IT: Nitke v. Ashcroft: Seth Finkelstein Expert Witness Report

[Seth Finkelstein]

	Nitke vs. Ashcroft is a case challenging Internet censorship
law, with particular focus on the issue of "community standards" and
the Internet. I am serving as an expert witness in the case. People
with a stake in these issues might be interested in reading my
now-released and on-line Expert Witness Report. In particular, I argue
that anonymity and privacy services make location determination too
unreliable for the purposes of criminal law.

Nitke v. Ashcroft : Seth Finkelstein expert witness report
http://sethf.com/nitke/ashcroft.php

           I. Opinion of Witness with Basis and Reasons Therefore

  A provider of content via the Internet cannot reasonably be
  expected to know the location of readers, if the context is one in
  which location would lead to a denial of the ability to read the content.

  This is because material can be read on the Internet through many
  alternate geographic routes, where the content can intentionally be
  relayed through third-party intermediaries which act to mask and
  obscure location. Further, intrinsic inaccuracies such as changes in
  address assignment and proxying by such large providers as America
  Online (AOL) mean many users cannot be reliably located.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf at sethf.com  http://sethf.com