Computer underground Digest Thu Apr 11, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 29
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #8.29 (Thu, Apr 11, 1996)
File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
File 2--LAWSUIT: Update Report, 4/9/96
File 3--why I will not rate my site
File 4--AOL.COM took the *WHAT* out of "Country?"
File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
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Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:00:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@EFF.ORG>
Subject: File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
The CDA Challenge, Update #6
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By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this update: BYU/CMU's Dan Olsen's net-censorship boondoggle
ACLU's 4/9 motion to suppress obscene images -- DENIED
The new "I am a child" Internet protocol
Who cares about kids: Who are the adults?
Olsen as an expert witness -- on what?
April 11, 1996
PITTSBURGH, PA -- The U.S. Department of Justice wants to split the
worldwide Internet into "adult" and "minor" sections.
That's their plan, assuming they can find someone to testify that this
audacious boondoggle is even remotely feasible under current
technology. If the DoJ gets this testimony in the record, then their
attorneys will argue that the Communications Decency Act is
constitutional and should be upheld.
Well, they found their man. The Justice Department stoolie who's
testifying tomorrow is none other than Dan R. Olsen, Jr., the incoming
director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University, now the head of the computer science department at
Brigham Young University.
Olsen concocted this scheme that he calls L18, for "Less than 18."
Under it, every net-user must label every USENET post, email message,
FTP site file, web page, chat room, IRC channel -- any collection of
public bits spewed on the Net -- if the content is "inappropriate for
minors."
If you think you're clever 'cuz you labeled some "indecent" materials
as suitable for kids, guess again, pal. Try that trick and the Feds'll
throw your ass in jail for two years and send you a bill for $250,000.
(Owners of anonymous remailers might be for in some surprise visits
from the Feds if their systems are used to post "indecent" stuff
that's labeled L18.)
The censorhappy geeks at Brigham Young University put together a demo
to prove that this scheme works. First Olsen stuck L18 tags on half
his web pages. Then they set up a "Netscape proxy server" so it denied
access to pages with L18 tags unless the user was verified as an
adult. The experiment was a success -- and a hit with the DoJ!
By now cybersavvy readers are wondering: "But how will a server know
how old a user is?"
The DoJ has a couple ideas that they're going to throw at the
three-judge panel in Philadelphia tomorrow. The government's idea
seems to be that if the judges accept even one of them, they'll uphold
the CDA. The DoJ's proposals are:
1. Servers with "indecent material" will register users as adults or
minors.
2. Every ISP will tag accounts as adults or minors.
3. A custom router will only allow users to access "indecent" sites
if an adult types in the password first.
Olsen's Grand Design for the Net incorporates Proposal #1. He's
pushing the idea that web servers or proxy servers with "indecent"
material will give out "adult verification passwords" before you can
access their web page. This means:
* A lengthy pre-registration process before you can access the site.
* The server has to keep a database with the identities of all the
adult users, complete with the credit card numbers that presumably
will be used for verification.
* If you want to access hundreds of web sites with "indecent"
material, you've got to get hundreds of different passwords.
If you run a web site with material that a Federal prosecutor anywhere
in the U.S. may find "indecent" or "patently offensive," under Olsen's
plan you have to verify that your users are adults.
Somehow, I don't expect overseas sites will go for this. What, doesn't
the DoJ realize that we're not just talking about the U.S. here?
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ACLU'S MOTION TO SUPRESS OBSCENE IMAGES -- DENIED!
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It's not about cybercensorship. It's about cybersex.
At least that's what the DoJ wants everyone to believe. Justice
Department attorneys have been flooding the court with printouts of
hundreds of pages of dirty pictures, a lot of them pretty damn
raunchy. Some of them might even be "obscene" -- that is, they fall
into a legal class of images that flunk a three-part test that
includes only images without "serious literary, artistic, social,
political, or scientific value."
Pretty hardcore stuff. GIFs like coeds fraternizing with german
shepherds -- with the help of 25' of rubber tubing and a Tibetan yak.
On April 9, the ACLU/EFF plaintiffs filed a motion to close the
floodgates on the DoJ's deluge of porn, asking that the government be
barred from introducing exhibits "unless they believe in good faith
the material could not be prosecuted under existing obscenity or child
pornography laws."
The idea behind this motion was to educate the court and remind them
that the CDA outlaws "indecency," not "obscenity." EFF attorney Mike
Godwin explains the difference in his forthcoming book _Cyber Rights_:
The term "indecency," although never defined by Congress or the
courts, is a far broader concept than "obscenity" (examples of
"indecency" include George Carlin's famous "Seven Dirty Words"
monologues, at least some portions of Howard Stern's radio
broadcasts, and, according to one court, the text of Allen
Ginsberg's "Howl").
Not one of our plaintiffs has "obscene" or even titillating pictures
on our web sites, but all of us are subject to a $250,000 fine and two
years in prison if a minor stumbles across our URL.
Yesterday the court denied our motion, saying that it understood that
we weren't challenging obscenity laws and that, unlike the situation
that might occur if there were a jury, the judges would not be
prejudiced by any pictures introduced.
The court ruled *they* were capable of understanding the difference,
so there was no need to separate the materials. They did admit that we
had raised an important issue, and the court understood the reason for
the motion.
I guess we have to trust them.
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THE NEW "I AM A CHILD" INTERNET PROTOCOL
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There's a second way to answer the question of: "How do you know who
the children are?"
Another option the DoJ appears to be pushing -- we'll know details
tomorrow -- is this idea of reprogramming every computer on the
worldwide Internet to run software that tags users as adults or
minors, so a server will know whether it can send out "indecent"
material.
This shifts the burden of establishing age-identity from the content
provider to the business or school giving out the Internet account.
It also would allow any unscrupulous net.lurker to troll for "I am a
child" tags and follow them back to the originating site -- not
exactly the best way to protect the children!
I should have realized this DoJ strategy earlier. Last week when I was
arguing with Bruce Taylor, an architect of the CDA, we went 'round and
'round on the issue of children on the Net. He maintained that every
Internet user has to have an account somewhere, so the provider of
that account can tag the user as a minor or adult.
I asked Taylor how his proposal was possible with the TCP/IP protocol
-- the nerve system the carries all the data flowing through the Net.
He replied that technical problems can be solved by technical people,
and wasn't there a new protocol being developed, anyway? Basically,
his position was: "Your side comes across to the court as saying that
it can be done but we won't do it. You're a bunch of geeks who want to
protect their porn and the court isn't going to buy it."
The "new protocol" being developed is IP Version 6, which the DoJ
zoomed in on in cross-examination of one of our witnesses, Scott
Bradner from the Internet Engineering Task Force:
13 Q Would it be fair to say, to summarize what you've just
14 said, that the IP Next Generation group is working on a new
15 generation of the IP Protocol itself?
16 A That is correct.
17 Q Does it have -- does the IP Next Generation group have
18 recommendations regarding a specific architecture of the
19 packet traffic on the Internet, including the format of the
20 packet?
The DoJ is going to argue that IPv6 can include such an adult/minor
tag in each datagram. Chris Hansen, the head of the ACLU's legal team,
says:
Olsen is going to push this tagging idea that the government has,
that you can imbed in your tag -- in your address -- an adult or
minor tag. They're going to suggest that the market will come into
existence that will make that tagging relevant.
It's more like the *judicial penalties* will evolve to make the
tagging not just relevant, but mandatory! On the cypherpunks list,
Bill Frantz, a computer consultant, outlines one problem:
One of the migration paths suggested for IPV4 to IPV6 migration is
to tunnel IPV4 packets within IPV6 packets. IPV4 packets do not
provide for an adult/minor tag, so until the transition to IPV6 is
fairly well along, this approach will be ineffective.
If the people who are worried about minor's accessing smut want
something this century, they should go with PICS.
A member of the IETF replies:
Neither, for that matter, do IPv6 packets -- there is no provision
for them. Furthermore, were anyone to create an end to end header of
that sort, it would be eight bytes of wasted space in every packet
in the net, especially since the implementation of such a tag is a
technical impossibility as there is no way to force the originating
system to tell the truth.
The "high-touch" argument against this is important as the high-tech
one. I just received the following mail from someone who would be
unable to continue his work if the DoJ's IPv6 scheme is implemented:
We provide free anonymous access to the net to sexual abuse survivors.
We don't even know who they are, nor do we care - a lot of them are
hiding out from their perps, and to try and identify them would be a
tremendous breach of trust, as they are depending on us for their
anonymity, much as a reporter would protect their anonymous source.
I also have been told by these folks themselves that some of them are
under the age of 18 - hell, I've had a few that tell me that they are
13 or 14 years old, and that they are still at home, still being raped
by their perps. We provide an outlet for their frustrations, emptional
support, a community for them, people to talk to, and support for them
if they choose to report their abuse. None of this would be possible
if Taylor and friends had their way.
Sure, we could trace each and every one of them back to their
providers, and find out who they are, but I'm not going to do it, and
I'm perfectly willing to go to jail to protect their identities. My
integrity is worth a whole hell of a lot more than any government law.
+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+
WHO CARES ABOUT KIDS: WHO ARE THE ADULTS?
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The third way to answer the now-tiresome who-are-the-kiddies question
is to turn it on its head and ask: "Who are the adults?"
Hardware to answer that question already exists. The March 25 issue of
Interactive Week reports that Livingston Enterprises, Inc. has
colluded with Senator Exon's staff to design an "Exon box" -- a router
that lets ISPs cut off unrated or "indecent" or unrated sites. To get
around the block, an "adult" enters a secret password that tells the
router to open a session and let the packets flow.
Exon's staff is heralding this as an example of how easy it is to
comply with the CDA. The only problem is that, like many such
hamfisted censorship "solutions," it sucks, and it ain't going to
work. One of the original architects of the Internet, David P. Reed,
wrote:
I do work to protect my children from inappropriate material, but
pressure from Senators to mandate technically flawed solutions, and
opportunistic, poorly thought-through technologies from companies
like Livingston are not helpful.
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OLSEN AS AN EXPERT WITNESS -- ON WHAT?
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As I was writing this, I started wondering why Olsen got picked as the
DoJ's expert witness for tomorrow's hearing, especially when his
research is *not* in distributed computing environments and protocol
design. It's in human computer interaction and user interfaces.
One of Olsen's former students at Brigham Young University contacted
me last week, saying he had initially hoped that Olsen was "lending a
neutral opinion" on technical issues "but that hope proved false."
I asked if his former faculty member has "done any work relating to
distributed computing environments like the Internet?" His reply: "The
closest thing I'm aware of is a paper on interactive bookmarks."
Network engineering that ain't.
On April 7th I sent Olsen email, asking him: "What kind of research
have you done related to distributed computing environments like the
Internet?"
As of April 11, still no response -- even though he had replied to my
earlier messages almost immediately. (I wouldn't put it past the DoJ's
tame attack ferret, Jason Baron, to try and muzzle Olsen as well.)
Vanderbilt Professor Donna Hoffman writes about Olsen:
A colleague at CMU told me that Dan Olsen is largely an administrator
at BYU and will assume administrative duties at CMU as the temporary
head of the HCII... I've seen his vita and talked to some colleagues
in CS and related fields about his work and it doesn't seem that he
has done much, if any, research related to the distributed computing
environments like the Internet.
His vita is difficult to parse because he has numerous items I can't
identify - for example, are they book chapters, working papers,
proceedings? Where were they published? And so on.
He is the Editor of a new journal published by CACM which started a
few months ago, related to human-computer interaction. His main
research interest seems to be in user interface issues, but he
hasn't published much in scholarly journals so I would conclude that
his work has had little impact on the field.
(I should point out here that a member of the HCII at CMU sent me mail
saying that conference proceedings are the main form of publication in
the field.)
Still, I wonder why the DoJ couldn't get a real net-expert to defend
the CDA and the network protocol schemes they're proposing?
Grey Flannel Suit (aka Air Force Special Agent Howard A. Schmidt) is
going to take the stand tomorrow and do a live demonstration of how he
can find cybersleze on the Net. I can hardly wait!
Grey Flannel has been involved in a half-dozen porn prosecutions in
the past: two dealing with civilian porn sites and and four dealing
with military ones. From the deposition he gave in Washington, DC
earlier this week, the extent of his testimony seems to be: "I went
onto the Net and found dirty pictures."
The following clue as to Grey Flannel's history of porn-prosecutions
flowed into my mailbox the other day:
It would be interesting to find out if Schmidt was involved in _US v.
Maxwell_, 42 M.J. 568 (USAF Ct Crim App 1995), a military justice
case concerning a USAF colonel who used AOL to communicate "indecent
language" to another servicemember and to traffic in pornographic
matter. USAFOSI was clearly involved in the investigation, but no
agents are named in the opinion.
Flannel will be followed by our last witness, MIT's Albert Vezza, and
then Dan Olsen.
Stay tuned for more reports.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We're back in court on 4/12, possibly 4/15 as a last day of witness
testimony, 4/26 for rebuttal if necessary, and 6/3 for closing
arguments.
Mentioned in this CDA update:
Michael Froomkin: "The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage"
<http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/arbitr.htm>
Wired: "How Anarchy Works -- Inside the Internet Engineering Task Force"
<http://www.hotwired.com/wired/3.10/departments/electrosphere/ietf.html>
Net-Guru David Reed's article: "CDA may pervert Internet architecture"
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2093>
Michael Froomkin's LONG article on anonymous remailers:
<http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/ocean1-7.htm>
Dan Olsen at BYU <http://www.cs.byu.edu/info/drolsen.html>
BYU's censorship policy <http://advance.byu.edu/pc/releases/guidelines.html>
Internet Eng Task Force <http://www.ietf.org/>
Rimm ethics critique <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/>
Int'l Net-Censorship <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/zambia/>
CMU net-censorship <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kcf/censor>
University censorship <http://joc.mit.edu/>
Grey Flannel Suit <howardas@aol.com>
This report and previous CDA Updates are available at:
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/>
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/EFF_ACLU_v_DoJ/>
<http://www.epic.org/free_speech/censorship/lawsuit/>
To subscribe to the fight-censorship mailing list for future CDA
updates and related net.censorship discussions, send "subscribe" in
the body of a message addressed to:
fight-censorship-request@andrew.cmu.edu
Other relevant web sites:
<http://www.eff.org/>
<http://www.aclu.org/>
<http://www.cdt.org/>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 09:31:30 -0800
From: telstar@WIRED.COM(--Todd Lappin-->)
Subject: File 2--LAWSUIT: Update Report, 4/9/96
Greetings and good cheer,
Things have been relatively quiet on the CDA front this week, as everybody
is busy preparing for the hearings in Philadelphia that begin on April 12.
During the next few court sessions, the Department of Justice will begin
presenting witnesses in an effort to demonstrate that the Communications
Decency Act is a fine piece of legislation whichwill effectively shield
minors from "indecent" material on the Internet.
What a farce. Too bad the DoJ is having such a good laugh at the expense
of the First Amendment.
Of course, we'll bring you gavel-to-gavel coverage of these hearings once
they resume.
And in the meantime...
Declan McCullagh -- our esteemed scholar, statesman, fashion consultant,
plaintiff in the ACLU case, and intrepid reporter -- has put together
another excellent update on the current situation.
In this installment.... Declan tells us about a new (and rather bizarre)
lawsuit that has been filed in opposition to the Communications Decency
Act; profiles Department of Justice lawyer Jason Baron; shows us where to
find Mr. Baron's favorite Net porn pix on the Internet; and resolves the
Mystery of the Man in Grey Flannel Suit.
(PUBLIC SERVICE WARNING: Declan's report contains explicit language,
graphic depictions of sexual acts, and several computer-related acronyms.)
Work the network!
--Todd Lappin-->
Section Editor
WIRED Magazine
=============================================================================
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The CDA Challenge, Update #5
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this update: Yet Another CDA Lawsuit: Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno
Deception and deceit from DoJ's Jason Baron
URLs for the DoJ's dirty picture list
The true identity of Grey Flannel Suit
April 9, 1996
PITTSBURGH, PA -- Fred Cherry wants a Federal court to uphold his
right to flame.
Lambasting "homonazis" on USENET is his inalienable right under the
First Amendment, argues the notorious netizen in his anti-CDA lawsuit
filed yesterday in New York City on behalf of "Johns and Call Girls
United Against Repression, Inc."
Cherry's beef with the law is that under its ban on "indecency," when
he gets flamed by "Australian homosexual nazis" he won't be able to
flame back. His complaint charges that his "Australian opponent will
have MORE freedom of speech" than he does -- unless the CDA is struck
down.
The self-taught amateur lawyer attached 20 pages of net.flamage as his
sole exhibit. One example that was spammed all the way from soc.men to
alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now: "Your ass is so blocked up
that you do need some therapeutic relief for your constipation -- a
condition which has backlogged all the shit right back up into your
head, Fred."
The indefatigable Cherry replied:
So, ramming a huge dick up my ass would be a therapeutic measure,
would it? You homos are the chief cause of AIDS in the United
States with your huge dicks being rammed up each other's asses. And
then you homos go around whining that the government isn't doing
enough to find a cure for AIDS. [12/22/95]
Ya gotta love this guy. He sent me mail describing his legal strategy,
concluding: "Can anyone deny that I am indeed the greatest amateur
lawyer since Caryl Chessman?" Of course Chessman -- California's "Red
Light Bandit" rapist -- was executed in 1960, his jailhouse lawyering
failing him in the end.
Cherry's lawsuit was easy to prepare. He grabbed the ACLU's complaint
from their web site, printed it out, added a few grafs about his
net.nazi adversaries, and trotted off to Federal court. When Cherry
filed his suit, which he's moved from Brooklyn to Federal court in
Manhattan, he wrote:
I am primarily a political activist, working for the repeal of laws
criminalizing adult prostitution and the patronizing of adult
prostitutes. Over the past thirty years I have found that, in the
United States, homosexuals are the worst enemies of the civil
rights of women prostitutes and their male clients.
The Cherry v. Reno case, refiled at docket number 96 Civ. 2498, most
likely will be consolidated with the American Reporter case, which is
also moving forward in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
A.R. editor Joe Shea will probably fight it. Shea refused to join our
lawsuit because he can't stand the ACLU and wants to do his own thing,
so he'll probably try to keep Cherry's case from being joined with
his. In fact, he accused the ACLU of putting Cherry up to it.
+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+
I would never have suspected the DoJ attorneys of trying to deceive
Federal judges, but now I wonder.
The DoJer I've had the most contact with is Jason Baron, a short,
portly guy who tries to land roundhouse punches during
cross-examination but instead keeps slipping up on technical terms. He
also wrote the Justice Department's reply to our initial complaint. In
that brief, the Civil Division lawyer uncritically cited Marty Rimm's
cyberporn study -- featured last summer on the cover of TIME magazine
-- as an authoritative reference on net.smut:
This article describes material located primarily on USENET
newsgroups, i. at 1865-76, and on adult commercial bulletin boards
(BBS), i. at 1876-1905. Defendants offer this as an initial reference
of the availability and nature of obscene and indecent material from
some on-line sources, such as USENET and BBS. [sic]
Maybe Baron thought nobody would notice. But there's no excuse for not
knowing that the study was deliberately fraudulent: The New York Times
printed an editorial exposing it; Rimm's connections with "family
values" groups have come to light; Donna Hoffman and I run extensive
web sites debunking the study; Carnegie Mellon University claims to be
investigating the ethical misdeeds of their former undergraduate.
Even attorneys who used to work within Baron's division of the Justice
Department complain that Baron deliberately foisted this fraud off on
Federal judges:
I'm embarrassed... They should have mentioned that the "study" came
under heavy critical fire almost immediately upon release. I trust
the opposition will make hay of this omission. In this context, this
"study" is not just another controversial report, but one whose
provenance is well known to be in doubt among the relevant actors.
That much should have been ackowledged in the quoted footnote, at
least along the lines of, "While the methodology of this study has
been challenged, defendants believe it to represent..." etc. [4/7/96]
By citing this study and appending its complete text without informing
the court that it was a hoax, Baron revealed the impoverished ethics
of the Justice Department. Interestingly, the Code of Professional
Responsibility and the Rules of Professional Conduct make it a
disciplinable offense for a lawyer to "knowingly use perjured
testimony or false evidence." Under Title 11, attorneys can be
sanctioned for introducing false evidence.
Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by all this. After all, Baron is
the same attorney who confuses EFF with IETF -- not to mention his
additional duties as the DoJ's courtroom-cop. Recall that when I was
asking the mysterious Grey Flannel Suit a question, Baron came over
and interrupted us. Now I've learned that he's threatening to report
me to "higher authorities" if I talk to his witnesses again. (!)
Yeah, Grey Flannel Suit is going to take the stand. He's none other
than the DoJ's cybersexpert witness -- Special Agent Howard A.
Schmidt from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
Guess that explains why Baron was so desperate to keep me from talking
with him the other day.
Baron's authoritarian streak showed again during the March 21 hearing,
when I joined some members of the press in paging through the ACLU's
copy of the DoJ's dirty pictures binder. Baron charged over and
snatched it away, snarling: "Not available to the public." Well, the
URLs ended up in my mailbox anyway, so here they are for your
amusement:
http://www.pu55y.com/hotsex/join.html
http://shack.bianca.com/shack/misc/terms.html
http://www.intergate.net/untmi/obbs1.html
http://www.whitman.edu/~burkotwt/pornpics/lady941.jpg
http://www.wizard.com/~gl944vx/gifs/01_21.jpg
http://www.vegaslive.com/sgguests/ginger.html
news:4hrs89k%24oap@what.why.net
http://monkey.hooked.net/monkey/m/grinder/nikkita/graphics/nikki36.jpg
news:313F56FD.3F19@access.mountain.net
news:4hb94m%24sij@asp.erinet.com
http://www.sexvision.com/web2.htm
news:314048f.1657746@news.netwalk.com
The DoJ has full-color printouts of these images, which are sexually
explicit but *not* obscene -- Baron wanted to remind the court that
placing these JPEGs online publicly would not be a criminal act
without the CDA.
For someone who's defending a ban on smutty stuff on the Net, Baron is
surprisingly embarrassed to talk about it. Vanderbilt Professor Donna
Hoffman reports:
[Baron] deposed me for over 7 hours, beginning on a Monday morning
at 9am. The most interesting part of the deposition was when he
brought out several large binders and started going through some of
the material in them and looking increasingly uncomfortable.
Eventually, he spoke and started to apologize saying he might have
to show me some materials and his New England background made him
feel uncomfortable about it.
He honestly was squirming and sweating a bit and then, after a brief
lunch, we resumed and he did eventually show me some materials, but
they were not surprising or of the type that I would have thought
would make him squirm like that.
I did wonder if it was some sort of "act," but he seemed genuinely
embarassed. In hindsight, I wonder if it was because I am a woman and
that was really the part that made the idea of showing me sexually
explicit materials uncomfortable for him.
I guess that Baron is a true "gentleman" who believes that certain
topics like dirty pictures are unmentionable in mixed company.
Avoiding embarrassment is just another reason to censor the stuff!
On April 12, Grey Flannel Suit (aka Special Agent Schmidt) will take
the stand and snarf around the net for dirty pix. He'll be followed by
our last witness, MIT's Albert Vezza, and then BYU/CMU's Dan Olsen.
Stay tuned for more reports.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We're back in court on 4/12, possibly 4/15, 4/26 for rebuttal, and 6/3
for closing arguments.
Mentioned in this CDA update:
DoJ's brief citing Marty Rimm's cyberporn study:
<http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/seminar/ACLU-Reno-TRO-Justice-brief.htm>
Text of complaint from Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno:
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2108>
Flamewar attached as exhibit to Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno:
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2109>
Fred Cherry's reasons why he filed his lawsuit:
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=1911>
Relevant excerpt from Fred Cherry's original complaint:
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=1891>
Rimm ethics critique <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/rimm/>
Censorship at CMU <http://joc.mit.edu/>
The American Reporter <http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html>
Grey Flannel Suit <howardas@aol.com>
Previous cases DoJer Jason Baron worked on:
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/Armstrong_v_President/>
<http://snyside.sunnyside.com/cpsr/government_info/info_access/PROFS_CASE/>
Joe Shea's complaints about ACLU wanting to "stand alone in the limelight":
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2014>
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2036>
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=2037>
This report and previous CDA Updates are available at:
<http://www.epic.org/free_speech/censorship/lawsuit/>
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/EFF_ACLU_v_DoJ/>
<http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/>
To subscribe to the fight-censorship mailing list for future CDA
updates and related net.censorship discussions, send "subscribe" in
the body of a message addressed to:
fight-censorship-request@andrew.cmu.edu
Other relevant web sites:
<http://www.eff.org/>
<http://www.aclu.org/>
<http://www.cdt.org/>
###
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--
This transmission was brought to you by....
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 96 21:51:56 PDT
From: jblumen@interramp.com
Subject: File 3--why I will not rate my site
Why I Will Not Rate My Site
by Jonathan Wallace jblumen@spectacle.org
It is becoming increasingly clear to most people providing
information on the World Wide Web that rating systems, a fairly
benign form of self-policing, will help us avoid government
censorship. While commercial sites take refuge behind credit card
front ends to screen out minors, amateur sites may be able to avoid
indictment under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) by adopting an
adult rating. Parents would then configure browsers to exclude these
sites, or would give their children Internet access through
providers who blocked adult-rated sites.
Although nothing in the CDA expressly endorses self-rating, the
judges in the ACLU v. Reno case in Philadelphia (in which I am a
plaintiff) have taken an eager interest in it, asking witnesses
questions like "How would you rate your site using the motion picture
ratings?" and "Could browsers be configured to recognize a rating
system?"
On the whole, self-rating systems are a very good idea, because they
allow information providers to post material for an adult audience
while avoiding the accusation that they are pandering to children.
However, as the Philadelphia judges discovered when they asked
witness Kiyoshi Kuromya of the Critical Path Aids organization how he
would rate his site, there are Web pages which cannot and should not
be rated under such a system.
In June 1995, I posted An Auschwitz Alphabet to the Web,
http://www.spectacle.org/695/ausch.html. It is a compilation of
excerpts from materials on Auschwitz, including the reminiscences of
survivors. It is technically indecent under the Communications
Decency Act (which bars descriptions of sexual acts or organs)
because of several excerpts from the book The Nazi Doctors, by Robert
Jay Lifton, describing castration and the removal of ovaries of camp
inmates. Here is one example:
"As for the men, after the X rays sperm was collected ('their
prostates [were] brutally massaged with pieces of wood inserted into
the rectum') and sooner or later one or both testicles were
surgically removed, with resulting hemorrhages, septicemia, and
death."
In the nine months since I put An Auschwitz Alphabet on the Web, it
has been visited by many thousands of people, and more than one
hundred have written to me thanking me for compiling it and making it
available. Some of my correspondents have revealed themselves to be
minors:
"I am a tenth grade student in Australia and I would just like to
congratulate you on this homepage. This information has been most
helpful for an assignment I am doing. So thanks."
"I think this is great. I am a 14 year old boy that lives in Indiana.
(USA) I really think what you are doing is important. If kids my age
aren't told of this tragedy, than it will be forgotten about and the
likelier the possibility of it happening again in some shape or form.
Thank you."
These letters make my problem obvious. I believe that An Auschwitz
Alphabet, and other materials on my site with some explicit language,
have literary and political value. Now, material with so called SLAP
value (scientific, literary, artistic, political) can be found
indecent under the Communications Decency Act, resulting in a prison
sentence or a steep fine.
If a self-rating system is adopted as a safe harbor, meaning that by
assigning your Web site an appropriate rating you could escape
liability under the CDA, I would still not want to assign my site an
adult rating. Assigning an R rating to the file on human
experimentation cited above, for example, would place it in exactly
the same R-rated category as sexual material with no SLAP value
whatever, and would prevent minors with a perfectly legitimate
interest from seeing it, like the two above. Under a rating system
which paralleled what we do for movies, I would either have to assign
An Auschwitz Alphabet a G rating or refuse to rate it entirely.
Since most browsers configured to accept ratings would probably
exclude unrated material, refusing to rate your site would be the
equivalent of giving it an X-rating. If so, I would have to rate An
Auschwitz Alphabet G and hope for the best. I resent a system that
forces me to rate material that should not have to be.
Since I am pretty strongly in favor of parental control over what a
child may read or see, let me explain the apparent contradiction. The
law recognizes many areas in which a teenage child, though still a
minor, has increased independence and privacy interests. Proponents
of safe sex information, for example, argue that their information,
if available to sexually active teenagers, will save lives. In such a
case, parental control implies a right to keep a teenager ignorant
and at risk. In other words, there are moral interests which (I know
this is a risky statement) trump parental control. Ratings systems
which lump An Auschwitz Alphabet together with the Hot Nude Women
page ignore this distinction.
Jonathan Wallace is the co-author, with Mark Mangan,
of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, a new book from Henry
Holt (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/),
a plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno (http://www.spectacle.org/
cda/cdamn.html) and publisher of the Ethical
Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org).
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 19:46:20
From: cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu
Subject: File 4--AOL.COM took the *WHAT* out of "Country?"
((MODERATORS' NOTE: From the folks who banned breasts, we have
the following. A CuD reader sent over the story and had the
subject of the story send over his version. Dunno whether to
laugh or cry)).
================================
Date--Thu, 11 Apr 1996 18:46:20 -0400
From--STEELBEAT@aol.com
Subject--Signing on with AOL
It has been suggested by "dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk" that you may be
interested in my bizarre experience when trying to sign - on with Aol.
Using the Aol Disk I followed the instructions given.
I was asked to type my name and address which I did using my name
"BLACKIE"and my home Town as "SCUNTHORPE"
When entered, the response appeared "cannot process your account any
further."
Despite several attempts to ensure the information was accurate the result
was the same.
I then contacted the help line in Dublin (fortunately a free-phone number) to
sort out the problem.
After some time on hold it was explained that there were safeguards built
into the System to prevent offensive or facetious entries being made.the only
suggestion they could give was that it was my name causing a possible racial
connotation.
I then tried again using different spellings of my Name but to no avail.
Back on the phone again,
The support Staff were very concerned and after talking to several people who
could offer no further solution I jokingly suggested it could be the name
Scunthorpe causing the problem. They doubted that would be the case and said
the matter would be looked into further.
Back on my Computer.
After trying several permutations I changed the town name to "Frodingham"
(one of the Town areas) and Eureka - the program carried on as normal.
I know there have been many lavatory type jokes about the four letter word to
be found in my Towns name, but did not, nor did Aols Staff expect it to bar
it from the Internet.
The local Paper did an article on the matter and said that Aol were trying to
sort it out,
but in the meantime SCUNTHORPE has become SCONTHORPE as far as AOL are
concerned.
Please note I am not being critical of AOL as a Service, I think it is first
rate, with superfast downloads and local access. Given time to expand it will
be a Main Contender in the UK.
Hope this is of interest
Doug.
=====================================================
Date--Thu, 11 Apr 1996 10:50:37 GMT +0100
From--David G. Bell <dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk>
Subject--AOL and Scunthorpe
From the front page of the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph (final edition)
of Tuesday, April 9th, 1996, issue number 30111.
Printed and published by Grimsby and Scunthorpe Newspapers Ltd.,
Telegraph House, Doncaster Road, Scunthorpe, DN15 7RE.
Re-typed by David G. Bell (dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk)
Surfing the net in bonny Sconny
SCUNTHORPE'S name has been changed to spare the blushes of millions
of computer users on the Internet
American and German bosses of the AOL UK service were shocked to
discover the name of the town could offend.
Now AOL's five million-plus members in the USA and thousands of
users in Europe have been warned to refer to the town as SCONTHORPE in
order not to cause offence.
"There is an internal software problem," admitted a London
spokeswoman for AOL which was launched in Britain three months ago by
America Online and the German media company Bertelsman AG.
The spokeswoman said that by re-naming Scunthorpe -- Sconthorpe --
they might be accused of "over-protecting" their members from
unscrupulous people.
She explained that there were safeguards built in to their system
to prevent "crude language" going on the line.
"We have renamed the town in order not to cause offence. But our
technicians between the UK and America are now working to remove the
block on the name."
The ban on Scunthorpe and that four-letter word was discovered by
retired steelworks mill controller Doug Blackie, of Cole Street, when he
applied to join AOL UK.
Each time he typed in the address Scunthorpe on his application he
was met with the stock reply: "Your account cannot be processed any
further."
Then Mr Blackie used the free telephone service to speak to
technicians in Dublin for around two hours.
"They were most helpful and suggested it could be a block on the
name Blackie. But jokingly I suggested it could be something to do with
the old toilet gag about Scunthorpe.
"So then I typed in my address as Frodingham and bingo the block
was lifted."
---8<-----------------------------
Notes:
"bonny Sconny" is probably a reference to the the local, and somewhat
ironic, phrase "sunny Scunny" used to refer to the town. Scunthorpe
grew up around the steel works and is an amalgamation of several small
villages, including Frodingham.
------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
Subject: File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996)
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------------------------------
End of Computer Underground Digest #8.29
************************************