US Congress drafts out tough legislation for web giants

The US Congress has proposed every US company with a website in China will have to relocate or its executives could face up to one year imprisonment.

The tough legislation drafts is expected to be introduced in Congress this week. It represents the first serious attempt to tackle the rules controlling how US Internet companies can interact with foreign governments.

If put in place, it will affect firms’ business in other ‘internet restricting’ countries like Iran and Vietnam.

The proposal, formed by Rep. Christopher Smith, chairman of a human rights subcommittee, comes after mounting reports about censorship in China.

And follows a hearing yesterday, chaired by Smith’s committee in which the four main protagonists Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Cisco faced a grilling over their dealings in China, and alleged handing over of information in which several dissidents have been imprisoned.

Consequently the proposal makes it unlawful to filter search results or hand over information about users to certain governments unless approved by the US Justice Department. It would further impose new export restrictions to those nations.

"For the sake of market share and profits, leading U.S. companies like Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft have compromised both the integrity of their product and their duties as responsible corporate citizens," Smith said.

However the outlook for the proposal is unclear as it puts US firms at an unfair competitive disadvantage, compared to Chinese firms. Its website relocation clause is also written in very broad terms, which means that any business with a site that responds to a query by displaying "information available on the Internet" is liable.

The draft also proposes that search engine companies must provide the Office of Global Internet Freedom -a new federal bureaucracy to be formed -with a list of verboten search terms "provided by any foreign official of an Internet-restricting country."

Also, any web site with operations in the US must regularly provide the Office of Global Internet Freedom with a list of content deleted or blocked at the request of an Internet-restricting country.

It further set out new regulations on the export of software and hardware, stating exports would no longer be permitted if software or hardware is exported for the purpose of "facilitating Internet censorship," and that Infractions can be punished, depending on the exact prohibition violated, by fines of up to $2 million and criminal penalties of up to five years of prison time.

By: William Easel of vnunet.com
^ TOP

Posted on 14:58:03 by chris -

Comments

No comments