CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 4, Group 3

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Many municipalities are beginning to provide free (taxpayer- or advertising-funded) citywide wireless Internet access. Many municipalities are also considering filtering the connections, usually to stop pornography. However, allowing the government to control information flow is fraught with danger to free speech, especially in the absence of any laws limiting the government's authority. Examine the ethical considerations posed by filtering of municipal WAN connections.


Dangers of Internet Filtering

  • Who decides what is appropriate and what isn't?
    • The first amendment guarantees the right to free speech, how can the government justify blocking certain webpages?
  • What criteria are used to decide whether a website is obscene?
    • Example: Denver airports block "racy" content
  • Who is and isn't allowed to access certain material on public networks?
    • Example: Oregon County Libraries propose age-based internet filters
  • Are there sufficient laws to protect user's rights?
    • Most legislators are blissfully unaware of even the most basic computer/internet functions, who could possibly expect them to understand the complex legal issues involved with internet free speech?

Policy Issues

There has not been a clear answer to the question that whether governmental organization should get engaged with the creation of Municipal Wireless Networks (MWN) or not. Many Internet Service Providers have started a legal challenge against creating MWN. The main argument is that the creating MWN is considered unjust competition. MWNs are not only threat to telecommunications and Internet Service Providers but also to the traditional wired telephones, cellular services, and broadcast entertainment. MWN delivers the same service at much lower cost to the customers. Telecoms and ISPs particularly argue that since government entities have a total access to the public assets that can be used to deploy network infrastructure equipment is not a fair competition. So far telecoms and ISPs successfully convinced public officials to pass laws in 14 states that prohibit MWNs to be built by the government. One of these states was Pennsylvania that telecoms and ISPs lobbied to pass law that prohibits municipalities in most of the state from building MWN but only Philadelphia was able to receive an exemption from this law after going through lot of debates.

MWN has some major legal implications and complexities. For example who is responsible for data security, and the related liabilities? Who is responsible for operational performance and customer service manager? Also since Municipal Wireless Networks operate over the whole city, they need to comply with the governmental regulations and licensing requirement.

Other important unresolved policy issues are:

1. Isn’t the installation of the MWNs by the governmental entities implies that government is trying to win private businesses?

2. Isn’t the free and the total access that government has to the public assets that enables them to install the network equipment cause an unfair competition with the private ISPs?

3. Is that okay to spend the public funds to support MWN where the internet service providers are the city or state governments which do not have lot of experience in providing internet service?

4. Maybe we need some new laws to handle the competing goals among MWN stakeholders. Implementers should first try to understand and evaluate the legislative landscape in their community before starting to create MWN.

Ethical Considerations

Free municipal WiFi service offered by the City of Boston, for example, comes with mandatory content filtering that blocks all kinds of sites which are not even close to illegal nor are they sources of pornography that might be considered harmful to children. One the one hand it’s not hard to see why city officials want to avoid the headline: “Boston’s free network a conduit to porn for city’s children, foiling parents’ filtering software.” But does that mean that it’s either wise public policy or constitutionally-permissible for the city to offer wifi to the public with such sweeping and arbitrary constraints?

United States Policy

As a constitutional matter, it’s not quite clear whether the government can require government-funded Internet service providers to filter content. In United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), the US Supreme Court decided that the Congress could require libraries receiving federal Internet access subsidies (the e-rate) to filter out porn. However, it’s not clear whether this case applies to the municipal Wifi situation. The Supreme Court explained:

"A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, any more than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak. It provides Internet access, not to “encourage a diversity of views from private speakers,” … but for the same reasons it offers other library resources: to facilitate research, learning, and recreational pursuits by furnishing materials of requisite and appropriate quality.

Links and Resources

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