>Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 20:19:53 -0800 >From: mcpherso (John McPherson) >To: libernet-d@Dartmouth.EU, ca-liberty@shell.portal.com, libprofs, libclubs-d, sdlp >Subject: Net censorship - alternatives to >Cc: solan@math.uio.no, ceclark@students.wisc.edu Hi, There's a lot of talk these days about censoring / regulating the Internet by the Gov't, and frankly I don't want the Gov't interfering at all ... no censorship, no regulation, etc. What I don't have is satisfactory alternatives to this gov't interference, so I'd like to find out what you folks have / can come up with. I figure that there are at least two major aspects which must be answered: content of posts and mechanisms of control. So ... 1. What are the most damned types of posts and what arguments are sufficient to allow even those? What I've come up with so far: the big hue and cry is currently over "pornography" and the fear that children will get to see it, and of course there is the ever- present demon of "child pornography". Next, I've heard people complain that there are posts about how to make bombs and other weapons, and I suppose there may be advertisements for contract killings. There is also complaint about "obscene" and "racist" posts, as well as potential libel and slander. I've also seen arguments for banning the posting of gov't secrets, war plans, etc. And there have also been complaints against the ability to post anonymously. Have I got most of the major ones? ... the ones brought up again and again to infringe our freedom of speech? In considering arguments to allow posting of all of the above, that is to ban the use of gov't force in suppressing these, perhaps the most important observation is that words and pictures and plans are information; they are not the things and actions themselves. So, while a bomb can hurt and kill people, a picture or blueprint of one doesn't. I'm looking, of course, for a sufficient set of arguments to handle this side of the issue ... please email me with your best and I'll compile and summarize later. 2. What are the available non-gov't mechanisms of control? Here's where I need the most help. First, of course, there are the individual consumers -- they can decide for themselves what to download and what not to, and hopefully there will be enough descriptive information to allow them to decide. Second, the one who owns the computer (eg, the parents) can decide what they will allow others (eg, children) to download with their machine. Third, of course, the providers of the information can decide what they would like to make available to their subscribers, so a Christian Internet provider, for instance, would choose not to provide any of the sex groups, while some providers would specialize in it. Fourth, I suppose, the ones who own the channels / nets / links of communication can decide what they will allow to be sent over their channels and what they won't (without some penalty). Fifth, of course, there are those who produce the information in question, and they can decide what they will and won't produce ... and if the actions they perform in producing their material is consented to by all involved, then that would seem to be alright, otherwise it seems to me, there is where a possible crime has been committed (eg, breaking into an electronic design company and then photographing and posting their proprietary designs). It occurs to me that this kind of multi-level system of control can work quite well assuming a completely free, self-regulating market in communications, but of course the gov't has already intruded into this market, screwing things up in the process. I'm thinking primarily of gov't granted monopolies of phone lines (the primary networking medium for the Net, right?), possible jurisdiction of the FCC and its precedents with other electronic and print media, and to a lesser extent the required licensing of businesses (eg, Internet providers) and the various regulations, taxes, etc. which bind them and discourage entry into the market. So, I'm sure that I've left out some important considerations, and have only touched on some deep issues, but I hope I've encompassed the whole of the task at hand and can perhaps help organize the battle to stop gov't censorship of the Internet. Please email me your ideas, arguments to overcome objections, let me know what I've left out, etc. -- John McPherson (mcpherso@lumina.ucsd.edu) * Host, Professors of Liberty Email Network * Host, Libertarian Student Club Email Network * Host, San Diego Libertarian Email Network ======================================================================= The Internet has the potential to set us free -- to learn anything and do anything, whenever we want. No wonder politicians want to regulate it -- The Washington Post, November 7, 1995, p. A13., Cyber Liberation [Column], James K. Glassman ======================================================================= >Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 21:39:25 -0700 >To: mcpherso >From: fagin@rmii.com (Barry or Michele Fagin) >Subject: Re: Net censorship - alternatives to John, For possible alternatives, check out FAIC's web site: www.rmii.com/~fagin/faic --BF Families Against Internet Censorship Welcome to the home page of Families Against Internet Censorship. FAIC is committed to opposing censorship on the Internet and the Exon bill currently before Congress. We believe that parents are the people best suited to decide what their children should and should not see. There are many knowledgable, Internet-literate families in America who need to make their voices heard. We would be grateful for your support. Our goals are 1) to provide a resource for anti-censorship families on the net, 2) to maintain a list of families willing to speak out against Internet censorship, 3) to make families aware of commercial products for filtering objectionable material, and 4) to oppose those who would use the power of government to regulate Internet content in the name of "protecting the family". To join FAIC as a Full Member you must: Oppose Internet censorship in general, and the Exon bill in particular (to see the text of the Exon bill, point your browser to www.cdt.org ) Have an email address Have at least one child living at home Send your name, the name of your spouse (if you are married), and your home state to the address below Permit us to list your last name and state on this page (see below ) Full members also have the option of being listed with links instead of plain text. If you wish, you may send us a picture of your family and/or send us a personal statement about your family and the Internet. If you do not meet the requirements for full membership, but still support our goals and would like to help, we would be delighted to have you join as an Associate Member. Associate Members will be added to our mailing list and kept informed of our progress. FAIC may receive media requests for email adresses and contact information for members. We will not release this information without your consent, but we hope any member will speak to the media if asked. One of FAIC's functions is to educate Congress and the general public about what online families are all about. Let's hope we get the opportunity. Click here to join Families Against Internet Censorship. Parent-friendly Internet products Net Nanny KidSafe (Note: this link appears to be temporarily inactive. --BF) Surfwatch Do you know about a link that should appear here? Have you used any of these products? Send us mail and let us know. Please check this site regularly for updates. As our membership grows, we plan media contacts, press releases and other efforts to increase our visibility. Thank you for your interest in Families Against Internet Censorship. - - - - - - Our children, Max (7) and Erica (5), surf the net regularly. It's a wonderful resource for education, current events, and just plain fun. It is our belief that whatever the difficulties parents may encounter with offensive material on the net, they are nothing compared to the problems we will encounter if current attempts to regulate internet content are successful. In our judgement, the Exon Amendment and related efforts show a total lack of understanding of what the Internet is all about, how it works today, and how it can empower families who want to raise active, intellectually curious children. Those who support further controls on the Internet and who claim to be acting in the best interests of children are not helping our efforts as parents. When it comes to the net, we are much more concerned about what our children might be banned from seeing than about what they might see. Barry and Michele Fagin, for the Fagin Family - - - - - HOW TO PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN AND THE REST OF YOUR FAMILY WHILE "SURFING" THE INTERNET The Internet is one of the most important business and educational tools in use today. It is the leading edge on the information highway, but it is not without its drawbacks. Because it is largely unregulated, the Internet has been a hot bed of pornography, adult-oriented bulletin boards and even pedophilia. But if this kind of thing is a worry to you - relax - there is a cost effective, proven way to protect your children. Trove Investment Corporation, a leading software developer for the Internet, has created Net Nanny. Net Nanny is an inexpensive way to protect your system form accessing or receiving any information that you designate as undesirable. All you have to do is decide what words or phrases you do not want your home computer to send or receive and Net Nanny does the rest. It is a truly remarkable breakthrough for the personal computer market, and at the special introductory price of $49.95 it is totally affordable for a lifetime of security. - - - - - - - Welcome to SurfWatch Software's World Wide Web site! SurfWatch is a new type of software which helps parents, educators and employers reduce the risk of children and others uncovering sexually explicit material on the Internet. Please use the links below to find out more about our company and products. Currently there are more than 200 Internet newsgroups which contain sexually explicit material including erotica, bondage, fetishes, pornography, prostitution, and pedophilia. Sites on the World Wide Web contain pictures and written material depicting sexual situations. There has been no way to shield anyone from receiving this material, until now... SurfWatch SurfWatch is a breakthrough software product which helps you deal with the flood of sexual material on the Internet. By allowing you to be responsible for blocking what is being received at any individual computer, children and others have less chance of accidentally or deliberately being exposed to unwanted material. SurfWatch is the first major advance in providing a technical solution to a difficult issue created by the explosion of technology. SurfWatch strives to preserve Internet freedom by letting individuals choose what they see. Internet Censorship and Freedom of Expression SurfWatch is real alternative to Internet censorship, giving parents and educators the opportunity to limit unwanted material locally without restricting the access rights of other Internet users. "Twenty-five years ago when I wrote the original software which allowed access to the Internet, we could only imagine what kinds of information would be available" said Bill Duvall, CEO of SurfWatch Software. "SurfWatch is the first product created to make access to inappropriate material a matter of personal choice, creating a true alternative to Internet censorship." In Washington, the US Congress is now struggling with the issue of how to protect children from access to material on the net that might be considered harmful. As the policy debate over obscenity on the Internet heats up, SurfWatch is one of the companies providing information to the Interactive Working Group, an ad hoc coalition of industry and public interest organizations that are studying technological alternatives that empower parents without the need for burdensome regulation. The Working Group is coordinated by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. - - - - - - - - - Hi Barry, Thanks for the FAIC ref; the products looks useful. I wonder why the KidSafe site isn't working ... I also hope that such blocking software efforts are sufficient to stem off the rising tide of populist anger regarding porn and "obscenity" on the Net. It also occurs to me that the LP really needs to handle the issue of children generally; our philosophy applies to self-responsible adulthood and seems a little shakey, so far, on children's issues. Ironically, perhaps, we seem to be borrowing from the Republicans (lord knows they've borrowed enough >from us :-), regarding the "family values" idea, but I still think we need to come up with a libertarian version of it ... something about focussing on training children to become self-responsible and capable of deciding things for themselves. I recently read "The Discovery of Freedom" by Rose Wilder Lane, and it blew me away when she said that children 8 years of age were expected to be largely capable of taking care of themselves and were of course expected to contribute to family life-support activities. This, of course, will get into the "child labor" laws, and coercive state "education" which seems designed for the purpose of extending childhood well into the teens, if not for the individual's entire life, to some extent at least. John McPherson (FAIC at URL: http://www.rmii.com/~fagin/faic ) ======================================================================= The Dec 95 issue of USAA Magazine (the magazine for the United States Automoblie Association) has an article entitled "Is Your Child Safe In CyberSpace" starting on page 28. ======================================================================= >Subject: Latest Telecom Bill Provisions Would Cripple Online Free Speech The Electronic Frontier Foundation has reviewed the draft language of the "indecency" sections of the Telecommunications Deregulation Act proposed by Sen. Pressler's joint conference committee. In every respect, this language is abhorrent to all who value the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech. This latest "indecency" legislation from Congress would impose upon the Internet a vague and unspecified "speech code", chilling freedom of speech among law-abiding citizens while having little or no affect on purveyors of obscenity or child pornography (both of which are already illegal, online or offline, in the US.) The Justice Dept. itself agrees that law enforcement needs no new anti-porn laws for this medium. Despite the claims of the bill's supporters, this would not be a law limited to pornography or the sexual abuse of children. Instead, the Telecom Bill would criminalize a great range of expression that is legal in media such as books, newspapers, cable television, film and the stage, as well as group conversation and personal correspondence. It would reduce discussion and publication on the Net to what is appropriate for a third-grade classroom. Our government is proposing to regulate the free exchange of ideas. This is unacceptable. Problems with the legislation include: 1) It would unconstitutionally censor speech on the Internet as if it were a "one-to-many" broadcast medium, despite the fact that less- restrictive means are available to prevent access to sexual (or any other) material - means like ratings, labelling and filtering systems and services. All content and communication on the Net would be placed under the control of the Federal Communications Commission, whose unelected officials in Washington, DC, would set the standards of what is "acceptable" expression online. 2) Anyone who makes so-called indecent content available on the Net in places where children *might* come across it, would be guilty of a felony and punishable by a jail term and a quarter-million dollar fine. It is as if librarians could be sent to jail simply because a child might come across the King James Bible, or works by Norman Mailer or J.D. Salinger on the library's shelves. 3) The term "indecency" is deliberately left undefined in the statute. This uncertainty will act as a "chilling effect" on the free speech of citizens who are unsure about its meaning, and will retard business and educational investment in the medium. 4) Online services providers would be held liable even if they enable parents and other users to employ filters and labelling systems to block "offensive" content. 5) The statute does not prevent the states from enacting their own censorship laws. This will create legal mayhem, and increase the risk of conflicting regulatory burdens on service providers and users. In sum, the latest "indecency" proposal has all the problems of previous proposals and adds some new ones. It insists on treating computer networks as if they were like broadcasting, and as if they had what the Supreme Court takes to be broadcasting's unique characteristics of pervasiveness and spectrum scarcity. But the network capacity is not "scarce" in the sense that broadcast frequencies are, and the Net is not "pervasive" in in the sense that content is "pushed" toward a passive audience unable to block unwanted material before receiving it -- on the Net, content is "pulled by the user, who has a widening range of filtration options available. Thus there is no rationale for this new iteration of the "Communications Decency" legislation, which would transmute a medium that has been the fulfillment of the promise of the First Amendment into a lowest-common- denominator environment fit only for goverment-regulated expression. EFF opposes it, as you should. If you are interested in discovering what you can do to oppose this legislation, which has not yet been reported out of conference committee, please check the EFF web page (http://www.eff.org/) and the Voters Telecom Watch web page (http://www.vtw.org/). It is not too late to let your Representatives and Senators know that you value the First Amendment online, and that you will not support politicians and policymakers who pass ignorant, ineffective, and destructive laws that do little or nothing to protect children, and that savagely undercut our freedom of speech in the online world. ==================================================================== >Date: Sat, 06 Jan 1996 10:11:14 -0500 >From: liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray) >Subject: Getting around the Compucen$or >To: libernet@dartvax.dartmouth.edu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dear Compuserve-using Libertarians: I have always been baffled at the large number of Libertarians who use Compuserve (which is, after all, a unit of H&R Block, and thus is probably a supporter of the increasingly-complex income tax laws; and which assigns users a number, instead of letting them pick a name) but be that as it may...I understand that, as time goes by, one becomes somewhat tied to a particular e-mail address (or a PGP key). Still, as songwriter John Perry Barlow once said, "The Internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it." To aid in the "rerouting," and for any Germans who happen to be listening, a respected cypherpunk has put a way to the banned newsgroups at: http://www.cs.umass.edu/~lmccarth/cypherpunks/banned.html I encourage those compuserve users who won't change services to visit. JMR Regards, Jim Ray http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray ===================================================================== >Date: Sat, 6 Jan 1996 09:32:50 -0500 >From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) >Subject: MIT Professor Addresses Telecom "Reform" Act Problems, Dangers >To: libernet@dartvax.dartmouth.edu MIT Professor Addresses Telecom "Reform" Act Problems, Dangers From: Dave Farber Subject: IP: re: Telecom legislation by William F. Schreiber Prof Emeratis MIT To: interesting-people@eff.org (interesting-people mailing list) ABORT THE TELECOM BILL! This legislation should be rejected, regardless of its final provisions. Its history ought to serve as an object lesson in how not to write laws that make even a pretence of serving the public. Although much of the pressure to shape its various provisions has been cloaked in public-interest clothing, what we have seen, for the most part, is nothing more than a battle for future profits among the different wolves of the telecom industry. A good deal of money has been spent by the interested parties, much of which has gone to members of the Conference Committee. The public interest has mostly gone unrepresented. Ironically, the lobbyists may well be wrong about what will eventually make for rapid growth and high profits in the industry. We all remember the bitter fight over dismantling AT&T. As it turned out, the net result was greatly increased profits for the various pieces, although that was not the intention of the court. (IBM was next on the DOJ's list; except for a change of adminstration, IBM would probably have been taken apart also, much to its eventual benefit.) If we really want to reform the regulatory framework of the telecommunications industry and also serve the public interest, a different approach is needed. Let Congress and the administration appoint a blue-ribbon commission representing the public, the government, and academia, taking care to omit those with a financial interest in the subject matter. Let hearings be held at which representatives of industry and labor and other interested parties present their views, and let the commission then make a proposal to Congress. Although the use of this method does not guarantee success, at least a rational proposal will be produced in the full light of day. William F. Schreiber, Prof. of Elec. Eng., Emeritus, MIT. 30 December 1995 =================================== >Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 23:43:45 -0600 (CST) >From: Tibor R Machan >To: John McPherson Dear John: The attached might be of interest to you in light of your recent post. Let me know what you think. Best, Tibor Controlling the Internet Tibor R. Machan The electronic highway has been a relatively peaceful place until recently -- people found it there, knowing little about its origins, and signed up to travel on it for their various purposes, some of which others may find trivial, even objectionable, but since no one got in the way of others, this posed no problem. Traffic proceeded smoothly enough, everyone went about his or her tasks without meddlesome supervision by others. This laissez-faire policy seems to be at risk now. The feds, for example, are threatening to impose various types of surveillance because, as the FBI recently argued before Congress, the Internet might be used for criminal purposes (communicating technical information, say regarding military weapons, to those receiving posts abroad). Others whine about the opportunity to send pornographic messages to children who are especially adapt at using cyberspace. Yet others are fretting that institutions and organizations where e-mail and other Internet access is available use their time for purposes that have little or nothing to do with the business of the firm. At some universities there is an upsurge of concern that students and faculty are not using the Internet or scholarly purposes alone but send private mail. In all these cases the remedy proposed involves some kind of monitoring. The FBI wants to be authorized by Congress to check something like 2 out of 100 e-mail messages -- it argues that this will enable it to make sure the Internet is not used for criminal purposes. The major private services, such as America On Line, CompuServe, Netscape and others, are already involved in checking on their customers so as to avoid being sued by, for example, parents whose children may be getting pornographic images over the Internet. Various firms have issued orders to their employees that they may only use e-mail for professional purposes. The same is now being done at universities, those bastions of freedom of expression and inquiry. One reason the laissez-faire policy on the Internet is taking a beating recalls something that occurred back in the early 20th century when radio transmissions began. At first there was near anarchy in the electromagnetic spectrum or, as it used to be called, the ether (because it was believed that some material substance was needed on which radio signals could travel). After a while the US Navy, which wanted to use radio communication to guide ships on the oceans, found the anarchy unbearable -- too many signals crossed others and communication became unreliable. So the Navy went to the US Justice Department asking that a system of property rights be generated, with various senders holding certain specific frequencies that would not be available to others for use. Before the Justice Department came up with a solution one US senator jumped the gun and in 1927, I believe, declared, on the floor of the US Senate and without any opposition, that henceforth the ether would be the property of the people of the United States of America. Thus was born the current system whereby the Federal government has the authority to regulate the electromagnetic spectrum in our behalf. This is the reason why radio and television broadcasters, only print publication and journalists, are not protected against government regulation and censorship by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. (Just consider: the feds never would imagine that they had the authority to tell publishers what kind of children's books to publishes or Hollywood what kind of children movies to produce, all the while issuing all kinds of rules about Saturday morning children's television programming and advertising.) The Internet grew out of the US Department of Defense's efforts, initially, to facilitate communication, presumably for administrative and military purposes. After a while, once the facilities were in place and their enormous potential became evident to enterprising users, they began to be used by other organizations for communication purposes. In time the current confusing system of the Internet developed, whereby no one but everyone owns the medium, with no one clearly in authority to set the terms of its use. There is a serious danger here, comparable to what happened with broadcasting. Without clear ownership of the facilities, it is impossible to set terms of usage. When I sign up to be a customer of AOL or CompuServe, those outfits are not fully authorized to settle on terms of usage with me - they cannot, for example, promise to stay out of my mail since part of what they rely on as they serve me is no theirs. It belongs to something nebulous, namely, that people of the USA. The same is true with the innumerable private commercial or non-commercial organizations. No clear cut authority exists to set the terms of usage. The situation is even worse at the thousands of state run colleges and universities. They are tax supported, so they are all accountable to the taxpayers of the states that operate them. This includes their electronic mail services. So if the public - i.e., some vocal segment of the population or some vocal politicians or bureaucrats in the state - get bent out of shape about something being posted on their system, they can demand that the university make amends. Because the Internet is so new, a tradition of freedom of communication has not developed at these institutions the way it has with, say, the campus mail service or, for that matter, with the United States Postal Service (where the government must obtain a warrant in order to check on someone's mail, even though the service is provided by the federal government of the USA). The kind of political atmosphere we live in now, whereby public policy is often driven by the most recent expression of outrage or panic or fear, not by principles of free government, is very conducive to generating enormously intrusive measures toward the Internet in the near future. Already there are very serious signs of this and unless enormous vigilance in support of a system of private property rights - which is the only way to ensure orderly privacy on the system - is developed, we will find ourselves faced with the Internet under full government control. That will surely jeopardize the American tradition of free speech - freedom of the press and publishing, freedom political, religious, scientific, humanistic and artistic expression, etc. I am not an expert vis-=E0-vis the intricacies of the Internet but unless some serious effort is invested in securing the principle of private property and privacy in general on that medium of ever increasingly vital and widespread communication, we will see the destruction of the sprit of the First Amendment as regards the medium where the bulk of the speech of the future will be conducted. ------------------------------------------------- Tibor R. Machan teaches political philosophy at Auburn University, AL. He wrote Private Rights and Public Illusions for Transaction Books in 1995. ======================================================================= >Date: Fri, 05 Jan 1996 22:17:18 -0800 (PST) >From: Annelise Anderson >To: mcpherso >Cc: libprofs There's been a long discussion of net censorship on cypherpunks@toad.com. If you want to subscribe to this I think you can send a message subscribe cypherpunks your.e-mail.address to majordomo-request@toad.com This is a high volume mailing list but quite libertarian oriented. What do cypherpunks do? They write code. They engage in flame wars. There's been extensive discussion of the Bavarian prosecutor who started an investigation of stuff on the I-net; Compuserve decided to censor what was accessible (newsgroups etc.) not only in Germany but to every subscriber. Some of the posters to this list consider that porn is only a front for the government's desire to control and have access to communications in general. As you doubt know the Telecomm bill has provisions for penalties for various content on the Internet, and this is considered a major threat to free speech and to the openness etc. of the Internet world wide. The cypherpunks list is archived--not sure just where, use a Web searcher to find it. Best is now http://altavista.digital.com, it seems. This is really an extremely serious issue and deserves current political action. Annelise ======================================================================= >Date: 06 Jan 96 06:54:05 EST >From: "Joseph C. Baxter" <74352.3634@compuserve.com> >To: John McPherson /1. What are the most damned types of posts and what arguments are / sufficient to allow even those? What I've come up with so far: / the big hue and cry is currently over "pornography" and the fear / that children will get to see it, and of course there is the ever- / present demon of "child pornography". I am concerned about the proliferation of kiddie porn on the net. Whereas the stuff with adults, no matter how wild or perverse, is their business. (Whether or not it should be consumed by children is another question which must be answered by their parents or guardians; no us or the gov't.) Kiddie porn on the other hand is another issue entirely. I am sure you are aware of the arguments made on constitutional grounds that we have the absolute right to possess and view child pornography; this seems to me an argument made in a vacuum. The disconnect here is a failure to address the child, the adult sexually abusing the child, the photographer, and the distributor (printed or electronic). Imagine arguing that you have the right to possess someone's head in a bowling bag without being subject to question about who it belonged to or how you came to possess it. As for ways to combat it: laissez-faire! Providers already have the constitutional right _not_ to provide access to material their management finds objectionable, in poor taste, or a potential liability. I do not feel that we need to have the net "regulated" by the FCC or some other beauracracy. We already have more than enough laws which can be used by police to make arrests and prosecute criminal activities on the net or otherwise. Although there may need to be some case law done initially. (Oh, I hear the howls now!) Government has only two morally just functions: the police and armed forces (defense of its citizens) and the courts. If someone is ripping you off I am sure you will want that someone arrested if it's bad enough (defense) and a place in which to have your case heard and the guilty punished. Surely, no one believes that the net can exist for long without a police force and a court system we can fall back on when criminal activity exceeds the ability of the free-market to control it. This is different than having the FBI reading my e-mail or the PD calling up local BBS just to see if there "might" be a GIF of a naked child there. We still have our 4th Amendment rights. Law enforcement still must have "probable cause" to do anything. If no one complains the cops are deaf, dumb, and blind. / Next, I've heard people / complain that there are posts about how to make bombs and other / weapons, and I suppose there may be advertisements for contract / killings. There is also complaint about "obscene" and "racist" / posts, as well as potential libel and slander. I've also seen / arguments for banning the posting of gov't secrets, war plans, / etc. And there have also been complaints against the ability to / post anonymously. Have I got most of the major ones? ... the / ones brought up again and again to infringe our freedom of speech? / / In considering arguments to allow posting of all of the above, / that is to ban the use of gov't force in suppressing these, perhaps / the most important observation is that words and pictures and plans / are information; they are not the things and actions themselves. / So, while a bomb can hurt and kill people, a picture or blueprint / of one doesn't. This is the old saw about Potential vs. Actual. Plans for an atomic bomb are not an atomic bomb. However, the "Wu Tang Clan home page" advertising discounted contract hits during the New Year Holiday are illegal under current law. Slanderous and libelous speech are also covered under current law. As I wrote above it is simply a matter of establishing case law. I'm surprised that I haven't heard of someone suing over a slanderous/libelous usenet group yet. Can a suit fronted by Ron-I-No-Longer-Have-To-Stand-In-The-Shadow-Of-William-I'll-Defend-Anyone-For-A- Soundbite-On-CNN-Kunstler-Kuby be far off. (Sorry, for that outburst but some lawyers give me chills like a cheap whore with a chancre on her lip.) The "National of Islam home page" could post all they wanted about how blacks invented everything and then the Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and other pork-eating demons dethroned and enslaved them. That's perfectly legal. Post something advocating the assassination of the Pope and that's a different issue altogether. As for gov't secrets, again there already exists a great corpus of law regarding this matter. Want to post the algorithms for stealth technology in alt.state-secrets.catch-me-if-you-can? Fine. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go immediately the FCI of your choice. The snoops at the DOJ & NSA are not as slug-like as some would imagine. I hope your find this useful. JB ======================================================================= >From: TSEditor@aol.com >Date: Sat, 6 Jan 1996 15:48:38 -0500 >To: mcpherso We will exhaust ourselves contending with each perversion of the Law (see earlier post). We must argue that the law must be limited to the protection of life, liberty and property. ANY extension of the law beyond that domain is unacceptible. Failing that, there is always Fidonet or 100% privately funded password protected network with membership agreement that says if you don't like the content, don't belong. - Bill Holmes ======================================================================= >Date: 07 Jan 96 00:21:58 EST >From: "DAN G. LITWIN" <71213.1421@compuserve.com> >To: John McPherson First of all, a bomb does not kill people unless someone detonates it in a dangerous way. A bomb can be used for good purposes, too. The item is never responsible. It is the people who are guilty. Now for the real issue. Please keep this simple. If a person leaves pornography in an unlocked drawer for his kids to see, he may be thought to be irresponsible. Certainly I would see it that way. Internet access software without password protection is an unlocked drawer. It's that simple. People need to lock up their pornography if they wish their children to be unaware. People are responsible for their own information in their own houses. Trying to use government to control the access to our own desk drawers or to the Internet requires a police state. Keep it simple. Everything in Cyberspace can be thought of as the same as a currently existing technology the way I talked about an unlocked drawer. All of these situations are the same as they've ever been. Dan Litwin. ======================================================================= >Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 23:55:45 -0500 >To: mcpherso >From: mac@headwaters.com (Wendy McElroy) >Subject: Re: Net censorship - alternatives to >Cc: libprofs I've also been deeply concerned about gov. encroachment on the InterNet. It seems to me that the Net is functioning like a '90s version of the '60s counter-culture by connecting people (especially the young) and creating a new social structure with evolving norms. To the extent that the free flow of information may be a problem -- eg. parents objecting to porn 'beamed' into their homes over the phone lines -- it is, or should be, a technological one, not a legal one. The accusations that are being hurled at the Net are amazingly reminiscent of the cry and hue directed toward cable not long ago. The furor there died down to background noise as technology stepped in to correct the unwelcomed access, eg. locks on the boxes. Several software packages to screen the InterNet are available for parents right now -- Net Nanny from a company in San Francisco is supposed to be good. And the Net is scrambling to find every possible technological solution. Having the servers screen at their end is a viable option...or, rather it would be, if several wrinkles can be ironed out. The law is the largest one. Remember that America On Line was hit hard by a legal decision that found it to be the equivalent of a publishing house and not of a bookstore. The difference here is that publishers are held liable for the entire content of their products, while bookstores are generally not liable for every page of every book on their shelves. Ironically, AOL was singled out for harsh treatment precisely because it tried to screen what it carried. Had it continued to act as a passive vehicle for words and images, it would have not been classified as a publisher. But it assumed responsibility. With this precedent, any server who screens is losing legal protections. Also, consider the mess CompuServe now faces. To accomodate German law, it blocks a wide variety of alt. and soc. discussion groups, which have in common words like 'sex' or 'gay' in their address. For example, the discussion group entitled Sexy Bald Captain Club was banned...it was a Star Trek Captain Picard Fan Club. Because there is no current technological way to ban only that part of the service that extends into Germany, CompuServe felt the need to impose this ban on a global basis. Happily, a backlash has developed and masses of people are cancelling their accounts. These are just two of several problems with the server assuming the responsibility, but I agree that such a solution would probably be the best one. Vis-a-vis your request for pro-free speech arguments...one of the best reasons to have a free market in ideas is to allow the solid ones to triumph. Suppressing an idea, like racism, in no way defeats it. In fact, it gains in power rather like a coil will when you press it down. Moreover, the content of the objectionable position remains unanswered. Worse, it is given the romantic aura of an 'outlaw' position. It is far better to put it up to the light-of-day test, and tear it to shreds. Perhaps naively, I do believe that truth will out and good arguments will generally prevail over bad ones. It is those who have no confidence in the strength of their ideas who turn to force. If anyone is interested in getting into the fray of fighting for InterNet freedom, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is doing heroic work. ======================================================================= >Date: Sun, 07 Jan 1996 23:19:57 -0600 >To: libprofs >From: Michael Weiss Wendy Mc's comments re: internet censorship are strong, however, 1. does not address the issue of children. the "free market of ideas wipes away the bad ones" may or may not be true, but it certainly is not of children. 2. free market of ideas does not, nor never was claimed to, work with pornography (if one worries about kids and that sort of thing) 3. The solution, is simple, however. There are already internet blockers for people with children. These programs are available at any good software store. The market will provide answers where there is a need. Being a devout libertarian does not mean adopting hackneyed arguments about free speech. It is certainly not verifiable true that free speech destroys bad ideas, the emotions are just as likely to be implicated in conversation as the intellect. Ideas that satisfy emotional needs such as insecurity, cannot be easily answered by appeals to intellect. Michael Weiss Michael D. Weiss P.O. Box 61148 Houston, Texas 77208-1148 713 942 7075 mdweiss@sccsi.com ======================================================================= >Date: Sun, 7 Jan 1996 23:47:13 -0600 (CST) >From: Tibor R Machan >To: Michael Weiss >Cc: libprofs >Subject: Re: Internet Censorship On Sun, 7 Jan 1996, Michael Weiss wrote: > Wendy Mc's comments re: internet censorship are strong, however, > > 1. does not address the issue of children. the "free market of ideas wipes > away the bad ones" may or may not be true, but it certainly is not of > children. > > 2. free market of ideas does not, nor never was claimed to, work with > pornography (if one worries about kids and that sort of thing) > > 3. The solution, is simple, however. There are already internet blockers > for people with children. These programs are available at any good software > store. The market will provide answers where there is a need. > > Being a devout libertarian does not mean adopting hackneyed arguments about > free speech. It is certainly not verifiable true that free speech destroys > bad ideas, the emotions are just as likely to be implicated in conversation > as the intellect. Ideas that satisfy emotional needs such as insecurity, > cannot be easily answered by appeals to intellect. > > Michael Weiss Please, first of all, do not characterize people's positions as "hackneyed" - especially when it is a variation of John Stuart Mill's position. It polemicizes a discussion and can unnecessarily raise people's ire. As to the basis of free speech, it is really no more than what underlies the defense of any human liberty: It's mine and so long as it does not violate the rights of others, no ban on it is justified. On your property I have no right to free speech, not because there it might not further the pursuit of truth but because you are the boss there, not I. In some institutions, such as colleges, think tanks, publishing houses, newspapers, etc., a policy of unimpeded discourse, to a point, may be quite sound, but this is not a matter of free speech. Folks can hold forth in colleges because, well, that's what is done there, but not at a department store or factory floor or bank. It is ultimately ownership that secures liberty and this is just what is obscure now vis-a-vis the Internet. Tibor R. Machan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tibor R. Machan (1107 Eagle Circle) Home Phone (334) 826-1511 Dept. of Philosophy (Auburn, AL 36830) Office Phon(334) 844-3784 Auburn University, AL 36849-5210 Office Fax (334) 844-2378 USA E-Mail Address: Machatr@mail.auburn.edu Website: ftp://lumina.ucsd.edu/pub/.../libuniv_dir/Machan_dir/Machan.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 08 Jan 1996 00:28:12 -0600 >To: Tibor R Machan >From: Michael Weiss >Subject: Re: Internet Censorship >Cc: libprofs You wrote, >Please, first of all, do not characteriuze people's positions as >"hackneyed" - especially when it is a variation of John Stuart Mill's >position. It polemicizes a discussion and can unnecessarily raise >people's ire. Sorry, your right! What I meant to say is very traditional, my apologizes.> Michael D. Weiss ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 09:28:29 -0500 >To: libprofs >From: jnarveso@watarts.UWaterloo.ca (Jan Narveson) >Subject: Free speech >Cc: Sarah Lawrence I have a couple of comments to offer on Tibor Machan's latest, and very perceptive, message concerning free speech and net censorship etc.. He says, in part: "As to the basis of free speech, it is really no more than what underlies the defense of any human liberty: It's mine and so long as it does not violate the rights of others, no ban on it is justified. On your property I have no right to free speech, not because there it might not further the pursuit of truth but because you are the boss there, not I. In some institutions, such as colleges, think tanks, publishing houses, newspapers, etc., a policy of unimpeded discourse, to a point, may be quite sound, but this is not a matter of free speech. Folks can hold forth in colleges because, well, that's what is done there, but not at a department store or factory floor or bank." His point is an exceedingly good and important one, but what it underlines is the difference between speech simply qua human activity, in which respect the analysis of it as private property etc., is bang-on, and speech qua contribution to inquiry, in which respect things are *quite* different. A third case to distinguish is political speech. Let me elaborate. In the context of inquiry - the "academic market place" - the reason for supposing that freedom of inquiry will probably lead to the truth is that everyone accepts the general goal of advancing knowledge, and in consequence everyone accepts certain general intellectual constraints, notably the rules of logic and the canons of induction and, more broadly, of scientific procedure and method. Given that they all do, then the fact that there are lots of agents in the "market" ever on the lookout for errors, makes it quite likely that those errors will be detected. Moreover, the more free agents there are, the more hypotheses are generated; with lots of more or less disciplined hypothesis-generation and lots and lots of error-correcting capability, the likelihood that more or less genuine knowledge will be advanced is high. Cf, broadly speaking, the hard sciences over the past century and a half. But suppose the players have other motives? Most imporantly, suppose that they have POLITICAL motives? A man who is seeking office has much less regard for the canons of science, because he knows that the people who will get him there are pretty ignorant of such things, pretty impressionable, and - most important of all - subject strongly to the biases that possessors of power are always subject to, namely the temptation to use it exclusively in one's perceived self-interest. Given the other constraints on democracy (how often one votes, how easy it it so vote, how difficult it is to do the relevant homework ...) the chances that democracy will lead to good legislation are very, very poor. In fact, the framework of democracy practically guarantees that most legislation will be deplorable, incompetent, awful. *The People* aren't given to making fine distinctions when it comes to cracking the whip over their neighbors. (They are much better at it when strictly attending to their *own* business, when the error-correcting devices of the School of Hard Knocks are ready to hand.) Science needs, but luckily usually has, the disciplines of scientific method, and that's what makes freedom of academic inquiry plausible. However, suppose we MIX science with politics? For example, suppose that scientists depend on government for research funding - as they overwhelmingly do nowadays. And suppose that the government has various projects in mind to maximize its share of the taxpayer's income. Nowdays, for example, environmental programs are high on the list. These programs are all based on "science" - except that they're based on pseudo-science, on distorted readings of evidence, neglect of other evidence, and so on. (My favorite example is global warming, which is essentially a scientific fraud, but one that's easy to manipulate people about. But there are plenty of others.) When science depends on government, will objective research be rewarded? Nope! Rather, research that supports the government is what is wanted, and others can forget about funding. The stories go on and on. (I think, for example, of the economist hired by the Government of Quebec to go through its motor accident statistics and "prove" that all drinking is evil, in terms of its effect on accident production. He soon found that the facts just don't support that -- moderate drinkers are the best drivers, both in terms of frequency and seriousness of accidents -- and he was promptly fired when he reported in. Governments don't care much about the truth, but only with images, with what will *sell*. Any science that is subordinate to government is ipso facto suspect, as would be any science that was simply "bought" by any private company. Except that the *other* private companies, as well as the general university-scientific community, are there to hire other scientists to prove the first ones wrong. But governments can corrupt, more or less, an entire scientific community, virtually. The capability of democracy for self-correction is very weak and very rough and very, very slow. Because democracy is essentially a brake on the market, it is also a brake on the aspects of free speech (which is a market device) which are its claim to fame, or our allegiance. Life is tough! __________________________________________________________________________ Jan Narveson (Professor) Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1 (519) 888-4567-1-2780# (from touch-tone); or 885-1211, ext. 2780 (via switchboard); FAX (519) 746-3097 Home: (519) 886-1673 (answering machine) e-mail: jnarveso@watarts.UWaterloo.ca ======================================================================= >From: "Aeon Skoble" >To: mac@headwaters.com (Wendy McElroy), libprofs >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 08:32:28 CST6CDT > Perhaps naively, I do believe that truth will out and good > arguments will generally prevail over bad ones. It is those who > have no confidence in the strength of their ideas who turn to > force. Hear, hear. I don't think that's naive, especially with regard to things like obscene or racist internet posts. Besides, unlike a Klan rally, which is "in one's face," you have to _look for_ posts. This often gets overlooked by those making the case for censorship. Why is this an issue? The current shibboleth - kids. Kids will log on to the bestiality news group and the heads will explode, therefore, anything with "sex" in the title must be banned. It is, as McElroy points out, exactly like arguments against cable porno in that it overlooks the concept of parental responsibility. Smith is barred access to adult material because Jones' kid might see it. This has always struck me as Jones' problem, not Smith's. But of course the government makes it Smith's problem too. Isn't this really the issue? Using the state to avoid responsibilty? ======================================================================= >From: "Aeon Skoble" >To: Michael Weiss , libprofs >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 08:36:38 CST6CDT >Subject: Re: Internet Censorship > Being a devout libertarian does not mean adopting hackneyed arguments about > free speech. McElroy's argument was not hackneyed. The point isn't that free speech destroys bad ideas, but that suppression of speech inhibits the destruction of bad ideas. ======================================================================= >From: m.simkin@genie.com >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 96 14:37:00 UTC 0000 >To: mcpherso >Cc: ca-liberty@shell.portal.com, libclubs-d, libernet-d@dartmouth.eu, libprofs, sdlp, solan@math.uio.no > From: MCPHERSO@LUMINA.UCSD.EDU@INET02# > 2. What are the available non-gov't mechanisms of control? Regardless of whether the control is imposed by government, telecommunications provider, or any other party between the sender and the recipient, any attempt to limit what types of information may be transmitted is DOOMED. There is an INFINITE number of ways to encode information in the digital medium, and it will never be possible for any computer program, person, or agency to filter them all. Yes, this includes parents, once your kid is smart enough to jigger the system. The ONLY choices for a censor are: (1) stand over your shoulder (literally) and watch everything you view, or (2) put the genie (digital communication) back in the bottle. We will see several attempts at partially implementing both (1) and (2), with the result that profitable communications are hampered while undesirable messages simply find other transmission codes. Does that result sound a bit like gun control? ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 08 Jan 1996 09:15:09 -0600 >To: m.simkin@genie.com >From: Michael Weiss >Cc: libprofs At 02:37 PM 1/8/96, you wrote: > > From: MCPHERSO@LUMINA.UCSD.EDU@INET02# > > 2. What are the available non-gov't mechanisms of control? > >Regardless of whether the control is imposed by government, >telecommunications provider, or any other party between the sender and the >recipient, any attempt to limit what types of information may be transmitted >is DOOMED. There is an INFINITE number of ways to encode information in the >digital medium, and it will never be possible for any computer program, >person, or agency to filter them all. Yes, this includes parents, once your >kid is smart enough to jigger the system. > >The ONLY choices for a censor are: (1) stand over your shoulder (literally) >and watch everything you view, or (2) put the genie (digital communication) >back in the bottle. We will see several attempts at partially implementing >both (1) and (2), with the result that profitable communications are >hampered while undesirable messages simply find other transmission codes. > >Does that result sound a bit like gun control? I disagree with your premise, children can be raised with appropriate values so (i) they do not want to seek out every form of external stimulation (self esteem), (ii) taught to listen. So I would add to your list of "only way for control", proper parenting in a good environment. Without this possibility we are doomed to big brother (or father) simply the real one has left the scene! MDW Michael D. Weiss P.O. Box 61148 Houston, Texas 77208-1148 713 942 7075 mdweiss@sccsi.com ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 10:36:26 -0500 >To: libprofs >From: mac@headwaters.com (Wendy McElroy) >Subject: Re: Internet Censorship Re: Michael Weiss's posting on InterNet Censorship Of course, tagging an argument as 'hackneyed' says nothing about whether it is true or valid, which are more interesting ways to approach ideas. Apology accepted. Michael observed that my prior posting >1. does not address the issue of children. The posting was focused on John McPh's laudable call for ideas on a practical solution to InterNet censorship, and his suggestion that server-control may be the best avenue. I suspect he is right, if only because that is one of the key places where property rights are vested, but there are huge practical problem which may delay the implementation of this cure. This is part of the reason I tend to view it as a technological tangle rather than a legal one. Another reason is to shift the emphasis from law -- which almost always rebounds against freedom -- to a hands-on strategy of avoiding lawmaking scenarios. Re: children being damaged by the InterNet (and, here, I assume we are speaking of children seeing porn rather than being in it)...I think the great flap is largely a smoke screen. I admit that part of this conviction comes from the history of how apple pie and pigtails have been used to crush discussion of unpopular ideas. And, yes, a valid way to consider graphic discussions or presentations of lesbianism, etc. is as the popularizing of an unpopular idea or view of man's sexuality. A key question -- when you get past who owns the computer, a point that Tibor has deftly handled already -- seems to be 'Whose business is it what your children see?' Obviously, in the absence of the child being considered competent to handle ideas him or herself, I favor parental control. Another reason I think the kid porn issue is overblown is the disreputable nature of the evidence 'proving' its menace. The Carnegie Mellon study received massive attention, but it is so flawed as to be a current embarrassment. If you are interested, log on to Electronic Frontier Canada for a line by line refutation of the entire study. Currently, the paths that are most likely to lead to kid porn are 'alt.' discussion groups, which are unmoderated. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my former posting, the law now punishes servers who screen content by considering them to be the equivalent of publishers rather than bookstore owners. The owners of bbs services are also vulnerable. So the natural solution of making the owner/server take responsibility is quite complicated. I understand that you are objecting that children can be hurt by bad ideas and that the free market actually is a bad mechanism for ensuring exposure to the right ideas. Frankly, even if you are correct, I don't see this as a problem...and it is NOT because I am insensitive to children. I take a somewhat Spencerian view and consider bad ideas to be like making mistakes. They are an inevitable part of the learning process. Parents should explain, council, etc. but I believe they actually harm children if they shield them from exposure to bad ideas. Michael objects to my statement that the 'best' ideas tend to prosper in a free market of ideas... > >2. free market of ideas does not, nor never was claimed to, work with >pornography (if one worries about kids and that sort of thing) > I disagree. Or, rather, you and I may define the 'best idea' differently in this context. To me, the best idea in sex (or porn which is merely the graphic display/discussion of sex) is whichever one leads to the happiness and fulfillment of a specific individual. In other words, as long as certain parameters {such as consent] are maintained, I think the word 'best' is subjective here. Thus, a free flow of all the alternatives does nothing but benefit every human being, quite independently of whether my particular choice becomes dominant or not. Of course, sexual ideas and alternatives are best placed in a context, which explains the significance, consequences etc. But how does this differ from political or religious ideas? On one level, however, you are quite right that a free market does not claim to maximize truth, merely to maximize people's preferences. And I may be PollyAnna in attributing more reasonableness to mankind than I can entirely justify. Nevertheless, I stand by the statement that truth and the 'best' ideas do better under a free market system than any other. And I fully extend that principle to pornography. Having said this, Michael, I should quickly follow up and state that I do NOT ascribe the opposite view to you. I understand we are in substantial agreement and the following discussion is hair-splitting. Nevertheless, it is a hair about which I feel strongly. All the best Wendy ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 17:12:25 -0500 (EST) >From: "Peter G. Klein" >To: John McPherson >Cc: libernet-d@Dartmouth.EU, ca-liberty@shell.portal.com, libprofs, libclubs-d, sdlp, solan@math.uio.no, ceclark@students.wisc.edu (Apologies in advance if people are already tired of this issue.) > in communications, but of course the gov't has already intruded into > this market, screwing things up in the process. I'm thinking > primarily of gov't granted monopolies of phone lines (the primary > networking medium for the Net, right?), possible jurisdiction of the > FCC and its precedents with other electronic and print media, and > to a lesser extent the required licensing of businesses (eg, Internet > providers) and the various regulations, taxes, etc. which bind them > and discourage entry into the market. These are all good examples, but the discussion seriously understates the government's role in the Internet. Indeed, seemingly lost in this whole exchange is the fact that the 'Net owes its very *existence* to the state and to state funding. The 'Net's basic architecture (packet switching, the TCP/IP protocol, etc.) was designed by the Department of Defense and the RAND corporation in the 1960s for a specific purpose, namely military communication in the event of a nuclear war. The expansion of the network to include academic and other non-military users was facilitated by the DoD's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). (The research network quickly became, in Bruce Sterling's words, "less a network for shared computing than a high-speed, federally subsidized, electronic post office.") ARPA, and later the National Science Foundation, continued to finance the backbone or "trunk" lines, for both academic and commercial users, until 1994. In short, both the design and implementation of the Internet have relied almost exclusively on government dollars. The fact that its designers envisioned a packet-switching network has serious implications for how the 'Net actually works. (For example, packet switching is good for file transfers and e-mail but very bad for real-time applications like video and audio feeds.) Furthermore, without any mechanism for pricing individual packets, the network is overused, like any public good. Hence when praising the 'Net we tend to commit the broken window fallacy: sure, it's a technological marvel, but we will never know what kind of network the market would have built had those millions of dollars not been taken in taxes and given to ARPA and RAND. In no sense can we say that packet-switching is the "right" technology. One of my favorite quotes on this subject comes from the "Netbook," a semi-official history of the 'Net: "The current global computer network has been developed by scientists and researchers and users who were free of market forces. Because of the government oversight and subsidy of network development, these network pioneers were not under the time pressures or bottom-line restraints that dominate commercial ventures. Therefore, they could contribute the time and labor needed to make sure the problems were solved. And most were doing so to contribute to the networking community." In other words, the designers of the Internet were "free" from the constraint that whatever they produced had to be desired by consumers. My point is that we must be very careful not to describe the Internet as a "private" technology, a spontaneous order, or a shining example of capitalistic ingenuity. It is none of these. Of course, many of the 'Net's current applications -- unforeseen by its original designers -- have been developed in the private sector. (Unfortunately, the Web is not among them, having been designed by the state-funded European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN).) Still, none of these would have been viable without the huge investment of public dollars that brought the network into existence in the first place. How does all this relate to the censorship issue? I'm not entirely sure. But it seems to me the proper way to frame the discussion is as if we were talking about the regulation of roads, parks, and other taxpayer-financed goods, not market-provided goods like pornographic movies. Remember, the issue is not IBM's right to regulate the content of its private, corporate network, or Compuserve's right to drop the alt.sex groups from its list of Usenet groups, had its customers so demanded. By the way, I would be cautious about joining up with electronic "civil liberties" organizations like Pat Leahy's Electronic Frontier Foundation whose definition of individual rights is closer to the ACLU's than Rothbard's or Rand's. Peter Klein --- Peter G. Klein \ klein@rigel.econ.uga.edu Department of Economics \ 706/542-3697 (voice) University of Georgia \ 706/542-3376 (fax) ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 96 15:33:44 PST >From: bruce@magma.COM (Bruce Schoenleber) >To: mcpherso >Subject: re: the C word Hi John, Beyond the libertarian arguments that censorship is just outright stupid, Internet censorship is fundamentally unenforcable. I can encrypt both text and images in a number of ways to make them appear to be just random binary data, and send them anywhere I want. Then it is a simple matter of hiding the decrypt keys here and there and everywhere. All it will do is give the "hacker's" another way to amuse themselves. Then there is the not to be ignored fact that the Internet is not a national commodity or property or service, but is international. What are they going to do, pass a UN resolution? Unfortunately, it may just come to that. In recent news both China and Germany are also looking for strong Internet censorship. I further suspect that an "under the hood" inspection of the motivating factors for regulating the Internet is just the Fed's looking to protect themselves. As a Libertarian I subscribe to the belief that a well informed public is the best defense from a tyrannical government. I suspect that more than a few of the entrenched federal politico's view the Internet as a very serious threat to business as usual. -bruce ======================================================================= >From: kurt@wickman.pp.se >Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 00:11:19 +0100 >To: "Peter G. Klein" , John McPherson >Cc: libernet-d@Dartmouth.EU, ca-liberty@shell.portal.com, libprofs, libclubs-d, sdlp, solan@math.uio.no, ceclark@students.wisc.edu Peter, I read the editorial in "The Economist" this week - I think only half right, for once - which made the clever remark, that since Compuserve closed some groups after Bavarian authorities had found that they were ill-suited for six-year-old Bavarians, the entire world was blocked at the same time. Of course, this is a normal experience in all kinds of government regulation - they overshoot, miss the mark, cause huge costs to innocent people asf. If your intention is to control or regulate flows of information, a good first is to start with pornography - for some reason people don't openly stand up for their interest in this field. I don't know why - but it seems to be the case. Any open enquiry where people are asked "Do you read pornography" gives so low figures, that hardly any pornographic papers at all would have any market, if people stated their preferences correctly. But they don't. But your discussion is not really about this kind of censorship - which might lead far beyond pornography, if no protests were voiced. Your discussion concerns the question whether there are limits for market adjustments - only because the scientists were freed from the market discipline were they able to build the Net. But one point that you have not considered is that even in military research there is market discipline - exactly as in any research-based corporation, the research groups have stiff economic and time budgets. If the research group is unsuccessful ("don't reach the target"), its members run the risk of being unemployed, and the military will have to answer to the tax payers - are you wasting our money? And not only the press - An entire apparatus of authorities (from the General Accounting Office and down) is there to oversee that the marginal value of money invested in the public sector will be as high as in the private sector. The general problem is that public sector investments often do not meet that criterion (That speaks for "a minimal state") - but sometimes they do. It is probable that the building of the Net was an example of the latter. I don't understand why you question how an entirely private sector solution would have looked - the same way, probably. A private corporation would have faced the same optimization problems as the military, and would have operated with the same budget restrictions. It is also a wide-spread belief - also not true - that the private sector can not manage gigantic international operations, like the Net. But an even more sophisticated and complicated "International Net" - almost entirely built and run by the private sector - is the international financial market. So, I think there are more arguments to consider than what first meets the eye. All the best to you and thanks for a thought-provoking letter Kurt Wickman (Sweden) ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 21:04:52 -0500 >To: libprofs >From: mac@headwaters.com (Wendy McElroy) Dear Peter G. Klein: Please do not feel one moment of hesitation in shining the light of history onto the discussion. The InterNet is a gov. creation. One of the ongoing and vigorous debates I have with the head of Electronic Frontier Canada is that the Net is a bastion of communism, or the free rider problem...Let me explain. In the beginning, most Net links were university sponsored and taxpayer funded. Nobody seemed to own anything. Most of the people I communicate with still do not pay the 'fee' that I do...phone time plus server charge. To them it is a perq. at taxpayer expense. This makes it more expensive for me in several ways. One is the lavish, excessive use 'they' make of a free good. When the Rolling Stones concert was broadcast over the Net, people reported incredibly sluggish communications because the concert was absorbing the megabytes that would have been otherwise available. This occurred without cost to the concert consumer. One of the dilemmas of modern science is that so much of our knowledge and technology comes from gov./defense sources that the water seems permanently muddied. Rather than apologize for raising this issue, I would love to see you expand upon it! The broken window fallacy is incredibly apt...I have the same questions regarding NASA. Peter Klein states: > >My point is that we must be very careful not to describe the Internet as a >"private" technology, a spontaneous order, or a shining example of >capitalistic ingenuity. Point humbly accepted as truth. Klein continues: >By the way, I would be cautious about joining up with electronic "civil >liberties" organizations like Pat Leahy's Electronic Frontier Foundation >whose definition of individual rights is closer to the ACLU's than >Rothbard's or Rand's. I understand your objection. But if we wait for an organization which is pure will we ever join anything? Please believe this question comes from someone whose motto is 'Purity are us!', but I have found it necessary for limited goals to give limited support to organizations with whom I do not entirely agree. this is one of those strategic issues on which I welcome debate. On the other hand, computers were developed by the gov. At what point does a technology stop being tainted? For example...what percentage of the Net is now priately funded. My local server certainly is free market. This is an honest --not a rhetorical question -- can a gov. inspired/funded technology evolve into an engine of freedom? Cheers, Wendy McElroy ======================================================================= >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 96 19:19:42 -0800 >To: libprofs >From: Tom Hazlett >Subject: Re: Net censorship & broader issues Dear Friends: Do not feel guilty about embracing the Internet as a product of spontaneous order. The government did not design anything close to what we now use as the World Wide Web. It's investment was in quite another mode of electronic data transfer, something which did grow -- quite by accident, in a classically spontaneous manner -- into the present "network of networks." It should also be noted that the physical infrastructure of the Net is virtually all private investment. The local area private networks which organize the data into efficient packets for distribution via the Net are entirely financed by the users. Although many such users are government institutions or government-funded universities, the computer software and hardware is all commercially produced. And the high-capacity lines which the Internet leases to transport data are provided by private telephone companies. The central coordination function, which has had some significant federal involvement, substantially consists of creating protocols. Even most of this function is now contracted out to private managers, however, and the government source of funding is phasing out as the Net is now self-supporting. The organization function is almost a trivial expense as a percentage of total computer technology required to create and operate the Net. So, if you insist that the Internet was a state project, remember this: The Internet, such as it is, was never envisioned by government planners, the physical and intellectual investment which makes it run (servers, PC's, local nets, long-distance leased lines, and software) was neither designed nor provided by the state, and its future evolution cannot be predicted by any central authority. Moreover, in this unique instance, the state is actually withering away (as funding is being withdrawn). All of this is not to say, incidentally, that the regulatory threat to the Internet is not real. Governments instinctively attempt to control communications, and the long history of government controls in broadcasting and cable indicate that the state will use the pretext of technical difference to slight the First Amendment's "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press." According to a 1943 Supreme Court opinion written by Felix Frankfurter (NBC v. US), the government may regulate electronic speech in ways it may not regulate the printed word, a notoriously shaky precedent for a society about to enter the 21st C. in virtually a panic to transfer communications of all sorts to efficient electronic formats. It would be a tragedy if the march of technology outpaced our constitutional protections. This was the gist of the late Ithiel de Sola Pool's great treatise, "Technologies of Freedom" (Harvard U. Press, 1983). Those interested in some of the telecommunications policy work going on with respect to extending the first amendment into the 21st century can email me, or write to: Prof. Thomas W. Hazlett Director, Program on Telecommunications Policy University of California, Davis Davis, CA 95616 Professor Thomas W. Hazlett Dept. of Agricultural Economics University of California, Davis Davis, CA 95616 Tel: (916)752-2138 Fax: (916)752-5614 ======================================================================= >Date: Tue, 9 Jan 96 10:03:41 PST >From: bruce@magma.COM (Bruce Schoenleber) >To: mcpherso >Subject: Internet, censorship, compuserve John, I though you might find the following excerpts from the comp.risks forum interesting. Best regards, -bruce >Date: 04 Jan 96 10:27:22 EST >From: "Mich Kabay [NCSA Sys_Op]" <75300.3232@compuserve.com> >Subject: DPA: Crime on the Net >From the German Press Agency news wire via CompuServe's Executive News Service; translated by MK with the help of Power Translator Deluxe 1.0 >from Globalink Inc: Copyright DPA, 1995 EDV-Polizeiexperte: Kriminelle nutzen vermehrt Computernetze Mu"nchen (DPA, 95.12.29) - Kriminelle nutzen fur immer mehr Straftaten die elektronischen Mo"glichkeiten der Computernetze. Darauf verweist der Leiter des Sachgebiets Computerkriminalita"t beim Bayerischen Landeskriminalamt in Mu"nchen, Werner Paul. ``Die Palette reicht von der Kinderpornographie, u"ber Rauschgift, den Waffenhandel, Software-Raubkopien bis zum Kreditkartenbetrug'', sagte er am Freitag der DPA. .... Copyright German Press Agency, 1995 EDP - Police Expert: Criminal use of computer networks increasing Munich (German Press Agency) - criminals are increasingly using the electronic possibilities of computer networks. According to the director of the computer crime unit of the Bavarian State Prosecutors Office in Munich, Werner Paul, "The range extends from child pornography to narcotics, the arms trade, software piracy and credit-card fraud." Herr Paul was speaking on Friday to the German Press Agency. Key points: o The investigation of CompuServe in Germany on suspicion of distributing child pornography is not an isolated case. o On-line access suppliers can no more distance themselves from distribution of pornography than from distribution of illegal copies of proprietary software, he said. o Herr Paul argued that the issue is not that the access providers are criminals; the problem is that criminals are using the access providers. o In the fight against computer crime, the networks must, in his opinion, help the police authorities; he conceded that the police authorities do not have enough highly qualified personnel for such investigations. M. E. Kabay, Ph.D. / Director of Education, National Computer Security Assn (Carlisle, PA) ------------------------------ >Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 14:26:23 -0500 (EST) >From: Educom >Subject: CompuServe's Can of Worms (Edupage, 7 January 1996) After cutting off subscribers' access to more than 200 electronic bulletin boards that feature adult material last week, CompuServe now is trying to find a technical way to block only German subscribers, whose government originally had lodged the complaint against the commercial online provider. Industry executives are pointing out that this would set a bad precedent, possibly encouraging other governments to make their own demands regarding content restrictions. "Every country will now jump in and say we don't want any antigovernment propaganda. Every country in the world will push its own local hot button," says a University of Pennsylvania professor. (*Wall Street Journal*, 5 Jan 95, B2) ------------------------------ >Date: Sat, 6 Jan 1996 17:25:55 -0800 >From: hbaker@netcom.netcom.com (Henry Baker) >Subject: Metaphorplay on Compuservile A powerful rule-of-thumb from control theory says that the uncertainty in a control system will gravitate towards the degree of freedom that is hardest to measure and/or hardest to control. A classic example of this problem is the 'horizon effect' in computer chess programs, in which bad (or good) things that happen more moves ahead than the program can look, aren't considered at all; this provides a way for a fair human strategic player to beat a tactically excellent chess program. Politicians appear to be blissfully unaware of this rule, and as a result they go off so half-cocked that their 'cures' are much worse than the diseases for which they are prescribed. For example, instead of having newsgroups whose content is trivially identified, so that people can stay clear of them, the newsgroups will now get innocuous names, and it will be much easier for someone to wander into the middle of an ogrey (sic). However, Santayana was right, and people must learn most things first-hand, so here goes. Instead of beating our breasts over Compuserve's censorship of Usenet newsgroups, we should should respond to this censorship in the same way that people have all through history -- by using metaphoric code. For example, some of the nursery rhymes we learned as children were actually very caustic statements about the powers-that-be of the time, but which if said in plain text would have gotten the speaker's spine stretched and/or severed. Given the indexing machines like www.dejanews.com and www.altavista.digital.com, one can get a list of the 2000 most frequent adjectives, verbs and nouns (exclusive of the proscribed groups, whose names are available at www.eff.org). We and then construct a mapping from these most frequent words onto the words of love & hate, which can provide a vocabulary rich enough for most public purposes. (A brief scan of the 'personals' section of the local newspaper indicates that 2000 words is far more than should be necessary, and probably exceeds by two orders of magnitude the vocabulary of cheap porn flicks.) We now fix our personal spelling dictionaries to suggest the appropriate mappings, and continue usenetting as before. Because we have utilized the most common words from Usenet, any attempt to scan the news with a simple 'stop list' will prove futile and/or will succeed in killing off 99% of _all_ the news. Example: "There once was a student from Nantucket; whose thesis was so long he could..." (You get the picture.) Additionally, some uncommon words like 'exon' and 'compuserve' can also be included in the dictionary. You can intuit their meanings from the usage below. "The first night we met, we exoned like bunnies; our son George is the result." "She was just a compuserver that I met in an IRC Chat Room; she was picked up by the vice squad for compuserving on Hollywood Boulevard before she discovered Cyberspace." Given these meanings, Compuserve will be forced to 'stoplist' these words, which among other things will lead to a Russell-Goedel paradox. Henry Baker www/ftp directory: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html Copyright (c) 1996 by Henry G. Baker. All rights reserved. ** Warning: Due to its censorship, CompuServe and its subscribers ** ** are expressly prohibited from storing or copying this document ** ** on CompuServe in any form. ** [But watch out for the russelling goedels unless you are quite undecided. PGN] ------------------------------ >Date: Tue, 02 Jan 96 21:35:52 GMT >From: dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk ("David G. Bell") >Subject: Re: Bavarian Police Censors CompuServe (RISKS-17.59) In article you write: > Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 15:26:25 +0100 > From: Klaus Brunnstein > Subject: Bavarian Police Censors CompuServe And the story looks more and more confused with every hour that passes... But does anyone else remember a similar incident, several years ago, over the game Wolfenstein 3D? This precursor to Doom, distributed in much the same way, was made available over Compuserve. Unfortunately, some of the graphics included pictures of Adolf Hitler and assorted Nazi insignia, on the walls of the rooms where the player was killing anything and everything that moved. This made the game illegal in Germany. The game was withdrawn from Compuserve, worldwide. Back then, I wasn't on the net. I got my news at a slower pace, in monthly magazines. According to the accounts, as I recall, there was some confusion about who took the decision to remove the game, and Compuserve said it was the decision of the forum sysop (is that the correct term?). In any case, the problem of local laws affecting an international computer network is _not_ new, and Compuserve staff didn't need to read RISKS to know about the possibility. David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, Furry, and Punslinger.. ------------------------------ >Date: Wed, 03 Jan 96 16:04:36 >From: diamond@Rt66.com (Russell Stewart) >Subject: Re: Bavarian Police Censors CompuServe (Brunnstein, RISKS-17.59) Actually, I think this should have been titled "Compuserve censors itself." Though I don't agree with the actions of the German police or those of Compuserve, the fact remains that Compuserve made this choice themselves. Why does it matter? Simple; this is all the more reason for anyone who truly cares about freedom of expression in the electronic medium to dump giant, corporate providers like Compuserve and AOL and instead patronize their local ISPs, who (in my experience) are usually very serious about providing their customers with everything that the 'net has to offer. Of course, not every town yet has an ISP, so this is not an option for everyone. But even if only the people in towns that do have good ISPs did this, C$ and AOL would feel it. Russell Stewart, Albuquerque, New Mexico diamond@rt66.com http://www.rt66.com/diamond/ ------------------------------ >Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 18:22:34 +0100 >From: Klaus Brunnstein >Subject: CompuServe Overreaction After some discussions with State Attorneys in Munich, there is evidence that CompuServe activities to shutdown worldwide access to 200 electronic discussion groups were legally UNJUSTIFIED to the extent as experienced! The legal background is Para.184 of German Penal Code concerned with "Pornographic Writings" (Schrift). The lengthy paragraph forbids to distribute and give access to pornographic writings to persons under 18 (sentence 1), and it also forbids pornographic broadcasts (sentence 2). Esp. provisions were recently introduced (1994) to forbid distribution, presentation, production etc of child pornography; this part applies to persons of any age. In early November 1995, Munich police notified Bavarian state attorney`s office that CompuServe`s German subsidiary (with its office in Unterhaching, a suburb of Munich) offers access to child pornography also to persons under 18. In German Penal Code, this is an offence which the state attorney MUST prosecute (Offizialdelikt). State Attorney asked the district court (on Nov.11) for a search warrant. On Nov.22, attorneys and police experts searched CompuServe`s office for evidence. CompuServe was given a list with 200 electronic fora to which Para.184 MIGHT apply, but it was explicitly made clear that CompuServe had the responsibility to analyse which of these fora really offended German law. (Indeed, a careful inspection of knowledgeable people would have made clear immediately that several items on this were NO valid candidates for Para.184!) CompuServe reacted VERY late (shortly before Christmas), and CompuServe OVERREACTED in blocking access to ALL these electronic fora WORLDWIDE. As most national laws (with exception of some laws requesting universal applicability :-), German law deliberately applies to Germany :-)! Either was CompuServe TECHNICALLY UNABLE to react ONLY FOR GERMAN users (and leave worldwide users unaffected). OR CompuServe choose its overreaction carefully to produce worldwide uproar against applying national law! Anyhow, CompuServe evidently failed to legally analyse which of the 200 el.fora really addressed the intent of Para.184! The procedure of Bavarian State Attorney may have one week point in whether the term "writing" (evidently meant by legislators as applying to traditional paper-work) may apply to "electronic documents" even in "virtual form". Current interpretation here is that "writing" also applies to printouts and stored files (as they may be printed). Evidently, this MAY NOT APPLY to pictures in RAM just displayed on a screen, as long they are not stored or printed. This may also not apply even to disk cache as long as this is only accessible to the display system. On the other hand, if CompuServe stores such files locally (in Munich), e.g., on a mirror-site, and as CompuServe does *not* differentiate between users according to age (e.g., those under 18), para.184 may indeed apply if CompuServe can be held responsible for the content of their files. It would be interesting to legally clarify also in Germany the question of responsibility, as recently clarified in the Prodigy and CompuServe cases in USA (in one case, a moderated group was regarded as being sort of publisher with responsibility for the content, while in another case, an unmoderated forum was regarded merely as book-seller, with NO re- sponsibility for the content traded). No similar case has been dealt- with in Germany, so far. In this situation, there is NO evidence that the Bavarian procedure in this case may be a signal for introducing censorship in the Internet (as many experts had feared, including my initial reaction :-). But this case may be helpful to start discussions of self-control, including topics of pornography, virtual violence or assault! From a German point of view, it is indeed hard to understand that Nazi propaganda (legally forbidden in Germany since WW II for good reasons, for which we have been re-educated and democratized :-) flows into Germany from Nazi groups, e.g., in Canada, USA and Denmark. Free Flow of Information requires responsibility and ethical standards which so far have hardly been developed in networld. So far, some universities with some sort of "Code of Ethics" (e.g., Hamburg university) have sopped access to (few) pornographic electronic fora since some time. This is NOT a matter of censorship but a matter of Ethics and responsibility! Klaus Brunnstein (Univ Hamburg: January 3,1995) PS: for those capable of German and interested in the text of para.184, I will make the text (in German only!) available on our ftp site, on 4 Jan 1995 (noon Hamburg time): look for ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/pub/virus/laws/para184.txt This site is "under development", and we will store there legal texts related to computer crime, viral and hacker issues, etc. ============================================================================ >Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 12:06:34 -0600 (CST) >From: Tibor R Machan >To: LibertProfessors >Subject: cyberlaw (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 17:29:21 GMT From: Stephen Clark To: Members of the list Subject: cyberlaw (fwd) > From: "Andrew J. Canamella" > > Announcement: > > Lawlinks: The Internet Legal Resource Center > http://www.lawlinks.com would like to announce its first of > many mail list forums (cyberlaw-list) > > This forum will be for the free and unfettered discussion > of CyberLaw: the Law and the Internet. > > This Forum is intended for the discussion of law-related > issues, the dissemination of information and the exchange > of opinions addressing CyberLaw's potential effect upon > social and political issues. Discussions will range from > Constitutional Rights and E-mail privacy issues to > Intellectual Property Rights on the Internet. Social and > political issues will include RAND's recommendation of > permanently assigned E-mail addresses for all citizens and > the continuing gap between the haves and the have-nots from > an information perspective. > > To join Email cyberlaw-list@lawlinks.com - send: > JOIN cyberlaw-list as Email body (Case sensitive!) > > example > --------------------------------------------- > Mail To: cyberlaw-list@lawlinks.com > cc: > Subject: > > Body: > > SUBSCRIBE cyberlaw-list > > --------------------------------------------- > Thank You > Andrew J. Canamella ============================================================================ >Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 11:40:51 +0100 >To: libernet-d@Dartmouth.EU, ca-liberty@shell.portal.com, libprofs, libclubs-d, sdlp >From: solan@math.uio.no (Svein O. G. Nyberg) >Subject: Net censorship - alternatives to] > So, I'm sure that I've left out some important considerations, and > have only touched on some deep issues, but I hope I've encompassed > the whole of the task at hand and can perhaps help organize the > battle to stop gov't censorship of the Internet. Please email me > your ideas, arguments to overcome objections, let me know what I've > left out, etc. Where these issues are of importance, is Publicly Available Information. That is: Web, FTP, gopher and News. My suggestion is to include a byte somewhere which is 0 by default, but which could be set to different values if the material at that web/ftp site/newsgroup was of a certain kind. Web browsers could then be set by parents to stop loading if an offending byte (say, a byte meaning "porn" or "violence") turned up. Also, Internet providers could then also set a "stop transfer" at such bytes. Any comments on such a scheme? Svein Olav ============================================================================ >From: "Aeon Skoble" >To: solan@math.uio.no (Svein O. G. Nyberg), libprofs >Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 08:17:24 CST6CDT [1] > Web browsers could then be set by parents to stop > loading if an offending byte (say, a byte meaning "porn" > or "violence") turned up. [2] > Also, Internet providers could > then also set a "stop transfer" at such bytes. > Any comments on such a scheme? Regarding [2], that's not really going to be any different from what Compuserve has already done. You're likely to throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. As in all such matters, the question is who decides which documents qualify for a stop byte. After they flag the child porno sites, will they also decide to flag sites devoted to serious (or even semi-serious) discussion of Henry James, or Camille Paglia? What about "reasonable" porn, like Playboy? Regarding [1], if the parent knows how to disable it, I'm sure any 13 year old hacker worth his/her salt could re-enable it. If I were 13, I'd make it my mission in life to do so. ============================================================================ >Date: Fri, 12 Jan 96 10:52:39 PST >From: pinney@manta.nosc.mil (Mel M Pinney) >To: mcpherso >Subject: Net censorship Dan Farmer (of SATAN security software fame) offers his take on net censorship: >From: zen@fish.com (d) >Newsgroups: comp.security.firewalls,comp.security.unix >Subject: new security program, in alpha testing stage >Date: 5 Jan 1996 12:47:22 -0800 >Organization: vicious fish hackers I'm releasing an ALPHA version of a new program I wrote called "fuck"; I'm seeking constructive criticism about the code and the functionality (not the name). Fuck is an ALPHA (got that? ALPHA!) release of a (mostly security) program that attempts to give three bits of information about your system in a moderately non-repudiable fashion: 1. What files have changed since you installed the OS from the distribution media? 2a. What security patches have and/or should be installed? 2b. What non-security patches have been installed? 3. What files have been deleted from or added to the OS since the installation? Fuck does its primary work by comparing MD5 digital signatures of the (allegedly) correct files, the signatures of which are taken either from the net (the program can grab a verified copy via the web), a CD ROM containing the OS (crude programs to suck things off of the CD are included), or from a local file with those that are currently installed on the system; it then flags the differences or problems that it finds. To ward off some questions/comments, this is not tripwire, nor does it do the same thing. Tripwire creates a baseline/snapshot of your system and tells you what changes occur on your system as you run it. Fuck tells you what has changed from the time your system was installed, and what patches should be installed to help secure your system. There is a significant difference. ALPHA release means that it has (just about) all the basic functionality, but has not been tested beyond my own limited machines (currently I use SunOS 4.1.4, and have run it on a sun running 4.1.3 and a BSDI box running 2.0, quite successfully). In addition, the databii that the program uses were generated by one person, me, and almost certainly have additional errors. Despite this, I have found this to be a very useful tool that gives me information I couldn't get elsewhere - for an example of the sort of report that it can give, see: http://www.fish.com/security/fuck/examples/ I think of it as a fairly solid framework or foundation for further additions. -=-=-=-=- To get the program, read this: http://www.fish.com/security/fuck/README_FIRST.html -=-=-=-=- If you care why I called the program "fuck" (it's not an acronym), see: http://www.fish.com/security/fuck/name.html <== Printed below -=-=-=-=- If life goes as planned, I'll put out new versions, which hopefully will primarily support more systems and finish polishing up the features, rather than have massive bug fixes; solaris support will be the next addition... new platforms really are pretty trivial to add, I simply need to do some typing and fix the cpio file sucker. Assuming I get some feedback I'll probably post a final version to one of the source groups. -- d ===== Test of http://www.fish.com/security/fuck/name.html ===== Why the name "fuck"? First, it's not an acronym. It's a combination of frivolity and seriousness. I'll discuss the latter first... perhaps you're not aware of the appalling legislation that is going on in the United States at this time - legislation that would censor the Internet. Proposals for laws that would forbid people from speaking their mind, to communicate "indecently" (whatever that is! It's not defined in the current legistlation), from propagating information on this great and relatively new tool of expression that we call the Internet. If the proposed legislation gets passed, the *privilege* that we call a right in america, that of free speech, will be eroded. The politicians, as far as I can tell, are doing this for power; to gain votes, stirring people up, scaring them with an emotional appeal - that child pornography thing. They claim that somehow the net is a perfect vehicle for the corruption of our youth. People seem to be ignoring the fact that we already have laws against this; what the new laws will do is undermine the thing that is quite possibly our greatest asset in our society - free speech. This "protection" of our children today is not only damaging them now, but in the future as well, when they are prevented from expressing their thoughts, emotions, whatever they wish. I don't want to protect kids against free speech. And I sure as hell don't want to be protected from myself. If the net makes some things more difficult, hurts some people, so be it - it helps, and will help, far, far more. So this program, its name, is a protest. It won't do a whole hell of a lot to change the situation, I suppose, but it could raise some awareness, and every bit helps! If it helps inform people that something is going on, and that something should be done about it, all the better. Anyway, I marched, I wrote, I protested, and I give this program to you, packaged with a "fuck you" to the politicians and the government of the united states for this appalling slice of legislation. At this time 12/20/95, you can look at Yahoo: http://yahoo.com/text/Government/Politics/Censorship/Censorship_and_the_Net/ for more information. Whatever you choose, whatever you do - make an *informed* and heartfelt choice. But make it yourself - don't let others decide for you. And after all is said and done... I've always wanted to write a program named "fuck". If it gets referenced in any journals or books, all the better - I want to see how it's cited. But aside from the freedom of speech thing, it's just a joke, that's all. -- d ===========================================================================