Download - Future of the Internet – And how to stop it.

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the exploit that was on his site. (He also said that the exploit was located in a
little-used area of his site, and noted that he had not been given notice before a
Google warning was placed on links to his page.) With the Google/StopBadware
project in full swing, Web site owners have experienced a major shift in incentives,
such that the exploit is their problem if they want Google traffic back.
That is perhaps more powerful than a law directly regulating them could manage—and
it could in turn generate a market for firms that help validate, clean,
and secure Web sites.
Still, the justice of Google/StopBadware and similar efforts remains rough,
and market forces alone might not make for a desirable level of attention to be
given to those wrongly labeled as people or Web sites to be avoided, or properly
labeled but unsure where to turn for help to clean themselves up. Google/Stop-
Badware and MAPS are not the only mainstream examples of this kind of
effort. Windows Vista’s anti-spyware program displays a welcome screen during
installation inviting you to “meet your computer’s new bodyguards.” 44
These bodyguards advise you what you can and cannot run on your PC if you
want to be safe, as far as Microsoft is concerned.
These private programs are serving important functions that might otherwise
be undertaken by public authorities—and their very efficiency is what
might make them less than fair. Microsoft’s bodyguard metaphor is apt, and
most of us rely on the police rather than mercenaries for analogous protection.
45 The responsibilities when the private becomes the public were addressed
in the United States in the 1940s, when the town of Chickasaw,
Alabama, was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation.
A Jehovah’s Witness was prosecuted for trespass for distributing literature
on the town’s streets because they were private property. In a regular town,
the First Amendment would have protected those activities. The Supreme
Court of the United States took up the situation in Marsh v. Alabama, and held
that the private property was to be treated as public property, and the conviction
was reversed. 46 Others have speculated that Marsh offers some wisdom for
cyberspace, where certain chokepoints can arise from private parties. 47 Marsh
advises that sometimes the government can defend the individual against a
disproportionately powerful private party. This view can put public governments
in a position of encouraging and defending the free flow of bits and
bytes, rather than seeking to constrain them for particular regulatory purposes.
It would be a complex theoretical leap to apply the Marsh substitution of public
for private for Paul Vixie’s anti-spam service or Microsoft’s bodyguards—
asking each to give certain minimum due process to those they deem bad or