Computer underground Digest Sun July 13, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 56
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
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #9.56 (Sun, July 13, 1997)
File 1--Cyber Patrol Bans Crpyt Newsletter
File 2--ALA Council Resolution on the Use of Filtering Software
File 3--An Economic Basis for SPAM Control
File 4--French "English Only" Web Site Suit Dismissed
File 5--UFOs and the Net (fwd Islands in the Clickstream)
File 6--Oil City Officials Worry About Link To Web Page
File 7--Call for Commentaries on CuD Special Issue of Net & Education
File 8--Star Wars, Fanfiction, and Big Eight Newsgroup Creation
File 9--Anti-solicitation laws and anti-spam "opt-in" mailing lists
File 10--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 97 01:53:31 EDT
From: "George Smith [CRYPTN]" <70743.1711@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: File 1--Cyber Patrol Bans Crpyt Newsletter
((CuD MODERATORS' COMMENT: George Smith learned the danger of
blocking software. As he explains, the homepage of
Crypt Newsletter was blocked. Why? Because another homepage on
the server, the American Society of Criminology's Critical
Criminology Division homepage at
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim, includes a copy of the
Unabomer Manifesto. The Crit Crim page is a well-established and
busy resource, especially for criminologists, and the Unabomer
Manifesto is relevant to the research resources the page
provides. Unfortunately, all homepages on the system beginning
with ~cr were blocked. Although the problem apparently has been
resolved for now, risks of future blocking remain. Because
libraries and schools use Cyber Patrol, the consequence of the
blocking may be to exclude students from the ability to access a
valuable homepage for assigments)).
Banned by Cyber Patrol
June 19, 1997
Hey, buddy, did you know I'm a militant extremist? Cyber Patrol, the
Net filtering software designed to protect your children from
cyberfilth, says so. Toss me in with those who sleep with a copy of
"The Turner Diaries" under their pillows and those who file nuisance
liens against officials of the IRS. Seems my Web site is dangerous
viewing.
I discovered I was a putative militant extremist while reading a
story on Net censorship posted on Bennett Haselton's PeaceFire
Web site. Haselton is strongly critical of Net filtering software and
he's had his share of dustups with vendors like Cyber Patrol, who
intermittently ban his site for having the temerity to be a naysayer.
Haselton's page included some links so readers could determine what
other Web pages were banned by various Net filters. On a lark, I typed
in the URL of the Crypt Newsletter, the publication I edit. Much to my
surprise, I had been banned by Cyber Patrol. The charge? Militant
extremism. Cyber Patrol also has its own facility for checking if a
site is banned, called the CyberNOT list. Just to be sure, I
double-checked. Sure enough, I was a CyberNOT.
Now you can call me Ray or you can call me Joe, but don't ever call me
a militant extremist! I've never even seen one black helicopter
transporting U.N. troops to annex a national park.
However, nothing is ever quite as it seems on the Web and before I
went into high dudgeon over political censorship--the Crypt Newsletter
has been accused of being "leftist" for exposing various
government, academic, and software industry charlatans--I told some of
my readership. Some of them wrote polite--well, almost polite--letters
to Debra Greaves, Cyber Patrol's head of Internet research. And
Greaves wrote back almost immediately, indicating it had all been a
mistake.
My Web site was blocked as a byproduct of a ban on another page on the
same server. "We do have a [blocked] site off of that server with a
similar directory. I have modified the site on our list to be more
unique so as to not affect [your site] any longer," she wrote.
Perhaps I should have been reassured that Cyber Patrol wasn't banning
sites for simply ridiculing authority figures, a favorite American
past time. But if anything, I was even more astonished to discover th
company's scattershot approach to blocking. It doesn't include precise
URLs in its database. Instead, it prefers incomplete addresses that
block everything near the offending page. The one that struck down
Crypt News was "soci.niu.edu/~cr," a truncated version of my complete
URL. In other words: any page on the machine that fell under "~cr" was
toast.
Jim Thomas, a sociology professor at Northern Illinois University,
runs this particular server, and it was hard to imagine what would be
militantly extreme on it. Nevertheless, I ran the news by Thomas. It
turns out that the official home page of the American Society of
Criminology's Critical Criminology Division, an academic resource,
was the target. It features articles from a scholarly criminology
journal and has the hubris to be on record as opposing the death
penalty but didn't appear to have anything that would link it with
bomb-throwing anarchists, pedophiles, and pornographers.
There was, however, a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto on the page.
I told Thomas I was willing to bet $1,000 cash money that Ted
Kaczynski's rant was at the root of Cyber Patrol's block.
Thomas confirmed it, but I can't tell you his exact words. It
might get this page blocked, too.
What this boils down to is that Cyber Patrol is banning writing on the
Web that's been previously published in a daily newspaper: The
Washington Post. It can also be said the Unabomber Manifesto already
has been delivered to every corner of American society.
If the ludicrous quality of this situation isn't glaring enough,
consider that one of Cyber Patrol's partners, CompuServe, promoted the
acquisition of electronic copies of the Unabomber Manifesto after it
published by the Post. And these copies weren't subject to any
restrictions that would hinder children from reading them. In fact,
I've never met anyone from middle-class America who said, "Darn those
irresponsible fiends at the Post! Now my children will be inspired to
retreat to the woods, write cryptic essays attacking techno-society,
and send exploding parcels to complete strangers."
Have you?
So, will somebody explain to me how banning the Unabomber Manifesto,
the ASC's Critical Criminology home page, and Crypt Newsletter
protects children from smut and indecency? That's a rhetorical
question.
Cyber Patrol is strongly marketed to public libraries, and has been
acquired by some, in the name of protecting children from Net
depravity.
Funny, I thought a public library would be one of the places you'd be
more likely to find a copy of the Unabomber Manifesto.
_George Smith is the author of The Virus Creation Labs, a book about
computer virus writers and the antivirus industry._
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 10:28:11 -0800
From: "--Todd Lappin-->" <telstar@wired.com>
Subject: File 2--ALA Council Resolution on the Use of Filtering Software
Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
From: "Craig A. Johnson" <caj@tdrs.com>
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
This resolution was adopted by ALA Council at the annual conference.
RESOLUTION ON THE USE OF FILTERING SOFTWARE IN LIBRARIES
WHEREAS, On June 23, 1997, the United States Supreme court issued a
sweeping re-affirmation of core First Amendment principles and held
that communications over the Internet deserve the highest level of
Constitutional protection; and
WHEREAS, The Court's most fundamental holding is that communications
on the Internet deserve the same level of Constitional protection as
books, magazines, newspapers, and speakers on a street corner
soapbox. The Court found that the *Internet constitutes a vast
platfrom from which to address and hear from a world-wide audience of
millions of readers, viewers, researchers, and buyers,* and that *any
person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that
resonates farther than it could from any soapbox*; and
WHEREAS, For libraries, the most critical holding of the Supreme
Court is that libraries that make content available on the Internet
can continue to do so with the same Constitutional protections tha
apply to the books on libraries' shelves; and
WHEREAS, The Court's conclusion *that the vast democratic fora of the
Internet* merit full constitutional protection will also serve to
protect libraries that provide their patrons with access to the
Internet; and
WHEREAS, The Court recognized the importance of enabling individuals
to receive speech from the entire world and to speak to the entire
world. Libraries provide these opportunities to many who would not
otherwise have them; and
WHEREAS, The Supreme Court's decision will protect that access; and
WHEREAS, The use in libraries of software filters which block
Constitutionally protected speech is inconsistent with the United
States Constitution and federal law and may lead to legal exposure
for the library and its governing authorities; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association affirms that the use
of filtering software by libaries to block access to constitutionally
protected speech violates the Library Bill of Rights.
Adopted by the ALA Council, July 2, 1997
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 97 09:59:10 EST
From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator <comp-privacy@UWM.EDU>
Subject: File 3--An Economic Basis for SPAM Control
((SOURCE - Computer Privacy Digest, Vol 11, #002:, Wed 8 July:
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of
technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and
gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated).
Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative
requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu.
Web browsers will find it at http://www.uwm.edu/org/comp-privacy/))
=========
From--Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Date--02 Jul 1997 18:02:07 -0700
Subject--An Economic Basis for SPAM Control
There are three approaches being publicly discussed to regulate
unwanted email: regulatory, opt-in and opt-out. Due to subtle, but
important differences between fax and email, I believe the legal
approach will be difficult to craft without facing First Amendment
challenges. Both the opt-in and opt-out appear to create more
bureaucratic overhead and may be difficult to satisfactorily
administer. There is a fourth approach, economic, which has received
scant attention.
Postage costs are what, quite effectively, keep our snail-mail boxes
from overflowing with junk. Since email is essentially free, or
almost, there has been no incentive for SPAMers to better target their
ads, as is financially required for snail-mail advertising.
One economic approach is to enhance email software (either at the ISP
or client end) that would filter incoming messages in two ways: to
determine if the sender was known to the recipient (i.e., from previous
correspondence) or to determine if sufficient postage was placed within
the message header.
The email software could automate building the 'known sender' list from
email responses and other user input (in this way electronic mailing
lists would should not be affected). Messages not from known parties
and without sufficient postage would be rejected: returned to sender or
discarded. The email software could refund postage--e.g., by explicit
recipient action or in the next reply email--so non-SPAM senders would
not be left out-of-pocket for d-postage. SPAMers would have their
d-postage pocketed by the recipient.
There are at least two Digital Postage (d-postage) approaches: e-cash
based d-postage and sender-generated d-postage (hashcash).
E-cash based postage is an obvious choice. Like today's postal stamps,
the sender would need to purchase the e-cash and include it in the
header of outgoing mail to recipients to whom the sender was unknown.
However, e-cash isn't widely used nor is it certain that current and
proposed e-cash systems could economically and architecturally scale to
address Net d-postage.
An alternative is to use 'stamps' created by the sender. Called
'hashcash,' it was first put forward as a way to reduce remailer
abuse. With hascash the sender must perform a mathematical operation
which is very computationally intensive when generating the 'stamp'
(the more complex the higher the stamp value) but which is quick for
the recipient to check. Each stamp value is intimately related to the
recipient's address, so a SPAMer can't reproduce a stamp and send them
to different addressees.
Hashcash is elegant in its simplicity and scalability due to its lack
of a centralized issuing or clearing facility. Hascash-based d-postage
could also seed the development of commercial distributed computing Net
industry, as SPAMers elect to purchase hashcash rather than generating
it themselves-the idea isn't to eliminate SPAM, just place it on
similar economic footing with junk snailmail. (See
http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/).
------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, June 10, 1997
From: user45@@anonymous.nosys.com
Subject: File 4--French "English Only" Web Site Suit Dismissed
Source: Reuters.
Dateline: PARIS
FRENCH INTERNET SUIT DISMISSED
ENGLISH-ONLY WEB SITE ILLEGAL, GROUPS CHARGE
The first test of whether France's disputed language law
applies to the Internet ended in a fiasco Monday when a court
threw out the case against an overseas branch of Georgia Tech on
a technicality.
Two state-approved watchdogs promoting the use of the French
language had filed a complaint against the Georgia Institute of
Technology's French campus for using English only on its Web
site.
The plaintiffs, Defense of the French Language and Future of
the French Language, accused Georgia Tech Lorraine of breaking a
1994 law requiring all advertising in France to be in French.
The Paris police court dismissed the lawsuit, saying the two
private groups should have notified a public prosecutor first.
The legislation, named after then-Culture Minister Jacques
Toubon, was part of a battle to protect the tongue of Moliere and
Racine from the growing international use of English.
"The central question, the most interesting one, has not been
decided today; only a procedural matter has," said Marc Jobert,
lawyer for the two groups, which had demanded that the Internet
site be translated into French.
While supporters of Internet say the World Wide Web should be
free of national restraints, many governments have asserted
their authority over cyberspace to try to block pornography or
to silence political dissent.
"The court did not address the underlying issue and has left
us wanting more," said Jacques Schaefer, lawyer for Georgia Tech
Lorraine, which is based in Metz, in eastern France.
"It's a total victory in the sense that we were cleared of
all accusations," he said, but the university would rather have
won on substance than on procedure.
Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough said the drive to apply
the Toubon law to the Web ignores its "interconnected nature."
"The Web is the personification of the global economy. It does
not recognize national or linguistic borders," he said.
Georgia Tech argued at a January hearing that communications
on the Web are like telephone calls. It said its Web site is in
English because all of its courses are taught in the language and
students are required to be fluent in English.
Two weeks ago, Georgia Tech Lorraine made its Web site
available in French and German as well but denied the lawsuit was
the reason.
It said that technological advances in the global computer
network had made it easier to provide the translation and that it
"wanted to be more European."
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 21:37:40 -0500
From: Richard Thieme <rthieme@thiemeworks.com>
Subject: File 5--UFOs and the Net (fwd Islands in the Clickstream)
Islands in the Clickstream:
UFOs and the Internet
[This summer marks the 50th anniversaries of the first modern
publicized report of UFO phenomena by Kenneth Arnold in June 1947
and the "Roswell incident" in July 1947. This column is much
abridged from the articles "How to Build a UFO ... Story"
(Internet Underground: November 1996) and "Stalking the UFO Meme
on the Internet" (South Africa Computer Magazine: April 1997).
The article was also included in Digital Delirium (eds. Arthur
and Marilouise Kroker: St. Martin's Press: 1997). A full copy
will be archived on the ThiemeWorks web site -- coming this
summer.]
"We are convinced that Roswell took place. We've had too
many high ranking military officials tell us that it happened,
that told us that it was clearly not of this earth."
Don Schmitt, co-author, "The Truth About the UFO Crash
at Roswell," in an interview on the Internet
That "interview with a real X-Filer" can be found on one of
the hundreds of web sites -- in addition to Usenet groups,
gopher holes stuffed with hundreds of files, and clandestine BBSs
where abductees meet to compare "scoop marks" -- that make up the
virtual world of flying saucers.
The UFO subculture or -- for some -- the UFO religion on the
Internet is a huge supermarket of images and words. Everything is
for sale -- stories, pictures, entire belief systems. But are we
buying a meal? Or a menu?
When Schmitt uses the word "Roswell," he is not merely
identifying a small town in New Mexico that put itself on the map
with a terrific UFO story. He uses it to MEAN the whole story --
the one that says a UFO crashed in 1947 near the Roswell Army Air
Field, after which alien bodies were recovered and a cosmic
Watergate initiated.
That story is scattered on the Internet like fragments of an
exploding spaceship. Do the pieces fit together to make a
coherent puzzle? Or is something wrong with this picture?
Stalking the UFO meme on the Internet
Memes are contagious ideas that replicate like viruses from
mind to mind. On the Internet memes multiply rapidly. Fed by
fascination, incubated in the feverish excitement of devotees
transmitting stories of cosmic significance, the UFO meme mutates
into new forms, some of them wondrous and strange.
"The Roswell incident" is one variation of the UFO meme.
On the Internet, Schmitt's words are hyperlinked to those of
other UFO sleuths and legions of interested bystanders fascinated
by the psychodynamics of the subculture as well as the "data."
Before we examine a few fragments, let's pause to remember
what the Internet really is.
Copies of copies -- or copies of originals?
The Internet represents information through symbols or
icons. So does speech, writing, and printed text, but the symbols
on the Net are even further removed from the events and context
to which they point.
The power of speech gave us the ability to lie, then writing
hid the liar from view. That's why Plato fulminated at writing --
you couldn't know what was true if you didn't have the person
right there in front of you.
The printing press made it worse. Now digital images and
text are on the Net. Pixels can be manipulated. Without
correlation with other data, no digital photo or document can be
taken at face value. There's no way to know if we're looking at a
copy of an original, a copy of a copy, or a copy that has no
original.
In addition, certain phenomena elicit powerful projections.
Because projections are unconscious, we don't know if we're
looking at iron filings obscuring a magnet or the magnet.
Carl Jung said UFOs invite projections because they're
mandalas -- archetypal images of our deep Selves. Unless we
separate what he think we see from what we see, we're bound to be
confused.
Hundreds of cross-referenced links on the Web create a
matrix of credibility. In print, we document assertions with
references. Footnotes are conspicuous by their absence on the
Web. Information is self-referential. Symbols and images point to
themselves like a ten-dimensional dog chasing its own tails.
Are there "eight firsthand witnesses who saw the bodies,"
"many high-ranking military officials who said it was not of this
earth," or "550 witnesses stating that this was not from this
earth?" Schmitt makes all of those statements in the same
interview. He uses the word "witness" the way Alice in Wonderland
uses words, to mean what she wants them to mean.
Tracking down the truth about the "Roswell incident" is like
hunting the mythical Snark in the Lewis Carroll poem. The closer
one gets to the "evidence," the more it isn't there.
There is in fact not one "witness" to the "Roswell incident"
in the public domain, not one credible report that is not
filtered through a private interview or privileged communication.
There are, though, lots of people making a living from it --
makers of the Ray Santilli "autopsy film," guides for tours of
the rival crash sites in Roswell, television producers and book
publishers. It all gets very confusing.
Is any of the confusion intentional?
Ready for a Headache?
Are government agents using the subculture to manipulate
public opinion? To cover up what they know? Are UFO investigators
spies, "useful idiots" (as they're known in the spy trade), or
just in it for the buck?
An online adventure illustrates the difficulty of getting
answers.
A woman in Hamilton, Montana, was speaking to Peter
Davenport, head of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle
about a UFO she said was above her house. She said she heard
beeps on the radio when it was hovering. As they spoke, some
beeps sounded.
"There!" she said. "What is that?"
I recorded the beeps and posted a message on a hacker's
Internet group asking for help.
I received an offer of assistance from the LoD, the Legion
of Doom, a well-known hacker name. I emailed the beeps as an
audio file to them. They examined the switching equipment used by
the Montana telco and reported that the signals did not originate
within the system. They could say what the signals were not, but
not what they were.
In another email, a writer said he had heard similar tones
over telephone lines and shortwave radio near White Sands Missile
Range. He said friends inside the base had given him "some info
that would be of great interest.
"The documentation and info that I am getting are going to
basically confirm what a member of the team has divulged to me
[about UFO occupants].
"They are here and they are not benign."
Into the Twilight Zone
Without corroboration, that's as far as the Internet can
take us.
Words originate with someone -- but who? Is the name on the
email real? Is the account real? Was the White Sands source who
he said he was? Were his contacts telling the truth? Or was he a
bored kid killing time?
The UFO world is a hall of mirrors. The UFO world on the
Internet is a simulation of a hall of mirrors. The truth is out
there ... but how can we find it?
Plato was right. We need to know who is speaking to evaluate
the data.
The Bottom Line
A number of years ago, I volunteered to be Wisconsin state
director of the Mutual UFO Network in order to listen firsthand
to people who claimed to have encountered UFOs. I brought sixteen
years' experience as a counsellor to the project. I listened to
people from all walks of life.
My interest in the phenomena had quickened in the 1970s
during a conversation with a career Air Force officer, a guy with
all the "right stuff."
A fellow B47 pilot told him of an unusual object that flew
in formation with him for a while, then took off at an incredible
speed. The co-pilot verified the incident. Neither would report
it and risk damage to their careers.
That was the first time I heard a story like that from
someone I knew well. I remember how he looked as he told that
story. Usually confident, even cocky, he looked puzzled,
helpless. That was the first time I saw that look, too, but it
wouldn't be the last.
I have seen that look many times since as credible people --
fighter pilots, commercial air line pilots, intelligence
officers, and just plain folk fishing on an isolated lake or
walking in the woods after dark -- recounted an experience they
can't forget. They don't want publicity. They don't want money.
They just want to know what they saw.
Data has been accumulating for fifty years. Some is on the
Internet. Some is trustworthy. Much of it isn't.
Are we hunting a Snark, only to be bamboozled by a boojum?
Or are we following luminous breadcrumbs through the forest to
the Truth that is Out There?
The Net is one place to find answers, but only if our
pursuit of the truth is conducted with discipline, a rigorous
methodology and absolute integrity.
**********************************************************************
Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by
Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions
of computer technology. Comments are welcome.
Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this
signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns
online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or
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To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to
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islands" in the body of the message.
Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer
focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and
organizations.
Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1997. All rights reserved.
ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321
*********************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jul 1997 13:34:47 GMT
From: glr@RIPCO.COM(Glen Roberts)
Subject: File 6--Oil City Officials Worry About Link To Web Page
AP 06-30-97 12:11 PMT
AM-PA-BRF--Oil City-Internet,150
Oil City officials worry about link to web page
Eds: Note Internet address at end.
OIL CITY, Pa. (AP) Officials in this northwestern Pennsylvania
city say they do not want to be linked to an Internet site
including electronic rants against religions, blacks, women and
homosexuals.
The ``Outrage'' page is maintained by Glen Roberts, who also
posts advertisements for Oil City on his home page in cyberspace.
Oil City Mayor Malachy McMahon and other officials are afraid
people might think the page reflects the views of city residents.
Roberts has a reputation as a spokesman for Internet privacy
issues and once posted the Social Security numbers of Indiana
University employees to make a point about privacy.
He said the opinions on his page are not his own, but rather
those of anonymous people who wish to express a viewpoint.
``The whole Internet is based on people being able to say what
they want,'' Roberts said. ``It's different than a newspaper, whose
letters are filtered through editors and publishers.''
=
The Internet address for Roberts' site is:
http://www.glr.com/outrage.html.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 97 16:39 CDT
From: Cu Digest <TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU>
Subject: File 7--Call for Commentaries on CuD Special Issue of Net & Education
Over the past year or two, CuD has received queries about how the
Net can be, or is being, used in classrooms, how the "virutal
university" concept is being developed, and in general, what's
going on at the K-12 and higher education levels.
This isn't a topic CuD has addressed in its 8 years of covering
cyberculture, but the number of inquiries convinces us that we
should make up for this omission. Because CuD has several
hundred thousand readers, we assume that a substantive number of
them are educators who use the Net.
We will start with a special issue in about two or three weeks,
and we solicit substantive commentaries (10-35 K) on such issues
as:
1) Innovative uses of the Net in classrooms
2) Problems/pitfalls in using the Net in teaching
3) Book reviews of Net-based pedagogy
4) Lists of URLs elated to Net pedagogy
5) Strengths/weaknesses of Virtual Universities
6) Critical essays on whether Net pedagogy is
a dilution of education
The above are suggestive. Readers will likely have other topics
of interest, so feel free to send them over for consideration.
Commentaries should be sent to: cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu
------------------------------
Date: 10 Jul 1997 02:48:17 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
Subject: File 8--Star Wars, Fanfiction, and Big Eight Newsgroup Creation
The policy of the current Big Eight newsgroup creation system on
newsgroups devoted to fanfiction has recently been criticized here. (The
Big Eight are the comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk
hierarchies.) Here's what that policy actually is and a little background
on the reason for it.
First of all, please realize that the Big Eight is not all of Usenet. It
is just eight specific Usenet hierarchies; there are many, *many* more.
Each hierarchy is created for a different purpose and has a different set
of rules for creating new groups in that hierarchy.
A major goal of the Big Eight is to provide a relatively small set of
widely useful newsgroups that are maintained by a central newsgroup
creation system. Ideally, every system carrying the Big Eight will have
precisely the same set of newsgroups; solid propagation and consistency
across different news servers are the major feature of this sort of
approach to newsgroup creation. Obviously this procedure does *not* work
for all topics, given that a voting procedure is involved (and therefore
the possibility of a group being voted down for political reasons exists)
and given that news administrators may not want certain types of groups
created automatically without their review. This is precisely why alt.*
was created originally; alt.* has a wide-open creation policy and
therefore is home to the sorts of groups that couldn't be created in the
Big Eight for whatever reason. (The tradeoff, of course, being that alt.*
groups are often subject to manual review at each site and tend to be much
less consistent across different news sites.)
Now, about the proposed Star Wars stories group. Fanfiction (fiction
using trademarked or copyrighted characters and backgrounds without the
permission of the owners) has always been of questionable legality and
subject to the occasional lawsuit in the United States and elsewhere. Due
to the way intellectual property laws work in the United States,
fanfiction *may* be illegal and if a news site is knowingly carrying a
newsgroup devoted solely to fanfiction, it *may* be possible to sue them
as well as the authors for the violation.
No, it's probably not very *likely* that a news site would be sued. But
this *has* been an often-stated concern by news administrators in the
past.
Keep in mind the purpose of the Big Eight, namely to create a set of
useful newsgroups that can be created automatically at all the subscribing
sites. Due to this *possible* legal concern, a large number of news
administrators do not want newsgroups devoted to fanfiction automatically
created on their news servers, and therefore would not be able to just let
the Big Eight newsgroup creation process run automatically on their
servers if the Big Eight includes those groups. This directly hurts one
of the primary purposes of the hierarchies. Therefore, newsgroups which
are devoted to fanfiction are against the rules of the Big Eight unless
the proponent can show reasonable evidence that the groups would not cause
a legal problem.
Some proponents do in fact do precisely that. rec.arts.anime.creative
exists because anime and manga companies do not, as a matter of general
policy, prosecute fanfiction, so the legal concern is minimal.
rec.arts.comics.creative exists because its charter requires that stories
posted there use original characters. Other groups have been proposed
with no problems before because they would have been for parody. The
proponents of the Star Wars group were considering changing their charter
to require parody or original characters and background, which would make
the group fine under those rules.
If a group can't fit under those rules, it most certainly isn't censored.
It simply needs to be created in a different hierarchy that has looser
rules, such as alt.*. People create fanfiction groups in alt.* routinely
and some of them are quite successful.
Also, please note that no *post* is refused. The newsgroup creation
system has nothing to do with individual posts; it has to do with
newsgroups. One can post pretty much anything one wishes to any
unmoderated group, and the newsgroup creation system doesn't affect that
in the slightest. The only thing this policy affects is whether a
newsgroup devoted to fanfiction can be created in this particular set of
hierarchies.
Finally, this policy obviously doesn't affect discussion, including
discussion of fanfiction, as should be obvious from the five existing
discussion groups devoted to Star Wars. Discussion of fanfiction is
certainly on-topic in rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc and absolutely nothing
prevents it from being posted there.
Hopefully this clarifies the situation somewhat. This policy, just like
all other Big Eight newsgroup creation policies, tends to get discussed
periodically on news.groups, and anyone with questions or concerns about
it is certainly welcome to raise the issue there or contact me directly.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:45:11 +0000
From: David Smith <bladex@bga.com>
Subject: File 9--Anti-solicitation laws and anti-spam "opt-in" mailing lists
Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
One of the tactics advocated by anti-spam activists is that of an
"opt-in" mailing list. That is, I can't send you commercial
speech via e-mail unless you request the information or we have a
prior business relationship.
I read the following article in First Amendment Legal Watch
(excerpted below) where an anti-solicitation law aimed at real
estate brokers was ruled by a district judge as a violation of
the First Amendment.
I'm not very familiar with anti-solicitation laws. Are there
other decisions about statutes that have been upheld or
over-turned?
------- Begin Article -------
3. Anti-Solicitation Law Violates First Amendment
A federal district court judge recently struck down an Illinois
real-estate anti-solicitation law in a case that has gone on for
more than 10 years. The statute prohibited real-estate brokers
from soliciting home sales or listings from owners who had
provided notice that they did not wish to be solicited.
After being fined $100 for calling certain Chicago homeowners who
had signed an anti-solicitation petition, a brokerage firm and
several brokers challenged the law in federal court.
The case has a long and convoluted history. Initially, federal
district court Judge Brian Barnett Duff denied the brokerage
firm's motion to enjoin the law. During the appeals process, the
case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which sent it back
down to Judge Duff for reevaluation under a different
constitutional standard. In April 1996, the parties had a bench
(non-jury) trial which resulted in this recent opinion.
Judge Duff ruled the law violated real-estate brokers' free-speech
and due-process rights. Analyzing the law under the commercial
free-speech doctrine, the Court found that the Illinois attorney
general failed to show that the anti-solicitation law "materially
and directly advanced" the state's interests in protecting
residential privacy and preventing blockbusting-a real-estate
practice in which brokers encourage owners to sell their homes by
exploiting fears of racial change in the neighborhood.
According to the judge, blockbusting is an outdated practice in
today's society that could, in any event, be properly punished
under other laws. He also found that real-estate solicitation
constituted only a small portion of messages residents encounter.
For this reason, the judge found that the law restrained too much
speech while only marginally protecting privacy concerns.
The judge also determined the law violated due process because the
law failed to define the term "solicit. " According to the court
opinion, a broker could unwittingly violate the law by harmlessly
handing out business cards to someone who has signed an
anti-solicitation petition.
<snip>
First Amendment Legal Watch Contact Info --
copyright 1997 First Amendment Center
To subscribe to the Legal Watch mailing list send an email to
legalwatch-join@truman.fac.org
To unsubscribe send an email to legalwatch-off@truman.fac.org
Legal Watch is available on our Web site (http://www.fac.org) in
HTML format and Adobe Acrobat format for printing.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
Subject: File 10--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
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End of Computer Underground Digest #9.56
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