So, rumination on the Global Online Freedom Act (HR4780) introduced in Congress with much fanfare back in February eventually led me to conclude that its a bad idea. While well intentioned, the export restrictions that it would impose are overbroad, and the controls on server hosting make doing any sort of business in China or other targetted countries either extremely difficult or impossible.

I am very strongly opposed to several misinformed calls to add Internet filtering software to the U.S. Munitions List. This is a knee jerk reaction made by people who have no experience dealing with U.S. export controls and do not understand how they operate. While an export rule makes sense, it should be limited only to repressive states that engage in political censorship, apply only to deals with government and telecommunications entities in those states, and it should be administered by BIS and not the State Department. There is absolutely no reason that the federal government ought to be involved everytime someone in the U.K. wants to buy a copy of Net Nanny for their home P.C. That level of scrutiny is designed to protect people from being killed and it is not justified by everyday use of censorware in private homes and businesses. ITAR regulations are not a political plaything. Such a policy would likely draw important resources away from problems that are far more critical to national security (PDF).

At the time I was thinking that no matter how effective the United States is at keeping these countries from getting access to American Internet filtering technology, if those countries can't source the stuff here they will source it somewhere else. What people who live in these places really need is better technology for subverting these filters. The U.S. ought to be looking to do ... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Decius has been following this situation for awhile now. He is extremely knowledgeable about export restrictions, so I strongly suggest posing any questions you have about these bills in this thread.

Tonight, I thought I'd check up on the bill's status. Apparently its still a live issue as its being discussed in the press. Much to my suprise, I also learned that another bill, called the Global Internet Freedom Act, was proposed at the same time as the Global Online Freedom Act, and it does exactly what I was thinking we ought to do. This bill funds research on content filtering and filtering subversion to the tune of $100 million over two years! For some reason the bill appears twice on Thomas, once as HR2216 and once as HR4741. I think the texts are the same but I haven't checked line for line. I like this quote:

It is the sense of Congress that the United States should... deploy, at the earliest practicable date, technologies aimed at defeating state-sponsored and state-directed Internet jamming by repressive foreign governments and the intimidation and persecution by such governments of their citizens who use the Internet.

Here, Here! Kathryn Cramer, who I link above calling for censorware to be added to the USML, also calls HR4741 "lame." I could not disagree more. HR4741 has a much better chance of impacting the real situation on the ground in these countries then HR4780, for the aformentioned reason. The pricetag is expensive, much more then I would have asked for, but I'll bet the impact of that expenditure on the U.S. economy would be dwarfed by the impact of HR4780, which makes it illegal to host Internet connected computers inside of any country designated as a censoring state.

So, in sum, if you're talking to your representative, I say No on HR4780 (without serious revision), but Yes on HR2216/HR4741.