when lookups fail? very little about circumvention tools is relevant in
> that discussion. circumvention happens in response to many other inputs.
> most of the time lookups succeed but tcp/ip to port 80 fails. the reason
> this question is technical (i'm disputing you here) is that much of the
> user's reaction depends on the application's, library's, and operating
> systems' reactions. and many of the things in the berkman report are
> related to circumvention of non-dns federal blocking systems.
>
>> If you think this is "utterly fantastical" I suggest you take it up
>> with the Berkman people.
> no, sir, i'm taking it up with you, because you claimed it was not a
> technical issue. it is a technical issue, and the technical issues will
> influence the non-technical ones, so, i claim that we have to study the
> technical issues first.
>
>>>> The bill is based on
>>>> the RPZ feature in BIND9 that allows a DNS administrator to attach
>>>> policy to DNS queries. This feature is controversial in some
>>>> quarters in
>>>> its own right, but there's not much of an issue with its current
>>>> implementation and DNSSEC. When BIND9 finds a user looking up a signed
>>>> domain, it simply bypasses the RPZ logic and gives a straight answer.
>>> ...
>>> first, if you're right that this bill really is based on RPZ, then i am
>>> extremely impressed. RPZ came out in summer 2010 and for it to reach the
>>> level of attention where authors of federal legislation in any country,
>>> especially in the U.S., would be impacted by it, astounds me. i thought
>>> it was a coincidence, as in, folks wanted to do this for a long time,
>>> but they couldn't see mandating it if the only dns filtering in
>>> existence was a commercial product (hello nominum!), and when RPZ came
>>> out, it was sort of like a door opened, allowing in what had been
>>> previously kept out.
>> The discussion about a bill of this type started in late 2009 when DNS
>> blackholes and Nominum were known phenomena. By the time the bill was
>> drafted, RPZ had validated DNS blacklisting and made it easy for the
>> drafters to include such a method.
> is this first hand knowledge on your part, or are you reading some
> calendar-related tea leaves here? rpz validates aligned-interests dns
> blocking, but does nothing to validate the goals or approach taken by
> PIPA or SOPA. if someone really did act the way you're describing, then
> they were fools or they were misled by their technical consultants.
>
>>> second, in the manager's amendment to SOPA, allowance is made for an ISP
>>> to "not resolve" which broadly means "don't answer at all, just time
>>> out." i think this would be bad engineering, even if it wasn't politics
>>> (and thus not engineering at all). but since RPZ is based on a rulesets
>>> containing a lot of<trigger,action>   tuples i'd like to state for the
>>> record that no "action" triggerable by RPZ includes "just drop the
>>> query, don't answer." so if the SOPA folks were really basing their bill
>>> on RPZ, they've gone outside the box with the manager's amendment.
>> No, there's more than that. The amended bill contains a stipulation
>> that the DNS providers don't have to do anything that would undermine
>> DNS Security. Whether they don't respond, respond with a signed
>> pointer to the AG's web site,  respond with Next Secure Domain, or
>> simply resolve the query is an exercise left to the reader. Congress
>> isn't writing the config files for the DNS providers at this stage.
> and yet "not respond" is not an RPZ feature, so if SOPA really is based
> on RPZ as a "reasonable measure" then SOPA is simply wrong to offer "not
> respond" as an option. and you should be in a position to know that
> "respond with Next Secure Domain" is not an option since the responding
> server will not possess the proper DNSSEC key for signing such a
> message. nor is "respond with a signed pointer to the AG's web site"
> since the responding server will not possess the key necessary for such
> a signature. "simply resolve the query" is outside the box since it does
> not comply with the law, unless you think an ISP could prevail in court
> if they say simply "there was no reasonable technical measure, so i did
> nothing." (i do not believe an ISP could prevail, since they could not
> afford the legal fees necessary to keep up with the MPAA people in terms
> of pretrial briefs and other filings.)
>
> what this means is not that i'm asking congress to write a config file,
> but rather, i am pointing out that there is no such possible config
> file; what congress is demanding here intersects rather badly with the
> null set. they may as well demand faster than light travel, because my
> answer would have the same form: "the laws of physics don't work that way."
>
>>> this is a problem in the design, and we're still trying to figure out
>>> what to do about it. if a bad guy with a bad domain can drive right
>>> through the RPZ just by signing his bad domain, then that'll either make
>>> DNSSEC very successful (since many domains are "throw aways" used only
>>> for e-crime) or it will make RPZ a total failure. on the risk that
>>> DNSSEC market success will not be the result of this missing feature in
>>> RPZ, i feel like some better answer is needed. but one thing i won't be
>>> putting into RPZ is a way to break DNSSEC -- as SOPA would require for
>>> effectiveness. if SOPA and PIPA were to be revised to say that any
>>> criminal who signs their infringing web site's domain name with DNSSEC
>>> shall be exempt from blocking under this law, then we'd really have
>>> something to talk about.
>> third, you're right, no signed answer is affected by RPZ at present.
>> Right, criminal domains and DNSSEC are on a collision course that will
>> need to be headed off in order for DNSSEC to live up to its claims. I
>> expect that can be done in a few different ways.
> this is nonresponsive, sir. congress has not said "if a bad guy signs
> their domain with DNSSEC then there is no need for ISP's to block access
> to that domain", and until they say that, they cannot use RPZ as an
> example of a "reasonable technical means" to comply with the law. this
> again is an intersection with the null set; it's a void concept; it's
> "crazy".
>
>>>> Congress needs to know whether doing so undermines Internet security,
>>>> impedes the deployment of DNSSEC, or threatens the Internet or DNS in
>>>> some way.
>>> The intent of SOPA is to have it follow the RPZ implementation, and
>>> as stated above, if SOPA is counting on RPZ, then the proposed law needs
>>> to say "and if criminals sign their domain names then they will not be
>>> blocked under this law" or it needs to refer explicitly to the RPZ
>>> specification, online at:
>>>
>>> https://deepthought.isc.org/article/AA-00512/0
>>>
>>> furthermore if they intend to be compatible with RPZ's actual
>>> capabilities for unsigned domain names, they will have to state a
>>> requirement that an unsigned NXDOMAIN, an unsigned CNAME, or an unsigned
>>> replacement answer record set be sent in response to queries for domains
>>> blocked under this law.
>> Good idea, but they won't get any closer than a "such as." It's best
>> if Congress doesn't specify the code.
> as before i am not asking congress for source code, merely some set of
> constraints that does not have a null result. if you're right that they
> are basing their demands on the existence of RPZ then they are
> responsible for staying within the capabilities of RPZ. they have not
> done the latter so i claim that they have no claim on the former. please
> be responsive to my specific complaints and claims, as i am doing for yours.
>
>>>> access to particular subdomains or even smaller units. That seems a bit
>>>> problematic from and overhead perspective so I'd rather not go there.
>>>> That seems to be going on in the Goodlatte amendment.
>>> The alternative to DNS-level filtering is to have ISPs use ACLs to block
>>> i don't know any ISP who has core (that is, the high speed stuff)
>>> equipment capable of singling out DNS messages and doing a deep dive on
>>> them and modifying those that contain subdomains of a hundred or so
>>> (estimated by the SOPA proponents) parent domains. any requirement to do
>>> this would run afoul of the "any reasonable technical measures" wording.
>>> (this "technical measure" would never be "reasonable".)
>> I mean ACLs that block access to specific IP addresses, not to the DNS
>> messages. Routers can do that. BGP filtering would be another approach.
> you said "subdomains" which meant, to me, that you expected these ACL's
> to be DNS-aware. which is it?
>
> moreover, if congress intends to allow ISP's to block by IP address
> rather than by domain name, then how often must the ISP update their IP
> filters to account for changes in the domain name ->  ip address
> mappings? if a criminal changes their IP address a thousand times per
> day (as some criminals already do, so this would not be an innovation)
> then would ISP's be remiss in their compliance with the law if they only
> update their IP address ACL's once per day? be careful how you answer
> because you're either placing an infinite burden on a non-conspirator or
> you're allowing for the possibility that this whole package of law
> achieves no effective result and ends up either being "just for show" or
> being an historical joke.
>
> paul
>

--

-- 
Richard Bennett

Re: Interesting correlation between RPZ and SOPA...

> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:35:28 -0800
> From: Richard Bennett <richard <at> bennett.com>
> To: internet-history <at> postel.org
>
> The main question that the lawmakers considering SOPA and PROTECT-IP
> need an answer to pertains to the effect of mandating domain filtering
> on the deployment of DNSSEC. The EFF's letter is being waved around in
> committee as "proof" that SOPA will somehow undermine DNSSEC or impede
> its eventual deployment, as in "these 83 security experts say that this
> bill threatens the security of the Internet."

i consider it a compelling argument, but as it contains no formal logic,
folks shouldn't refer to it as a "proof".

> The implications of adopting a law that requires U. S. ISPs to alter
> their response to certain DNS lookups depends to a great extent on the
> expected user response to a lookup failure, which is a very interesting
> discussion but not really technical.

that's... utterly... fantastical.

the response of the operating systems, libraries, and applications that
users on the internet will be running at the time that a mandated dns
response (or mandated nonresponse) occurs is both interesting AND
technical. and it's central to understanding whether the adoption of
SOPA or PIPA in its proposed form would preempt DNSSEC in the
marketplace. therefore it's the place we'd have to start any serious
inquiry.

assuming for the purpose of this message that you were not serious,
let's proceed.

> To me, the more interesting question is whether there's a direct
> conflict between DNS filtering and the DNS itself.

i am far less interested in this since it's a settled point, we can look
at what happens today and what has happened in the recent past and know,
simply know, no guessing or computation required, that there is no such
conflict. however this does nothing to inform the more serious inquiry
described above, which is DNSSEC preemption.

> The bill is based on
> the RPZ feature in BIND9 that allows a DNS administrator to attach
> policy to DNS queries. This feature is controversial in some quarters in
> its own right, but there's not much of an issue with its current
> implementation and DNSSEC. When BIND9 finds a user looking up a signed
> domain, it simply bypasses the RPZ logic and gives a straight answer.

i suspect that your mention of RPZ is what caused alan clegg (thanks
alan!) to forward me your message, which led me to subscribe to this
mailing list (thanks joe!). in response to the above, which is
nonsequitur to the real inquiry (which is: whether SOPA and PIPA would
have a preemptive effect on DNSSEC in the market), is in three parts.

first, if you're right that this bill really is based on RPZ, then i am
extremely impressed. RPZ came out in summer 2010 and for it to reach the
level of attention where authors of federal legislation in any country,
especially in the U.S., would be impacted by it, astounds me. i thought
it was a coincidence, as in, folks wanted to do this for a long time,
but they couldn't see mandating it if the only dns filtering in
existence was a commercial product (hello nominum!), and when RPZ came
out, it was sort of like a door opened, allowing in what had been
previously kept out.

second, in the manager's amendment to SOPA, allowance is made for an ISP
to "not resolve" which broadly means "don't answer at all, just time
out." i think this would be bad engineering, even if it wasn't politics
(and thus not engineering at all). but since RPZ is based on a rulesets
containing a lot of <trigger,action> tuples i'd like to state for the
record that no "action" triggerable by RPZ includes "just drop the
query, don't answer." so if the SOPA folks were really basing their bill
on RPZ, they've gone outside the box with the manager's amendment.

third, you're right, no signed answer is affected by RPZ at present.
this is a problem in the design, and we're still trying to figure out
what to do about it. if a bad guy with a bad domain can drive right
through the RPZ just by signing his bad domain, then that'll either make
DNSSEC very successful (since many domains are "throw aways" used only
for e-crime) or it will make RPZ a total failure. on the risk that
DNSSEC market success will not be the result of this missing feature in
RPZ, i feel like some better answer is needed. but one thing i won't be
putting into RPZ is a way to break DNSSEC -- as SOPA would require for
effectiveness. if SOPA and PIPA were to be revised to say that any
criminal who signs their infringing web site's domain name with DNSSEC
shall be exempt from blocking under this law, then we'd really have
something to talk about.

> The intent of SOPA is to have it follow the RPZ implementation, and
> Congress needs to know whether doing so undermines Internet security,
> impedes the deployment of DNSSEC, or threatens the Internet or DNS in
> some way.

as stated above, if SOPA is counting on RPZ, then the proposed law needs
to say "and if criminals sign their domain names then they will not be
blocked under this law" or it needs to refer explicitly to the RPZ
specification, online at:

https://deepthought.isc.org/article/AA-00512/0

furthermore if they intend to be compatible with RPZ's actual
capabilities for unsigned domain names, they will have to state a
requirement that an unsigned NXDOMAIN, an unsigned CNAME, or an unsigned
replacement answer record set be sent in response to queries for domains
blocked under this law.

> The alternative to DNS-level filtering is to have ISPs use ACLs to block
> access to particular subdomains or even smaller units. That seems a bit
> problematic from and overhead perspective so I'd rather not go there.
> That seems to be going on in the Goodlatte amendment.

i don't know any ISP who has core (that is, the high speed stuff)
equipment capable of singling out DNS messages and doing a deep dive on
them and modifying those that contain subdomains of a hundred or so
(estimated by the SOPA proponents) parent domains. any requirement to do
this would run afoul of the "any reasonable technical measures" wording.
(this "technical measure" would never be "reasonable".)

> Anyhow, I'm interested in the topic, and if this isn't the most
> appropriate venue for discussing it, I'm happy to move the discussion
> somewhere else.

i'm new here and if this is off-topic then i hope to be forgiven my
unintentional trespass. certainly the name of this mailing list
(internet-history) does not sound inclusive of this topic. if this
thread moves elsewhere i will move with it.

paul

Re: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

Keith - 

  Government has certain functions that it has to perform (including law 
  enforcement), but generally those tasks are performed with respect to
  "real world entities" such as people and businesses.  It's perfectly 
  reasonable for government to be able to request and obtain the legal 
  parties that were involved in a given communication (even if the answer 
  is nothing more detailed than valid legal contact for a university or
  women's shelter network or whistleblowers non-profit....)  When parties 
  in multiple jurisdictions are communicating, it's particularly important 
  that governments are involved, since there may be very different views 
  about free speech, due process, fair use, libel, etc.)

  We've completed failed to provide a framework which allows governments
  to identify parties and hence use their existing mechanisms (e.g. courts, 
  diplomacy) when it comes to the Internet, and we should not be surprised 
  therefore at government attempts to more directly control communications.  

  It's a shame, since if we had provided better mechanisms, then the inability 
  for the US government to obtain cooperation to identify and shutdown a given
  foreign website streaming US-illegal content would much more clearly be seen
  as an actual failure of common values & diplomacy rather than "a problem with 
  the Internet" per se.

/John

On Dec 19, 2011, at 7:56 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

> I'm concerned about anything that requires ISPs to impose interception proxies (DNS or HTTP or anything
else) on customer traffic.   Interception proxies cause too many problems already.  They need to be
eradicated rather than enshrined in law.
> 
> I'd also be concerned about anything that would view a customer's using an alternate DNS server (or other
name lookup service) as "circumvention".  The Internet community needs the ability to develop better
alternatives to DNS while still retaining compatibility with the DNS name space.
> 
> Keith
> 
> On Dec 19, 2011, at 7:42 AM, John Curran wrote:
> 
>> On Dec 19, 2011, at 4:22 AM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> 
>>> has anyone seen the present state of the bill after two days of mark up?
>> 
>> Present state is here <http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html>
>> 
>> The "Manager's Amendment" is the base admendment, and there are have been four
>> voice votes and one roll vote which have passed and therefore have modified the 
>> base amendment.  Text of all motions to amend and disposition are on the website.
>> 
>> At present, the bill provides for domestic ISPs to be required by "order" to 
>> block (via DNS filtering or other means) websites or portions of websites from 
>> being accessed by their domestic customers.  It enables government to order an 
>> otherwise uninvolved party (the ISP) to interfere with the communications of
>> its customers for the presumed financial benefit of third-party content owners.
>> Depending how one reads the text, such orders either require the decision of 
>> the US Attny Gen or decision of a federal court, and attempts to clarify 
>> this point via amendment have failed repeatedly during the markup process.
>> 
>> FYI,
>> /John
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

Re: Fwd: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

Yes, and just like the EFF letter that some people signed without 
knowing what's in the SOPA bill, it's a blatant misrepresentation of the 
bill. It says:

"It would be ridiculous for an ISP to block the entire whitehouse.gov 
domain on court order because a single user posted a link. "

Yes, that would be ridiculous, but SOPA doesn't permit any domain to be 
RPZ'ed on such a thin pretext. The domain has to be dedicated to 
unlawful commerce, like The Pirate Bay or the sites that sell camcorder 
grabs of newly released movies without a license.

"It is difficult for any web administrator to know which links to 
copyrighted material are done with permission."

SOPA doesn't require any web administrator to know which links to 
copyright material are by permission and which aren't.  It does require 
the operators of UGC site to know whether the site's primary purpose is 
to sell copyrighted material without a license or not, but that's not 
very hard.

"This will kill the free flow of information and conversation on the 
internet."

If you believe that the sale of bogus drugs and unlicensed movies is the 
essence of the "free flow of information and conversation on the 
Internet," sign the petition. If you believe the Internet has 
substantial legitimate uses that don't kill people or otherwise violate 
the law, then don't.

RB

On 12/18/2011 7:37 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
> There is now a petition on the WH website asking the President to veto
> SOPA in the event it passes Congress approval.
>
> http://wh.gov/DfY
>
> -J
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Noel Chiappa<jnc <at> mercury.lcs.mit.edu>  wrote:
>> FYI. I hope many (most?) here can sign: the attempt to interfere with the
>> operation of DNS is particularly problematic, as it will 'break' DNSSEC.
>>
>>           Noel

--

-- 
Richard Bennett

Re: Fwd: [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

FYI. I hope many (most?) here can sign: the attempt to interfere with the
operation of DNS is particularly problematic, as it will 'break' DNSSEC.

	  Noel

--------

Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Eckersley
Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Subject: EFF call for signatures from Internet Engineers against =
censorship
To: David Farber <dave <at> farber.net>

(For the IP list)

Last year, EFF organized an open letter against Internet censorship
legislation being considered by the US Senate
(https://eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/open-letter).  Along with other activists
efforts, we successfully delayed that proposal, but need to update the letter
for two bills, SOPA and PIPA, that are close to passing through US Congress
now.

If you would like to sign, please email me at pde <at> eff.org, with a one-line
summary of what part of the Internet you helped to helped to design,
implement, debug or run.

We need signatures by 8am GMT on Thursday (midnight Wednesday US Pacific, 3am
US Eastern).  Also feel free to forward this to colleagues who played a role
in designing and building the network.

The updated letter's text is below:

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called
the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards
and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it.
We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our
project, the Internet, has brought with it.

Last year, many of us wrote to you and your colleagues to warn about the
proposed "COICA" copyright and censorship legislation.  Today, we are
writing again to reiterate our concerns about the SOPA and PIPA derivatives
of last year's bill, that are under consideration in the House and Senate.
In many respects, these proposals are worse than the one we were alarmed to
read last year.

If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous
fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the
credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet
infrastructure. Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will
risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS) and have
other capricious technical consequences.  In exchange for this, such
legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be
circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties'
right and ability to communicate and express themselves online.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended
to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard
because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just
infringing pages or files.  Worse, an incredible range of useful,
law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals.  In fact, it
seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE
seizures program.

Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and
security problems.  This is true in China, Iran and other countries that
censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship.  It
is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS,
proxies, firewalls, or any other method.  Types of network errors and
insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will
affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The current bills -- SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly -- also threaten
engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily
and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government.
When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were
reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or
control.
We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance
as a design requirement for new Internet innovations.  This can only damage
the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power
over what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open
Internet, both domestically and abroad.  We cannot have a free and open
Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political
concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the
leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly
uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a
neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its
central in the network for censorship that advances its political and
economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, Congressmen, we believe the Internet is too important and too
valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put these bills
aside.

--

Peter Eckersley                            pde <at> eff.org
Technology Projects Director      Tel  +1 415 436 9333 x131
Electronic Frontier Foundation    Fax  +1 415 436 9993

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