As an alternative to your statement that “name surpression is obsolete”, I would propose that “national laws are (or will soon be) obsolete”, and that we will need more common international laws so these things can be enforced globally.

Maybe nations will eventually be obsolete, and we can all finally live in the global village. John Lennon would have approved.

Bring on world order. Ahem, on second thought, perhaps not.

Mundens – It’s a good analogy. Would you like to turn it into an article about the futility of blocking/filtering to be published on an about to be launched website?

Jack – I don’t agree with your interpretation of the language of that clause, I believe that Internet NZ has asked the Law Commission for clarification. However, that just brings into doubt the whole idea of suppression.

Consider the recent case where “an entertainer” was convicted of offensive behaviour in Wellington and given name suppression. People seemed determined to tell me the name (which I’m not going to pass on here) and I heard it multiple times on Facebook and Twitter. You can also find it in the history edit history of the wikipedia page about them.

If we are going to have suppression at all, we either have to do what I believe the Law Commission has asked for (and which I don’t believe is technically possible) or… well, there is no or. I fear that name suppression is obsolete.

I don’t read this as a new way to block foreign sites but as a way to enforce an otherwise good (and existing) law – to protect personal privacy rights of those involved in crimes. If an ISP knowingly publishes the information (or doesn’t remove it from their own sites after being made aware of it) they are in breach of those rights of the individuals involved.

I don’t believe the law commission is attempting to force ISP’s to block access to other sites beyond their own scope, via evil censorship powers. Perhaps the wording of the clause should be changed to reflect a definition of the word “carrying” but I think the intent of the proposed law is fine.

– Jack M.

An analogy to the above Law Commission suggestion that may make it more obvious to people who don’t understand the internet, why it won’t work, is to equate it to phone calls.

The request to block a site is technically exactly the same as a person, having made a phone call via Telecom to a person they know in China, being told some information that has been suppressed in New Zealand, and raising this to the court, the court then requests Telecom (for example) to block access to calling that number in China for all people in New Zealand.

The obvious flaws are that Telecom is not the only international provider, so anyone could still call the number in China via Telstra, or, if they have a Sprint account they could call direct via Sprint via the drop number in NZ. And thats not even getting into the concept of dialling foreign exchanges and basking to be redirected, or using a satellite phone

There really is very little difference in concept between blocking a phone number in a foreign country and blocking a web site, and when yu put it in phone number terms people can start tp see how impossible it is to block, without understanding the internet.

People will say there is a difference in that the message is always there and multiple people can read it, but that’s just the same as if the number connects to a conference centre that is continually playing a recorded message of the suppressed information, instead of muzak.

In fact, the Law Commission should be asked how they expect telecommunications companies to deal with that example, and if they don’t expect the telecommunications companies to try and block the number, why are they expecting an ISP to block a web site which is, as far as information transfer and accessibility goes, exactly the same thing!

If I make a blog post saying that the true identity of the name-suppressed rapist in Clevedon is “Joe Blogger” and someone complains, how is the ISP able to verify that? For media organisations it’s fairly easy, they typically know the information they’re not allowed to publish, for ISPs it’s a lot more complicated, as they will not be privy to the information that is suppressed in the first place.

But yeah there’s also the larger picture (in so many new laws) where ISPs are becoming liable to content they deliver – as well as the technical issues, there is the very large issue of compliance. The copyright one is a huge issue – without a large legal team at work, how is an ISP able to determine with any certainty if a copyright infringement claim is legitimate?