Conference back40::soapbox

JON CARROLL: The Exon amendment is a lie


(c) 1995 Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co.

(c) 1995 San Francisco Chronicle

(Jun 29, 1995 - 01:48 EDT) -- Everywhere there is pandering. You are
being pandered to and the children you know are being pandered to, and
you are scared. No wonder; it's scary. It's a society in decay, ruled by
panderers, and there is nowhere to turn.

They want your money; they want your votes. They are indifferent as to
how they get it. If you want sex, they have sex. If you have fear, they
have more fear. Give them your vote, give them your money. Whaddya
want? Every day is Christmas Day, here in Pander Land.

Sex on the Internet. James Exon amendment to the telecommunications
bill -- it will end sex on the Net! Feinstein votes for it; Boxer votes for
it. Desperate Democrats. Please, friends: It will not end sex on the Net.
It won't work. It's deeply cynical.

Fifty out of 50 states have laws against prostitution (yes, even Nevada:
local option). In 50 out of 50 states, prostitution flourishes. It is confined
to certain neighborhoods. On the Net, every neighborhood is the same
neighborhood.

Do you see what I'm saying? There will always be sex on the Net, on the
phone lines, in the books, on the streets. There will always be sex in
your heart and on your mind.

The Exon amendment is a lie, a lie you want to believe because society
is falling apart and the children you know are surrounded by panderers.
Fear makes us all stupid.

Time magazine: Sex on the Net. Weirdest sex you've ever heard of.
Your children are at risk. Alarm! But how many kids have computers?
And what percentage of those computers have modems? And what
percentage of the kids with computers that have modems also have
access to credit card numbers and the will to defraud? Say 0.1 percent of
all American citizens fall into that category -- 250,000 kids. It's not that
many, but let's pretend.

How many kids get beaten by their parents every night? How many kids
get smashed around by good old Dad, the drunk? How many kids are
suffering brain damage from malnutrition because Mom just can't get it
together? What are the real problems?

You have a right to be scared for the children you know. They are
swimming in the soup of noncontext. They may not have computers, but
they have friends who have computers. They have friends whose parents
have a stash of porno videotapes. They have friends in school who are
packing heat.

You have a right to raise your children the way you want. You need to
think clearly, though. You must not listen to the media; you must not
listen to politicians. Pandering is the last thing you need; pandering is the
enemy of reason.

Remember yourself as a child. Remember yourself as a 12-year-old.
Remember how curious you were about sex. You were not an innocent;
you were not pure. You had already been corrupted by your own
hormones, by the natural and wholesome lust God gave us all. The
problem is not the sex, not even the pictures by computer. The problem
is the marketing, the consuming, the pandering.

That's what is newer and stronger and more vicious; that is the context
you need to provide. The first way to provide the context is not to
succumb to the pandering.

I read a horrifying story the other day. A 14-year-old girl had sex with
her brother while several hundred people watched. Then she had sex
with her father. Then the guests had sex with each other and took turns
having sex with the 14-year-old girl.

The girl was Lucrezia Borgia. The brother was Cesare Borgia. The father
was Rodrigo Borgia, who at the time of the orgy was also Pope
Alexander VI, the Holy Father in Rome. The year was 1497.

Our problems are not new. We must not sign away our freedom and our
reason to make things even easier for the panderers. The only cure for
bad information is better information. You are in charge now; use your
power wisely.



The Internet is a den of iniquity.  Or so the excessive hype of the tabloids
would have us believe.

Chris.

    
    The Internet will be the downfall of postmodern society.
    
    REPENTIUM!
    

    
    
    
    			It's television reinvented.

 RE .4



 
Yes!  I hadn't looked at it that way, but I think you are correct.



 Jim

Internet opens new realm of politics for members of
Congress


(c) 1995 Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co.

(c) 1995 Associated Press

WASHINGTON (Jul 5, 1995 - 00:54 EDT) -- New on the
information superhighway: A Louisiana gumbo recipe from Sen.
John Breaux and the latest on the St. Louis Cardinals from House
Democratic leader Dick Gephardt.

Members of Congress are finding that they can put a lot more
information on the global Internet computer network than just
their speeches, press releases and criticism of the opposing
party.

Lawmakers can use the Internet to give their constituents an
electronic handshake, while voters can use it as a sounding board
on the issues.

"I tell people to give me hell or agree with me if you want. I find
people are not reluctant to do either one," said Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt.

Lawmakers don't have to depend on the usual news outlets or log
miles of travel to reach thousands of people, potentially all over
the world, right in their own homes.

"Americans who enter the information age and superhighway can
take a detour around the traditional media roadblocks," Senate
Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said.

Actually, neither Dole nor House Speaker Newt Gingrich of
Georgia yet has a "home page" -- a signature trove of
information accessible by computer -- on the Internet's World
Wide Web, which is the latest rage in Congress.

But more than 40 lawmakers and leadership groups had such
pages by the end of June, with three or four more coming on line
each week.

While Gingrich often gets credit for putting Congress on-line
with creation of the Thomas system -- named for Thomas
Jefferson -- Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., actually
pioneered use of the home page two years ago.

Democrats have been winning the cyberspace race thus far, with
34 House and Senate members on the World Wide Web,
compared with only nine Republicans.

Home pages are popular because they provide graphics, including
color photographs and sound, and enable a computer user to
move from topic to topic with the clicks of a mouse.

"You can go to a multitude of other resources," said Rep. Peter
DeFazio, D-Ore.

Most members of Congress provide color photos, press releases,
biographies, descriptions of their districts, speeches and links to
other government departments or political home pages. For
example, someone visiting Gephardt's page could jump directly
to the Internal Revenue Service or the Democratic National
Committee.

Constituents can order flags that are flown over the Capitol, find
tourist information about Washington and reserve tickets for the
White House tour.

Some are more creative, such as Breaux's gumbo recipe or
Gephardt's link to the Cardinals.

"My wife Lois and I love to cook. Here's one of our favorite
Louisiana recipes," Breaux says on his page.

Gephardt, D-Mo., also provides a color photo of the view from
the top of the St. Louis Arch. Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle's page features favorite recipes and tourist information
for his home state of South Dakota and the nation's capital.

Many lawmakers have an e-mail address permitting constituents
to write electronic letters and receive responses. Sen. Barbara
Boxer, D-Calif., said that feature is a key for someone who
receives thousands of pieces of mail from her populous state.

Instead of painstakingly opening all those letters, drafting a
response and mailing another letter, she said, "you skip all of
those steps."

"We want to bring government down to the people. We want to
make sure alienation doesn't grow, particularly with the young
people," said Boxer.

There is, of course, a political element as well. The Democratic
and Republican congressional caucuses both have pages that
critique each other's proposals, sometimes in sharp rhetoric.

The House GOP page includes a section on "winners and losers"
under the "Contract With America." Under the tax relief section,
the losers are described as "super wealthy Democrats like Sens.
Jay Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy ... who have never worked a
real job a single day in their lives."

Both houses of Congress have adopted rules that a member
cannot use a home page as a campaign tool. But nearly all of
them allow links to the political pages, blurring the distinction
between official business and politics.

Lawmakers from rural areas are interested in how the home
pages enable their far-flung constituents to become more
directly involved in government.

"It means a whole range of things that, by and large, they've been
precluded from having before," said Rep. Collin Peterson,
D-Minn.



    
    Radio station just announced that the
    FBI will go after 250 users of child pornography on the internet.
    
            

    >Radio station just announced that the FBI will go after 250 users of child 
    >pornography on the internet.
     
    Users? What about the instigators??
    
    ...Tom                                                                    

    
    ...they only covered" users" in the broadcast.
    
    
    

I wonder how they define "users" in this context, and how they counted
and/or id'ed them.

    I'd like to know how they IDed them as well. If I download a .GIF file
    from the net is someone keeping track??
    
    ..Tom

Perhaps they're considering doing an audit of every system on the 'net.  That
should keep them occupied for a few millenia!  (Especially as if any US legal
guys turn up on my doorstep I'm probably quite entitled to tell them to
piss off)

Chris.

.11: yes and no.  

    Thanks, that clears it up.  :)
    
    ...Tom

    	On night time talk radio (specifically listening to Bruce 
    	Williams) I've heard an internet access service advertise
    	their business.  Access to sex is one of their main selling
    	points.

    If you ever get a chance to invest in a new venture called anything
    like TeleDildonics International, go for it.
    
    nnttm
    

         <<< Note 482.15 by CSC32::J_OPPELT "He said, 'To blave...'" >>>

>    	On night time talk radio (specifically listening to Bruce 
>    	Williams) I've heard an internet access service advertise
>    	their business.  Access to sex is one of their main selling
>    	points.


	I'm skeptical. That little slot for the 3.5" floppy looks 
	AWFULLY small.

	Of course, you guys with the high-tech multi-media CD-ROM
	openings may be all set.

	;-)

Jim

    Waal Jim, ya know wot they say...
    
    When in ROM, do as the ROMans do.
    
    hth.
    

    <<< Note 482.18 by LJSRV2::KALIKOW "Partially sage, & rarely on time" >>>

>    Waal Jim, ya know wot they say...
    
>    When in ROM, do as the ROMans do.
 
	I checked the CD player on my stereo. A little button 
	marked "open". OK, so far so good. But there is a REAL
	problem when you push the button marked "close". OUCH!

	Since you are an obviously more experienced user of the
	technology, do you have any advice?

	;-)

Jim

    Do I have any advice?  Yep.
    
    Keep your external floppy far, FAR away from your CD player.
    
    hth, nnttm
    
    |-{:-)
    

    .16 :-) :-)
    

    
    
    .16 Not impossible. I have seen a product on the TV show "Inventions"
    (or something similar) 
    
    It was two square pads, over a modem, one user could press down on his
    pad with his hand. Then, on the opposite side the pad gave a reverse
    impression of his hand. 
    
    The closing comment was "Reach out and touch someone."
    

    Does anyone else find the expression "surfing the internet" slightly
    irritating?
    
    Especially irritating when people try and make a joke. Like "oh,I
    better put my wet suit on. ho,ho". yeah,right. Very amusing.
    
    Still,I think i`m getting it next week. So i`ll check out the 
    Internet Reader`s Wifes Special file. If there is one.
    

    .23
    
    > Does anyone else find the expression "surfing the internet" slightly
    > irritating?
    
    No.  As with TV channel surfing, it's an effective simile for the
    practice of skimming the top as one tests the "waters" to see where to
    settle.

    A bit like you can`t make your mind up whether to watch Eastenders,
    Brookside,or the Cook Report so you flick about until something
    grabs your attention?
    
    Like Sharon controversialy copping off with Grant,for example?
    
    

    I find the expression "Les Mizz" to be far more irritating.

    "We've got tickets to Les Mizz."

    Aaaargh!

  .26 i am wichoo.

 I find the term "vacay" for "vacation" to be irritating.

How about cafe for cafeteria?

    
    
    but vacations are not supposed to be irritating...
    
    

>    Like Sharon controversialy copping off with Grant,for example?
    
looks like there might be a bit of a scrap tonight.  Don't miss it!

Chris.

    re .22
    
    "wives"

    I find the expression "At this point in time" to be very irritating.

    POLAR::RICHARDSON
    
    >>    I find the expression "Les Mizz" to be far more irritating.
    
     For what ever reason, that one bugs me too. 
    
    
    				Derek.

    
    I've been know to get violent when I hear someone say "irregardless".
    :-) :-)
    
    -b

    
    RE.23
    Read that an African-American group promoting the use of the Internet
    in business discourages the use to the term "surfing the net". Since
    surfing is not a popular sport with the African-American community.
    Out here in California, that seems to be true.
    
    

I thought it was because serfdom is sorta like slavery.

    
    .37
    
    what's wrong now?
    were you offened or something of that nature?
    
    

    
    Even MEUSE_DA can be right every once in a while....
    
    								-mr. bill

    That's what we need !
    
    Affirmative Action for Surfers !
    
    We must have more black surfers.... take that board away from that
    white guy..... We'll have a sit-in, ..... Yeah, that'll show 'em
    
    GEEEEE  WHIIIIZZZZZ ! ! ! ! ! ! !
    
    Get a life.
    
    :-)
    Dan

    re: 482.7
    
    What I heard on the news was the FBI were going after approximately 250
    AOL users (we can't call AOL "the internet" can we?) who have been
    E-mailing pornographic pictures of children to random users of AOL.
    
    What should be the punishment for such actions?
    
    Bob

>    E-mailing pornographic pictures of children to random users of AOL.
>    What should be the punishment for such actions?

If they were truly mailing to "random users" who hadn't requested the
data or expressed any interest, they were extremely stupid. What's the
penalty for gross stupidity?

What's the penalty for distribution of unsolicited porn through the USPS?
I guess this is pretty much the same, isn't it?

                     "Don't look .GIFfed whores in the mouth"

    <<< Note 482.44 by LJSRV2::KALIKOW "Partially sage, & rarely on time" >>>
>                    -< Lends new meaning to the phrase... >-

>                     "Don't look .GIFfed whores in the mouth"


	All future punning in this forum will be measured by the above
	standard.

	Ladies and Gentlemen, we are in the presense of greatness.

Jim

                                      |-{:-)

    Too bad he can't transfer some of that brilliance into the socio-political
    arena. 8^)

    The Trilateral Commission will have something to say about this I would
    imagine.

    .43
    
    > If they were truly mailing to "random users"...
    
    I've an AOL account.  All I know is that I received several mailings,
    from different users - none of whom had ever before contacted me or was
    even known to me - of material that ranged from mildly offputting (but
    definitely in violation of AOL's stated policy) to rankly disgusting. 
    It was all with adults, not children.  Some of it was of professional
    quality, and some of it was worse than a '50s snapshot taken with a
    Brownie.

    >>                     "Don't look .GIFfed whores in the mouth"
    
    >        All future punning in this forum will be measured by the above
    >        standard.
    
    I agree with Jim. This is the best of the best! Good one.
    
    ...Tom

It takes all kinds, I guess, Dick. Pretty disgusting, besides being stupid.

    Is there any way to get to a homepage without going through an Internet
    Service? If there is I would like to do a benchmark.
    
    ...Tom

>    Is there any way to get to a homepage without going through an Internet
>    Service? If there is I would like to do a benchmark.
    
not that I know of, but within the easynet there's always COPY (or dcp :)

Chris.

>not that I know of, but within the easynet there's always COPY (or dcp :)

    I'm not familiar with this. I think in Colorado one needs a GENRL
    account to use easynet. Is there another way??
    
    ...Tom

??
If DASHER:: isn't on the Easynet, how are you noting here?

    My friend Andre was 'surfing the net ' during a telephone conversation
    we were having and after a short pause he said to me, " Chris, people
    think the internet is for geeky computer nerds like me but they are
    wrong the internet is for PERVERTS like me! This is great!" Andre was
    watching a graphic simulation of a woman peeing.
    
    A doctor type I know stays up all night 'surfing the net' leaving
    messages with people and getting mail, very tame he enjoys himself.
    
    I tried it myself for a while except for some reason people got pissed
    off at me for the things I was saying. I would like to 'surf' more than
    I do but I refuse to buy a big ugly computer and ain't gots no money
    for a laptop. 
    
    chris
    

    re: .55
    
    I said before that I am not familiar with the easynet term. I am not
    sure what is ment by being told that I can use COPY on the easynet when
    I asked about getting to a Homepage on the internet.
    
    ...Tom

Is DASHER:: running VMS?

    
    I thought DASHER was running with Comet, Cupid, Donner etc...

    So, can I get to the internet from DASHER? If so, how?
    
    ...Tom

    
    Tom, no, but you can get to the North Pole through Dasher and friends.
    
    hth
    
    Mark
    :-)

    >Tom, no, but you can get to the North Pole through Dasher and friends.
    
    Thanks, I'm on my way :)
    
    ...Tom

    Survey in last week's Economist on the Internet is available at
    http://www.economist.com.
    
    DougO

    
    The new jealousy: Losing a mate to the Internet


    (c) 1995 Copyright the News & Observer Publishing Co.

    (c) 1995 San Francisco Chronicle

    (Aug 9, 1995 - 00:24 EDT) -- Movie director Irwin Winkler used to come
    home at the end of each workday to a wife who would greet him with a
    drink and a shrimp cocktail.

    "But now she just glances up from her computer, says 'Oh, hi,' and
    turns back to her online world," grouses Winkler, who wrote and
    directed "The Net," the new movie that stars Sandra Bullock as a
    computer consultant whose identity is wiped out by corporate thugs with
    access to powerful databases.

    Winkler says his wife's online fixation "makes me feel like I'm being
    ignored, and it's partially why I made a film about the Internet."
    After coming home night after night to a wife who had her face buried
    in a World Wide Web page, Winkler said he realized that "I'm a Net
    widower."

    The director is just one of thousands of people who have grown to
    resent the home computer almost as they might "Monday Night Football,"
    or even a rival lover. Wives grieve the absence of husbands. Husbands
    mourn the loss of wives. Even children bemoan hours of togetherness
    lost as their parents spend hours in the gray-green glow of computer
    screens that serve as portals to a brave new cyberworld.

    "I know spending time online is one of my dad's favorite things to do,"
    said 14-year-old Alison Williams of Franklin, Tenn. She said her
    father, Doug, spends several hours each evening and on weekends
    downloading e-mail and games. "But sometimes when I or my brother want
    to spend time with him, it makes us feel left out. Now when he tells us
    to not watch so much television, we tease him about playing on the
    computer and say he ought to come out and play with us."

    More than a third of all U.S. households own personal computers,
    according to estimates by Channel Marketing, a Dallas research firm.
    And more than 6.5 million computers worldwide are connected to the
    Internet, according to Mark Lottor of Network Wizards. Estimates as to
    how many people are online run in the tens of millions worldwide.
    Increasingly, their flesh-and-blood kin view the mechanical mistress
    with distrust -- even envy.

    Worse yet, many spouses fear their mates may be turning to virtual
    worlds to avoid real-life intimacy.

    "I've told my husband that I draw the line where the computer infringes
    on the time we have to be together and to make love," said Ava Lazar, a
    former actress. She now runs a multimedia development business called
    Newspeak Media in Los Angeles with her husband, former MGM executive
    John Tarnoff. "Between our business and our child, I feel we have
    little enough time left for intimacy."

    "I sometimes feel resentful," said Arlene Immerman, an Albany, Calif.,
    resident whose husband, David Brown, likes to troll online bulletin
    boards on bluegrass and folk music in his spare time. "On the one hand,
    he's got this thing he loves to do -- and that's great. But if we have
    plans to do something together and he's online for six hours, I have to
    say it isn't fair."

    Occasionally, Net spouses grow jealous of online pen pals. One Northern
    California author said an online pal corresponding from France finally
    severed communications with her, in part because of his wife's
    jealousy.

    "I think the computer just triggered her insecurities in their
    relationship," said the author, who declined to be identified. "But I
    think online communications can be extremely dangerous, because it's
    much easier to say things to this anonymous person than to your mate. I
    think it can become adultery that takes place right in your home."

    Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, agrees. "It's much
    easier to love someone whom you have never really met, because you can
    fantasize that they are your dream woman or man," she said. "They make
    no demands."

    Lieberman suggests those troubled by a mate's online habits keep a
    record of his or her computer use.

    "If you mark down what day and time the partner uses the computer and
    what happened just before they went online and what they're using it
    for, then you will see certain important patterns emerge," she said.
    "For example, if a partner repeatedly uses it before bedtime, you have
    to ask whether this is an excuse to not have sex."

    She also suggests asking "what they're getting from being online that
    they're not getting from you."

    A casual observer might theorize that, like television, a computer's
    bright, flickering images physically draws people to it. But formal
    research on online behavior points more often to a need for limited
    social interaction, said Pavel Curtis, a researcher at Xerox Corp.'s
    renowned Palo Alto Research Center.

    While studying structured real-time chat forums called Multi-User
    Dungeons, or MUDs, Curtis said his interviews with heavy Internet users
    "indicated that people were addicted to communication in a very safe
    setting, where they couldn't be hurt, and where the communication was
    kept to a shallow level and wasn't threatening."

    Mark Levy, a psychiatrist who also serves as president of the San
    Francisco Foundation for Psychoanalysis, said a need for distraction
    was at the heart of his own online addiction.

    "My wife pointed out that I was spending so much time online that I was
    ticking her off and that there were priorities other than the
    computer," he said. "I agreed with her. I realized that I probably was
    coping with feelings of ennui or discontent by zoning out on the
    Internet."

    Both Levy and Lieberman suggest that family members ask the online
    addict to schedule his or her computer time around family time. Net
    widows and orphans say that such demands often work, but that they have
    to be firm and specific.

    "I've definitely had to set my foot down," said Bissy Eddy, whose
    husband, Andy, is a game magazine editor. "It was difficult because a
    lot of the time he spent online had to do with his job, but I knew a
    lot of it was pure fun -- like keeping up on the Letterman Top Ten
    list." She finally persuaded her husband to refrain from his online
    activities at dinnertime and during the early evening hours before
    their children's bedtime.
     

	It's Josephine Boxer all over again.

    
    > The new jealousy: Losing a mate to the Internet
    
    The right woman can get me to shut off a computer so quick, it ain't
    even funny...  :-)
    
    H*!!, for the right woman I'd teach a computer to fly...
    (sort of a crash course)
    
    Dan

Use of computer network for child sex sets off raids
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
(c) 1995 N.Y. Times News Service

WASHINGTON (Sep 13, 1995 - 23:24 EDT) -- The Justice Department on Wednesday
announced a dozen arrests in a two-year investigation into the use of
America Online, the country's largest computer network, to distribute child
pornography and to lure minors into sex.

The searches of 125 homes and offices around the country represented the
first time that federal agents investigated the misuse of a nationwide
computer network, in which information and graphic material is exchanged
between computers.

The Justice Department said the cities in which the searches took place
included Miami, New York, Dallas and Newark, N.J., adding that many more
arrests were expected.

"We are not going to permit exciting new technology to be misused to exploit
and injure children," Attorney General Janet Reno said Wednesday in
announcing the arrests.

The FBI said that in the course of the investigation it collected
pornographic evidence involving mostly victims from the ages of 2 to 13 who
were pictured either nude or engaged in actual or simulated sexual acts.

The Justice Department said the investigation began in 1993 as a result of
the abduction of 10-year-old George Stanley Burdynski from his neighborhood
in Brentwood, Md., a suburb of Washington. The boy has not been found, and
no one has been tried for his kidnapping.

But during that investigation the federal and state authorities focused on
two suspects believed to have exploited juveniles in the mid-Atlantic
region, officials said. The investigation of them unearthed evidence that
adults and minors were regularly using computers, linked through America
Online and similar services, to transmit explicit images of juveniles. In
addition, adults were using the services to seek out minors for sexual
encounters.

As a result of the Burdynski inquiry, agents in the Baltimore office of the
FBI and state authorities in Florida set up an undercover operation. Several
of the arrests today involved agents who posed as minors to be recruited
into sex liaisons by adults using computer bulletin boards.

In a statement on Wednesday, America Online, a service based in Vienna, Va.,
with 3.5 million subscribers, said it fully cooperated with the federal
investigators. The company said that conversations between people using its
service were private, but added that it did not knowingly tolerate the use
its network for any illegal activities.

A Justice Department official said the company was not a subject of the
investigation.

The FBI said in a statement that the investigation had demonstrated how
child pornographers were increasingly using computer networks.

"The utilization of on-line services or bulletin board systems is rapidly
becoming one of the most prevalent techniques for individuals to share
pornographic pictures of minors, as well as to identify and recruit children
into sexually illicit relationships," the agency said.

It is a violation of federal law to create, possess or disseminate child
pornography, and those convicted of such a crime face up to 10 years in
prison and a $10,000 fine.

The use of America Online was investigated because it had been used by the
suspects in the Burdynski case and had been the subject of a number of
complaints from its users and from other law-enforcement agencies, the
Justice Department said.

But it added that the FBI found that similar activities took place on
several other on-line services in varying degrees.

Lawmakers have debated whether to impose restrictions on the use of computer
networks. On Wednesday, a bill making it illegal to use computers to produce
child pornography was introduced by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, who is
chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The measure would expand the definition of child pornography to include any
photograph, film, videotape or computer image produced by any means,
including electronically by computer, if it depicts or appears to depict a
minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

"Today, visual depictions of children engaging in any imaginable form of
sexual conduct can be produced entirely by computer, without using children,
thereby placing such depictions outside the scope of federal law," Hatch
said in a statement.

"Computers can also be used to alter sexually explicit photographs, films
and videos in such a way as to make it impossible for prosecutors to
identify individuals, or to prove that the offending material was produced
using children."

The Senate has passed a bill to outlaw pornography on the Internet computer
network.

    
    	Ban AOL!!
    

From: Joshua Cole <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: FBI Arrests America Online Users
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 14:44:42 EDT


Pat-

If you read Steve Case's note to the America Online Community dated
September 13, 1995, you will see that he states:

"When material is forwarded to us which we believe is illegal, we
notify law enforcement and upon receipt of a court order or subpoena,
we cooperate fully."

Note that they will only do this when they receive a *legal* demand
for the information. I am not an AOL employeee, but have been a member
since shortly after its inception and know that this has always been
their policy and their operational behavior.

In other words, the "snooping" that is being done at AOL is because
they have been ordered to do so. In addition, as a corporate citizen
of the US, it is AOL's duty to help law enforcement apprehend people
who are in violation of the law.

One more thing that I'd like to add. America Online is a service that
is owned and operated by a private sector company. Their hardware,
software and service is owned completely by them. They are not a
public or quasi-public corporation nor are they a common carrier. They
have every right to read all e-mail, instant messages, postings, chat
room conversations and other data that resides on their systems. They
choose *not* to do this unless they find out that there is a possible
violation of the law.

You have every right to cancel your account, but when you agree to
their Terms of Service agreement when you subscribed, you also agree
to abide by their code of conduct and the consequences of violating
those codes.


Sincerely,

Joshua Cole
America Online Member since January, 1990

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I appreciate your early response to the
message which ran here just two issues ago on Thursday afternoon. It
is quite admirable that you wish to defend them. I don't think anyone
disputes that they are entitled to run their system however they see
fit, the same way Prodigy can run theirs as they see it, and for that
matter, Compuserve. It is their property to do with as they wish. I do
not think however, that most users there are/were aware that AOL gets
into their email and monitors their private chats. I do not think most
users there are/were aware that AOL was making up these little lists
of people they 'suspected' and turning them over to the FBI. 

The 'Terms of Service' thing there is a joke. Depending on the mood and
general disposition of the 'Guide' -- many of whom seem to very much
enjoy playing like little gestapo police, you'll see that ever-present
macro about 'Violation! Read Your Terms of Service' message time and
again in the public chat areas. Unlike the [HELPER] people on Compuserve
who seem genuinely interested in helping new users learn about the system,
the AOL Guides seem far more interested in meeting some quota for the
number of people to be written up for one reason or another. And yes,
of course, that's their perfect right. They own the system, they have
people of their own mindset who congregate there and seek out positions
on the system as Guides, and they are all free to do their own thing just 
as you point out. If you don't like it, then leave; lots of users have.

There is such a thing as 'taking a big stick and stirring the pot to
see what will come up' also. By this I mean that yes, as you point out,
a 'good citizen' will cooperate with authorities, and if something comes
up right under his nose, the 'good citizen' will inform the authorities.
You point out that AOL is only responding to *legal demands* i.e. subpoenas
made for files on their network, but it just seems to me they are going
a bit beyond the call of duty as 'good citizens'. It seems to me they
are being a bit too snoopy, and a bit too inviting of the authorities.
It is like "we know that you, as the government cannot tap into the email
and files and stuff without legal authority that stems from probable
cause, and we know that is hard for you to obtain, so suppose we do it
on this end and make your job a lot easier for you."

And although Steve Case may claim that they only respond to things which
are brought to them by other (presumably offended) users, I will suggest
that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the 'offended user' was one
of the Guides and not one of the regular subscribers. I will also suggest
that there is a certain amount of entrapment, with some of those people
arrested yesterday guilty of nothing more than viewing a piece of mail
which was sent to them without their request. That's like saying that
a plainclothes police officer cannot proposition a prostitute, lie about
his position, and then arrest her when she agrees to his offer. He can,
but its a sleazy, dispicable tactic.  I'd not be surprised at all as
these latest arrests work their way through 'the system' to hear at
a least a few defenses of the form that unwanted mail found its way to
them; that users heretofore unknown to them lured them into a chat room,
etc.   

How come Compuserve -- around three times as long, and just as large if
not larger -- never seems to have ruckuses like this?    PAT]

In porn crackdown, America Online opens private e-mail to government agents
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
(c) 1995 N.Y. Times News Service

(Sep 14, 1995 - 23:42 EDT) -- Responding to court orders related to a
nationwide crackdown on the electronic transmission of child pornography,
America Online, the nation's largest information service, gave law
enforcement agents access to the private electronic mailboxes of an unknown
number of its subscribers, company officials confirmed Thursday.

By reading and tracing the trails of electronic mail messages as they
coursed through the America Online system, FBI agents were able to identify
several thousand America Online users who viewed digitized images of
children in sexual poses.

They were also able to follow the electronic trail of messages beyond the
America Online network, identifying many more computer users nationwide who
stored and traded pedophilic material, according to a scenario pieced
together from persons familiar with the investigation.

At least a dozen people suspected of being among the most active traders of
child pornography on the computer network were arrested Wednesday as part of
the investigation, code-named "Innocent Images," which is continuing.

The Justice Department indicated Wednesday that many more arrests were
planned, but it released no new information Thursday.

At least some of the arrests resulted from "sting" operations conducted on
America Online in the past year by undercover law enforcement agents
pretending to be young boys and girls, court records revealed.

In one case, an adult investigator posing as a teen-age girl on an America
Online "chat" service invited a Las Vegas man to cross state lines to have
sex. He was arrested when he arrived at a motel suggested by the "girl."

In other cases, an America Online spokeswoman said Thursday, concerned
subscribers contacted either the FBI or network administrators to complain
about lewd pictures arriving unsolicited in their electronic mailboxes.

Copies of the objectionable images were then provided to the FBI by America
Online, and the agency then obtained court orders to search the mailboxes of
the senders, said Pam McGraw, the spokeswoman.

Depending on the volume of mail a person receives, electronic mail messages
can remain in an electronic mailbox for days or weeks, until they are
deleted or "scroll off" the screen as the mailbox fills with newer messages.

Because of the persistence and traceability of electronic mail, and the fact
that it can be copied easily without alerting the owner, reading the
mailboxes was particularly effective.

Meanwhile, Ms. McGraw strongly denied Thursday that digital images of child
pornography existed in any public areas of the on-line information service,
the nation's largest with 3.5 million subscribers.

In its announcement of a series of raids and arrests Wednesday, the FBI said
it had concentrated its four-year investigation on America Online, which is
based in Vienna, Va., because of complaints from a number the service's
subscribers that child pornography was circulating on the system.

Representatives of Compuserve Inc. and Prodigy Services Co., the second- and
third-largest on-line services respectively, said they had not been
contacted by the FBI or any other other law enforcement agency in regard to
the investigation of child pornographers and pedophiles.

While applauding the arrests, the other on-line service representatives said
they feared the crackdown could have a negative impact on the on-line
services industry, which serves more than 8 million Americans.

"There are a whole lot of hysterical stories going around that leave
potential on-line customers with impression there is nothing but pornography
out there," said R. Pierce Reid, a Compuserve spokesman.

The arrests are occurring just as Congress is preparing to debate several
legislative proposals to place restrictions on the Internet and other
on-line services, in an attempt to stanch the flow of child pornography.

"We think this investigation establishes what we've been saying all along,
that the existing laws work, that the industry will cooperate with law
enforcement, and there is no need for flawed legislation that violates
constitutional rights," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the public
policy lobbying group Center for Democracy and Technology.

>> By reading and tracing the trails of electronic mail messages as they
>> coursed through the America Online system, FBI agents were able to identify
>> several thousand America Online users who viewed digitized images of
>> children in sexual poses.

    As much as I can't stand the pedophiles, I'm also left to wonder
    about the methods involved in the investigation, and what else
    besides child porn that the "FBI agents were able to identify"
    in their reading and tracing the trails of e-mail.
    
    I sense that the government is going to use the evils of
    pedophilia (which certainly exist, and must be stopped somehow)
    as their "foot in the door" to assert increasing control over
    the on-line services and the Internet.
    
    Besides that, there appears to be a lot of "setting up" and
    possible entrapment issues going on here.  People aren't
    necessarily responsible for what ends up in their mailboxes.
    Just look at our own systems.  Almost anyone can place any kind
    of file in my directories, or even fake certain kinds of mail
    files, and then drop a dime.
    
    This isn't as cut-and-dry as we'd like it to be.  As for myself,
    I'm glad I've stayed out of the entire on-line services ordeal...
    
    Chris

    Tapping email is EXACTLY equivalent to wiretapping; both are private
    conversations conducted through an electronic medium.  With a proper
    court order the cops can already do wiretapping, so what's the beef?
    
    AOL's stated policy, which new members are enjoined to read, says that
    transmitting porn and its ilk are violations of the Terms of Service
    agreement every AOL member accepts upon signing up.  Receiving porn, on
    the other hand, is not a violation of TOS if it was unsolicited.  The
    proper way to handle such unsolicited material is to forward the mail
    to AOL's TOS people to be dealt with administratively; the perp will
    find himself without an AOL account posthaste.  Illegal solicitation is
    similarly treated, except that AOL can - and should - let the cops in
    on it.  If honest citizens won't holler to the cops how can they expect
    to have any legal protection from predators?

    There probably isn't enough detail available, but what I'm
    concerned about is: how does AOL and the FBI know whose e-mail
    to tap?  Are they tapping only those who have sent unsolicited
    porn, or they doing some kind of random searches or poking around?
    
    Is any AOL member subject to having their e-mail (or other
    operations) monitored without the likes of court orders or
    other specific "probable cause"?
    
    Chris

    .75
    
    > they doing some kind of random searches or poking around?
    
    AOL asserts that it does not do random searches or poke around, unlike
    a certain other online service that does in fact censor mail containing
    messages derogatory to itself.  AOL is proud of its role as a provider,
    not a mommy.
    
    > Is any AOL member subject to having their e-mail (or other
    > operations) monitored without the likes of court orders or
    > other specific "probable cause"?
    
    No such monitoring occurred.  The news report I read was very specific
    in stating that the monitoring was done under a court order.

Groundbreaking case seeks to lift anonymity on computer networks
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
(c) 1995 Associated Press

CHICAGO (Sep 15, 1995 - 17:30 EDT) -- Anonymity and freedom of speech in
cyberspace are being challenged by a Caribbean resort owner in a court case
that could dramatically restrict the rights of computer network users.

The resort owner and a scuba instructor claim they were defamed on a
computer bulletin board by an anonymous user, and they asked a judge this
week to force America Online to reveal the name of the subscriber so they
can sue the person for libel.

If Arnold Bowker and John Joslin are successful in obtaining the name, it
could have serious implications for millions of people who use the Internet
to think, write and debate in a world where they are identified by their
ideas, not their names.

Technology experts fear a morass of court cases that would hold computer
users accountable for what they say anonymously.

"What this case brings up is the specter of millions of libel suits every
time there's a disagreement on the Internet," said Daniel Weitzner, deputy
director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. "I think
it's a critical issue."

The motion filed in Cook County Circuit Court charges that Bowker's dive
shop at the Carib Inn in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, and instructor John
Joslin were defamed by a message posted on an America Online bulletin board
for scuba divers by a user identified as "Jenny TRR." The bulletin board is
accessible to the company's 3.5 million subscribers.

In June, Jenny TRR wrote that she had a bad experience while learning to
dive at the Carib Inn with an instructor who she said used drugs.

"Since I'm a little new diving needless to say diving with a stoned
instructor was a little scarry. ... I won't mention his name but he's the
only white instructor there," the computer user wrote.

According to Bowker, a frequent visitor to the Carib Inn told him of the
allegations. Much of the Carib Inn's business depends on communication with
customers via computer, said Lawrence Levin, the attorney for Bowker and
Joslin.

When Bowker investigated the charges made by Jenny TRR and found them
untrue, he posted a message on the same bulletin board rebutting them and
asking Jenny TRR to recant, Levin said.

When no apology came, Bowker decided to sue for damages, claiming his
business had suffered. But first he must find out the identity of Jenny TRR.

"The person who used this abused the privilege of being able to communicate
with people worldwide on America Online," Levin said. "This has serious
repercussions for businesses."

Several calls seeking comment from officials at America Online were not
immediately returned Friday.

Abraham Haddad, chairman of the computer science department at Northwestern
University, said the anonymity of cyberspace should be maintained as long as
it was not used to commit a crime.

"There's really a need to protect people's privacy as long as no laws have
been broken," Haddad said. "What would happen is people would think twice
about saying things publicly. That really would be terrible."

Case involving free speech and Internet is settled
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) 1995 Copyright Nando.net
(c) 1995 N.Y. Times News Service

BELLEVUE, Wash. (Dec 23, 1995 - 16:47 EST) -- A dispute about free speech on
the Internet has been settled out of court here after a local school
district admitted that a high school principal had wrongly reprimanded a
student for lampooning his school on the World Wide Web.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced Dec. 14 that it had reached a
settlement with the Bellevue School District on behalf of Paul K. Kim, who
was a senior when he published his parody last winter on the Internet's
World Wide Web.

Though it is not a court precedent, the ACLU called the settlement the
nation's first strong message that a student has the right to publish on the
Internet without fear of retribution from school authorities.

In his "The Unofficial Newport High School Home Page" in February, Kim
ridiculed his peers for being preoccupied by sex and for "majoring in
football." Kim also included links to material on the Internet about oral
sex and masturbation and to a picture of a Playboy centerfold.

School officials in this affluent Seattle suburb were angered by Kim's
spoof. To punish him, the principal, Karin Cathey, told Kim, a straight-A
student, that she was withdrawing her support for his National Merit
finalist candidacy, a move that ended his eligibility to get a $2,000
college scholarship.

Without telling him, Mrs. Cathey also faxed letters to seven universities to
which he had applied, including Harvard, Stanford and Columbia, informing
them that she was withdrawing the schools' endorsement of any
recommendations that high school administrators might have given him.

Kim said he had learned of the letters from Paul Eickelberg, an admissions
official at Columbia University. That is when he frantically wrote to the
school district appealing the loss of his chance at a scholarship and to the
ACLU, he said.

In the months to follow, the ACLU threatened to sue the school district on
grounds that Kim's constitutional right to free speech had been violated and
that he was wrongfully being punished for expressing his views on the
Internet.

The ACLU also asserted that Mrs. Cathey violated the student's 14th
Amendment right to due process by failing to tell Kim that she had written
to college admission officers.

In the recent settlement, the Bellevue School District apologized to Kim for
Mrs. Cathey's actions, agreed to pay him $2,000 for the potentially lost
scholarship and vowed to have him reinstated as a National Merit finalist.
In a short statement, the school district acknowledged that Kim had a right
to express himself no matter how offensive they believed the parody was.

"The district," the statement read, "has no right to punish students who, on
their own time and with their own resources, exercise their right of free
speech on the Internet."

It concluded, "School officials had no right to object to Kim's failure to
remove the home page."

The World Wide Web is a part of the Internet that gives people an easy way
to find and see the documents and pictures that are publicly available on
the Web, often through "home pages," which serve as an introduction and
guide to material.

The school district's statement, which was signed by Mrs. Cathey and other
board members, apologized to Kim for the punitive actions. Several attempts
to contact Mrs. Cathey were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Bellevue
School District said the case taught administrators some valuable lessons.

"We now know our own boundaries," said Ann Oxrieder, the school district's
spokesman. "The Internet is unexplored territory for schools and we now know
that when a student uses his own equipment and on his own time, we should
stay out of it."

Cases involving school officials regulating students' off-campus behavior
are not new, but this dispute addresses a student's use of the Internet,
where information goes largely uncensored and is accessible to anyone with a
personal computer and an Internet account, said Lucy Lee Helm, one of Kim's
ACLU court-appointed lawyers.

Ms. Helm noted that the ACLU had cited several federal court decisions to
argue that school officials had no authority to regulate underground student
newspapers or a student's off-campus behavior.

A 1988 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San
Francisco, for example, held that five high school students in Renton,
Wash., who had circulated an underground newspaper could not be disciplined
because of "fear of possible disturbances or embarrassment to school
officials," she said.

Now a freshman at Columbia, where he is majoring in chemistry, Kim said he
was pleased with the school district's willingness to settle. But he added
he would never know whether his first choice, Harvard, had denied him
admission because of the principal's actions.

"Do I have any regrets?" Kim said. "It may not have been the most prudent
thing to do. But at least this decision helps to establish that kids have a
right for self-expression on the Internet without fear of punitive actions."

    
    	Those stories are good to hear.
    
    	He should have sued the school for damages also.
    

Do the school administrators have any free speech rights in writting their 
recommendations?  It is my understanding that they do.  This case would have 
been much more interesting if the school administrators had reaffirmed the 
student's right to publish whatever he wanted on the Internet and retracted 
their recommendations under their first amendment right to freedom of speech.

Jim

CompuServe blocks access in response to German request
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) 1995 Copyright Nando.net
(c) 1995 Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Dec 29, 1995 - 09:53 EST) -- CompuServe Inc. blocked access
for its 4 million users to a sex-oriented area of the Internet under
pressure from German prosecutors investigating child pornography.

The move Thursday represents the most drastic action yet to limit public
access to the Internet, the global computer network with an estimated 40
million users.

It alarmed cyberspace enthusiasts who say it could lead governments to begin
trying in earnest to censor, legislate and regulate the Internet.

"The part that is the greatest threat is that rules will be put up and
barriers will be set before we even know what this business (the Internet)
is all about and what great opportunities it offers," said Gary Arlen,
president of Arlen Communications, a Bethesda, Md.-based research company
that specializes in interactive services.

Once the arcane domain of scientists, the Internet now allows people in
homes, offices and universities to publicly post text, audio and pictures on
thousands of electronic discussion forums called newsgroups.

These forums are maintained on interconnected networks of computers around
the world, but can often be reached with a local phone call to a commercial
on-line service or Internet provider.

Most of these services and providers don't have customers in Germany, so the
German request would not affect how free or restrictive they are in
providing newsgroup access.

But CompuServe, a Columbus-based unit of H&R Block Inc., provides the same
service overseas that it offers to Americans, and it had no ready way to
block only its 220,000 German users from some material.

Munich prosecutor Manfred Wick confirmed today that Bavarian state police
investigators searched CompuServe's networks and computers last month for
child pornography, but he would not say what they found.

"We didn't threaten them with charges," Wick said.

Arno Edelmann, a CompuServe product manager in Unterhaching, Germany, said
today that the company blocked access to 200 sex-oriented newsgroups in a
portion of the Internet called Usenet.

"It is perhaps an overreaction but we want to cooperate with the Bavarian
prosecutor's office," Edelmann said.

The move prompted a flurry of angry postings on CompuServe's in-house
message forums today. Some German members said they planned to cancel their
subscriptions and seek direct, uncensored Internet access.

Other subscribers said they were starting a petition drive or asked others
to bombard CompuServe's customer service staff with protests.

"E-mail early, e-mail often," one said.

One subscriber complained that some of the banned newsgroups contained
nothing obscene or indecent and that one was "a vital lifeline for gay
youth."

German authorities notified CompuServe this week that they were
investigating 200 distributors of sexually explicit material in connection
with a government probe of what's on the Internet. They told CompuServe to
block member access to them.

CompuServe said it will continue to cooperate with the investigation, but
noted that it has no creative or editorial control over material on the
Internet.

The Internet could face rules and regulations in many countries. The
European Union is studying possible regulation and Congress is considering
legislation that would ban pornography on the Internet.

On-line services themselves have guidelines for what is permissible.

America Online, which claims 4.5 million users, bans use of languages other
than English for public messages because it cannot screen them for forbidden
words.

The screening process often leads to disputes, such as earlier this month,
when the service had to back off its ban of the word "breast" because it was
interfering with serious dialogue among breast-cancer patients.

America Online and Prodigy, an on-line service co-owned by IBM and Sears,
Roebuck & Co., also allow parents to restrict what their children can see.

Jan Buettner, managing director of America Online's new joint venture in
Germany, said his company was also contacted by the Munich prosecutors about
child pornography but they were satisfied with the company's protective
measures.

    I have a difficult time believing that the regulation of cyberspace is
    possible. The individual reigns supreme in cyberspace. In cyberspace, 
    harmful politicians, armed bureaucrats, ego judges, religious charlatans,
    dishonest journalists, and stagnant big-business executives have no control
    or power over individuals. Consider professional politicians who promote 
    gun-backed laws to impose their whims in trying to control others. In 
    cyberspace, as Internet explorers are discovering, such self-aggrandizing 
    politicians are impotent. They are simply flamed out of existence. 
    
    What will happen as individuals by the millions move into cyberspace? In 
    cyberspace, individuals function freely, voluntarily among themselves. No 
    space, time, or cost boundaries exist in cyberspace. No legal, political, 
    or religious boundaries exist. Thus, a natural dynamic develops in which 
    the honest, the exciting, the valuable eventually drive out the dishonest, 
    the boring, the destructive. 
    
    By contrast, in the noncyberspace world ruled by political agendas, the 
    honest and rational are often condemned or suppressed as politically 
    incorrect or subjectively illegal. Also, in the noncyberspace world,
    the dishonest and irrational are often politically promoted while backed 
    by armed bureaucrats who ultimately function as unpunished criminals. In 
    the noncyberspace world, armed bureaucrats become dehumanized destroyers of
    innocent people's lives, values, and property. 
    
    In cyberspace, contextual facts eventually vanish myths. Likewise, 
    rationality eventually vanishes irrationality: value vanishes disvalue, 
    honesty vanishes dishonesty. The good drives out the bad, reality
    drives out mysticism, excitement drives out stagnation. Why? Because 
    honesty rules in the freely competitive atmosphere of cyberspace. Thus, 
    through cyberspace, a powerfully exciting, value-filled civilization will 
    eventually replace the dishonest, nihilistic civilization choking the
    world today. 
    
    In cyberspace, each individual can freely communicate with any other 
    individual, free of media dishonesty and morbidity, free of destructive 
    gun-backed political agendas, free of the noncyberspace world. Today,
    the noncyberspace civilization is ruled by self-serving parasitical elites 
    through their armed bureaucrats, sycophantic journalists, and neurotic 
    entertainers hypocritically promoting various politically correct agendas. 
    By contrast, the new cyberspace civilization spreading across the globe is 
    free of such corruption and dishonesty. Thus, any cyberspace civilization 
    is ultimately ruled by honest, value-producing individuals.
    
    The corrupt establishment media are irrelevant in cyberspace. No matter 
    how articulately mendacious are Washington Post or Newsweek-type 
    journalists, their dishonesties have no power in cyberspace. The corrupt, 
    deeply dishonest print-media and network news simply cannot compete in 
    cyberspace. By contrast, any honest, articulate individual has limitless
    competitive power and relevance in cyberspace. For example, consider the 
    most powerful person in the noncyberspace world: The articulate but 
    pervasively dishonest President Clinton would have no chance in cyberspace
    against the articulate, honest individuals roaming the Internet. President 
    Clinton would be mercilessly flamed, skewered, and then laughed off the
    Internet. That is why he and other harmful politicians dare not personally 
    enter in the dynamics of cyberspace. 
    
    Those proclaiming authority by revelation, deception, or force have no 
    power or influence in cyberspace. By contrast, in cyberspace, any 
    individual can become powerful and influential by applying the dynamics of
    honesty. 
    
    There are now estimated to be over 16 Million websites, and it is
    increasing by the thousands each day. The absurdity of the control and 
    regulation of individuals and their businesses is approaching its 
    unstoppable demise in cyberspace.

    by changing only a half dozen words, you've effectively described
    "Utopia" as it was first described 50+ years ago...
    
    the problem is, just like utopia, your dream of what can happen in
    cyberspace is just that, a dream...
    

re .82:

You need to read, study and thoroughly understand the
writing on the shirt at http://www.danger.com/cyberspace.gif .
(actually it's hard to read, see bottom of page at
http://www.danger.com/netstuff-old.html )

From: [email protected] (David L. Sobel)
Subject: EPIC: Oppose FBI Wiretap Plan


The FBI has released a dramatic "reinterpretation" of the
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (the "Digital
Telephony" bill or "CALEA").  In a Federal Register notice which
outlines "capacity requirements" for surveillance of the nation's
communications infrastructure, the FBI is claiming that
compliance with CALEA requires that telephone companies and other
service providers in some regions of the country build in enough
surveillance capacity so that *one percent* of all phone lines
could be *simultaneously* wiretapped, calls isolated, and
forwarded to the FBI.  This would permit wiretapping at a level at
least a thousand time greater than currently occurs in the United
States.  This level of surveillance is also far in excess of what
Congress intended when it enacted the CALEA.  The rule, if adopted,
will lead to a radical change in the surveillance capabilities of
the government.

The methodology used to determine capacity requirements is also
deeply flawed.  Wiretapping reports, as required by law, have
always been based on actual taps authorized, actual conversations
intercepted, and actual lines surveilled.  These numbers are
reported annually by the Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts.  The Bureau's proposed rule attempts to shift from the
analytic approach required by current wiretap law to one that is
based on percentages of total communications activity.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

(a) Contact Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), a former federal prosecutor and
leading Congressional opponent of the FBI's request for wiretap
funding:

      Rep. Bob Barr
      U.S. House of Representatives
      1607 Longworth Building
      Washington, DC 20515
      (202) 225-2931

 (b) Submit comments to the FBI.  Object to the "percentage
approach" to wiretap capacity.  Urge the FBI to follow the current
measurement of wiretapping, as reported annually by the Administra-
tive Office of the U.S. Courts, which considers the actual number
of wiretaps authorized. If you are a telephone customer, ask
the FBI to address the privacy risks of unauthorized, illegal, or
excessive wire surveillance. Comments should be submitted in
triplicate to the Telecommunications Industry Liaison Unit
(TILU), Federal Bureau of Investigation, P.O. Box 220450,
Chantilly, VA 22022-0450.   Send copies of your comments to EPIC
<[email protected]> and to Rep. Barr.

          ** Comments must be received by November 15, 1995.**

  (c) If you represent or work for a telecommunications company,
equipment manufacturer, or service provider, assess carefully the
cost and liability that this proposed federal regulation may impose
on your company and the risk that it may expose your customers to
illegal wiretapping.

The text of the FBI notice and additional information can be found
at:

     http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/

====================================================================

Electronic Privacy Information Center
666 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E.
Suite 301
Washington, DC 20003
<[email protected]>
http://www.epic.org


************** E-Mail: [email protected] ************
Matthew Gaylor
1933 E.Dublin-Granville Rd., # 176
Columbus, OH  43229

I maintain the Electronic Frontier Foundations' Online Activism Resource
List FAQ. An ACTION/EFF FAQ. Please send me sources of privacy/free-speech
civil-liberties advocacy and general online activism tool/resources. Please
send your hardcopy materials to my snail address.

Available on the web at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Activism/activ_resource.faq
And archived at: ftp.eff.org, /pub/Activism/activ_resource.faq

######################TANSTAAFL
"We can foresee a time when...the only people at liberty will be prison guards
who will then have to lock up one another.  When only one remains, he will be
called the 'Supreme Guard; and that will be the ideal society in which
problems of opposition, the headache of all twentieth century governments,
will be settled once and for all."        Albert Camus

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 04 Nov 1995 07:45:53 -0700
From: [email protected] (Don Henson)
Subject: Got Your Munition T-shirt Yet?
To: [email protected], [email protected]

By now, everyone knows about the TSHIRT that is classified as a 
MUNITION by the US ITAR. If you don't know, just send email to 
[email protected] with a subject of 'TSHIRT STORY' and you will 
receive full details via return email.

For more information on how to own this classic example of civil 
disobedience, just send email to [email protected] with the subject 
of 'SHIRT'. (You don't have to be a US/Canadian citizen to request the 
info.) Or, if you have WWW access, just point your Web browser to:

     http://colossus.net/wepinsto/wshome.html

You can read about the t-shirt, see pictures of the t-shirt, and order 
it online using Visa/MasterCard or personal check (yes, you can do that 
on line).

Get your Munitions Tshirt now. Who knows how long they'll stay in 
production!

Don Henson, Managing Director (PGP Key ID = 0X03002DC9)
West El Paso Information Network (WEPIN)
email: [email protected]
Check out The WEPIN Store at URL:
http://colossus.net/wepinsto/wshome.html

General information:  [email protected]
World Wide Web:       URL:http://www.cdt.org
FTP                   URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/

Snail Mail:  The Center for Democracy and Technology
             1001 G Street NW * Suite 500 East * Washington, DC 20001
             (v) +1.202.637.9800 * (f) +1.202.637.0968


&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&


Is Someone Already Watching All International Net Traffic?

The following is the transcript of an actual communications trace that a
friend ran, while I was sitting next to him, watching -- reprinted here
with his permission.

He did a "traceroute" of two messages that he sent from his machine in
Switzerland (he'd telneted into it while we were at a computer conference
in California).

Traceroute automatically reports each Internet node through which a message
passes, as it proceeds from origin to destination.

He did two traceroutes.  The first was from Switzerland to an addressee at
Netcom in San Jose, California.  The second was from Switzerland to an
addressee in Israel.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does anyone know 'zackly what CompuServe shut down?

All of the alt.sex.*.*.*.* groups?  Some of them?  Some others?

/john

    
    
	<<< Note 482.85 by 43GMC::KEITH "Dr. Deuce" >>>
    
    >In a Federal Register notice which outlines "capacity requirements" for
    >surveillance of the nation's communications infrastructure, the FBI is
    >claiming that compliance with CALEA requires that telephone companies
    >and other service providers in some regions of the country build in
    >enough surveillance capacity so that *one percent* of all phone lines
    >could be *simultaneously* wiretapped, calls isolated, and forwarded to
    >the FBI.
    
    Note that there are a lot of arguments over that 1%.  The FBI is trying
    to use semantics by claiming that it is not 1% of all phone lines, just
    1% of all active calls.  That is because note everyone is on the phone
    at the same time.
    
    Also note that the requirement is that 4% of the phone lines in certain
    urban areas must be tappable, while less then a half of a percent of
    rural and suburban areas will be covered (resulting in 1% overall).
    
    They are pushing this for the "War on Drugs".  This should probably be
    moved/discussed in that note.
    
    	Skip
    

This is supposedly the list of what CompuServe shut down on order from
the Munich State Prosecutor's office:

      66 alt.binaries.* groups
      alt.homosexual
      2 alt.magick.sex[.*] groups
      alt.motss.bisexua-l
      alt.politics.sex
      2 alt.recovery.* groups
      alt.religion.sexuality
      130 alt.sex[.*] groups
      alt.sexy.bald.captains
      alt.stories.erotic
      alt.support.disabled.sexuality
      alt.tv.tiny-toon.sex
      3 clari.* groups pertaining to sex & lbg news
      de.sex
      de.talk.sex
      es.alt.sexo
      2 fido.* groups with "sex" in their names
      6 fido7.* groups with "sex" in their names
      15 gay-net.* groups
      rec.arts.erotica
      shamash.gayjews
      slo.sex
      soc.support.youth.gay-lesbian-bi
      2 t-netz.sex groups
      ucb.erotica.sensual
      uw.alt.sex.*
      zer.t-netz.sex

    
    
    	Guess I'll have to cancel my compuserve account and shoot myself
    between the eyes.....nothing to live for anymore.
    
    
    

    .89
    
    Get AOL, no newsgroup restrictions except the ones your mommy and daddy
    make.

    >Get AOL, no newsgroup restrictions except the ones your mommy and daddy
    >make.
    
     Just don't say breast.

    
    Always keep abreast of the guidelines and policies.
    

    
    
    Hmmmmm... I guess I should be glad I don't own a PC and don't have to
    make these hard, earth-shattering decisions...

    .91
    
    As you probably know (setting mode=humorless), AOL realized very
    quickly that they'd stepped into something very squishy and malodorous. 
    They fixed their error, apologizing PROFUSELY for having overstepped
    the bounds of good sense.  They explained that they had made the
    mistake based on an overzealous desire to keep AOL clean in order to
    keep the howling reichwyng types from shutting down the filth-laden
    Internet.
    
    Everybody makes mistakes.  Except conservatives, who merely rub others'
    noses in it.

    No, Dick, I didn't realize they'd recognized the error of their ways.
    
    PS- Exon is a democrat. /hth

    Reich-wyngers are showing up on both sides of the paddock these days. 
    The control mongers can no longer be identified by which decoder ring
    they are wearing.  

    .95
    
    I was referring to the Christian Coalition, some of whose members I
    happened to hear on The Connection Monday.  They couldn't generate a
    coherent argument among them but that sure didn't stop them from
    clamoring to censor the Internet - despite the fact that the things
    they want to censor, at least the ones they can think of today but who
    knows about tomorrow, are already illegal (why make MORE laws?) and
    despite the fact that censoring the Internet is quite frankly not
    possible.
    
    Damn common sense, there's control to be exerted.

    
    
    
    And that's how you'd like to define all the folks on the right, Dick. 
    Funny, I thought you were more intelligent than that.
    
    
    
    Mike

    Well, Mike, WADR, it's no more intellectually dishonest than defining
    the left by the Kennedys and Metzenbaums and other ultralibs.
    Nonetheless, it looks particularly unflattering when done by one
    presumed to be more on the ball. We expect such idiocy from shriekers
    like Pat Buchanan and Teddy Rednose. Were intellectuals like W.F.
    Buckley to start doing so, it would look a lot worse, because our
    expectations are so much higher.

.94

This was the second time in six months that AOL had effectively closed down
the breast cancer forums by misguided censorship.

So they've realized the error of their ways twice in six months.

Tim

    .98
    
    > And that's how you'd like to define all the folks on the right...
    
    If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  :-)
    
    You and those in your general camp seem to be defining all those on e
    left as limolibs  They're not, any more than those on the right are all
    brainwashed theocrats.

    
    
    Not at all, Dick.  You've never asked what I think the motivation
    behind the liberals are.  It's much more fun to speculate, I know.
    
    
    Mike

Today the German government is denying ordering that any newsgroups be
shut down or threatening prosecution (even though they had earlier raided
the CompuServe offices in Munich).

However, they admit that they told CompuServe that German law required
them to monitor the content of the information provided by their on-line
service to eliminate anything related to child pornography, revisionism
about the holocaust, or other neo-Nazi activity; CompuServe insists that
they are not responsible for content and had no choice but to shut down
the groups, since they don't have the resources to do the monitoring.

CompuServe shut them down world-wide, because they don't, at this time,
have the technical means to deny access to a portion of their offerings
to subscribers only in Germany.

Of course, there are hundreds of other internet providers in Germany which
still (at the moment) provide access to all of these groups.  This access
may or may not be by storing the text of the groups on servers owned by
those providers, and that may be the key difference.

/john

    Sounds to me like the bureaucrats simply don't have a clue about how
    the Internet works or how big it is. They got nothing but rice pudding
    between their ears.

>However, they admit that they told CompuServe that German law required
>them to monitor the content of the information provided by their on-line
>service to eliminate anything related to child pornography, revisionism
>about the holocaust, or other neo-Nazi activity...

So why did they only shut down sex-related stuff?  What about alt.revisionism?

	Glenn, thanks for enlightening me. I thought what was between their
ears was GAK. Which is why it is so plentiful in the stores.

	My niece got some for Christmas. She wrote a letter to Senator Kennedy,
thanking him for the gift. 

	I did make mention that GAK and hair is not a good combo..... right,
'tine????  :-)




Glen

I don't know for sure that they didn't shut down alt.revisionism; as I
said, I can't be sure the list I found was complete; the group that
published it isn't likely to have listed anything but the things they
were upset about having censored.

Can someone with a Compu$pend account let us know?

/john

>    Sounds to me like the bureaucrats simply don't have a clue about how
>    the Internet works or how big it is. They got nothing but rice pudding
>    between their ears.

of course they have no idea.  If they're anything like their counterparts in 
this country, which is likely as bureaucrats appear to have the same mentality 
the world over, they have an unbroken track record of creating unsuitable 
legislation on just about anything because they have little understanding of 
the subject in question and an apparent unwillingness to learn.  Probably why 
bureaucracy has such a bad name - knowledge contains little of interest to 
megalomaniacs.

Chris.

    Radio news reported that Compuserve was going to develop the
    capability of selectively shutting down access (by country, at
    least) to "undesirable" newsgroups, so that access to these
    newsgroups would soon be restored to the rest of its global
    customers, while remaining blocked in Germany.  They estimated
    that this would be ready in a week or so.
    
    This whole episode was probably predictable, and it was inevitable
    that it would happen first to Compuserve with its wide international
    customer base.  And yet, its knee-jerk initial response was still
    disturbing.  They could have easily told Germany that they would
    develop this selective blocking capability and implement it as
    quickly as possible, but in the meantime, tough.
    
    They went for what they'd hoped would be the politically safe
    reaction, and it backfired.  They'll probably lose more American-based
    customers from this misadventure than they have in all of Germany.
    
    As for AOL, even beyond the "breast" incident, their past censorship
    in some areas (particularly the "chat" feature) is well-known, but I'll
    give them some grudging credit for not blocking "offensive" Web pages
    or newsgroups.  Of course, their newsgroup reader is so annoying to
    use that you probably won't even bother reading the "offensive"
    newsgroups, but that's another matter. :-)
    
    Chris

    
    I barely use CompuServe... I have a separate internet account
    that covers most of what I use (e-mail, WWW, ftp, gopher.)
    
    On the other hand, as a Microsoft developer's network member,
    it's still the best way to contact Microsoft since it doesn't
    cost me a "support incident"... also many of the hardware
    and software products I use do their support (such as driver
    upgrades) primarily through CompuServe. Although I'd rather
    keep my $10 a month, they are the biggest game in town when
    it comes to third party support...
    
    And this won't change, regardless of how bone-headed the were
    in Germany. For many of us, there simply is NO other choice
    since the people we really want to do business with almost
    exclusively use CompuServe.
    
    -b

    
    The humorous thing about Germany and the harassment of compuserve is
    just how ineffective this will be.
    
    Just a few thoughts - E.mail, Cross posting, access through other
    countries, access to unsensored web sites that then allow access to
    other web sites, etc.  The list goes on.
    
    Once you are connected into the internet, the information flows,
    whether the local government likes it or not.  So the question comes
    down to what is the government willing to do to enhance its controls. 
    It appears they are at least willing to threaten shutting down internet
    access to millions (i.e. closing something like compuserve).  
    
    But then again, there were many government willing to burn books
    instead of allowing the free flow of thoughts and ideas.
    
    	Skip

Article in the Globe on the Internet in Vietnam says they have but one
gateway to the Internet.  They're hoping to control Internet usage
(i.e. censor) by keeping it a state monopoly.

    HAHAHAHAHA!

Internet providers asked to censor racist groups
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright � 1996 Nando.net
Copyright � 1996 The Associated Press

BOSTON (Jan 10, 1996 2:40 p.m. EST) -- White supremacist groups that once
spread their racist messages at rallies and in leaflets are now going
high-tech on the Internet -- a trend a leading Jewish human rights group
wants to stop.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday began sending hundreds of letters to
Internet access providers asking them to refuse to carry messages that
"promote racism, anti-Semitism, mayhem and violence."

Good idea? No, say providers and civil libertarians. They argue that public
debate is the way to defeat hate.

The Internet allows users to "show the whole world what's wrong wrong about
what the hate speakers are saying," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group dealing with
computer communications.

"The correct place to try and put pressure is on the people who create the
content, not the person who provides access to it," said CompuServe
spokesman William Giles.

The roughly 250 hate groups in the United States, whose previous methods
reached a limited audience, now "have a magnificent marketing technology
dumped in their laps," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the
Wiesenthal center, based in Los Angeles. "They are able to dress up their
message in a way that looks ... presentable."

Slick web sites are springing up every day, with names such as Aryan
Nations, Skinheads U.S.A. and The Aryan Crusader's Library.

Ernst Zundel, a prominent Canadian Holocaust revisionist who has a homepage
called Zundelsite, says he should have as much of a right to post a web page
as anyone else.

"The Internet is the first and last truly free marketplace of ideas, for the
time being. It levels the playing field," Zundel said. "To curtail the
freedom for some will curtail the freedom for all."

The Wiesenthal Center's request is part of a growing debate over whether
Internet service providers should be viewed as publishers responsible for
what moves on their networks, or carriers who simply provide access to a
service without monitoring what is communicated.

The Wiesenthal Center argues that the services are publishers who have a
civic responsibility not to promote bigotry.

Godwin says Internet service providers should be treated like bookstores,
which exercise some control when they decide to specialize in science
fiction instead of mysteries, but are not expected to read every book and be
held responsible for the books' contents.

Prodigy spokesman Brian Ek said the service does employ systems operators
who monitor content on its proprietary bulletin boards and can remove any
messages with "blatant expressions of bigotry, racism or hate."

But what exactly meets that definition is hard to pin down: "You make a
decision when you see it."

For example, when one subscriber pointed out a "repugnant" bulletin board
message saying the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews was a good thing,
Prodigy removed it

Joe Bunkley -- who operates the "1st WWW Banned Media Page," a web site that
links to virtually every other white supremacist and neo-Nazi Internet site
-- had a strong message for those who would want to stop him from posting
his views.

"You cowards who want my page shut down can't deal with either the diversity
or the free interaction of ideas," he said.

"You, the intellectually dead, are hereby formally notified that my
intentions are not to offend anyone. It is to speak the truth as I know it
and to ensure, to the best of my abilities, the survival of the White Race."

    Censorship in ANY form is bad.
    
    Bob

	As much as I can't find any part of any white supremist group that I
could ever like, I agree with Bob. They should not be censored. 


Glen

    This is still the United States of America. Remember, home of the free.
    Any direct action taken by these white supremicist idiots, that deny
    individual rights of anyone, requires swift action. However, if they
    want to spew their BS amongst each other, or anyone interested, they
    should be free to do so.

    .117
    
    Aren't there laws against conspiracy?  And against inciting to injure?

    ^Aren't there laws against conspiracy?  And against inciting to injure?
    
    Well, if we made laws to totally stop these things, SOAPBOX would be
    out of business. :)  Objective laws would be based on a person's harmful
    actions based on his/her force coersion or fraud directed at other
    individuals. Laws based on subjective words, such as conspiracy and
    inciting, allows politicians and other power/control freaks to steal
    steal our freedom.

    <--- True!

>    This is still the United States of America.

in terms of the Internet, no it's not.

Chris.

Trying to selectively stop messages on the Internet is like trying to
selectively stop messages tranmitted via air.  The Internet was designed 
for failsafe delivery of messages.  Even putting all Internet traffic 
through a gateway into Viet Nam may not be workable.  Once a encryption 
mechanism is introduced, I suspect that there would be no hope of 
blocking the traffic.

Jim

Neo-Nazi Materials Lead Prosecutors To Investigate Internet Providers
By PAUL GEITNER

Associated Press Writer

BERLIN (AP) -- State prosecutors are investigating Germany's telephone
company and another firm for allegedly helping distribute neo-Nazi
propaganda on the Internet.

The move comes a month after prosecutors in another German state,
Bavaria, began investigating child pornography on the Internet,
prompting the computer on-line service CompuServe to block worldwide
access to sex-related material.

Prosecutors in Baden-Wuerttemburg state said Wednesday they are
looking into whether Deutsche Telekom is helping disseminate the
writings of neo-Nazi Ernst Zuendel. Zuendel, a German extremist living
in Canada, has created his own site on the Internet.

Anyone logging on to the global network can access such Zuendel tracts
as "Auschwitz: Myths and Facts," "The Holocaust: Let's Hear Both
Sides" and "Did 6 Million Really Die?"

Neo-Nazi material is illegal to print or distribute in Germany.
Violators can be charged with inciting racial hatred, but it is
unclear yet how such laws can be enforced in cyberspace.

The national telephone company, which provides Internet access through
its "T-Online" service for a monthly fee, is trying to determine how
to prevent such material from being spread in the future, spokesman
Stefan Althoff said Wednesday night.

"We have no interest in seeing radical right-wing ideas spread in the 
Internet," Althoff said.

Prosecutors in Mannheim, a city about 50 miles south of Frankfurt,
said in a statement they also were investigating another firm for
incitement. Wolfgang Kneip, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office,
would not identify the firm because of the ongoing investigation.

But next to T-Online, Germany's only other major Internet provider is
CompuServe.

Last month, CompuServe agreed to block access for its four million users
worldwide to sex-oriented areas of the Internet because of pressure
from Bavarian prosecutors investigating child pornography.

CompuServe officials in Germany could not be reached late Wednesday.
At the company's Columbus, Ohio, headquarters, spokeswoman Jane
Torbica said Wednesday afternoon: "At this point, we have not received
any information on this matter."

Once the arcane domain of scientists, the Internet now allows people
in homes, offices and universities to publicly post text, audio and
pictures on computers.  These files are maintained on interconnected
networks of computers around the world, but can often be reached with
a local phone call to a commercial on-line service or Internet
provider.

In a telephone interview from his home in Toronto, Zuendel said his
"Zundelsite" on the Internet's World Wide Web has logged 20,000
"visits" since it opened five months ago.

Zuendel said people from all over the world, including Germany, had
accessed the site and downloaded his neo-Nazi materials. He said only
a tiny portion of his computer mail was negative about the texts.

"They're available on the Internet because Germany does not yet rule
the Internet," Zuendel said. "They might want to, but they do not."

Zuendel said he expected the Germans to go after his site.

"The Germans, hypocrites that they are, would first say that they are
against pornography," he said. "But that was only a foot in the door."

Using the same anti-neo-Nazi laws that hold the distributor of
material responsible for its content, Bavarian prosecutors last year
identified some 200 Internet electronic forums, known as newsgroups,
as illegal under German law.

Unable to block access to those forums for just its 220,000 German
users, CompuServe, a unit of H&R Block Inc., cut access to all
customers, touching off a debate about censorship on the Internet.

CompuServe officials say they are working on a way to selectively
block controversial sites while allowing other customers to access
them.

Obstacle Seen To Internet Ban

     By Bloomberg Business News  (NY Times, Saturday 27 Jan p. 37)

FRANKFURT, Jan. 26 -- Compuserve says it is powerless to block access to
neo-Nazi material on the lnternet as the German authorities have requested.

Compuserve, a unit of H & R Block Inc., confirmed today that prosecutors in
Mannheim had informed it that a resident of Canada was using the Internet
to distribute neo-Nazi material.

The company said the material cited by the prosecutors was available on the
World Wide Web, which is part of the Internet.

Josef Dietl, a spokesman for the company in Germany, said it would be
extremely difficult to shut off access to individual Internet sites like
the one cited by the authorities. "We're only the entry point," he said.

Hubert Jobski, Mannheim's chief prosecutor, said he was not sure whether
on-line services could legally be held responsible for Internet content.

In December, Compuserve barred its users worldwide from access to about 200
discussion groups identified by the prosecutor in Munich as containing
child pornography and other sexual material that might be illegal.

The difference between this and the previous incident with CompuServe is that
in the case of the newsgroups, the data was being explicitly stored on news
servers operated by CompuServe; CompuServe has the capability to decide
exactly which newsgroups will be carried.

With WWWeb sites, CompuServe users simply connect to an internet address.

Here is an example (courtesy of the NY Times online Cyberedition) of a site
which violates German law

	http://panther.gsu.edu/~gs02jwb/hoax.ind

If you drop off the "hoax.ind" after the "/" you'll get a list of links to
all sorts of disgusting stuff, including the infamous "Zundelsite" in Canada:

	http://www.webcom.com/~ezundel/english/aaa.table.html

/john

                       * U N B E L I E V A B L E *

I didn't believe they would do it.  Deutsche Telekom has firewalled off
access from Germany to the ENTIRE Web Communications internet site.

Because of _one_customer_, Ernst Zundel, *all* customers of Web Communications
are unable to be accessed from Germany.  One of their customers is Deutsche
Bank Securities, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of one of Germany's largest banks.

Web Communications will have to decide how to or whether to respond to this.

They could complain to the CCITT (will take years and probably not succeed).

They could expel Zundel.

They could set up a separate internet address specifically for Zundel's crap.

So, immediately, a net free-speech maven has made arrangements for alternate
access.  Note that he insists he agrees that Zundel's crap is crap, but wants
to demonstrate that the Internet is the solvent of all government censorship.
Will Deutsche Telecom block access to Stanford next?

From: [email protected] (Just Rich)
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,soc.culture.german,alt.revisionism
ANNOUNCE: Mirrors of "Zundelsite" revisionism blocked by Deutsche Telekom
Date: 29 Jan 1996 19:13:17 -0800

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

To cut to the chase, 

 http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/
 https://www.c2.org/~rich/

But please follow the reasoning below.

[email protected] (Ralf Vogelgesang) wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
>Fergus O'Dea  <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>(3) How does an internet provider block one IP no.?
>
>That is the most interesting question in this context... I'm not
>exactly a wizard in the true sense, but I know how to write cgi-bin
>interfaces, etc... if there is *something* coming out of that IP node,
>going *anywhere* unrestricted, it should be fairly easy to set up a
>gateway at that location and the information is detour back on the net.

Such anonymous Web proxies exist. The most famous one is at CMU, but it
is limited to CMU users only. There's an open one in France somewhere, but
I'm pretty confident that if the instructions to use it were publicly
posted, it would shut down. I can certainly understand not wanting to
dedicate one's entire bandwidth to gatewaying the Web for people you don't
know, no matter how civic-minded you are.

>The only sure way of restricting access to someone on the net who
>wants to be accessed is switching off his computer.

What Deutsche Telekom has done is block routes -- 129,000, according to
the article I read in the San Jose Mercury News. I think this is a very
big deal. Of course this kind of thing is normal practice in China, Cuba,
and so on, but I believe that this is the first time that a Major Western
Democracy has disrupted the global telecommunications network for
political reasons. Judging from the way Zundel and friends have been
scrambling, the blocking has been rather effective. 

What has also been effective is an apparent campaign of mail- and http-
bombing of webcom.com, which makes this site nearly impossible to reach,
even from here, which is only five very fast router hops away.

This is silly and wrong.

To illustrate the folly of Internet censorship, I am now mirroring most of
Zundel's files (I can't handle the RealAudio stuff). They are being 
mirrored
both on the Web and in the global AFS file system, which is mounted by at
least a dozen universities and corporations within Germany. Deutsche 
Telekom
now needs to make a choice:

1. Cut off all links with the outside world (a simple symlink is all that
   is now needed for thousands of servers in dozens of countries to mirror
   my directory).

2. Try to extradite me personally and enjoin the distribution of files from
   computers in the United States and every other country.

3. Attack my employer.

4. Recognize that censorship has no place in a free society, and give up.

The failed attempts of Scientology to stifle distribution of the Fishman
documents, which by the way continue to be distributed from Germany in
defiance of recent US court rulings, should demonstrate that #4 is the 
only reasonable choice.

Yes, I recognize that private parties have the right to free association,
and that noone has the right to force you to publish something you
disagree with. I applaud WebCom.COM for its courageous and purely optional
stand (to date, at least). It would have been within their rights to pull
theplug on Zundel. However, I believe that Deutsche Telekom has gone way
beyond what is appropriate by denying pass-through access. Are they now
accepting responsibility for the political implications of every bit that
might pass through their routers? 

The right way to address people like Zundel is to meticulously document
and refute, not to drive underground. This is what the Nizkor Project,
which by the way knows about and applauds my mirror, is doing. (I haven't
heard back from the Wiesenthal Center, but I'd imagine that they aren't
pleased.) Nizkor means "Remember," which I believe is the right approach.
Nizkor's site is: 

 http://nizkor.almanac.bc.ca/

I highly recommend it.

The original "Zundelsite" is:

 http://www.webcom.com/~ezundel/english/

However, this site is basically unreachable now.

You can access my mirror on the Web via:

 http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/

People with access to the global AFS file system -- which includes dozens
of sites in Germany -- can use the path:

 /afs/ir.stanford.edu/users/l/llurch/WWW/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views

Assuming your Web server honors symlinks (which is a security hole if you
have untrusted Web publishers), simply symlink to this directory and you
have an instant mirror.

For an old, partial list of sites that mount AFS, and for other information
about the global AFS filesystem (which for the information of the censors
uses UDP ports 7000-7029), see:

 http://www.transarc.com:80/afs/transarc.com/public/www/Product/AFS/
   FAQ/faq.html#sub1.07

(that should actually be one line, of course)

I have no interest in giving Zundel, who can certainly afford his own
account, free Web space. I'm certainly no fan of his views. But to make
the point, I will keep the files up for at least a week, and beyond that
for as long as anyone tries to attack the main webcom.com distribution
site in any way. I will give him a couple of days' notice before removing 
the files, at which point they'll be replaced by a pointer to the main 
site. 

This message is PGP-signed with my usual key for authentication purposes. 
The From: line is different because this has nothing to do with work. The 
usual disclaimers apply.

Sent to alt.censorship,alt.revisionism,soc.culture.german by [email protected]
Mon Jan 29 19:11 PST 1996

- -rich

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From: [email protected] (Klaus Ries)
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,soc.culture.german,alt.revisionism
Re: ANNOUNCE: Mirrors of "Zundelsite" revisionism blocked by Deutsche Telekom
Date: 30 Jan 1996 19:00:41 GMT

I don't quite understand all that activity for a person of that history.
Overall I like your enthusiam and believe in free speech and I really hate
your attitude that you know what is right for Germany to do.
We have a democracy and we have reasons why we did certain things in this way
or another.
Remember: Germany is independent ( just in case you forgot that ).

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Just Rich) writes:
[...]

|> To illustrate the folly of Internet censorship, I am now mirroring most of
|> Zundel's files (I can't handle the RealAudio stuff). They are being mirrored
|> both on the Web and in the global AFS file system, which is mounted by at
|> least a dozen universities and corporations within Germany. Deutsche Telekom
|> now needs to make a choice:
|> 
|> 1. Cut off all links with the outside world (a simple symlink is all that
|>    is now needed for thousands of servers in dozens of countries to mirror
|>    my directory).
|> 
|> 2. Try to extradite me personally and enjoin the distribution of files from
|>    computers in the United States and every other country.

A little bit simple minded, if you think that this is effective.
They are not that stupid ... and universities and cooperations have their own
providers anyways, so they haven't been effected.
The typical Telecom Online user won't find your servers and if they did Telecom
would just pull the plug again.
It's also easy to find out, if somebody is downloading the stuff (believe me
...).
Some simple lines of code can do the job, even if you try to change the text.

|> 3. Attack my employer.
|> 
|> 4. Recognize that censorship has no place in a free society, and give up.

I like your enthusiasm.

But some of the spirits that might aggree with Mr Zundel in Germany are
expressing their opinion on other people by beating them up, firebombing
their houses, planning terroristic activities and insulting them. If that's
what you mean by free society, be welcome in their club. Just because Mr.
Zundel isn't beating up other people himself he isn't responsible for that
type of activity.

Germany's experience of the late Weimarer Republik has healed us from the
imagination, that freedom of assembly and speech is OK in every instance.

|> The failed attempts of Scientology to stifle distribution of the Fishman
|> documents, which by the way continue to be distributed from Germany in
|> defiance of recent US court rulings, should demonstrate that #4 is the 
|> only reasonable choice.

Failed ? They were very effective at CMU !
And they could be effective in Germany as well, because the legal situation
could be just the same.

So long

Klaus

From: Fergus O'Dea <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: German ISP censors Webcom?
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 14:31:59 -0600

D B McCullagh wrote:
> 
> T-Online has indeed censored access to Webcom, where the Zundelsite keeps
> its pages.
> 
> Just Rich ([email protected]) and I have set up mirrors of the Zundelsite at
> Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University. I do not agree with
> Zundel's views. Instead, the mirror archive exists to demonstrate the
> folly and the danger of Internet censorship. My mirror is in the AFS
> directory:
>   /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/declan/www/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/
> 
> You can access it from the following web servers at these URLs:
>   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/declan/www/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/
>   http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~declan/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/
>   http://web.mit.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/declan/www/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/
> 
Well done! WTG!  This is what I wanted to see.  I think the battle to
beat censorship has entered a crucial phase, and it is imperative
that people defeat it in every way possible.

It is no surprise to me that Germany is having problems with neo-Nazis
if this is how they deal with it.  In Western society, censorship is
counter-productive and only provides publicity and status to those
being censored.  The 'Zundelsite' is now overloaded with readers. Is
this what the German govt. wants???  I even had to think twice about
the Holocaust myself!  Is it all a huge conspiracy??  Of course not -
but the one sure way to encourage conspiracy theorists...is to censor
them!!!

YOU CANNOT CENSOR THE INTERNET!!!  FORGET IT!!!   

PS Visit the site of a movement which knows all about
censorship...since defeated...

http://www.serve.com/rm/sinnfein

Fergus O'Dea
Sinn Fein web admin

                           WEBCOM ISSUES STATEMENT
                            ON GERMAN CENSORSHIP

                               January 29, 1996

 Webcom Communications of Santa Cruz, California, today posted the following
                     announcement to their subscribers:

Dear WebCom Users,

     Most of all I want you all to know that I, Thomas, and the entire staff
of Web Communications condemn anti-Semitism, racism and hate unequivocally
and in nothing but the strongest terms. I lost my maternal grandmother to a
Nazi concentration camp and the sight of the swastica turns my stomach.

     Thomas and I knew when we founded WebCom that these sorts of issues
would arise, and that we would receive pressure to edit the content of
communications flowing through our network and equipment. We set our policy
from the beg- inning, and plan to stick by it. That policy is that we do not
monitor, control, police, edit, or censor the content of any communications
flowing through webcom.com. I am glad to see that many of you support that
position, but I also understand why some of you are outraged. This message
is addressed to all WebCom users, but especially to those of you who are
outraged and/or who feel that terminating the account in question is the
action we should take.

     As a college student studying philosophy, I once attended the American
Philosophical Association convention in San Francisco with a group of my
fellow students. At that convention I remember getting into a heated debate
over ethical relativism. The relativists were arguing that all ethics are
subjective/relative. During the course of the argument I brought up Nazism
as an example of one system of ethics that we should all be able to agree
*absolutely* is wrong and not deserving of any respect whatsoever. My
opponent stuck by the position that my condemnation of Nazism was merely my
subjective ethics speaking, and that since all ethics are relative, my
ethics were in some fundamental way equally as valid as Hitler's. My
opponent made it clear that she was not a Nazi, but still wanted to defend
the philosophical position that all ethics are relative. I became very
emotional and passionatly argued that as human beings we should *all* be
able to denounce Nazism, unequivocally and any philosophy of ethics
notwithstanding. I became so upset with this person that I stopped the
argument and refused to talk with her any further.

     The point I want to make is not that ethical relativism is an absurd
position, which most of you would probably agree upon, nor to start a debate
on ethical relativism on the WebCom users mailing list. I just want to
demonstrate that I can appreciate the position of outrage and intolerance of
such a morally repugnant position as taken by the "Zundelsite" at WebCom. To
those that say either Web Communications should terminate the site, or else
they will not do business with us - I hope you can see now that I really do
know where you are coming from.

     Nonetheless, Thomas and I don't feel that censorship has a positive
effect in the final analysis. We feel that the type of dialogue such as we
are engaging in now which arises as a result of letting ideas be expressed
is productive towards refuting such misguided ways of thinking as the
Zundelsite. Censorship drives the ideas underground to fester, and could
even tend to lend some legitamcy to or create additional curiosity about the
censored party. I find it very ironic that the action of Deutsche Telekom
has done nothing if not brought the eyes of the world to this neo-Nazi Web
site. I have said all along that the best action to take against an
objectionable Web page is to ignore it. What if nobody visited the Zundel
web site? After all, let us not forget that one of the primary
characteristics of the Internet which sets it apart from all prior
communications media is that it gives us all infinite choice over what we
shall focus our attention upon.

     Long before Thomas and I founded WebCom, we worked together for a
grassroots political organization which worked for peace and non-violence
(this is actually how Thomas and I met). In that work I became convinced
that debate in this country was shaped (that is, controlled) by the
*broadcast* (i.e., one- to-many) forms of communication which dominate
political communications. The main reason we were and are so excited about
the Internet is that it allows communications to flourish without restraint,
in a many-to-many fashion, at a grassroots level and on a global scale to
boot! We believe that although this results in some of lunacy right
alongside intelligent, rational discourse, in the long run we all benefit by
increased dialogue, discourse, interaction, and communication, but we must
take the good with the bad.

     God forbid, if ever again we should find ourselves in an international
war, it is my sincere hope that communications between the citizens of the
warring countries at a grassroots level and in a many-to-many format will
occur un- impeded by the governments of those countries. It is really,
really sad that we do not have the opportunity to discuss this issue with
users of the network which blocked us.

     The first action taken by a Nazi regime upon gaining power is to censor
all dissenting communications and information. Nazis understand that
restricted communications are key to their ability to hang on to power.
Democracies understand that participation by *all* is a necessary ingredient
of freedom. Many believe that freedom of speech is the very heart and soul
of America. I believe it is certainly one of the pillars of this country,
and worth defending even when it forces us to defend the speech rights of
someone with whom we vehmently disagree.

     From a purely business standpoint, it could be argued that it would be
prudent for us to terminate service to this account. However, we also feel
that that action could endanger our future as a business, since it would set
a precedent both for ourselves and the industry in general. Indeed, legal
precendent demon- strates that a single action of censorship would be cause
for the courts to treat us as a publisher and not as a common communications
carrier. The more we edit content, the more we will be expected to edit
content, and that is not the business we want to be in. I would much rather
spend your service fees on upgrading equipment and networks than on hiring a
panel of censors to review every ftp upload to our server. Censorship
threatens the viability of our business model which is low-cost,
self-service Internet publication. The very things which allow us to keep
our prices low (self-service, automation, high-volume) are the same things
that would be threatened by a requirement for us to monitor and be liable
for the content of our customer sites.

     I had not planned on posting here yet because we have not yet issued a
formal statement, but I felt that WebCom customers deserved some sort of
statement of our position, especially those who are upset.

Yours truly,

Chris Schfler

President
Web Communications

In response to the person who originally wrote .128:

>|> The failed attempts of Scientology to stifle distribution of the Fishman
>|> documents, which by the way continue to be distributed from Germany in
>|> defiance of recent US court rulings, should demonstrate that #4 is the 
>|> only reasonable choice.
>
>Failed ? They were very effective at CMU !
>And they could be effective in Germany as well, because the legal situation
>could be just the same.

The Scientologists have won many battles over this but are losing the war. In
the Netherlands, someone posted these "Fishman Documents" (secret Scientology
scriptures) on their web page.  The Scientologists attempted to have the
internet service provider raided by police.  This made local headlines.  The
result:  The Fishman Documents are now available from 100 web sites in
the Netherlands.

The underlying question: What should the law be for when copyrighted text is
entered into a court case, and someone takes (publicly available) court records
with the copyrighted text and posts them on the Internet?

    So can anybody point us to a web page that the Fishman documents can be
    found on?
    

Using AltaVista, I found:

	http://www.vnu.ib.com/telepc/cos/

which is in Dutch, but contains a huge table which would appear to
be a list of the 100 Dutch sites.

/john

There's one at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/fishman/index2.html .
An explanation of what it is about is at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/fishman/home.html .

I had written to WebCom to ask them whether the reports were actually true
and what they planned to do (Formal complaint to the CCITT, set up a new
address for Zundel separate from their main server, or what).  They replied
and included their official statement, which is similar to but also quite
different from their letter to users posted earlier.  Unfortunately there
are a few transmission errors in the document.

Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 14:26:50 PST
From: Chris Schefler <[email protected]>
To: covert::covert (John R. Covert)
Subject: Re: Access blocked from Germany?

John,

It is true.  This is an extremely complex issue, and we have not yet
determined any specific courses of action, except that we do not
intend to cancel the E Zuendel site.  Attached is our official
statement.

Chris Schefler
President


First and foremost the officers and staff of Web Communications want it to
be absolutely clear that we unequivocally and in the strongest terms
condemn anti-Semitism and all other forms of hate and racism. 
	
However, WebCom maintains a strict corporate policy that we do not in any
way monitor, edit, police, censor or control the content of any of our
customers' communications as they pass over our network and through our
computer systems.  We provide strictly self-service Internet services, and
the neo-Nazi propaganda to which Germany and Deutsche Telekom reacted by
blocking all access our network and computer systems is being published by
a customer of Web Communications, *not* by Web Communications itself
	
We feel that the primary question the public will want us to address is
this: If we, along with all sensible, intelligent and educated human
beings, are so absolutely opposed to the neo-Nazi propoganda being
propogated via our service, then why do we not exercise our right to
terminate service to the offending customer?.  Our reasons are as follows.

- It is absolutely and unconditionally essential to our business model that
we retain the status of "common communications carrier".  Web
Communications is able to offer World Wide Web, email, and other
communications services at among the lowest prices in the industry
primarily through self-service, automation, and high volume.  Due to the
breadth and volume of communications carried by our network, monitoring and
editing would simply be cost prohibitive.  Legal precedent has demonstrated
that if an online service acts to edit or restrict content in any way, then
that service will be viewed by the court as a publisher, and therefore
ultimately liable and responsible for *all* content provided by
	  
- Terminating service or otherwise cooperating with the German government
in their desire to censor the Zuendel Web site would  help to establish a
precedent in which foreign governments all over the world would be able to
exercise censorship over any Internet communications which they find
objectionable.  Such a state of affairs would work against one of our
primary corporate missions: to help foster the diverse, unrestricted,
international grassroots communications made possible by the Internet.

- We have not been notified by anyone, let alone an officer of any U.S.
court or law enforcement agency, that the maintainer(s) of the Web site in
question may be conducting any activity via our services which violates any
applicable local, state or federal law.

- We believe that our country's constitution gaurantees that the simple
non-violent expression of ideas, however unpopular those ideas may be, is
a fundamental human right which shall not be violated.  Although the
customer in question is not a U.S. citizen, the WebCom communications
network is an American communications facility, and we believe that the
right to freedom of speech is held by our constitution to be not merely an
American right but indeed a human right.

- We believe in the fundamental value of diverse communications.  The
presence of other viewpoints, no matter how loathsome, forces us to make
moral judgements and to think about and consider the issues they raise. 
Ignorance is dangerous; when opposing views are suppressed, instead of
exposed and refuted, the result is that we are unprepared or incapable of
countering them when they do emerge.

- Each of our more than 1,500 customers joined us with the explict
understanding of our policy that they, and they alone, would be completely
responsible for the creation, maintenance, and publicization of their own
materials, as well as any legal issues which might arise as a result of
their publications or communications.  This understanding is formalized in
a service agreement which each of our customers must sign.  We believe that
if such a policy is not uniformly applied, it loses credibility with ou

In addition to philosophical reasons, the founding officers of Web
Communications have very personal reasons for their vehement condemnation
of the message behind the Ernst Zuendel Web site.  Our President, Chris
Schefler, lost his maternal grandmother to a Nazi concentration camp.  A
sister church of the church to which our Vice President Thomas Leavitt
belongs suffered the extermination of its entire clergy in southern France
by the Gestapo.

Nonetheless, for the reasons previously outlined, Web Comunications intends
to enforce the service agreement with the Ernst Zuendel account exactly as
it is enforced with any other customer.  Namely, if we are notified by U.S. 
authorities that the customer is using our services in violation of any
American law, or if the customer fails to remit their service fees in a
timely manner, their account with us will be terminated.

Schefler and Leavitt have a long record of commitment to and active
participation in progressive and non-violent political causes, and actually
met while working for California Peace Action, a grassroots progressive
citizens lobby.  They decided to found Web Communications not only because
they recognized an incredible business opportunity, but also because they
recognized the Internet as having the potential to be an incredible
catalyst for positive planetary change by uniting people all over the world
i potential as a catalyst for positive social change.

We at Web Communications believe in the fundamental value of communication,
and are excited about the real-time flow and exchange of ideas, dialogue,
information, music, art, commerce, and communications of all sorts over the
global Internet as a powerful catalyst for innovation and creativity,
understanding, learning, grassroots community, efficient niche marketing
and commerce, and unprecedented synergy.  We believe that diverse
grassroots communication on a large global scale will tend to reduce racism

--
Web Communications (sm)                 Chris Schefler, President
Voice: (408) 457-9671 x100              [email protected]

Web Communications Home Page URL http://www.webcom.com/

     Fences in cyberspace: Governments move to limit free flow of the
     Internet

     By Jon Auerbach, Globe Staff, 02/01/96

     Viewed until recently as a vast and ungoverned digital wilderness that
     could link strangers at opposite ends of the world, the Internet is
     slowly being colonized.

     Governments around the world - from Germany to Iran to Singapore - are
     moving to limit Internet access for their citizens, viewing the global
     computer network as a threat to national security, cultural decency or
     religious sanctity.

     Embracing the Internet technology but eschewing the ungoverned flow of
     information it invites, these countries are now employing censors to
     filter out undesirable information, everything from neo-Nazi propaganda
     in Germany to Playboy centerfolds in Iran.

     In Washington, the proposed Communications Decency Act now being
     discussed by Congress would hold individuals responsible for posting
     sexually explicit material on the Internet, a measure decried by a
     broad cross-section of computer users as government censorship.

     And in corporations around the country, computer managers are scurrying
     to install technologies that limit employees' access to the Internet to
     sites deemed work-related because of concerns that workers will fritter
     away the work day on line. Companies are also building ``firewalls''
     that shield them from the outside Internet to protect sensitive
     information from the eyes of prying hackers.

     This move to cordon off the Internet into private plots - some call it
     digital Balkanization - is seen by experts as one of the most profound
     changes since the global network emerged as a commercial medium in
     1991.

     Many Internet specialists say it marks the shift from an open,
     ungoverned network to one where users are building nation states, an
     evolution that they say will lead to the Internet's ultimate success as
     a commercial and communication platform.

     But free speech advocates say the colonization of cyberspace could turn
     the much-ballyhooed information superhighway envisaged by Al Gore and
     other senior statesmen into a disconnected network of private roads.

     ``You can view this as the morning after,'' said Marc Rotenberg,
     director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington,
     who believes the push marks a ``cyberspace plate shift.''

     Because the idea of regulating and controlling the Internet runs
     counter to the idea of an open and ungoverned information network
     espoused by many of its veteran users, the colonization of cyberspace
     has ignited a firestorm among the global Internet community.

     The whole idea of governments choosing what their citizens can and
     can't see is ``Orwellian in the literal sense of the word,'' said
     Rotenberg.

     To be sure, the issues of controlling content raised by the Internet
     are not new ones. In the 1920s, European countries worried that
     medium-wave radio broadcasts would impinge on their sovereignty by
     allowing information to flow unmonitored across borders. The debate was
     rekindled with satellite television networks in the 1970s.

     But unlike broadcast organizations, which tend to be regulated by laws
     and controlled by watchdogs, the Internet is more or less ungoverned.

     And though ``real world'' laws technically apply to the Internet - a
     handful of people have been prosecuted in the United States for
     distributing child pornography on line - the anonymity of the Internet
     and the ease of distributing information from multiple locations makes
     finding and prosecuting criminals distinctly more difficult. An illegal
     document or picture could sit on hundreds or thousands of computers at
     once, making it difficult to track down and even more difficult to
     stamp out.

     As a result, some countries have taken matters into their own hands.

     Last week, a leading Internet access provider in Germany blocked access
     to the World Wide Web site of a Toronto-based neo-Nazi after German
     prosecutors warned the company that it may be responsible for inciting
     racial hatred. The move came a month after CompuServe, a big US-based
     on-line service, cut off access to sexually explicit Internet bulletin
     boards in response to an investigation of child pornography launched by
     prosecutors in Munich.

     Vietnam, which was scheduled to open up its doors to the Internet this
     month, has slammed on the brakes on the project, saying it first wants
     to draft regulations on what Internet links will be allowed and by
     whom.

     Chinese officials are toying with the idea of using advanced filtering
     technology to build a digital wall around the huge country that would,
     in effect, cordon off a part of cyberspace for private use. With such a
     system, Chinese users could communicate with each other, but they would
     have only limited access to the outside world, a measure officials
     believe would keep political dissent from reaching the screens of
     ordinary Chinese.

     In Saudi Arabia, access to the Internet is a tightly guarded privilege.
     Electronic mail accounts are open to inspection by the ministry of the
     interior, and anyone ordering, say, a Playboy centerfold over the
     Internet could be jailed for dealing in pornography. And as its
     citizens rush to get wired, Iran and Singapore, too, are trying to
     adopt censorship laws. ``We refuse to accept that the free flow of
     information means allowing an environment for crime and sleaze to
     flourish,'' Singapore's minister of information, George Yeo, was quoted
     as saying last year.

     That doesn't mean there aren't easy ways of finding sleaze. A user in
     Germany could easily access the banned neo-Nazi site by linking up to
     the Internet through, say, France. Likewise, a Chinese user may not be
     able to read politically dissenting material directly, but someone
     outside the country could easily send him the material via e-mail.

     Trying to close off the Internet is ``like stopping smoke signals from
     across the border,'' said Nicholas Negroponte, director of the
     Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and an Internet expert.

     And although filtering the Internet is working for some countries now,
     it remains to be seen whether it might not prove destructive in the
     long term. With the Internet emerging as a burgeoning global
     marketplace, those countries that limit access are set to lose out,
     said Mary Modahl, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge.

     ``The costs of censorship are extremely high. Business lost, loss of
     industry. Basically, if you limit technology, you limit your whole
     economy.''

     Modahl and others believe new laws would help open the Internet. If
     international agreements were in place, they argue, countries would not
     need to cloister themselves off from the global network.

     Earlier this week, Federico Mayor, the director of UNESCO, an arm of
     the United Nations, called for the drafting of a global agreement that
     would help protect rights in cyberspace. Among other areas that need to
     be addressed, Mayor pointed to copyright laws and the distribution of
     banned materials.

     And a private organization in the United States known as the Internet
     Law Task Force, which is selling itself as a global watchdog, is
     gaining support around the world. ``We've got all these nation states
     and suddenly they're all interacting and that's why you're seeing the
     sense that maybe we should talk about international treaties on the
     net,'' said Mike Godwin, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier
     Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil rights group.

     Most Internet experts believe the Internet of the future will
     ultimately emerge as a network more like the real world. Questionable
     material like pornography probably wouldn't be banned, but rather it
     would be found in the Internet's version of a red-light district. In
     this way, users wouldn't stumble on pornography, and access to adult
     sites could be more easily controlled.

     And in this way, the experts say, users, and not government, would be
     ultimately responsible for choosing what they wanted to see.

     This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on 02/01/96.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected] (John R. Covert)
Subject: Germany's drastic censorship

Jon Auerbach's page one article (1 Feb 1996) on Internet censorship failed to
reflect the drastic nature of Germany's most recent act of censorship.  While
Jon is correct that a leading Internet access provider blocked access to a
Toronto-based neo-Nazi, the full story is much more dramatic.

The "leading Internet access provider" is Deutsche Telekom, which holds a 
monopoly on almost all telecommunications within and to and from Germany,
similar to that held by AT&T before the Bell System breakup.  Thus access
is blocked not just for customers of Telekom's T-Online internet service,
but also for most internet users in Germany, including essentially all
universities and scientific institutions.

And Telekom did not block just the material provided by the Toronto-based
neo-Nazi, whose crime in Germany is claiming that the Holocaust did not
occur.  Telekom blocked both incoming and outgoing access between Germany
and all customers of Web Communications, an internet access provider in
Santa Cruz, California.  (http://www.webcom.com/)

In so doing, Telekom cut off Germany from over 1,500 businesses, including 
electronic and computer businesses, art stores, online banks, and and even 
the Port Douglas Visitors Bureau for Queensland, Australia.

The response of advocates for free speech was swift and comprehensive.  
Even though most of the free speech advocates denounce the neo-Nazi 
material, copies of the information immediately appeared on dozens of other 
sites including Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, and MIT.  So far, Telekom has
not followed through by shutting down access to these well-respected 
universities, and the action has had the result of preventing German users
from communicating with completely innocent commercial sites instead 
of cutting off the holocaust-denial information illegal in Germany.

Regards,
John R. Covert

    ``Orwellian in the literal sense of the word,''
    
    Surely the literal sense of the word "Orwellian" refers to something
    belonging to or produced by (presumably George) Orwell.  Just
    nitpicking..

    .138
    
    Surely you are mistaken.  The American Heritage Dictionary, Third
    Edition, gives the following definition of "Orwellian":
    
        Or�well�i�an adj.
        Of, relating to, or evocative of the works of George Orwell,
        especially the satirical novel 1984, which depicts a futuristic
        totalitarian state.
    
    Neologisms, of which "Orwellian" is one, tend to have the literal
    meanings assigned to them by the uses to which they are put.  Of
    course, we could really pick nits and point out that there was never
    any such person as George Orwell.  The name is a pseudonym that was
    used by British author Eric Blair.

    .139
     Great thing about the box - I can get educated without effort

    .140
    
    Any time.

    
    	Not any time ... just when you're around, Binder.
    

    Or, when you are clearly in the wrong.
    
    

    
    
    >Not any time ... just when you're around, Binder.
    
    
    Is he gone yet???
    

This gets weirder and weirder, although it was bound to happen.

The Church of Scientology just filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands against 23
defendants (mostly internet service providers) for having the Fishman Documents
on users' home pages. (see 482.131)

They should be in for a good fight, since, apparently, in the Netherlands court
documents are considered public records and are open to all, more so than in
the US.

Santa Cruz Webber's got hot one by tail
By David Plotnikoff
San Jose Mercury News

CHRIS Schefler says he's doing just fine, thank you -- sticking to his
guns and trying to keep his mind on business. Indeed, Schefler, the
president of Web Communications, a tiny Santa Cruz Web-access company
with 1,500 members, sounds just fine -- for a man who just had a giant
flaming chunk of international telecommunications controversy fall out
of the blue and into his lap.

Schefler's strange days began a week ago, when Deutsche Telekom,
Germany's national phone company, blocked its one million on-line
customers from reaching all Web sites maintained at Schefler's
company. Deutsche Telekom, the country's largest Internet provider,
did it -- under pressure from German prosecutors -- because one of the
1,500 self-publishers who store materials on the Web Communications
server is a somewhat notorious Toronto man named Ernst Zundel, who
asserts the Holocaust never happened.

Why, with hundreds of racist sites on the Web, did DT single out
Schefler's Santa Cruz firm as a menace to German society? "That's odd.
I really couldn't tell you why," says Schefler. "So far, they haven't
had any explanation at all." Schefler says no amount of pressure from
the German phone giant is going to pressure him into booting Zundel --
or anyone else who chooses to self-publish controversial material on
his site. This concept -- defending the practice of even the speech
you loathe the most -- takes on added significance here when you
consider Schefler's maternal grandmother died in a Nazi concentration
camp.

"We basically told everyone from the very beginning that although we
unequivocably condemn anti-Semitism, we don't monitor, police, censor
or edit anything on the site. Period. It's essential that we retain
the status of a common carrier," Schefler explained. "If we were to
edit or restrict content in any way, it's possible we could be viewed
in court as a publisher responsible for all content."

Schefler says his membership is "1,000 percent" behind him. What about
those customers who rely on his service for business and don't
particularly want to be part of a noble test case? "There have been
spirited discussions, but nobody's leaving so far." In the end, what
if protecting this one person's right to speech ultimately led to the
closing of the platform for all members? "We're feeling it certainly
could develop into a situation that could threaten our business.
Really, it's a complex situation, and there are a lot of other things
we'd rather be dealing with right now. Still, we're up to the
challenge. We felt it was inevitable that something of this nature
would come along sooner or later."

Without getting into the diverse legal standards for speech that exist
in Canada, Germany and the United States, here's my take on why
Deutsche Telekom's move to block is a gross mistake:

-- Blocking access to an entire Web server to stop one person's speech
is like blocking access to an entire telephone area code simply
because one person is running a phone-sex service.

-- There are at least 100 racist sites on the Web, and probably many
more. Not only is it impractical to block them all -- it's also
impractical to block even one. As of Tuesday, the materials on
Zundel's site had been duplicated and moved to another Web server, 
thereby defeating the ban.

-- By stepping in and disrupting the marketplace of ideas, Deutsche
Telekom actually increased demand for the neo-Nazi material. Schefler
said the disputed section has been flooded with traffic since the
story broke.

Toronto. Santa Cruz. Berlin. Three cities, with three very different
measures of what constitutes words fit for consumption in the public
sphere. So whose standard will become the global standard? I don't
know the answer. I do know this global problem is squarely in our
neighborhood now and moving closer to home by the day.

The federal telecommunications reform bill that may be voted into law
in the next few days contains such broad and vague "indecency"
provisions for Net speech that they establish a new prurience standard
for digital speech quite unlike the constitutional standard applied to
other print media. We could see www.penthouse.com heading into federal
court, followed by the guy who uploads James Joyce's "Ulysses,"
followed by ... me. There is a chance that if this bill passes in
its current state, paper-and-ink versions of some articles I've
written would be legal, while the on-line versions could land me in
prison.

We can no longer pretend this is some clueless foreign government's
mess. This is our clueless government's mess -- and it's about to land
in our laps.

	Radio reports (out of Denver) stated that the new Telecommunications
	Bill, just passed by Congress, outlaws any mention of abortion on
	the Internet. 

	Did this get reported anywhere else?

Jim

 Sheesh..

    ><<< Note 482.147 by BIGHOG::PERCIVAL "I'm the NRA,USPSA/IPSC,NROI-RO" >>>


    >	Radio reports (out of Denver) stated that the new Telecommunications
    >	Bill, just passed by Congress, outlaws any mention of abortion on
    >	the Internet. 

    >	Did this get reported anywhere else?
    
     This is the reason given for Pat Schroeder having voted against it,
    but in point of fact what is "outlawed" is obscene and indecent
    material. (And even then, the penalties apply to carriers who knowingly
    allow it.)
    
     No, sorry, but it's a chicken-littleism.

             <<< Note 482.149 by WAHOO::LEVESQUE "memory canyon" >>>

>     This is the reason given for Pat Schroeder having voted against it,
>    but in point of fact what is "outlawed" is obscene and indecent
>    material. (And even then, the penalties apply to carriers who knowingly
>    allow it.)
 
	The reports were fairly specific and denoted a difference between
	the "obscene and indecent" and the abortion proscription. THe
	report claimed that this was a last minute amendment offered
	by Congressman Hyde.

Jim

    Last evening's national news (Jennings, I think) reported that the new
    telecom legislation will ban pornography from the Internet, but no
    further details were offered.
    
    I wondered how "they" will do that.

    .151
    
    > I wondered how "they" will [ban pornography from the Internet].
    
    They can't.  Period.  I have a Photoshop plug-in that scrambles an
    image, making it into so much gobbledygook.  Because this is just pixel
    data, there's no way that a decryption program can get a handle on it -
    hell, they won't even know it's a picture, and they can spin their
    supercomputer-powered, DES-equipped wheels as long and hard as they
    like.  If the person I send it to has the filter, any program that can
    use Photoshop plug-ins, and a password, any or all of which which I can
    provide by some other means, the file is golden at the other end.

    .152
    
    Agreed, but I doubt the average Internet surfer is going to climb up
    the PGP or DES learning curve. 
    
    I believe pornography is defined with reference to "local standards",
    which made me wonder how govt. can hope to enforce a ban nationally.

    .153
    
    > the PGP or DES learning curve
    
    Not the point.  Suppose I am an America Online user.  I can upload a
    porn GIF as part of a mail message for some other person or persons. 
    If this file was scrambled using this handy Photoshop filter, nobody
    can tell it's porn except the people for whom it is intended.  Those
    people will have a graphic program that can use Photoshop filters, I
    will supply a perfectly innocent copy of the scrambler, and then I'm
    in a position to give them a password for descrambling the image.  I
    know I'm safe because even if AOL people look at every attached file
    for every mail mesage, all they will see is colored TV-like snow.
    
    No DES or PGP is required.  Just a couple of clicks and the entry of
    one simple password.  The password could be as simple as a ROT13, on
    the name of the file or on my AOL screen name.

    .154  phew.  it's so comforting to know that porn will always
	  be available on the internet.

re Schroeder and Abortion.

This was some new thing that Schroeder came up with and that Hyde denied.

Apparently Schroeder realizes that advocating abortion is obscene, but
Hyde claimed that discussing abortion obviously had a First Amendment
protection.

See 20.3823

/john

    
    
    	I guess I just don't understand what the huge hoopla is
    	in banning it on the net when you'll still be able to go
    	into your corner Cumby's and buy it.
    

    
    >.154  phew.  it's so comforting to know that porn will always
    >      be available on the internet.
    
    	Diane, you didn't fool me with that "innocent routine" regarding
    	the pictorial discussion.
    
    	In cyberspace, no one can see you cheering.
    

    
    	Because, JJ, a 10-year old doesn't need an ID to view it on the
    	web.  But he does [or should] if he wants to buy it at a store.
    

    
    
    	IMO, that should be the parent's responsibility.  Isn't
    	there a way for the parents to be able to block the kid's
    	access to certain web pages?  (I'm a bit naive when it comes
    	to some of what the web is capable of)
    

    .160
    
    There is software available for both Mac and PC platforms that blocks
    accesses to sites that its database lists as being obscene or otherwise
    undesirable.  The vendor provides periodic updates to the database so
    you can lock out your kids' newest sticky-keyboard inducers.

| <<< Note 482.157 by DECWIN::JUDY "That's *Ms. Bitch* to you!" >>>



| I guess I just don't understand what the huge hoopla is
| in banning it on the net when you'll still be able to go
| into your corner Cumby's and buy it.

	JJ...you should watch where you put your notes. You DO realize that
your note followed John's note about abortions! :-)

	Go to your local Cumberland Farms store and by your abortion. :-)

    It all seems like trying to catch a cloud in a bottle to me.

    
    	Glenn, if there's a cause that people believe in [or just want
    	to make a stink about because they have nothing better to do,
    	like making an honest living by working for their money] then
    	they will protest and march and whatever.
    
    	A majority of the time, the causes ARE drops in the bucket when
    	compared to causes that could make a difference.  You can comp-
    	are this to the police enforcement of speeding laws ... it's
    	easy to do, and "prove" in court, and it's profitable for the
    	city and/or state, yet speeding is no worse than discourteous-
    	ness and very probably not as dangerous.
    

    oh.

This seems to be the extent of the ballyhooed internet censorship:

Section 1465 of title 18, United States Code,
is amended by adding at the end the following:

            `Whoever intentionally communicates by computer, in or affecting
          interstate or foreign commerce, to any person the communicator
          believes has not attained the age of 18 years, any material that, 
          in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as
          measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory
          activities or organs, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under
          this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.'.

In addition, some existing sections dealing with transmitting obscenity by
wire (not indecency) are amended to include "or by computer" here and there.

/john

Auch AOL verd�chtigt

Hamburg (AP) - Die Mannheimer Staatsanwaltschaft hat die Ermittlungen wegen 
rechtsradikaler Schriften im weltweiten Computernetz Internet auf den 
Hamburger Anbieter America Online Service (AOL) ausgeweitet.  Gegen das 
Unternehmen werde nunmehr ebenfalls wegen des Verdachts der Beihilfe zur 
Volksverhetzung ermittelt, best�tigte gestern die Staatsanwaltschaft.  
Vergangene Woche waren Verfahren gegen T-Online und Compuserve eingeleitet 
worden, die auch im Verdacht stehen, den Zugang zu den Schriften des 
deutsch-kanadischen Neonazis Z�ndel zu erm�glichen.

AOL accused as well

The Mannheim Prosecutor's Office expanded its investigation of radical
right writings in the worldwide Internet computer network to the Hamburg
service provider America Online.  Yesterday the Prosecutor's office
confirmed that the company would now also be investigated on suspicion
of aiding and abetting rabble-rousing.  Last week proceedings were
introduced  against T-Online and Compuserve, who are also suspected of
allowing access to the writings of the German-Canadian Neo-nazi Zundel.

The real tragedy for Germans is that for now they can no longer access

	http://www.webcom.com/~lnc/

I wonder where they got that tatooed peekshure of �bermensch with his Fr�ulein.

/john

                             http://www.69.snarf

    There seems to be a certain type of disturbed person who loosely
    equates "sexual" with "excretory" in the making of laws which ban
    things.
    
    And how come violence, death, blood, dismemberment, and all that good
    stuff are so much more acceptable for kids than sex?  Never understood
    that either.  Strange people infest our rock.  They musta been potty
    trained with a whip or something.

    >They musta been potty trained with a whip or something.
    
    Clothes pins and rubber bands. /hth

    >    Clothes pins and rubber bands. /hth
    
    :-)
    
    And a number 10 rubber stopper!
    

    How excretiating.

    Re: .166
    
    I've examined the text of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and don't
    find that exact excerpt, although I'm willing to concede that the
    statements in SEC 507(b) of that act results in amending that section
    of the U.S.C. in the way you describe.*
    
    You also missed the point of the "ballyhooed internet censorship".
    
    The relevant text is in SEC 502(a), exceprted following the form feed,
    which results in potential felony convictions with a maximum jail term
    of 2 years if one uses a "four-letter word" or discusses some matter
    that someone, somewhere in the U.S.A., finds offensive in some way, on
    ones home page, an IRC chat, a document available via ftp, or an AOL
    chat room--actions which are permissible in any other medium or in
    face-to-face discussion. 
    
    Many documents supporting this views of those opposing these provisions
    of the so-called Communications Decency act can be found at:
    
       http:://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html
    
    I have yet to find a good source of information for those opposing the
    specific issue raised here.
    
    ---
    * SEC 507 is relevant to Representative Pat Schroeder's legislation
      vis-�-vis the combination of the so-called Communications Decency Act
      and possibly mooted provisions of the Section 1462 of Title 18
      (a.k.a. the Comstock Act). However, this has little to do with the 
      main thrust of the censorship debate and, in my opinion, the debate
      on this narrow issue has more political than practical effect.
    

          SEC. 502. OBSCENE OR HARASSING USE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS FACILITIES
                            UNDER THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934.
            Section 223 (47 U.S.C. 223) is amended--
                (1) by striking subsection (a) and inserting in lieu thereof:
            `(a) Whoever--
                `(1) in interstate or foreign communications--
                    `(A) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly--
                        `(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and
                        `(ii) initiates the transmission of,
                  any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other
                  communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy,
                  or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or
                  harass another person;
                    `(B) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly--
                        `(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and
                        `(ii) initiates the transmission of,
                  any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other
                  communication which is obscene or indecent, knowing that
                  the recipient of the communication is under 18 years of
                  age, regardless of whether the maker of such communication
                  placed the call or initiated the communication;
                    `(C) makes a telephone call or utilizes a
                  telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or
                  communication ensues, without disclosing his identity and
                  with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person
                  at the called number or who receives the communications;
                    `(D) makes or causes the telephone of another repeatedly
                  or continuously to ring, with intent to harass any person
                  at the called number; or
                    `(E) makes repeated telephone calls or repeatedly
                  initiates communication with a telecommunications device,
                  during which conversation or communication ensues, solely
                  to harass any person at the called number or who receives
                  the communication; or
                `(2) knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under
              his control to be used for any activity prohibited by paragraph
              (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity,
          shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned
          not more than TWO years, or both.'; and
                (2) by adding at the end the following new subsections:
            `(d) Whoever--
                `(1) in interstate or foreign communications knowingly--
                    `(A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a
                  specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or
                    `(B) uses any interactive computer service to display in
                  a manner available to a person under 18 years of age,
              any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other
              communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms
              patently offensive as measured by contemporary community
              standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs, regardless
              of whether the user of such service placed the call or
              initiated the communication; or
                `(2) knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under
              such person's control to be used for an activity prohibited by
              paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity,
          shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned
          not more than two years, or both.
            `(e) In addition to any other defenses available by law:
                `(1) No person shall be held to have violated subsection (a)
              or (d) solely for providing access or connection to or from a
              facility, system, or network not under that person's control,
              including transmission, downloading, intermediate storage,
              access software, or other related capabilities that are
              incidental to providing such access or connection that does not
              include the creation of the content of the communication.
                `(2) The defenses provided by paragraph (1) of this
              subsection shall not be applicable to a person who is a
              conspirator with an entity actively involved in the creation or
              knowing distribution of communications that violate this
              section, or who knowingly advertises the availability of such
              communications.
                `(3) The defenses provided in paragraph (1) of this
              subsection shall not be applicable to a person who provides
              access or connection to a facility, system, or network engaged
              in the violation of this section that is owned or controlled by
              such person.
                `(4) No employer shall be held liable under this section for
              the actions of an employee or agent unless the employee's or
              agent's conduct is within the scope of his or her employment or
              agency and the employer (A) having knowledge of such conduct,
              authorizes or ratifies such conduct, or (B) recklessly
              disregards such conduct.
                `(5) It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection
              (a)(1)(B) or (d), or under subsection (a)(2) with respect to
              the use of a facility for an activity under subsection
              (a)(1)(B) that a person--
                    `(A) has taken, in good faith, reasonable, effective, and
                  appropriate actions under the circumstances to restrict or
                  prevent access by minors to a communication specified in
                  such subsections, which may involve any appropriate
                  measures to restrict minors from such communications,
                  including any method which is feasible under available
                  technology; or
                    `(B) has restricted access to such communication by
                  requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account,
                  adult access code, or adult personal identification number.
                `(6) The Commission may describe measures which are
              reasonable, effective, and appropriate to restrict access to
              prohibited communications under subsection (d). Nothing in this
              section authorizes the Commission to enforce, or is intended to
              provide the Commission with the authority to approve, sanction,
              or permit, the use of such measures. The Commission shall have
              no enforcement authority over the failure to utilize such
              measures. The Commission shall not endorse specific products
              relating to such measures. The use of such measures shall be
              admitted as evidence of good faith efforts for purposes of
              paragraph (5) in any action arising under subsection (d).
              Nothing in this section shall be construed to treat interactive
              computer services as common carriers or telecommunications
              carriers.
            `(f)(1) No cause of action may be brought in any court or
          administrative agency against any person on account of any activity
          that is not in violation of any law punishable by criminal or civil
          penalty, and that the person has taken in good faith to implement a
          defense authorized under this section or otherwise to restrict or
          prevent the transmission of, or access to, a communication
          specified in this section.
            `(2) No State or local government may impose any liability for
          commercial activities or actions by commercial entities, nonprofit
          libraries, or institutions of higher education in connection with
          an activity or action described in subsection (a)(2) or (d) that is
          inconsistent with the treatment of those activities or actions
          under this section:  [Italic->] Provided, however [<-Italic] , That
          nothing herein shall preclude any State or local government from
          enacting and enforcing complementary oversight, liability, and
          regulatory systems, procedures, and requirements, so long as such
          systems, procedures, and requirements govern only intrastate
          services and do not result in the imposition of inconsistent
          rights, duties or obligations on the provision of interstate
          services. Nothing in this subsection shall preclude any State or
          local government from governing conduct not covered by this section.
            `(g) Nothing in subsection (a), (d), (e), or (f) or in the
          defenses to prosecution under subsection (a) or (d) shall be
          construed to affect or limit the application or enforcement of any
          other Federal law.
            `(h) For purposes of this section--
                `(1) The use of the term `telecommunications device' in this
              section--
                    `(A) shall not impose new obligations on broadcasting
                  station licensees and cable operators covered by obscenity
                  and indecency provisions elsewhere in this Act; and
                    `(B) does not include an interactive computer service.
                `(2) The term `interactive computer service' has the meaning
              provided in section 230(e)(2).
                `(3) The term `access software' means software (including
              client or server software) or enabling tools that do not create
              or provide the content of the communication but that allow a
              user to do any one or more of the following:
                    `(A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content;
                    `(B) pick, choose, analyze, or digest content; or
                    `(C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search,
                  subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.
                `(4) The term `institution of higher education' has the
              meaning provided in section 1201 of the Higher Education Act of
              1965 (20 U.S.C. 1141).
                `(5) The term `library' means a library eligible for
              participation in State-based plans for funds under title III of
              the Library Services and Construction Act (20 U.S.C. 355e et
              seq.).'.

    
    >of 2 years if one uses a "four-letter word" or discusses some matter
    >that someone, somewhere in the U.S.A., finds offensive in some way, on
    
    
    	That narrows it down, doesn't it?
    
    	So I ask again ... how is the Internet different from a 1-900
    	number as far as smut/offensiveness goes?
    

>    >of 2 years if one uses a "four-letter word" or discusses some matter
>    >that someone, somewhere in the U.S.A., finds offensive in some way, on
>    
>    
>    	That narrows it down, doesn't it?
>    
>    	So I ask again ... how is the Internet different from a 1-900
>    	number as far as smut/offensiveness goes?

what I want to know is, what happens if the someone, somewhere isn't in the 
USA?  Not that I'm trying to claim that the UK doesn't attempt equally stupid 
jurisdiction.

Chris.

    Re: .175
    
    Depends what you consider "smut" or "offensive". I think that no one
    would dispute that it is a small fraction in either case when "900
    adult" phone numbers are compared to all potential phone-based
    services. I'm not sure what you mean by the question--although I may
    not have read far enough back yet.
    
    Re: .176
    
    The Act is silent on that matter. I imagine a whole new thread could
    discuss whether or not the Justice Department is willing to prosecute
    this law worldwide. I suspect that the U.K. is safe for a while,
    though. :-)

>    The Act is silent on that matter. I imagine a whole new thread could
>    discuss whether or not the Justice Department is willing to prosecute
>    this law worldwide. I suspect that the U.K. is safe for a while,
>    though. :-)

perhaps, but just wait 'til Brussels decide to pass definitive laws on the 
matter.  If ever there was an organisation arrogant enough to assume they can 
run the world, well, Brussels is one of them.

Chris.

    
    	If this law is a telecommunications/computer media bill which
    	prohibits offensive material, is the 1-900 business in trouble?
    
    	If I see a 1-900 number advertised on TV, and call it 15-20
    	times to collect enough "smutty" evidence to convince someone
    	that it should be shut down, will it be shut down?
    

>    The relevant text is in SEC 502(a), exceprted following the form feed,
>    which results in potential felony convictions with a maximum jail term
>    of 2 years if one uses a "four-letter word" or discusses some matter
>    that someone, somewhere in the U.S.A., finds offensive in some way, on
>    ones home page, an IRC chat, a document available via ftp, or an AOL
>    chat room--actions which are permissible in any other medium or in
>    face-to-face discussion. 

I don't see the phrase "four-letter word" anywhere in SEC 502(a).

As far as I can tell, anything legal in a normal conversation on Boston Common
is legal on my home page, an IRC chat, a document available via ftp, or an AOL
chat room.  And the converse is true:

	If you walk up to someone on Boston Common and repeatedly say
	"Let's boink" with intent to annoy, you might be arrested, just
	as you might on the Internet.  But the difficulty of proving
	"intent to annoy" will limit such arrests to serious cases.

And, anything legal in a Combat Zone sleazy bookstore also appears to be legal
on the Internet, as long as it is not available to anyone under 18.

I don't see anything being done in this bill that hasn't already been
determined to be within the currently defined scope of permissably
regulatable public speech.

Oh, and it also specifically release liability to service providers:

	No person shall be held to have violated subsection (a)
        or (d) solely for providing access or connection to or from a
        facility, system, or network not under that person's control,
        including transmission, downloading, intermediate storage,
        access software, or other related capabilities that are
        incidental to providing such access or connection that does not
        include the creation of the content of the communication.

So the German nonsense can't happen here.

/john

    Re: .180
    
>I don't see the phrase "four-letter word" anywhere in SEC 502(a).
    
    A syntactic error on my part. My intent was to say: 
    
      ...one uses a so-called four-letter word (also called swear words
      or expletives) or discusses some matter...
    
>But the difficulty of proving "intent to annoy" will limit arrests to
>serious cases.
    
    Probably--I also believe that the law is unenforceable except where
    spectacularly (and politically) convenient. On the other hand, it opens
    up anyone discussing anything remotely offensive to the possibility of
    a felony conviction (or at best a nuisance lawsuit) because of the
    interesting adjectives used to apply to that speech.
    
    Either the law is widely ignored until you are caught in the Internet
    equivalent of a highway speed trap or intensive enforcement area (and
    certain service providers already police in this way today) or every
    information made available and any conversation over any open computer
    network has to be brought down to the level of, say, ten-year old
    children who haven't learned toilet humor, to insure that you are
    in compliance with the law.
    
    The effect is restrictive and self-censoring to all (U.S.) computer users.
    
>And, anything legal in a Combat Zone sleazy bookstore also appears to be legal
>on the Internet, as long as it is not available to anyone under 18.
    
    It is not legal to sell such items to minors in, I believe, all states.
    There are laws in some jurisdictions regarding the open display of such
    items. But there are few laws that require you to physically restrain
    minors from walking up and looking at what is hiding on the top shelf.
    
    It is not clear that a statement that says "do not click this link if
    you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction" is sufficient
    to make something unavialable to minors.  As a result, the legislation
    mandates that this material be removed from the network because a minor
    might walk over to your virtual top shelf and peek inside. 
    
    The effect is restrictive and self-censoring to all (U.S.) computer users.
    
>Oh, and it also specifically release liability to service providers:
    
    Service providers are not at risk. Fortunately, that stupidity was
    corrected from the first attempt at this legislation. The restrictions
    on ordinary citizens are at issue.
    
                                    -----
    
    It is because this law is overly restrictive is the reason why it may
    not (and hopefully will not) stand a constitutional challenge. Such
    broad restrictions are not permissible means to regulate expression
    when other means exist that do not affect the broad majority of
    affected people. [Looking through some old notes, the Supreme Court
    case of Butler vs Michigan (1957) is relevant here.]
    
    The political nonsense is the posturing over how this Act was promoted
    as protecting children or eliminating the terrible scourge of smut from
    the networks, not the activity needed to reverse this bad piece of
    legislation.

    Re: .179
    
    It might be, technically, although I believe previous court cases would
    give any attempt against it fewer legs to stand on. (I need to re-read
    the sections that discuss this again.) 
    
    Of course, the people on the other end of an adult phone service line
    generally don't call you and offer you free samples. Also, the "900"
    and "976" blocking technology that was put in was solved  the issue of
    keeping minors away from the service.
    
    [Aside: "900" is probably a misnomer these days, too. A magazine I
    happen to read typically has far more numbers leading to foreign countries
    for adult services.]
                                         

    I just read that in some circles a new meaning for an existing word,
    "EXONerate", has been coined.  It means to change all RO's in a certain
    fashion such that it can be used in electronic tranmissions without
    violating any obscenity codes that might be in effect.
    
    For example, this reply contains an exonerated word.
    
    -- Jim

China: Internet users must register with the police (14 Feb 96)

	Source: Rheinische-Post online

Chinese authorities today ordered all users of the Internet or other
international computer networks to register with the police within
thirty days.  The Xinhua news agency reported that the requirement
was published in an official police announcement publication.
Failure to obey this order would be prosecuted under the recently
announced regulations for computer networks.  Details of these
regulations are still unknown.

According to Xinhua there were around 40,000 Internet users in China
as of last July.  The police notice claimed that the lack of security
measures had resulted in a few negative results.  Observers consider
the action of the Chinese authorities as an attempt to increase the
control of news and information.

    
    	Only 40K out of 1B people on the Internet?
    

    GDP/head = $370.  Not too many can afford to get on the Internet

Judge blocks law on Internet smut
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright � 1996 N.Y. Times News Service

(Feb 15, 1996 9:39 p.m. EST) -- A federal judge temporarily blocked
enforcement on Thursday of a new law that makes it a felony to send indecent
material over the Internet or other on-line computer services if the
material may be seen by children.

The judge ruled that the term "indecent" was unconstitutionally vague and
was not defined in the new law, the Communications Decency Act.

But, drawing a semantic distinction that appeared to leave both supporters
and opponents of the law uncertain of the eventual outcome, Judge Ronald L.
Buckwalter of Federal District Court in Philadelphia upheld another part of
the same law. That section makes it a felony to use computer networks to
display, in a way accessible to minors, material that depicts or describes,
"in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community
standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

While the law thus makes clear what "patently offensive" is meant to cover,
the problem with the term "indecent," the judge ruled, is that in criminal
trials it would "leave reasonable people perplexed in evaluating what is or
what is not prohibited in this statute."

The complex ruling sets the stage for a swift judicial review of the the
act, which is part of the broad telecommunications overhaul legislation that
President Clinton signed last week. Under a review process spelled out by
lawmakers who had anticipated just such a challenge, a three-judge federal
panel will now review the constitutionality of the Decency Act, with any
subsequent appeals placed on a fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court.

No schedule has yet been set for the review by the three-judge panel, which
will include Buckwalter.

"Things are a bit more confused now than they were before," said Chris
Hansen, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Association, which
led a coalition of more than a dozen organizations in seeking to block the
law. "The effect is that free speech on the Internet is still at risk."

A spokesman for the Justice Department said on Thursday night that lawyers
there would have to study the judge's ruling carefully before making a
statement.

The judge also let stand language in the law that makes it a crime to
discuss some aspects of abortion on the Internet and on-line information
services, which are used by tens of millions of Americans and millions more
abroad. The Justice Department has said, however, that it would not enforce
that provision of the new law until the judicial panel reviews the matter.

The coalition of civil liberties and free speech groups had gone to court
moments after the president signed the law last week, seeking a temporary
restraining order to block it. They argued that the prohibition against
indecent material was unconstitutionally vague and overly broad.

By granting the part of the temporary restraining order that pertained to
indecency, Buckwalter appeared to accept the plaintiffs' arguments that the
vagueness of the term could cause damage to the flow of free speech on the
Internet.

But Buckwalter specifically said that his order on Thursday did not change
current laws against displaying or transmitting outright obscene material
over the Internet. Such display of material to children is already illegal,
whether on a computer network or in printed or video form.

"Obscene" is a term that federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have
found to be definable. Obscene material, courts have ruled, is not protected
by the Constitution's free-speech provisions.

In at least temporarily upholding the section of the new law that deals with
the display of "patently offensive" material, however, Buckwalter has
focused attention on a phrase that has been used in previous court cases
without specific definition.

"The two phrases, indecency and patently offensive, mean the same thing, so
in some sense enjoining one and not the other doesn't make a lot of sense,"
Hansen of the ACLU said.

A separate challenge to the law, filed in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
last Thursday, seeks to invalidate a portion that makes it illegal to
conduct on-line discussions of certain issues related to abortion. No
decision on that challenge is expected until next month, and the Justice
Department has agreed not to enforce the law until a ruling is made.

A Justice Department spokesman said it was the agency's general policy not
to begin prosecutions under a law while it was being challenged in court.

Supporters of the Communications Decency Act say it is necessary to protect
children from access to pornography, obscene speech and other "indecent and
filthy" material available on the Internet and other computer networks.

They note that the government has historically exercised regulatory
authority over other communications media, including radio and television,
and that it is in the public interest to regulate the Internet and other
publicly accessible computer networks.

But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced a bill last Friday to
repeal the Communications Decency Act, said the "indecency" aspect of the
law would have a chilling effect on free speech.

"Internet users will have to limit all language used and topics discussed to
that appropriate for kindergartners, just in case a minor clicks onto the
discussion," Leahy said. "No literary quotes from racy parts of "Catcher in
the Rye" or "Ulysses" will be allowed. Certainly on-line discussions of safe
sex practices, of birth control methods, and of AIDS prevention methods will
be suspect."

In a 60-page brief filed Wednesday in opposition to the ACLU's request for a
restraining order, the Justice Department argued that opponents' concerns
about overly broad interpretation and enforcement of the law were merely
speculation. The benefits of protecting children from pornographic images
and speech on-line was in the public interest, the Justice Department said.

The act applies not just to individuals but also to computer network
operators and information providers who allow the on-line transmission of
indecent material without taking precautions to shield that material from
minors.

Almost work, FYI...


                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M
...

Subject: Position Statement: Black Thursday

...

Position Statement: "Black Thursday"

Background:     The signing of the US Telecommunications Bill has spawned
                a flurry of protest alleging that it engenders undue censorship
                of the Internet. The most outspoken of the bill's opponents are
                trying to organize a formal protest asking Webmasters to
                black out their pages and display a blue ribbon in place of
                them on Thursday, February 22. The organizers are rallying the
                protest around the name "Black Thursday."

Digital's Position:

                Digital Equipment Corporation maintains a neutral position
                on the "Black Thursday" protest. We will not be "blacking out"
                any of our pages.

                Digital, and other members of the Internet business community,
                have serious concerns regarding the vagueness of the liability
                standard as passed in the US Telecommunications Bill. We are
                working with industry groups to address these concerns.
 
...

The TRO against the CDA only enjoins enforcement against "indecent" material.

Enforcing the law against those making "obscene" material available to
persons under 18 is not enjoined.

I wonder if the guy who was moaning on alt.censorship because AOL wouldn't
let him mention his "Random Access Porno" generator has had a knock on
his door yet...

/john

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, 1996 MAR 1 (NB) -- The European Commission (EC)  
is working on a series of proposals that will impose controls on the 
Internet, Newsbytes has learned. The pan-European controls being 
designed aim to limit new multimedia services on the Internet, forcing 
the "broadcasters" to ensure that the material they are handling is 
legal and decent. 

Perhaps more importantly, the proposals seek to impose the same  
controls on Internet services as with general broadcast services, 
such as TV transmissions. These controls mandate that 51 percent of 
the "transmissions" originate from within the EC. 

...

The effect on Internet service providers (ISPs) could be to limit the US 
output on the Internet, including Usenet messages, to European users 
of the Internet, unless the ISPs can show that at least 51 percent of 
the "programs" on the Internet originate from within the EC itself. 

Singapore tells Internet firms to prevent access to some material
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright � 1996 Nando.net
Copyright � 1996 The Associated Press

SINGAPORE (Mar 5, 1996 3:58 p.m. EST) -- Singapore ordered Internet access
providers Tuesday to restrict material on sex, religion and politics.

In addition, libraries, schools and cafes that offer Internet access must
supervise how it is used, the government said. And it plans to license
political parties that wish to distribute information on the global public
data network.

The rules appear to be some of the strictest a government has yet attempted
regarding the Internet. In recent weeks, Germany has ordered Internet access
providers to block sexually oriented and neo-Nazi material and China ordered
users to register with the government.

The United States has made it a crime to transmit or display material that
is "patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards."
Lawsuits have been brought in several courts to prevent enforcement of the
law and a bill has been introduced in Congress to repeal it.

Singapore Information Minister George Yeo, who announced the new
regulations, tried to reassure computer users that they won't affect most
Internet activity.

"What goes on privately is not really our concern," Yeo said at a news
conference. "Our concern is at the broadcast end, where the content will
have a public impact on public morals or the stability of Singapore."

There are about 100,000 Internet users in Singapore.

The government wants Singapore to take advantage of the Internet, but
doesn't want to give up social controls that include restrictions on books,
movies and political activity.

It has previously ordered Singapore access providers not to connect to
newsgroups whose titles include "alt.sex."

The new regulations extend to material that might incite religious or
political unrest, said Ahmad Shuhaimi, a spokesman for the Singapore
Broadcast Authority, which is to enforce the regulations.

SingNet, one of the country's three access providers, said it could block
access to computers, newsgroups and other data identified by the government.

"It is technically possible to do this," said Foo Kim Ling, a spokeswoman
for SingNet, which is run by the phone company Singapore Telecommunications
Ltd.

But Shuhaimi said it isn't clear yet how the regulations will apply to
international online services with customers in Singapore, such as
CompuServe Inc.

"It's not clear to us either," said CompuServe spokesman Russ Robinson at
the company's headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. The company discovered in
Germany that geographic restrictions are difficult to enforce.

"The Internet interprets blockage as a failure and routes data around it,"
Robinson said. "Any sophisticated user of a PC can figure out how to get to
around."

CompuServe puts more emphasis on features in its software that allow parents
to control what information children can see.

But Singapore wants to block adult access to information as well. The
city-state has some of the world's strictest rules against sexually-oriented
material and bans political and social activities that its leaders say would
undermine public order.

For instance, Jehovah's Witnesses have been banned for rejecting military
service and oaths of national loyalty, which Singapore leaders say violates
draft laws and hurts national unity.

    I heard on the news yesterday that Canada is the second largest
    Internet user.

    I was surprised.

    and i wouldn't be surprised if u weren't in the top ten of users

    zinger!

    USAT05::HALLR "God loves even you!"
    
    >>and i wouldn't be surprised if u weren't in the top ten of users
    
     Apparently God does not love the shift key, grammer, or spelling.
    
    							Derek.

    Hey Derek, u don't have to defend Glenny, he's still far ahead of me on
    the 'dart' board!
    
    :-)

    USAT02::HALLR
    
    >>:-)
    
     thanks for the clarification.
    
    			Derek.

>                     <<< Note 482.195 by KAOFS::D_STREET >>>
    
>     Apparently God does not love the shift key, grammer, or spelling.

	grammar


	nnttm

    
    	200 replies!!
    

I believe Finland has the highest per capita Internet usage.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and
steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the
future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome
among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I
address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty
itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are
building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to
impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess
any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you.
You do not know us, nor do  you know our world. Cyberspace does not
lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though
it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of
nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did
you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our
culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our
society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use
this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these
problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are
wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are
forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according
to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought
itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications.
 Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not
where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or
prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station
of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her
beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into
silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and
context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no
matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order
by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened
self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our
identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The
only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize
is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular
solutions on that basis.  But we cannot accept the solutions you are
attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the
Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution
and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison,
DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a
world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you
entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are
too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments
and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are
parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot
separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United
States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting
guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the
contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that
will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate
themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to
own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas
to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our
world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and
distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no
longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same
position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination
who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We
must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we
continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread
ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be
more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

Hackers hit Justice Department web site
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright � 1996 Nando.net
Copyright � 1996 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (Aug 17, 1996 7:29 p.m. EDT) -- Internet hackers infiltrated the
Justice Department's home page Saturday, altering the official web site to
include swastikas, obscene pictures and lots of criticism of the
Communications Decency Act.

The official web site, which was turned off by government technicians when
it was discovered Saturday morning, was changed to read "United States
Department of Injustice," next to a red, black and white flag bearing a
swastika. The text of the page was written over a background of gray
swastikas, and at the top declared in red letters: "This page is in
violation of the Communications Decency Act."

The page included color pictures of George Washington, Adolf Hitler, who is
called the attorney general, and a topless Jennifer Aniston, one of the
stars of NBC's "Friends." Other sexually explicit images were shown.

"Somebody did get into the web page at the Justice Department," said
department spokesman Joe Krovisky, but the site was turned off and remained
off Saturday afternoon.

The spokesman said Justice officials were not sure initially what statutes
were violated, "but certainly would be against the law." Possibilities, he
said, might be destruction or defacing government property -- or perhaps
trespassing.

Krovinsky added that the department expected to have the page reconstructed
and running again by Sunday, or Monday at the latest.

The agency web site is used to post public information, including government
news releases and speeches, Krovisky said.

Hackers used the majority of the web site to criticize the Communication
Decency Act, signed in February, which makes transmitting sexually explicit
material in ways children might see it a felony, punishable by up to two
years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A federal appeals court declared the
law unconstitutional.

"As the largest law firm in the nation, the Department of Justice serves to
punish all who don't agree with the moral standards set forth by (President)
Clinton," the page said. "Anything and anyone different must be jailed."

The altered web site said the new law takes away privacy rights and freedom
of speech.

"It is hard to trick hundreds of millions of people out of their freedoms,
but we should be complete within a decade," the page said.

The doctored page also had links to other web sites, all unflattering, about
Clinton, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole and conservative
commentator Pat Buchanan. Those sites, which are not the official campaign
sites, were still operating Saturday.

The official Justice Department web site is http://www.usdoj.gov

    
    Perchance, do you know who provided the DOJ with the system/protection
    that these hackers got through? This could be quite the opportunity for
    a company with superior technology to make a house call.
    
    Bob

> WASHINGTON (Aug 17, 1996 7:29 p.m. EDT) -- Internet hackers infiltrated the
> Justice Department's home page Saturday, altering the official web site to
> include swastikas, obscene pictures and lots of criticism of the
> Communications Decency Act.
    
    See?  See??  We really DO need controls over the Evil Internet
    after all!
    
    How... convenient.
    
    Chris

    The simplest way to put up a Web site that cannot be hacked into is to
    use a Macintosh.  Mac OS systems are the only known machines that do
    not require a firewall to protect them from hackers on the Internet.

 <audiences buzzes in anticpation>

    Re .206:
    
    > Mac OS systems are the only known machines that do not require a
    > firewall to protect them from hackers on the Internet.
    
    My PC does not require a firewall to protect it from hackers on the
    Internet.

    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

Over the weekend, my 2 year old VHS machine broke.  My 10 year old betamax
(which gets used daily) is still going strong.

Normally, this would have nothing to do with the topic of the basenote, but
I add it as an addendum to Binder's recent MacNote.

    Everybody knows beta is better than VHS.

    
    	So why doesn't everybody know that a Mac is better than a PC?
    

>    	So why doesn't everybody know that a Mac is better than a PC?

    Cause they've never tried a Mac!

    Most everyone who has a PC that has seen my ancient Mac
    is amazed at what it can do...at what this '91 Mac could do back
    then, let alone now.

    At some point I expect I'll have to upgrade to a new PowerPC based
    Mac.  But so far its been great.

    The comparisons to Beta/VHS dont work for a simple reason....Beta
    lost for a technical reason, it could not record simple Hollywood
    movies.  The recording time was just not long enough.

    The Mac lost for a different simple reason....it was too good a machine
    for its time.  And Apple charged too much for it.  So over time, the
    fucntionality of the Mac has continued to advance as the price has
    dropped.  And the functionality of the PC has also advanced, trying
    to match the Mac.

    So today you can get the better machine for about the same price
    as the 'popular' machine.  Your choice.  I have yet to meet someone
    who did a serious evaluation (like tried both machines for a while)
    who did not choose the Mac.
    bob

    I've used Macs before.
    
    I'm always amazed then they boot.  I'm even more amazed when I can find
    the effing application I'm trying to run.  Back in '91, I was amazed at
    how much less it could do than an Amiga, let alone now.
    
    Beta, on the other hand, roolz.  (Note: back when the Beta vs. VHS wars
    were raging, I was staunchly pro-VHS, although I would often sneak out
    in the middle of the night to buy Beta machines.  Now that Beta is good
    and dead, I can pretend I was in that camp all along.  This is another
    place where the Mac vs PeeCee/Beta vs VHS analogy fails:  I'll never
    have anything nice to say about Macs.)

    .213
    
    > I'll never have anything nice to say about Macs.
    
    Hardly a credible witness, are you?

I'll take the Rush approach to this discussion:

Doesn't matter, 'cause I'm right.

(waiting for my "mega-dittos")

    Saw a Macazine (MacWeek or something having to do with Mac computing)
    that declared a 225MHZ PowerPC.  Says it is the fastest personal
    computer available, bar none.
    
    
    -steve

From what height did they drop it?

Copy of what was put on the DOJ site:

	http://www.doobie.com/%7Ebaby-x/usdoj/

Warning: bare baps and other controversial photos.

    
    Supreme court is all set to rule on constitutionality of internet's
    Decency Act.  The challenger says it violate the right of freedom of
    speech.   Do you wish you kits to access the pornography on internet?
    
    The court had just stroke down the challenge for the same right on
    California street - those coin operated stands with pornographic
    material.
    
    Some think the justices are wasting time  because the global computer
    network has no national boundary.  But I think it still can be 
    controlled.

    Actually, my kits don't access anything until I un-zip them and run the
    setup program.

    Jason:
    
    This is the perfect example where Glen cannot accuse me of putting a
    Christian slant on something...supposedly.
    
    If we really cherish the Bill of Rights, particularly the 1st
    ammendment, then we have to apply the ammendment equally.  In order 
    to put these kinds of controls on the internet to protect our socially
    retarded counterparts in society, there would have to be proof there is
    a compelling reason to deem this sort of entertainment as a detriment
    to society.
    
    Pornography is sold at your local Cumberland Farms.  Therefore, the
    precedent has already been set.  I would see tactical good coming from
    these controls but I would fear other forms of censorship that I
    personally find beneficial to society.  Therefore, I honor any social
    retards out there who have to resort to looking at goily pictures on
    the WEB.
    
    -Jack
    
    PS.  Yastrzemski is a bumb Jason.  If you haven't learned anything in
    this conference...remember that fact.

Is the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday a foreshadowing of how they will
rule in the Internet case?

Another portion of the Communications Decency Act has just been upheld by
SCOTUS.

In that portion, cable providers were required to either _completely_
scramble channels such as the Playboy channel _or_ only transmit them
after 10pm at night.  Playboy and Spice had argued that such a restriction
would relegate them to "programming Siberia", since cable operators would
not be likely to implement more secure scrambling.

Parents had been upset that even if they did not subscribe to adult
cable programming, their children were able to see wavy pictures of
sex acts and hear moaning and lewd dialogue on the semi-scrambled
channels.

By refusing to hear arguments and upholding a lower court ruling, SCOTUS
has agreed that the First Amendment does not give broadcasters the right
to ship indecent (not even obscene) programming into people's homes unwanted,
as well as that the "indecency standard" in the Communications Decency Act
is not unconstitutionally vague.

/john

    did the parents happen to mention if, while observing their children
    viewing (er, hearing) these programs, they set the rules for their
    children that this was not acceptable? or... will they take the
    passive posture and let the gov't and cable companies do their
    parenting for them?

Where's that war on common sense being waged, anyway?

Actually, I have a friend who's too cheap to pay for the smut channel, but
who is very fond of watching the scrambled signal.  For him, it adds an
extra element of titilation to try to figure out where the dirty parts are
among all those quivering, squidgity images.

I s'pose it's kinda like those "See the Eifel Tower in this Magic Eyes 3-D
picture" things.

    it may also be connected to that "I only buy Playboy for the articles"
    phenomenon :-).

  there's several ways to look at the Internet case, and no matter how
 SCOTUS goes, there will be followup cases.

  You can argue the constitution's text.  One view, with the late Hugo
 Black emphasizes "Congress shall make no law", the other emphasizes
 abridging "the freedom of" speech, as opposed to speech itself.  They
 ask why the founders didn't say "abridging speech" instead.

  You can argue the merits or various levels of regulation.

  You can argue politics.  Prudery seems to be most popular the farther
 left or right you go,  so that revolutionaries side with the preachers.
 But unfortunately for smut fans, the votes are with the regulators.

  And you can argue the personalities on the court.  For all the left/right
 politics, the key vote is Sandra Day O'Connor.  If she thinks it's smutty
 enough to regulate, you have a majority.  If not, I'd guess not.

  bb

    Someone should explain a rational link between the SCOTUS decision to
    let stand a lower court ruling on a minor provision of the federal
    regulations on cable television broadcasting, whose penalties are
    limited to significant fines and loss of license for corporate
    entities, and the SCOTUS decision to review major provisions of
    entirely new regulations on the content of electronically transmitted
    information, such regulations not only being specifically not applicable
    to cable operators but whose penalties include fines and up to two years
    in federal prison for an individual's active or passive actions.
    
    One might wish there to be one, but the assertion that it has to do
    with the definition of "indecency" had, according to the information
    I've reviewed, had nothing to do with the issue on the former. The
    lower court ruling affirms the regulation that requires cable operators
    to scramble certain programming more completely for non-subscribers--
    people who aren't paying for it anyway.  The transcript of the Supreme
    Court oral arguments on the latter are instructive (even the movie
    quote) but only address the definition of "indecency" peripherally. 
    
                                    -----
    
    My bet is that it will be a lopsided decision, maybe 9-0, overturning
    SEC. 502 of the CDA. Justice Scalia's and Justice Bryer's bench
    questions seem to show that they don't like the law as written and
    there isn't much latitude for them to narrow the law. I suspect that
    the (hopefully majority) opinion for overturning the regulation will
    address the shortcomings in detail and indicate what kind of law might
    pass constitutional muster. 
    
    Congress could have written a better law. They could have chosen a less
    broad standard. The majority of Congressmen instead chose to be parents
    and treat the rest of the citizens of the United States as their
    underage children. That is reprehensible and I once wished for a
    "Congressional Stupidity Act" that would fine and jail legislators who
    should know better.

    Re .341:
    
    > ... in federal prison for an individual's active or passive actions.
    
    Passive actions?
    
    No such thing.  Besides, this law is about active passions.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

Another big AOL brouhaha brewing:

AOL has refused ADL's request to remove a site providing information about
the KKK.

ADL insists that the KKK site violates AOL's rules against speech which
promotes hatred, but AOL has certified the KKK site as being within their
guidelines.

/john

    Well, that's free speech for you.

    
    AOL's members agreement restricts the free speech of their members.
    
    
    
    http://members.aol.com/realmoftex/
    
    The "Traditions" and "Guestbook postings" are, how shall you say, I
    won't say it.
    
    								-mr. bill

    Too true.
    
    Then again, it's still possible to word things to fit AOL's TOS, and
    still be offensive to other groups, such as the ADL.  I suspect the
    real issue here isn't over speech, but beliefs, which is something that
    no one can censor.

Last Wednesday, the Bavarian state prosecutor filed A FORMAL INDICTMENT against
the director of Compuserve's German subsidiary, charging that both sexual
content and hate-promoting content on the Internet is being made available
to children in Germany in violation of the "protection of youth" laws.

Compuserve had previously blocked access to numerous sites for all of its
customers worldwide, claiming that its network could not distinguish between
customers in Germany and those in other countries.

However, after major protests from its customers in other countries, access
was restored.

The state prosecutor insists that Compuserve must block access to all content
which violates German law, or stop doing business in Germany.

Compuserve has already announced its intention to move its operations in
Munich to Luxembourg.

/john

A 41-year-old Chicago man has been sentenced to six months in jail and five
years probation on a charge of suggesting lewd acts to a woman he thought
was 14.

The woman with whom he had established the chat room relationship was
actually in her 20s.  As the online discussions became increasingly
lurid, she became frightened and contacted police.

When he flew to San Diego to meet her, he was met instead by a police
decoy and arrested.

Judge Frank Brown stated that the man was "hopeful that he would have sexual
contact of a very gross nature with a child."

/john

    This guy seems to be a sick puppy, but what did he do that was illegal?
    It seems that the 20 year old female is just as culpable.

    not only that, it looks like she's guilty too!

Hmmm ... was she pretending to be 14 so she could try and 
statutorily rape boys of that same age?

Did he mention sending any letters or postcards?

    Did he remember her on her birthday? If not, what a cad!  :)