Slashdot Mirror

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton is back with a story about Internet censorship in the Middle East. Several blocking software companies claimed that they had no control over how various Middle Eastern governments used their software. Bennett says it's time to put this patently false claim to rest. American censorware companies could easily cut off Middle Eastern governments from using their software, and thus make their existing filtering systems far less effective; they just refuse to do it. Hit the link below to see what he has to say, and make up your own mind.

The Wall Street Journal published an article Monday listing the Western-made Internet censoring programs used by several Middle Eastern governments, in countries that filter what their citizens can access on the Web. Like a similar 2011 report from the OpenNet Initiative, hopefully this listing will shine a spotlight on the problem, and make it easier for human rights groups to call for these companies to stop aiding censorious governments.

However, I wish that the article had quoted someone giving a rebuttal to the several companies which claimed, "Once the customer buys the product, we have no control over it," as stated variously Netsweeper, Blue Coat, and McAfee (which makes Smartfilter). For a product that relies on continuous updates provided by the software company, this claim, of course, is nonsense. Unfortunately, the claim seems to go unchallenged so often, that there's a risk that it will start to affect policy -- people may believe that we can't regulate how American censorware is used by repressive countries, so we shouldn't even try.

Some background: When a customer buys a standard network filtering program like Websense, SmartFilter, or Blue Coat, the product comes with a built-in list of websites to be blocked by the software. (The customer can select or de-select categories of sites to be blocked, like "pornography" or "gambling".) The purchase of the software typically comes with a year or two of free updates to the blocked-site list. The software vendors employs a combination of human reviewers and (more often) automated crawlers to scour the Web looking for new sites that fall into their categories, and add these sites to their database. Customers who are within their subscription period can download periodic updates to this blocked-site list. After a customer's initial free subscription period runs out, they can opt to continue purchasing updates to the database. If they don't, then the product will continue to work, but the blocked-site list will be frozen (except for any new sites that the customer finds on their own and adds manually to their own blocked-site list).

Once the blocked-site list is frozen, the filtering product becomes ineffective against any user making a serious effort to get around it. This is because there are many mailing lists like mine that mail out new proxy sites every week (a proxy site is a site which contains a form that allows the user to access third-party Web sites indirectly, usually to circumvent Internet blocking). And as long as the user can access at least one unblocked proxy site, they can access any other blocked site by going through the proxy. So when a censorious regime stops updating their blocked-site list, the product becomes ineffective almost immediately. (For that, I suppose, the blocking companies should be grateful to us proxy site makers, since we make it necessary for their customers to keep renewing their blocked-site subscriptions year after year.)

So, even if one were to accept the (highly dubious) claim that the software vendors didn't realize what was going on when a foreign government approached them to buy their software, once they realize that their software is being used to violate the rights of the country's people, they can easily stop providing updates to that customer. This can be done by either (a) blocking the IP addresses that the customer uses to download the updates, or (b) blocking any further updates using that customer's license key. (Each installation of a blocking program like Websense comes with a license key unique to that customer, and the program has to submit the license key to the download server in order to download the latest update to the blocked-site list. If the customer's subscription runs out or gets cancelled, no more updates.)

This is roughly the situation that exists in Iran. The Iranian government claims to use McAfee's Smartfilter to filter Internet access for their citizens, despite McAfee's claim that they don't sell to Iran because of the embargo. But the evidence suggests that while Iran may have once acquired Smartfilter along with a copy of their filter list that was current at the time, they're not getting regular updates to the blocked-site list. From corresponding with Iranians and testing the filter through a server located inside Iran, I've found that most of the proxy sites we mail out never get blocked at all in Iran, even as they eventually get blocked in countries like Bahrain and Kuwait that are using Smartfilter with a subscription to the blocked-site database. The proxy sites we mail out that do get blocked in Iran are usually blocked a few days later than they are in Bahrain and Kuwait. This suggests that the Iranian censors are finding and blocking new proxy sites by ad hoc methods, and that they're not as effective at it as American censorware companies. So the Iranian situation proves two points: that Western blocking companies really can prevent a foreign government from using their products (well, duh), and that this restriction actually works, in the sense of making the country's filter less effective.

So when a McAfee spokesman told the WSJ reporters, "You can add additional websites to the block list; obviously what an individual customer would do with a product once they acquire it is beyond our control," that's true only in the most literal sense. Yes, Bahrain can add human rights web pages to their list of sites blocked by Smartfilter, and McAfee can't stop them, but the effectiveness of this block depends on the Bahrani censors using Smartfilter to block new proxy sites as well, which McAfee continues to aid them in doing, as a matter of choice.

Websense, incidentally, announced in 2009 -- in response to an earlier ONI report describing how their software was used to censor Internet access in Yemen -- that they would stop providing censoring software to the Yemeni government. But ONI's current report claims that the Yemeni government continued to use Websense into 2011, and Websense declined to comment. Maybe the Yemeni government was using Websense with a "frozen blocked-site list" -- but the ONI report includes at least one instance where a site that was un-blocked by Websense (the opennet.net domain itself!) became un-blocked in Yemen shortly afterwards. So maybe Websense just lied about canceling the Yemenis' license.

Could some censorious country like Yemen continue using the Websense filter -- with a continuously updated blocked-site list -- even after Websense truly tried to cut them off? Possibly, but it would probably be more trouble than it's worth. Yemen would have to set up a shell company outside of their own borders, with an overseas bank account, in order to purchase the software. Then after Yemen had installed Websense on their servers, they would have to download the updates indirectly by going through an anonymizing proxy set up in some other country as well. And if Websense ever found out which of their customers was a shell company used by the Yemeni government, they could cut off that customer's license, and the Yemeni censors would have to start all over again. It's probably safe to say that most Middle Eastern countries wouldn't find this worth the trouble. (After all, Iran could do everything I've just described, but apparently they haven't; they still seem to be using Smartfilter with an outdated copy of the blocked-site list, and adding new proxy sites to their blacklist manually.)

So far, proposals to ban American censorware companies from selling to foreign governments have not gotten off the ground -- and now with several Middle Eastern countries using or looking at Netsweeper, we'd have to get Canada on board as well. But at the very least, let's start calling out censorware companies on the canard that "We just sell the software and have no way of controlling who uses it." The companies know that foreign governments are using it to censor their own people, and they can cut them off as customers any time they want to; they just don't.

The word "Internet" was uttered precisely once in last night's presidential debate, and I don't have to tell you the context. You already know the topic was Columbine, and you already know the Net was being blamed for mass murder. What our Republican candidate failed to mention is that his party's bogeymen, the evil Internet and its evil twin violent entertainment, have brought about a new era of peace. If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."
- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000

The term we're looking for is "manufactured crisis." That's what we need to start calling it, this supposed violence in our schools.

I don't need to provide you with more quotes from Bush, Gore, Cheney and especially Lieberman about how disgustingly violent our culture has become. You can't pick up a paper without seeing at least three people moaning about violent movies, the violent internet, and worst of all violent video games. They're infecting the minds of our children, don't'cha know. It'd be the new national pastime if it weren't 200 years old: grumping about those damn kids.

Let's counter disinformation with some real numbers. Here's an annotated timeline showing the increase in violent imagery, and the corresponding decrease in actual violence.

1993
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,438,200.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 49.1.

Let's consider 1993 our baseline year, the pre-Doom year. That blockbuster was not released until December 1993, so I think we are safe to assume that it did not begin darkening hearts until 1994 or later. By the end of 1993, the internet's two million host machines include 500 webservers.

Demolition Man, Kalifornia and Falling Down are in the theaters.

1994
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,424,200: a 1% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 51.2: a 4% increase from the previous year.

In 1994, shareware Doom, downloadable from the evil internet, shatters existing gaming records. Its bloody graphics and Satanic imagery shock and offend many who are easily shocked and offended. In an era where 200,000 is a great-selling title, 1994 sees the first of fifteen million gamers who download and play Doom.

Meanwhile, the web grows at an annual rate of 341,000%, becoming the 2nd-most popular type of data; among the three million machines on the net, there are too many webservers to count.

The movies Pulp Fiction, Timecop, True Lies, Children of the CornIII, and the politicans' favorite Natural Born Killers are all released in 1994.

1995
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,290,000: a 9% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 2,169.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 46.1: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

In 1995, the web becomes the most popular internet service among the net's four million machines. Shareware Doom continues to rack up downloads. Doom II: Hell On Earth, released last October, takes over as the violentest game ever, with an initial release of half a million units.

The Basketball Diaries, Braveheart, Se7en, and Die Hard3 are released.

1996
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,134,400: a 12% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,683: a 22% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 41.6: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

1996 is a banner year for violent images. Doom II continues on its track to eventually sell two million copies. Duke Nukem 3D, aimed at the young teenage male market, gives our nation's young boys a healthy mix of strippers, jokes, and mass slaughter with machine guns. Soon after, the breakthrough title Quake offers unprecedented visual accuracy: blood, gore, and murder are now illustrated with detail that makes Doom and Duke Nukem look cartoony.

Scream is released in theaters to tremendous success, along with Broken Arrow, CrowII, Sling Blade, and the excellent Fargo. Meanwhile, there are now 9 million hosts on the net.

The effects of all that horrible media violence in 1996 appear in 1997's statistics...

1997
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,055,200: a 7% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,457: a 13% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 38.8: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1997, there are 16 million hosts on the net. At year's end, QuakeII is released, and is quickly banned in Germany for its even-more-realistic violence. And Con Air, Face/Off, Starship Troopers, and Scream2 are released in theaters.

1998
Total under-18 murderers: 1,169: a 20% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 36.0: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1998, Quake II hits its sales stride and begins corrupting young minds. Grand Theft Auto, one of the more vilified and censored video games, is released. The web crosses the 300-million-page mark.

Brace yourself for the movie list: Lethal Weapon4, Saving Private Ryan, American HistoryX, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ronin, Urban Legend, Blade, and the crappy remake of Psycho hit the theaters.

The result?

1999
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 32.1: an 11% decrease from the previous year.

There it is. In the four years between the release of Doom and Quake II, the number of killers under the age of 18 in this country plummeted. A drop of 46% in just four years is nothing short of astonishing.

Long-term graphs are even more valuable. Click through to these, they're small and quick:

• The homicide rate, 1900-1998. We are experiencing the longest and steepest sustained dropoff in violence since the Great Depression.
• Homicide offenders grouped by age, 1976-1998. The number of teenage killers is steadily falling.
• Average age of homicide offenders, 1976-1998. The average age of the American killer has been rising since 1993.

Last month, I watched CNN as my friend Bennett Haselton got grilled opposite Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

How do the posturing panderers justify their crisis-du-jour? How'd we end up with the phantom of media-created child violence as a major election issue, while violence plummets?

The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.

So here's the slogan for my campaign: our kids deserve the best in first-person shooters. In my America, every family will have free movie tickets, 300 megatexels, and low-ping broadband. Let's put an end to frame rates under 30Hz. For our country - for our safety - we can leave no child behind.

(Sources: US DOJ 1, 2, 3; OJJDP 1, 2, 3; FBI UCR; Blues News; crime.org; poynter.org.)

If you're looking for a political issue that will advance freedom, support the growth and innovation of technology, support younger geeks (and adults) who depend on libraries for access to the Net and Web, and also strike a blow against the Luddites who dominate Congress and media, there's a great cause for you: your local library needs some help. Enlightened educators and librarians are seeking help in blocking imminent federal legislation that would require the installation of filtering software on all school and library computers connected to the Net.

This provision ought to be called "The Local Net Censorship Act" -- and it's close to becoming law. Lawmakers in both the House and the Senate approved a final version late last week, agreeing on a compromise approach containing elements of separate plans passed in the two chambers earlier this year. It would require all schools and libraries to install filtering software regulating the content available to any computers purchased with Federal money, blocking child pornography, obscenity and materials deemed harmful to minors. Schools and libraries would also be required to develop Net use policies that address minors' online access to "inappropriate" materials.

Much of the tech culture was asleep at the switch when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed, giving corporations unprecedented control of American intellectual property, and is now paying for its apathy. This law could increase liability for schools and libraries, give local politicians and religious crazies a significant new weapon to ban access in public institutions to material they consider offensive or inappropriate.

Representatives are already lining up to lengthen the list of sites and subjects considered "inappropriate." Sen. John McCain of Arizona is pushing his own filtering provision in the Senate, where an amendment by Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has just added the further requirement that communities be able to provide input about blocking other "inappropriate" Web sites that mention bomb-making, drugs or other topics.

As most of the people reading this know, blocking and filtering programs are arbitrary and wildly ineffective. While savvy users can easily bypass them, these filters hide from most users vast amounts of legitimate information along with so-called "offensive" content. This law is a license for every political interest group to keep subjects they don't like out of local libraries and schools. The victims would be kids with nowhere but libraries to go for Net access. Most filtering programs are censorship technology, pure and simple, but at the same time less effective than simple adult or parental supervision. They are not justified by any meaningful statistics regarding children and the Internet -- perhaps because there really aren't any.

Instead of tying the hands of educators and librarians, government should be doing everything possible to ensure that as many kids as possible have free access to the Net and the Web, because it will be vital to their social, educational and economic opportunities. Laws like this demonstrate how profoundly and dangerously ignorant of technology most of our elected leaders are, and how vulnerable to their ignorance the tech culture is.

The National Education Association is fighting the law -- the still nameless legislation is attached to legislation funding the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments. The American Library Association is in on the fight, too, since the bill would for the first time force public libraries to follow the same access policies as schools. But hardly anyone in Congress will dare defend "pornography" and "offensive" material.

"For a library, it's a different ball game," a spokeswoman for the ALA told The New York Times. "If you have to filter any machine a child may use, in a library, you'd have to filter every computer. It disregards age-appropriate levels." This means older children, teenagers and adults would be arbitrarily censored by any local community that didn't like a particular kind of Web site or subject matter, from abortion information to anything resembling sexual imagery. And kids in schools would be subject to even more controlled than they already are.

Libraries -- and local communities -- already have the freedom to establish controls ranging from increased supervision to some kinds of filtering if they wish. Most libraries and schools also have the ability to block sites if they are deemed dangerous and offensive. There is absolutely no reason for Congress to make censorship technology universal and required by law. The federal provision would further complicate Net access issues for libraries, since their environments are less controlled than a public school. Libraries are open to all ages, including adults -- who have a First Amendment right to access a broader range of materials on the Net than the proposed congressional filtering arrangement would allow. Libraries also fear that the law would expose libraries to a wave of new lawsuits demanding they filter -- in accordance with federal law -- any site that could be considered "inappropriate" or "offensive" by any elements of any local community. Passage of this law would force local libraries to radically increase filtering of the Net.

Most of us don't need to go to the library for Net access, but millions of people -- mostly kids -- do. They are entitled to some kinds of First Amendment protection as well as we are. This is a dangerous law, one which injects federal moral guardians directly into the issue of Net access. History tell us this is an awful idea. If you're in the mood to contact your local congressman or woman, this is a great reason to do it. For further information, you can also contact the National Education Association and the American Library Association.

Note: If you're looking for factual evidence to help bolster your arguments against the encroachment of filters, jamie also suggests checking out The Censorware Project, Peacefire and the GLAAD report on filter discrimination.

You may recall our series on the battle over censorware in the libraries surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound in Holland, Michigan. In the final piece, I wrote: "This isn't the end, though. It's just the beginning." Well, the pro-filtering groups have been busy almost since the day they lost the vote, and will almost certainly put the same issue up for a vote again this year, probably on the November ballot. Here's the first news worthy of a heads-up: old, flawed censorware (SmartFilter) is being repackaged with a new name and some card-based hardware that can assign different patrons different settings. Its presentation last night was well-received, and local groups seem to be ready to adopt the system. Last time the Censorware Project checked out this product, it had recently modified its database to allow children to read "How To Have Sex With A Horse."

You may recall our series on the battle over censorware in the libraries surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound in Holland, Michigan. In the final piece, I wrote: "This isn't the end, though. It's just the beginning." Well, the pro-filtering groups have been busy almost since the day they lost the vote, and will almost certainly put the same issue up for a vote again this year, probably on the November ballot. Here's the first news worthy of a heads-up: old, flawed censorware (SmartFilter) is being repackaged with a new name and some card-based hardware that can assign different patrons different settings. Its presentation last night was well-received, and local groups seem to be ready to adopt the system. Last time the Censorware Project checked out this product, it had recently modified its database to allow children to read "How To Have Sex With A Horse."

More on the conflict of interest in the 2600 / DeCSS case. More on the South African penguins trapped in a world of petroleum, currents and love beneath the panopticon world of satellite observation. And congratulations to Distributed.Net for setting in place their new milestone. All below!

Why no, gentlemen, I see no conflict of interest. You may recall reading that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in the DeCSS trial underway in New York right now, consulted for Time-Warner, raising questions about conflict of interest. Jim Tyre of The Censorware Project writes: "Yesterday, CT posted a piece on 2600's attempt to disqualify Judge Kaplan in the New York DeCSS trial. Last night, Kaplan's 51 page Order denying the motion made it to the Net. No doubt he spent the weekend writing it, putting him in a nice mood for when trial commenced yesteday. Interesting reading for those who like to slog through such things."

The first 1000 days. emerson writes "According to their RC5-64 Stats Page, distributed.net's RC5-64 project turns 1000 days old today (July 18th; the stats page will show 1000 days when today's stats are digested and displayed tomorrow), with just over 28% of the keyspace checked out. Makes me feel pretty safe about RC5-64 versus brute-force attacks ..." Oskuro writes: "Today is the 1000th day distributed.net is searching for a winning key on RSA's RC5-64 contest. In that long time, the 28% of the keyspace has been tested, so there's a long way to go still. Maybe you want to download a client and start crunching for Team Slashdot?" Note: this means that as of today (day 1001), the stats reflect the 1000-day figure.

Wish I had scientists helping find me a mate ... John B. Hayes writes "Yahoo! News has a great story on an heroic high-tech penguin and his surviving the impossible. I wonder if there is a deeper meaning here... I mean, he made it 600 miles without a re-boot; ok, so there were some unexpected obstacles to deal with and the programmer had to step in, but that's the beauty of it. I'm charged!" cvd6262 writes "It seems that all's weel that ends well. Our Beloved Jackass Pequin, Peter, arrived home. I quote from the site: 'At 0456 this morning, Peter's satellite tag reported that he was at 33 48 S 18 22 E. Wait a moment. Those are the coordinates for Robben Island. Peter is home.' Now he only has to find a suitable Jackass Penquin mate."

All the same, I think I'd prefer some privacy. Oostendorpophile writes "I got this email today:

'Thank you for your inquiries into the FBI's "Carnivore". We have received many inquiries, many Kudos and many sneers for what has been in the news in the last couple weeks. Much of the information that the press has published has been inaccurate or misleading. Earthlink takes the following stance (in quotes below).

"We do not allow the installation of Carnivore on our network because it has the potential to compromise the privacy of our legitimate users and the performance of our network. We have an internal solution which allows us to comply with court orders without the presence of government personnel or equipment in our buildings. The government accepts this solution since they still receive the requested information about the criminal suspect, and we sleep well knowing that our customers are safe from unauthorized surveillance."

Sincerely,
Mary Youngblood
Privacy Policy
Earthlink/Mindspring Abuse Team Manager'"

This isn't the most satisfying possible answer, but at least it's nicer than block committees and "an enthusiastic welcome to the nice gentlemen who'll be sharing the building with us" ... Earthlink / Mindspring is one of the largest if not the largest ISP, though -- will smaller ISPs be able to stare down Carnivore as well?

And Apple Legal hasn't said a thing about this yet? Hollis writes "After months of discussion and work, linuxppc.org has been rewritten and is hosted at penguinppc.org. The new site has a slick design and lots of new content... check it out." And today's announcement of the new cube PowerMac puts a different light on the criticism Ryan Meader received for posting about such a thing on MacOS Rumors. It's a good thing to be wrong about! Dual G4 in a cube. Linux on PPC. Repeat.

latcarf writes: "The article here reports what happened in the American heartland when a councilman raised a fuss over filtering at the local public library. In this case, the forces of reason prevailed because the library had policies and procedures for casual monitoring of internet use and because the librarian, who had to defend the rejection of filters, was well informed. While the article doesn't say it, the librarian's information about the problems with filters came, in no small part, from SlashDot discussions. This is just another example of Slashdot's important contribution to the social discourse." Heh. I don't know what the poster is basing his statement on, but it sure would be nice to think the information in places like Slashdot, Peacefire and censorware.org was useful in this particular case.

We just ran a story on Friday about Mattel, which makes the Web-censoring software product Cyber Patrol, and their attempted suppression of an essay and utility to decrypt CP's list of banned sites. Since then, things have gotten even uglier. Mattel's attorneys have been mass-mailing the mirrors of Eddy Jansson's site, demanding that ISPs remove them -- the original site and some of the mirrors have been taken down already. Just to make sure though, Mattel is updating the Cyber Patrol blacklists for all of their customers to include the homepages of the authors and all of the mirrors, blocked under every blocking category the product has. (more ...)

This means, for example, that if you have Cyber Patrol set to block "Full Nudity", you might think you're blocking pictures of nude human beings, but you're actually banning criticism of Mattel and the homepages of people Mattel is suing even if the decryption utility and essay aren't hosted there, such as Matthew Skala's homepage. Feel free to download the demo version of Cyber Patrol, update the filter list to the newest one, and check this out -- or just type it into their search engine, though that won't tell you it's banned under every category. Does Skala's page contain full nudity? No? Then you're seeing an example of a company purposefully and deliberately lying about the content of a page in order to serve their own agenda.

Same thing if you chose Violence/Profanity, or Partial Nudity, or Sexual Acts, Gross Depictions, Intolerance, or Satanic/Cult, or Drugs/Drug Culture, Militant/Extremist, or Sex Education, or Gambling, or Alcohol and Tobacco -- guess what? "All categories" also include "or criticism of our company or product."

Welcome to America in the new millennium, where a corporation just made the decision to ban several documents from the World Wide Web. They did it unilaterally, without court review, without any notice to the public whatsoever, yet their decisions are now being carried out (the Cyber Patrol product automatically updates its list of banned sites on a daily or weekly basis) in public schools and libraries and companies across the country, for children and adults. (Cyber Patrol uses the same list for the "corporate firewall" versions of its products.)

A list of mirrors is still available. Get it while you can. Declan McCullagh, a journalist for Wired, has started an archive of case-related documents; -- he too has received the legal threats, despite never hosting the banned essay. (The .uni files are actually TIFF images of the documents.)

And just as I was finishing up this story, I've received an e-mail in my capacity as censorware.org webmaster. A woman wrote:

The link to the essay you mentioned on your page [our homepage] date 3/16/00 must not be correct. Could you e-mail me the essay? I am a high school librarian and am trying to find out more about what Cyber Patrol filters. Thank you.

I wrote back, among other things:

In fact the link was correct, but Mattel (the maker of Cyber Patrol) has filed suit against the authors of that essay and made legal threats to that ISP which caused them to delete the page. So, the page existed on Friday, but does not today.

I certainly understand your desire to find out what Cyber Patrol blocks, but they are going to great lengths to stop you from finding out.

Blocking software can work on any category of material. Here in the States we try to block sex. But in Germany, they're going to use censorware to go after MP3s. Its "Rights Protection System" is rumored to already be in testing - and the rights that get protected are those of Mariah Carey and her label, needless to say, not yours or mine. What does this mean for our German readers, and others? More thoughts below...

If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.

Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.

Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.

But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.

This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:

"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."

"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."

Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?

And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at

http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/

The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.

But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.

And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):

"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."

In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.

The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):

"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."

"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."

Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?

If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.

Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.

And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.

This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.

Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:

"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."

"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."

(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)

Then, two sentences later:

"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."

"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."

Boy. How serious are these guys?

But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.

Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.

Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.

What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.

Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.

But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"

Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.

This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.

If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.

Blocking software can work on any category of material. Here in the States we try to block sex. But in Germany, they're going to use censorware to go after MP3s. Its "Rights Protection System" is rumored to already be in testing - and the rights that get protected are those of Mariah Carey and her label, needless to say, not yours or mine. What does this mean for our German readers, and others? More thoughts below...

If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.

Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.

Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.

But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.

This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:

"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."

"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."

Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?

And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at

http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/

The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.

But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.

And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):

"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."

In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.

The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):

"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."

"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."

Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?

If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.

Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.

And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.

This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.

Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:

"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."

"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."

(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)

Then, two sentences later:

"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."

"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."

Boy. How serious are these guys?

But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.

Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.

Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.

What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.

Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.

But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"

Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.

This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.

If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.

Blocking software can work on any category of material. Here in the States we try to block sex. But in Germany, they're going to use censorware to go after MP3s. Its "Rights Protection System" is rumored to already be in testing - and the rights that get protected are those of Mariah Carey and her label, needless to say, not yours or mine. What does this mean for our German readers, and others? More thoughts below...

If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.

Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.

Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.

But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.

This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:

"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."

"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."

Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?

And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at

http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/

The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.

But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.

And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):

"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."

In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.

The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):

"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."

"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."

Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?

If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.

Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.

And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.

This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.

Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:

"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."

"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."

(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)

Then, two sentences later:

"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."

"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."

Boy. How serious are these guys?

But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.

Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.

Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.

What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.

Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.

But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"

Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.

This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.

If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.

Repton writes, "Another one from CNET's News.com: A commission set up by the government to look into ways to keep youngsters from Internet smut has realized that they have no funding. This is a sad state of affairs, but somehow I don't feel too much sympathy." Perhaps people "charged with evaluating high-tech tools and other methods to keep online pornography away from children," but on a beer budget, should enjoy a few hours reading through the Censorware Project's Web site. At a library in Utah, say.

Greyfox writes "This USA Today story tells us that the Utah Senate just passed a law to withhold funding from libraries that don't implement net filtering. The law now goes to the governor for signing or not signing." The bill text talks about keeping minors off sites with "obscene" material. Most Utah libraries will probably just sign on to the existing statewide Smartfilter network, which (as the Censorware Project has shown) already blocks a legitimate access every 99 seconds. As the law pressures more libraries to sign up, that rate will climb. More thoughts below...

I am not a lawyer, but here's something interesting. The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:

"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."

"Obscene" is a term with strict legal meaning. The definition is, roughly, that the material must depict sexual conduct in an offensive way, must appeal to prurient interest as defined by community standards, and must lack serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political ("SLAP") value.

But no internet blocking software in existence blocks material according to these or any other legal criteria. For example, "sexualconduct" is defined by the state. Is mere nudity sexual conduct? Not according to most states. In Utah? I don't know. Does Smartfilter offer a Utah- or Utah-community-specific version? Of course not.

Most censorware programs just lump nudity in with hardcore obscenity. Their simple categories are aimed at the home or business market, after all, and there's no need to be very picky. Sometimes they just block any webpage with "sex" in the URL - no, I'm not making this up, that's the software they were pushing in Holland.

In other words, the only way to satisfy the requirements of the bill is to install software which violates the First Amendment by indiscriminately blocking protected material. The bill uses legal terms that no software can live up to.

Also, the bill offers no definition of "site." Is a site an entire domain? If so, then no minor may access Yahoo, because, at any given time, somewhere on geocities.yahoo.com, there is probably a (soon-to-be-decommissioned) free page with sexual content.

This is not an abstract problem. The Smartfilter software used in Utah at the time of our tests blocked the Wiretap archive, which blocked library patrons from reading the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, "Wuthering Heights," and many other legitimate and valuable texts. Not theoretically - in reality - we know because we read the proxy logs.

But after our report came out, they unblocked it - so now patrons could read about how to have sex with a horse, make drugs, and build an atomic bomb. Same archive. Two very different types of material.

So, should the entire Wiretap archive be blocked, or not? Or should the decision be made at the directory level? The file level? Granularity is important, and by using the sloppy word "site," the lawmakers have dodged the issue.

And they are not alone. Lawmakers in every state and at the federal level are looking at similar legislation. It'll be worded slightly differently every time, but none of it can get around the fundamental problem: computer algorithms aren't up to the task of categorizing human expression.

If and when the governor signs this into law, it will be an important marker in the struggle over filters. It will probably encourage other states to do the same. But, this isn't the final word; wait for the lawsuits to begin.

Greyfox writes "This USA Today story tells us that the Utah Senate just passed a law to withhold funding from libraries that don't implement net filtering. The law now goes to the governor for signing or not signing." The bill text talks about keeping minors off sites with "obscene" material. Most Utah libraries will probably just sign on to the existing statewide Smartfilter network, which (as the Censorware Project has shown) already blocks a legitimate access every 99 seconds. As the law pressures more libraries to sign up, that rate will climb. More thoughts below...

I am not a lawyer, but here's something interesting. The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:

"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."

"Obscene" is a term with strict legal meaning. The definition is, roughly, that the material must depict sexual conduct in an offensive way, must appeal to prurient interest as defined by community standards, and must lack serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political ("SLAP") value.

But no internet blocking software in existence blocks material according to these or any other legal criteria. For example, "sexualconduct" is defined by the state. Is mere nudity sexual conduct? Not according to most states. In Utah? I don't know. Does Smartfilter offer a Utah- or Utah-community-specific version? Of course not.

Most censorware programs just lump nudity in with hardcore obscenity. Their simple categories are aimed at the home or business market, after all, and there's no need to be very picky. Sometimes they just block any webpage with "sex" in the URL - no, I'm not making this up, that's the software they were pushing in Holland.

In other words, the only way to satisfy the requirements of the bill is to install software which violates the First Amendment by indiscriminately blocking protected material. The bill uses legal terms that no software can live up to.

Also, the bill offers no definition of "site." Is a site an entire domain? If so, then no minor may access Yahoo, because, at any given time, somewhere on geocities.yahoo.com, there is probably a (soon-to-be-decommissioned) free page with sexual content.

This is not an abstract problem. The Smartfilter software used in Utah at the time of our tests blocked the Wiretap archive, which blocked library patrons from reading the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, "Wuthering Heights," and many other legitimate and valuable texts. Not theoretically - in reality - we know because we read the proxy logs.

But after our report came out, they unblocked it - so now patrons could read about how to have sex with a horse, make drugs, and build an atomic bomb. Same archive. Two very different types of material.

So, should the entire Wiretap archive be blocked, or not? Or should the decision be made at the directory level? The file level? Granularity is important, and by using the sloppy word "site," the lawmakers have dodged the issue.

And they are not alone. Lawmakers in every state and at the federal level are looking at similar legislation. It'll be worded slightly differently every time, but none of it can get around the fundamental problem: computer algorithms aren't up to the task of categorizing human expression.

If and when the governor signs this into law, it will be an important marker in the struggle over filters. It will probably encourage other states to do the same. But, this isn't the final word; wait for the lawsuits to begin.

Maybe Peacefire's timing is bad. Two courts have recently said that the reverse-engineered DeCSS program is illegal to publish in the United States, and UCITA gets closer every second. Yet Peacefire today released a program that reverse-engineers the encryption on a list of sites blocked by a major censorware product. Maybe T-shirts that say 'X-Stop has a 68% error rate for blocking student homepages' will get classified as munitions next. Bennett Haselton shares his thoughts (below) on corporate crypto.

Bennett Haselton is the founder and head of Peacefire, an activist group to support the free-speech rights of young people. He suggests that you might want to download the X-Stop "smoking gun" evidence (4MB) before the company has a chance to remove it from their server.

The feature below was written by Mr.Haselton.

X-Stop is an Internet censoring program with an encrypted database of 370,000 URL's blocked under various categories: Sex, Drugs, Rock `n' Roll, etc. Their competitors like SurfWatch and Cyber Patrol also do not publish their blocked site lists; the officially given reason is to keep kids from using the lists to find smut on the Internet. This is silly, given how easy it is to find Internet porn without the aid of X-Stop's secret database (although if you still want to, you can download our codebreaker, follow the instructions to get the X-Stop list and decrypt it, and help yourself). But for the next part of our report, after we decoded the URL list, we looked at the first 50 URL's in the .edu domain that were still valid, and found that 34 of them were regular student home pages with nothing offensive (hence the "68% error rate" t-shirt slogan). None of those 34 students who responded to our e-mails could think of why X-Stop would want to block their pages.

X-Stop admits on their Web site that their database is put together by a Web spider called "Mudcrawler" and not by human reviewers, but even for a machine, a 68% error rate is pretty bad. And even though the real reason why these lists are encrypted is obviously to keep competitors from stealing them, this also makes it much harder for third parties to find out what the programs really block. In fact, X-Stop had once claimed that every URL on their list was reviewed by a human before getting blocked, but cyber lawyer Jonathan Wallace called them on it when he published "The X-Stop Files" in 1997, asking why X-Stop blocked several sites like the Quakers home page, the AIDS Quilt, and parts of Jonathan's own e-zine, The Ethical Spectacle. Peacefire also put up a page in 1998 about sites blocked by X-Stop, including an affirmative action site and a blind children's hospital. But these examples were all found through trial and error; today is the first day that the entire list of URL's has been made public. And to determine the 68% figure, it was necessary to have a copy of the entire list, so that the first 50 blocked sites could be used as a random sample.

So far, this is more or less the same story that took place in 1997 with another blocking program, CYBERsitter, right down to Jonathan Wallace posting a page about CYBERsitter and getting his site blocked. First, several people posted articles criticizing CYBERsitter's policies, and slowly CYBERsitter's public image deteriorated as word got out that they were blocking sites which criticized their company (even Time magazine got blocked, and then posted an article about how they found themselves on CYBERsitter's list). Then in April 1997, Peacefire released a program that broke the encryption on CYBERsitter's list of blocked URL's. CYBERsitter sent Peacefire a threatening letter demanding that we take down the program and remove all of our links to CYBERsitter's Web page. Jim Tyre, a volunteer lawyer and future founding member of the Censorware Project, sent CYBERsitter a reply telling them they had no case, and we never heard from them again. But UCITA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the two court injunctions against the right to post DeCSS, didn't exist in 1997. If we had released the CYBERsitter codebreaker today, would CYBERsitter actually file a lawsuit?

The outcome of the DeCSS court cases could, in fact, determine the rights of a private citizen to embarrass a big software company by reverse engineering their products and catching them in a lie. It's easy to forget the importance of legal protection for reverse engineering, because sometimes public opinion is enough: RealNetworks never sued Richard Smith when he revealed that copies of RealPlayer included a "globally unique identifier" to track user's listening habits, and Microsoft never sued Andrew Schulman when he discovered that Windows 3.1 threw up fake error messages about DR-DOS. These were large companies that would have been crucified if they had tried to sue someone for discovering something that the public thought they had a right to know anyway. But legal protections are still important, because sometimes public opinion isn't enough - when the software company doesn't have much of an online reputation to worry about, or when then they have a reputation but they don't care about it.

The RIAA, with their campaigns against MP3 technology and reverse-engineering SDMI, is an example of an organization that doesn't care about their online image - and why should they, since we all download our music for free anyway. CYBERsitter is another good example - they do care about their reputation, but in 1997 their image was that of a children's guardian angel and an ally in fighting government censorship, almost immune to criticism. It took an enormous amount of bad press - letters from CYBERsitter's CEO threatening ISP's and flaming people in general, and at one point actually mail-bombing a lady who sent them a complaint - before even advocates of blocking software started distancing themselves from the company. Even today, CYBERsitter's public image is fairly rosy, and their campaigns of legal harassment hardly affected their reputation at all. (What had you heard about CYBERsitter before you read this article?) It's hard to imagine Microsoft, for example, filing a similar lawsuit without embarrassing themselves and turning their intended target into a martyr. The real threat to "reverse engineering for the public good" is from medium-sized companies, small enough that not everything they do will get in the news, but still big enough to afford lots of lawyers.

This threat affects not just programmers, but even journalists who get anonymous tip-offs - like Brock Meeks and Declan McCullagh, who were threatened with an FBI investigation by CYBERsitter in 1996, after they published their "Keys to the Kingdom" article about sites that CYBERsitter and other "censorware" programs blocked. The part of the article that got them in so much trouble was this excerpt from CYBERsitter's bad- word file:

[up][the,his,her,your,my][ass,cunt,twat][,hole]
[wild,wet,net,cyber,have,making,having,getting,giving,phone][sex...]
[,up][the,his,her,your,my][butt,cunt,pussy,asshole,rectum,anus]
[,suck,lick][the,his,her,your,my][cock,dong,dick,penis,hard on...]
[gay,queer,bisexual][male,men,boy,group,rights,community,activities...]
[gay,queer,homosexual,lesbian,bisexual][society,culture]
[you][are][,a,an,too,to][stupid,dumb,ugly,fat,idiot,ass,fag,dolt,dummy]

If this now counts as a "trade secret" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then our list of the 50 .edu sites blocked by X-Stop - and the study that found the 68% error rate - could be declared illegal. And under UCITA, CYBERsitter could even claim the enforceability of these excerpts from their license agreement:

Reverse Engineering Prohibited
Unauthorized reverse engineering of the Software, whether for edcucational, fair use, or other reason is expressly forbidden. For the purposes of this license the term "reverse engineering" shall apply to any and all information obtained by such methods as decompiling, decrypting, trial and error, or activity logging.

Non-Disclosure
Unauthorized disclosure of CYBERsitter operational details, hacks, work around methods, blocked sites, and blocked words or phrases are expressly prohibited.

So any CYBERsitter user who even discusses what the program blocks, would be in violation. Not that CYBERsitter would enforce this against everybody, but they probably would have liked to enforce it against Brock and Declan.

At this point, we don't know how X-Stop will respond to our report. But we do know that for all of their bluster, CYBERsitter never actually sued Brock, Declan or Peacefire. Given that CYBERsitter pursued the matter for months (and the fact that Brock and Declan had actual money), if CYBERsitter gave up, it's because they had no case. If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, UCITA, or the DVD court rulings change that situation, then it will become much harder to criticize blocking software - or any kind of software - except for the user interface and other things that users can "see" without looking under the hood.

Maybe Peacefire's timing is bad. Two courts have recently said that the reverse-engineered DeCSS program is illegal to publish in the United States, and UCITA gets closer every second. Yet Peacefire today released a program that reverse-engineers the encryption on a list of sites blocked by a major censorware product. Maybe T-shirts that say 'X-Stop has a 68% error rate for blocking student homepages' will get classified as munitions next. Bennett Haselton shares his thoughts (below) on corporate crypto.

Bennett Haselton is the founder and head of Peacefire, an activist group to support the free-speech rights of young people. He suggests that you might want to download the X-Stop "smoking gun" evidence (4MB) before the company has a chance to remove it from their server.

The feature below was written by Mr.Haselton.

X-Stop is an Internet censoring program with an encrypted database of 370,000 URL's blocked under various categories: Sex, Drugs, Rock `n' Roll, etc. Their competitors like SurfWatch and Cyber Patrol also do not publish their blocked site lists; the officially given reason is to keep kids from using the lists to find smut on the Internet. This is silly, given how easy it is to find Internet porn without the aid of X-Stop's secret database (although if you still want to, you can download our codebreaker, follow the instructions to get the X-Stop list and decrypt it, and help yourself). But for the next part of our report, after we decoded the URL list, we looked at the first 50 URL's in the .edu domain that were still valid, and found that 34 of them were regular student home pages with nothing offensive (hence the "68% error rate" t-shirt slogan). None of those 34 students who responded to our e-mails could think of why X-Stop would want to block their pages.

X-Stop admits on their Web site that their database is put together by a Web spider called "Mudcrawler" and not by human reviewers, but even for a machine, a 68% error rate is pretty bad. And even though the real reason why these lists are encrypted is obviously to keep competitors from stealing them, this also makes it much harder for third parties to find out what the programs really block. In fact, X-Stop had once claimed that every URL on their list was reviewed by a human before getting blocked, but cyber lawyer Jonathan Wallace called them on it when he published "The X-Stop Files" in 1997, asking why X-Stop blocked several sites like the Quakers home page, the AIDS Quilt, and parts of Jonathan's own e-zine, The Ethical Spectacle. Peacefire also put up a page in 1998 about sites blocked by X-Stop, including an affirmative action site and a blind children's hospital. But these examples were all found through trial and error; today is the first day that the entire list of URL's has been made public. And to determine the 68% figure, it was necessary to have a copy of the entire list, so that the first 50 blocked sites could be used as a random sample.

So far, this is more or less the same story that took place in 1997 with another blocking program, CYBERsitter, right down to Jonathan Wallace posting a page about CYBERsitter and getting his site blocked. First, several people posted articles criticizing CYBERsitter's policies, and slowly CYBERsitter's public image deteriorated as word got out that they were blocking sites which criticized their company (even Time magazine got blocked, and then posted an article about how they found themselves on CYBERsitter's list). Then in April 1997, Peacefire released a program that broke the encryption on CYBERsitter's list of blocked URL's. CYBERsitter sent Peacefire a threatening letter demanding that we take down the program and remove all of our links to CYBERsitter's Web page. Jim Tyre, a volunteer lawyer and future founding member of the Censorware Project, sent CYBERsitter a reply telling them they had no case, and we never heard from them again. But UCITA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the two court injunctions against the right to post DeCSS, didn't exist in 1997. If we had released the CYBERsitter codebreaker today, would CYBERsitter actually file a lawsuit?

The outcome of the DeCSS court cases could, in fact, determine the rights of a private citizen to embarrass a big software company by reverse engineering their products and catching them in a lie. It's easy to forget the importance of legal protection for reverse engineering, because sometimes public opinion is enough: RealNetworks never sued Richard Smith when he revealed that copies of RealPlayer included a "globally unique identifier" to track user's listening habits, and Microsoft never sued Andrew Schulman when he discovered that Windows 3.1 threw up fake error messages about DR-DOS. These were large companies that would have been crucified if they had tried to sue someone for discovering something that the public thought they had a right to know anyway. But legal protections are still important, because sometimes public opinion isn't enough - when the software company doesn't have much of an online reputation to worry about, or when then they have a reputation but they don't care about it.

The RIAA, with their campaigns against MP3 technology and reverse-engineering SDMI, is an example of an organization that doesn't care about their online image - and why should they, since we all download our music for free anyway. CYBERsitter is another good example - they do care about their reputation, but in 1997 their image was that of a children's guardian angel and an ally in fighting government censorship, almost immune to criticism. It took an enormous amount of bad press - letters from CYBERsitter's CEO threatening ISP's and flaming people in general, and at one point actually mail-bombing a lady who sent them a complaint - before even advocates of blocking software started distancing themselves from the company. Even today, CYBERsitter's public image is fairly rosy, and their campaigns of legal harassment hardly affected their reputation at all. (What had you heard about CYBERsitter before you read this article?) It's hard to imagine Microsoft, for example, filing a similar lawsuit without embarrassing themselves and turning their intended target into a martyr. The real threat to "reverse engineering for the public good" is from medium-sized companies, small enough that not everything they do will get in the news, but still big enough to afford lots of lawyers.

This threat affects not just programmers, but even journalists who get anonymous tip-offs - like Brock Meeks and Declan McCullagh, who were threatened with an FBI investigation by CYBERsitter in 1996, after they published their "Keys to the Kingdom" article about sites that CYBERsitter and other "censorware" programs blocked. The part of the article that got them in so much trouble was this excerpt from CYBERsitter's bad- word file:

[up][the,his,her,your,my][ass,cunt,twat][,hole]
[wild,wet,net,cyber,have,making,having,getting,giving,phone][sex...]
[,up][the,his,her,your,my][butt,cunt,pussy,asshole,rectum,anus]
[,suck,lick][the,his,her,your,my][cock,dong,dick,penis,hard on...]
[gay,queer,bisexual][male,men,boy,group,rights,community,activities...]
[gay,queer,homosexual,lesbian,bisexual][society,culture]
[you][are][,a,an,too,to][stupid,dumb,ugly,fat,idiot,ass,fag,dolt,dummy]

If this now counts as a "trade secret" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then our list of the 50 .edu sites blocked by X-Stop - and the study that found the 68% error rate - could be declared illegal. And under UCITA, CYBERsitter could even claim the enforceability of these excerpts from their license agreement:

Reverse Engineering Prohibited
Unauthorized reverse engineering of the Software, whether for edcucational, fair use, or other reason is expressly forbidden. For the purposes of this license the term "reverse engineering" shall apply to any and all information obtained by such methods as decompiling, decrypting, trial and error, or activity logging.

Non-Disclosure
Unauthorized disclosure of CYBERsitter operational details, hacks, work around methods, blocked sites, and blocked words or phrases are expressly prohibited.

So any CYBERsitter user who even discusses what the program blocks, would be in violation. Not that CYBERsitter would enforce this against everybody, but they probably would have liked to enforce it against Brock and Declan.

At this point, we don't know how X-Stop will respond to our report. But we do know that for all of their bluster, CYBERsitter never actually sued Brock, Declan or Peacefire. Given that CYBERsitter pursued the matter for months (and the fact that Brock and Declan had actual money), if CYBERsitter gave up, it's because they had no case. If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, UCITA, or the DVD court rulings change that situation, then it will become much harder to criticize blocking software - or any kind of software - except for the user interface and other things that users can "see" without looking under the hood.

Maybe Peacefire's timing is bad. Two courts have recently said that the reverse-engineered DeCSS program is illegal to publish in the United States, and UCITA gets closer every second. Yet Peacefire today released a program that reverse-engineers the encryption on a list of sites blocked by a major censorware product. Maybe T-shirts that say 'X-Stop has a 68% error rate for blocking student homepages' will get classified as munitions next. Bennett Haselton shares his thoughts (below) on corporate crypto.

Bennett Haselton is the founder and head of Peacefire, an activist group to support the free-speech rights of young people. He suggests that you might want to download the X-Stop "smoking gun" evidence (4MB) before the company has a chance to remove it from their server.

The feature below was written by Mr.Haselton.

X-Stop is an Internet censoring program with an encrypted database of 370,000 URL's blocked under various categories: Sex, Drugs, Rock `n' Roll, etc. Their competitors like SurfWatch and Cyber Patrol also do not publish their blocked site lists; the officially given reason is to keep kids from using the lists to find smut on the Internet. This is silly, given how easy it is to find Internet porn without the aid of X-Stop's secret database (although if you still want to, you can download our codebreaker, follow the instructions to get the X-Stop list and decrypt it, and help yourself). But for the next part of our report, after we decoded the URL list, we looked at the first 50 URL's in the .edu domain that were still valid, and found that 34 of them were regular student home pages with nothing offensive (hence the "68% error rate" t-shirt slogan). None of those 34 students who responded to our e-mails could think of why X-Stop would want to block their pages.

X-Stop admits on their Web site that their database is put together by a Web spider called "Mudcrawler" and not by human reviewers, but even for a machine, a 68% error rate is pretty bad. And even though the real reason why these lists are encrypted is obviously to keep competitors from stealing them, this also makes it much harder for third parties to find out what the programs really block. In fact, X-Stop had once claimed that every URL on their list was reviewed by a human before getting blocked, but cyber lawyer Jonathan Wallace called them on it when he published "The X-Stop Files" in 1997, asking why X-Stop blocked several sites like the Quakers home page, the AIDS Quilt, and parts of Jonathan's own e-zine, The Ethical Spectacle. Peacefire also put up a page in 1998 about sites blocked by X-Stop, including an affirmative action site and a blind children's hospital. But these examples were all found through trial and error; today is the first day that the entire list of URL's has been made public. And to determine the 68% figure, it was necessary to have a copy of the entire list, so that the first 50 blocked sites could be used as a random sample.

So far, this is more or less the same story that took place in 1997 with another blocking program, CYBERsitter, right down to Jonathan Wallace posting a page about CYBERsitter and getting his site blocked. First, several people posted articles criticizing CYBERsitter's policies, and slowly CYBERsitter's public image deteriorated as word got out that they were blocking sites which criticized their company (even Time magazine got blocked, and then posted an article about how they found themselves on CYBERsitter's list). Then in April 1997, Peacefire released a program that broke the encryption on CYBERsitter's list of blocked URL's. CYBERsitter sent Peacefire a threatening letter demanding that we take down the program and remove all of our links to CYBERsitter's Web page. Jim Tyre, a volunteer lawyer and future founding member of the Censorware Project, sent CYBERsitter a reply telling them they had no case, and we never heard from them again. But UCITA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the two court injunctions against the right to post DeCSS, didn't exist in 1997. If we had released the CYBERsitter codebreaker today, would CYBERsitter actually file a lawsuit?

The outcome of the DeCSS court cases could, in fact, determine the rights of a private citizen to embarrass a big software company by reverse engineering their products and catching them in a lie. It's easy to forget the importance of legal protection for reverse engineering, because sometimes public opinion is enough: RealNetworks never sued Richard Smith when he revealed that copies of RealPlayer included a "globally unique identifier" to track user's listening habits, and Microsoft never sued Andrew Schulman when he discovered that Windows 3.1 threw up fake error messages about DR-DOS. These were large companies that would have been crucified if they had tried to sue someone for discovering something that the public thought they had a right to know anyway. But legal protections are still important, because sometimes public opinion isn't enough - when the software company doesn't have much of an online reputation to worry about, or when then they have a reputation but they don't care about it.

The RIAA, with their campaigns against MP3 technology and reverse-engineering SDMI, is an example of an organization that doesn't care about their online image - and why should they, since we all download our music for free anyway. CYBERsitter is another good example - they do care about their reputation, but in 1997 their image was that of a children's guardian angel and an ally in fighting government censorship, almost immune to criticism. It took an enormous amount of bad press - letters from CYBERsitter's CEO threatening ISP's and flaming people in general, and at one point actually mail-bombing a lady who sent them a complaint - before even advocates of blocking software started distancing themselves from the company. Even today, CYBERsitter's public image is fairly rosy, and their campaigns of legal harassment hardly affected their reputation at all. (What had you heard about CYBERsitter before you read this article?) It's hard to imagine Microsoft, for example, filing a similar lawsuit without embarrassing themselves and turning their intended target into a martyr. The real threat to "reverse engineering for the public good" is from medium-sized companies, small enough that not everything they do will get in the news, but still big enough to afford lots of lawyers.

This threat affects not just programmers, but even journalists who get anonymous tip-offs - like Brock Meeks and Declan McCullagh, who were threatened with an FBI investigation by CYBERsitter in 1996, after they published their "Keys to the Kingdom" article about sites that CYBERsitter and other "censorware" programs blocked. The part of the article that got them in so much trouble was this excerpt from CYBERsitter's bad- word file:

[up][the,his,her,your,my][ass,cunt,twat][,hole]
[wild,wet,net,cyber,have,making,having,getting,giving,phone][sex...]
[,up][the,his,her,your,my][butt,cunt,pussy,asshole,rectum,anus]
[,suck,lick][the,his,her,your,my][cock,dong,dick,penis,hard on...]
[gay,queer,bisexual][male,men,boy,group,rights,community,activities...]
[gay,queer,homosexual,lesbian,bisexual][society,culture]
[you][are][,a,an,too,to][stupid,dumb,ugly,fat,idiot,ass,fag,dolt,dummy]

If this now counts as a "trade secret" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, then our list of the 50 .edu sites blocked by X-Stop - and the study that found the 68% error rate - could be declared illegal. And under UCITA, CYBERsitter could even claim the enforceability of these excerpts from their license agreement:

Reverse Engineering Prohibited
Unauthorized reverse engineering of the Software, whether for edcucational, fair use, or other reason is expressly forbidden. For the purposes of this license the term "reverse engineering" shall apply to any and all information obtained by such methods as decompiling, decrypting, trial and error, or activity logging.

Non-Disclosure
Unauthorized disclosure of CYBERsitter operational details, hacks, work around methods, blocked sites, and blocked words or phrases are expressly prohibited.

So any CYBERsitter user who even discusses what the program blocks, would be in violation. Not that CYBERsitter would enforce this against everybody, but they probably would have liked to enforce it against Brock and Declan.

At this point, we don't know how X-Stop will respond to our report. But we do know that for all of their bluster, CYBERsitter never actually sued Brock, Declan or Peacefire. Given that CYBERsitter pursued the matter for months (and the fact that Brock and Declan had actual money), if CYBERsitter gave up, it's because they had no case. If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, UCITA, or the DVD court rulings change that situation, then it will become much harder to criticize blocking software - or any kind of software - except for the user interface and other things that users can "see" without looking under the hood.

If you've been following the events surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, perhaps in regard to the DeCSS lawsuits, you may have noticed part of the DMCA is not in effect yet and the Copyright Office is taking comments on it. The time period for comments ends today, but that's okay, because even if you don't get in comments today you can file Reply Comments until March 20, and you can always reply to AOL/Time Warner's submission (mirrored here). A number of Slashdot posters have submitted comments as well, but included below is my set of comments to the Copyright Office. Out of 71 comments filed and available so far, only Time Warner's is favorable toward the DMCA.

(Note to would-be commenters: make sure you read the rules before sending in comments. You can send comments in plain text or as a PDF file [see createpdf.adobe.com], but it must be as an e-mail attachment, not in the body, addressed to 1201@loc.gov.)

Comments on 17 USC Section 1201(a)(1), Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Michael Sims
76 Swan St.
Staten Island, NY 10301
(718) 556-1002
<michael@slashdot.org>

David O. Carson
General Counsel, Copyright GC/I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station
Washington, DC 20024

By e-mail: 1201@loc.gov
Comments on 17 USC Section 1201(a)(1), Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Dear Copyright Office,

My comments on this section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are simple: I recommend that the Librarian of Congress find that enforcement of Section 1201(a)(1) will adversely affect non-infringing uses of copyrighted works for ALL CLASSES of copyrighted material, and thus the prohibition in subparagraph (A) should not apply to any user for any copyrighted work for the next three years.

Digital copyright protection systems offer the potential for copyright holders to totally eliminate any "unauthorized" uses through technology. The copyright system employed on Digital Versatile Discs (DVD's), for example, does not permit users to make copies, grab still screenshots or audio snippets, or even to play the disc in an unauthorized piece of hardware, on an unauthorized operating system, or in an unauthorized country. This is the model for future digital distribution systems. No technological system can tell whether a user is making "fair use" copying or not, so they restrict all copying.

Users already pay for whatever unauthorized copying may occur. See 17 USC Sec. 1004, which describes the government-mandated royalty payments on digital audio recording devices and media, which go to producers of copyrighted content. Everyone who purchases any equipment relating to digital audio pays a tax directly into the pockets of the recording industry, whether they ever infringe any copyrights or not. These forced royalties were put into place specifically to compensate copyright holders for the alleged "casual copying" that users would perform.

There is already plenty of copyright law on the books. Copyright infringement is unlawful and punishable. By definition, a corporation pursuing claims under the copyright infringement laws is enforcing its rights to the maximum extent of the law - so what use is the prohibition against circumventing access control measures? The only use of such a prohibition is to attack conduct that is NOT infringing, yet still involves some sort of access to a copyrighted work, since infringing conduct could be attacked under other parts of the copyright laws. The usual name for conduct that isn't infringing but involves copying from a copyrighted work is "fair use".

And of course "effectively controls access to a work" reaches far beyond a copyright holder's rights under our current laws. The phrase is not "effectively controls copying of a work", though even that would eliminate fair use copying. Copyright is the right to prevent copying. The right to prevent or regulate access to a specific work is one that has never been enforced by copyright - when one book vendor tried to do so, the Supreme Court ruled against them, in BOBBS-MERRILL CO. v. STRAUS, 210 U.S. 339 (1908). Once a book is sold the copyright holder loses all powers over it - the purchaser can sell it again, loan it out, or read it in the country of his choice. Under section 1201(a)(1), a digital book author could restrict any or all of these abilities, and violating the restrictions would be grounds for civil and criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison. Once more: reading a book in a location or manner not authorized by the copyright holder could land you five years in prison. In a world that is rapidly moving to digitization of all works of creativity and scholarship, this is a frightening thought.

I'm not sure I can emphasize this enough. The only purposes which 1201(a)(1) can be used for is to restrict consumers from non-infringing copying and from accessing the copyrighted content in the time, place and manner of their choosing, which has never been a legitimate subject of copyright rights. That is, if a lawsuit is brought against someone, only two situations can exist: either that person was actually infringing copyright, in which cases claims could be brought under both the copyright infringement statutes and this circumvention provision; or the person was not actually infringing, in which case the claim under this provision would necessarily affect non-infringing conduct. In the first case this provision is simply tacking on more liability to the copyright infringement codes (which Congress should do independently if it wishes); in the second case it is making tort-feasors or criminals out of persons who have not infringed copyright in any fashion.

So we've established that the only conduct which section 1201(a)(1) affects is conduct which is non-infringing copying, or unauthorized access. Nothing in the law requires copyright holders to set "fair" standards for access to works - for instance, a digital book, perhaps a work by Stephen King or Danielle Steele, could cost $5 for individuals to buy, but $500 for libraries to buy. The mass market books could be issued with the "access restriction" that the purchaser may not lend the book to anyone else, ever, and thus the library would have no recourse but to purchase the $500 lending-permitted version. Access could be further restricted by only allowing the purchasing library to lend the book out; inter-library loans would be a thing of the past. Or maybe digital books would expire after a set time period; trying to gain access to them afterwards would be a violation. Naturally, copyright holders will seek to maximize their profits by setting the most restrictive access terms that the market will accept. Conduct like this is allowed by the law, hugely profitable to copyright holders, and under section 1201(a)(1), taking any action to circumvent it is illegal.

The Federal Register notice asks for specific examples of abuse. As an example, the standard for Digital Versatile Discs forces DVD players disable the user's ability to fast-forward when instructed by the disc. This allows copyright holders to include advertisements in the content which the user has no choice but to watch. If I want to be able to make certain non-infringing uses of a DVD I've purchased - such as watching only the 90% of the content which is not advertisements while skipping past the rest - the access controls in the work prohibit me from doing so, and the DMCA prohibits me from circumventing those access controls. There are hundreds or thousands of examples of abuses related to the software field. Many software programs limit their use to a single machine CPU, prevent users from making back-up copies of the original software, inform on users via the Internet to the company which produced the software, and otherwise limit the user's ability to copy or access the software in the manner of his choosing.

Access controls will also adversely affect the ability of libraries to archive copyrighted works. Digital Versatile Discs may last as little as 5-10 years (that is how long CD's last) and the access controls built into all DVD players and recorders mean that is impossible for a library to transfer a copyrighted work to a new medium for archival purposes. While a library's rare book collection can be digitized so that even when preservation efforts fail, an authentic copy remains available, no such preservation measures are allowed by the DMCA.


I hope I have made my point adequately. Honestly, the Librarian's action on this matter is likely to have little practical effect. Section 1201(a)(2) of the law, already in effect, outlaws the production, importation or distribution of any devices (including software code) which would circumvent access control measures. This part of the DMCA is already being used against individuals who wanted to play DVD's on an "unauthorized" computer operating system, Linux, and constructed a device to allow them to play lawfully-purchased DVD's on computers running Linux. The outcome of that lawsuit is not yet determined, but it is clear that making lawful, non-infringing uses of lawfully purchased DVD's (the defendants have not been accused of any copyright infringement whatsoever) is being hampered by the DMCA.

Thus, even if the Librarian accepts my recommendation and negates the effect of 1201(a)(1) for the next three years, a library may still find itself in the position of being permitted to circumvent an access control measure but not being allowed to construct or otherwise obtain a "device" which would allow them to perform it, unless the library desired to be sued by a copyright holder. However, if the Librarian were to reject 1201(a)(1) for all copyrighted works, this would send a strong message to Congress that the current attitude toward protecting copyrighted works, which involves no consideration of the fair use rights of the public, is unacceptable to the library community.


-- Michael Sims
Feb. 16, 2000

I'm halfway through Susan Blackmore's book "The Meme Machine," and it's rekindled my interest in meme dispersal. In a memetic sense, the battle over filters in the Holland library is just one of implanting the right ideas in enough people's minds by the day of the vote. Here's a look at one of the more annoying memes the opposition is using: a lie about the results of my very own organization. Click for more.

Everyone's familiar with the term "meme" by now, so I don't have to explain that it's the unit of idea transmission. The struggle over Internet filters, or any other conflict where ideas, facts, opinions, and outlooks collide, is memetic in nature: it's memetic warfare.

All's fair in war, supposedly, but I'm someone who has been infected by the meme that we should all fight fair, even - especially - in the war of ideas.

Will the "fight fair" meme become popular in the long run? I hope so. But the way I see it, that will only happen if it is more successful at reproducing than its alternative: "fight dirty." In the long run, it doesn't matter what's right, or what's good, or what benefits us humans the most. The memes just spread because they're good at spreading.

In early 1999, my friend (now Slashdot writer) Michael Sims started a long process to obtain some Web logs from the state of Utah. Internet access for schools and libraries across the state was provided by a single network, and all their Web traffic went through proxies that had the same blocking software running. Their Web logs were a gold mine of data, showing both blocked and unblocked accesses. When users were blocked from something, the logs showed what category it was blocked in.

Our group, the Censorware Project, had been looking for a real-world test case of this software. Michael did a tremendous amount of work to file the papers, get permission to get the logs, have them delivered, gather them, and analyze them. He then wrote a brilliant report (the rest of us helped too).

What this let us do was see how blocking software's errors show up in the real world. We had known for years that the software has many mistakes in its blacklists, in every product we'd studied. But we had no data on how that affected users.

When all the data was crunched, two numbers surprised us. First, the amount of material blocked was quite small: about 0.6%. People were interested in things besides pornography on the internet. Who would have thought.

Second, just looking at the wrong blocks that we were able to find, the proportion was quite high: about one block in every 20 was Constitutionally protected material. That's a minimum - the minimum we were able to confirm. All in all, we identified over 5,000 occasions when people were blocked from reading protected material (totalling 300 unique Web sites).

Most measures of blocking software effectiveness focus on how much pornography it blocks. We weren't able to test that because we couldn't look through the 99.4% of unblocked material - over 53million URLs. Just too much data. But we did learn that, in Utah, 5% of the time, when the software said "you can't look at that," it was just plain wrong.

Ninety-five percent accuracy might sound like a nice high figure to base a good meme around. Who could argue with a number like 95%? But consider what this means for the 300 Web sites in question: each of them was blocked from being read by a great many public institutions in the state of Utah.

And the First Amendment protects publishers, not readers: it's freedom of the press, not freedom to read the press. When you're blocked from reading your favorite author, you might be annoyed, but if the censor were taken to court, the injured party would be the author.

This is exactly what we fought against the Communications Decency Act for. Except, in many ways, censorware is worse. If your site is one of the 5% that's wrongly blocked, you won't know it. Our government will stop people from reading what you have to say even if your site is completely innocent (like the Candy Land website), and nobody will bother to notify you. You won't ever know.

At least with the CDA, you'd have gotten a letter from the prosecutor telling you your site was censored - and nobody, but nobody, would ever have been censored for publishing the Bible.

(Yes, the Bible was one of the banned books we found in Utah, along with the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, etc. That kind of thing makes good memes.)

Michael put a lot of work into our report, and I even contributed a little, so I'm a little protective of that 5% meme. Which is why it was so jarring to open up a press kit distributed by the Family Research Council, last week, and find our work, cited in black and white, as support for the figure: "one in a million."

That's right, the exact same report which found one bad block in every twenty is now being cited as proving that Web sites are misblocked "one time in a million."

Now that's a good meme. "One in a million" sticks with you. It isn't backed up by any of the facts, but despite that handicap - or perhaps partly because of it - it has thrived.

It was first invented by a fellow named David Burt, who read our report not very carefully, and then decided he was going to do a little numerology of his own.

The first thing he did was ignore all the bad blocks we'd found that he thought were perfectly appropriate. For example, we'd found that the homepage of the band "The Offspring" was wrongly blocked - you may remember their songs from the fall of 1998. "I'm just a sucker with no self-esteem," and so on. (You're humming it now. Catchymeme.)

David Burt decided that The Offspring deserved to be blocked, and to illustrate why, quoted nine words from their Web site:

"These songs have ideas PLUS drugs, sex and ass-kicking"

He also decided it was OK to block BaywatchTV.com, BirthControl.com, the Starr Report, the Yahoo category "Society and Culture: Romance," and Glamour magazine. It was OK to block a page on the NASA Web site about a crackdown on hackers, because it "discusses hacking techniques." Both takedown.com and 2600.com should be blocked, he says, for the same reason. A fellow whose homepage includes a link to a PGP FAQ - no code or binaries - should be blocked for containing "cryptographic software."

Did I mention this man is a librarian?

After trimming out all the fat from our list, he got it down from over 300 sites to just 64. Of course, this was the list of unique sites. If he'd had all our numbers, he would have known that his changes affected our 5% figure by about 0.1% - this because the large majority of blocked sites are blocked few times.

There's some other nonsense he tried, like saying that we were deceitful to ignore blocked banner ads because they were surely all pornographic. In fact, four of the five top blocked ad sites were perfectly ordinary, and counting ads would have made our numbers more impressive, not less.

But his main meme was the number. Armed with his new figure "64", he performed a division by the largest number in our report, which was 54,000,000. Kind of like dividing apples by hydrogen. Of the 54,000,000 URLs, only 29% were page views; only 0.56% of those were blocked; and the previously-mentioned 5% of those were blocked incorrectly. From there he switched from blocks to unique blocks, cutting the actual figure of 5,000 down to his list of 64.

Then, dividing 64 by the original 54,000,000, he got 1 in 1.18... well, for the meme's sake he got one in a million.

Publishing this in April of 1999, David Burt ignored our corrections. Despite our offering all the raw data on CD-ROM, for the cost of the media, he just accused us of lying.

You can't say anything to that, without getting into a yes-you-are no-we're-not. We'd put out two press releases about this already. We told him to order the CD-ROMs and check for himself. Then we moved on.

But his meme began to spread. In June, the company that made the blocking software pulled the same trick, reported the results to Sen. John McCain - and then issued a press release about it. Our group was now cited as supporting their software by proving its accuracy. Since the numbers were so big anyway, they just used the 300 figure and called it an "accuracy rate of 99.9994%."

A group I've never heard of, the American Decency Association, now points to our study and says: "Filters Work!" They source is another group I've never heard of, the Michigan Decency Action Council. Word gets around.

So when I opened up the report "Internet Filtering and Blocking Technology," published by the Family Research Council and distributed at their Holland presentations, I was not surprised when I found the same meme on pages 9 and 14. (I was surprised to see them divide 64 into 54,000,000 and get 6 parts per million. But as long as they've blown the numbers so badly, a little botched division doesn't make any difference.)

I talked to two of the FRC techies about this and tried to explain what was wrong with the numbers. I got some mild interest. Will the FRC correct and reprint this report? Of course not. Admitting that DavidBurt fudges numbers might be a bad tactical move. The concluding two sections of the report have 31 footnotes, 28 of which reference no one but Mr.Burt.

I choose to be an optimist about the marketplace of ideas. I believe that truthful memes will proliferate in the long run, because enough people's brains select for truth.

But in the meantime, it's frustrating when my team takes below-the-belt punches from the guys who don't care about what's true.

I don't expect everyone reading this to share my memeplex on this issue. I know from reading the comments that many Slashdot readers think censorware in libraries is a good thing, and that's fine. In fact, I'll bet many of you are grinding your teeth that I keep using the word "meme" so damn much. That's fine too.

All I ask is that, when your memes start arguing with my memes, you make them fight fair. It's only right.

I'm halfway through Susan Blackmore's book "The Meme Machine," and it's rekindled my interest in meme dispersal. In a memetic sense, the battle over filters in the Holland library is just one of implanting the right ideas in enough people's minds by the day of the vote. Here's a look at one of the more annoying memes the opposition is using: a lie about the results of my very own organization. Click for more.

Everyone's familiar with the term "meme" by now, so I don't have to explain that it's the unit of idea transmission. The struggle over Internet filters, or any other conflict where ideas, facts, opinions, and outlooks collide, is memetic in nature: it's memetic warfare.

All's fair in war, supposedly, but I'm someone who has been infected by the meme that we should all fight fair, even - especially - in the war of ideas.

Will the "fight fair" meme become popular in the long run? I hope so. But the way I see it, that will only happen if it is more successful at reproducing than its alternative: "fight dirty." In the long run, it doesn't matter what's right, or what's good, or what benefits us humans the most. The memes just spread because they're good at spreading.

In early 1999, my friend (now Slashdot writer) Michael Sims started a long process to obtain some Web logs from the state of Utah. Internet access for schools and libraries across the state was provided by a single network, and all their Web traffic went through proxies that had the same blocking software running. Their Web logs were a gold mine of data, showing both blocked and unblocked accesses. When users were blocked from something, the logs showed what category it was blocked in.

Our group, the Censorware Project, had been looking for a real-world test case of this software. Michael did a tremendous amount of work to file the papers, get permission to get the logs, have them delivered, gather them, and analyze them. He then wrote a brilliant report (the rest of us helped too).

What this let us do was see how blocking software's errors show up in the real world. We had known for years that the software has many mistakes in its blacklists, in every product we'd studied. But we had no data on how that affected users.

When all the data was crunched, two numbers surprised us. First, the amount of material blocked was quite small: about 0.6%. People were interested in things besides pornography on the internet. Who would have thought.

Second, just looking at the wrong blocks that we were able to find, the proportion was quite high: about one block in every 20 was Constitutionally protected material. That's a minimum - the minimum we were able to confirm. All in all, we identified over 5,000 occasions when people were blocked from reading protected material (totalling 300 unique Web sites).

Most measures of blocking software effectiveness focus on how much pornography it blocks. We weren't able to test that because we couldn't look through the 99.4% of unblocked material - over 53million URLs. Just too much data. But we did learn that, in Utah, 5% of the time, when the software said "you can't look at that," it was just plain wrong.

Ninety-five percent accuracy might sound like a nice high figure to base a good meme around. Who could argue with a number like 95%? But consider what this means for the 300 Web sites in question: each of them was blocked from being read by a great many public institutions in the state of Utah.

And the First Amendment protects publishers, not readers: it's freedom of the press, not freedom to read the press. When you're blocked from reading your favorite author, you might be annoyed, but if the censor were taken to court, the injured party would be the author.

This is exactly what we fought against the Communications Decency Act for. Except, in many ways, censorware is worse. If your site is one of the 5% that's wrongly blocked, you won't know it. Our government will stop people from reading what you have to say even if your site is completely innocent (like the Candy Land website), and nobody will bother to notify you. You won't ever know.

At least with the CDA, you'd have gotten a letter from the prosecutor telling you your site was censored - and nobody, but nobody, would ever have been censored for publishing the Bible.

(Yes, the Bible was one of the banned books we found in Utah, along with the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, etc. That kind of thing makes good memes.)

Michael put a lot of work into our report, and I even contributed a little, so I'm a little protective of that 5% meme. Which is why it was so jarring to open up a press kit distributed by the Family Research Council, last week, and find our work, cited in black and white, as support for the figure: "one in a million."

That's right, the exact same report which found one bad block in every twenty is now being cited as proving that Web sites are misblocked "one time in a million."

Now that's a good meme. "One in a million" sticks with you. It isn't backed up by any of the facts, but despite that handicap - or perhaps partly because of it - it has thrived.

It was first invented by a fellow named David Burt, who read our report not very carefully, and then decided he was going to do a little numerology of his own.

The first thing he did was ignore all the bad blocks we'd found that he thought were perfectly appropriate. For example, we'd found that the homepage of the band "The Offspring" was wrongly blocked - you may remember their songs from the fall of 1998. "I'm just a sucker with no self-esteem," and so on. (You're humming it now. Catchymeme.)

David Burt decided that The Offspring deserved to be blocked, and to illustrate why, quoted nine words from their Web site:

"These songs have ideas PLUS drugs, sex and ass-kicking"

He also decided it was OK to block BaywatchTV.com, BirthControl.com, the Starr Report, the Yahoo category "Society and Culture: Romance," and Glamour magazine. It was OK to block a page on the NASA Web site about a crackdown on hackers, because it "discusses hacking techniques." Both takedown.com and 2600.com should be blocked, he says, for the same reason. A fellow whose homepage includes a link to a PGP FAQ - no code or binaries - should be blocked for containing "cryptographic software."

Did I mention this man is a librarian?

After trimming out all the fat from our list, he got it down from over 300 sites to just 64. Of course, this was the list of unique sites. If he'd had all our numbers, he would have known that his changes affected our 5% figure by about 0.1% - this because the large majority of blocked sites are blocked few times.

There's some other nonsense he tried, like saying that we were deceitful to ignore blocked banner ads because they were surely all pornographic. In fact, four of the five top blocked ad sites were perfectly ordinary, and counting ads would have made our numbers more impressive, not less.

But his main meme was the number. Armed with his new figure "64", he performed a division by the largest number in our report, which was 54,000,000. Kind of like dividing apples by hydrogen. Of the 54,000,000 URLs, only 29% were page views; only 0.56% of those were blocked; and the previously-mentioned 5% of those were blocked incorrectly. From there he switched from blocks to unique blocks, cutting the actual figure of 5,000 down to his list of 64.

Then, dividing 64 by the original 54,000,000, he got 1 in 1.18... well, for the meme's sake he got one in a million.

Publishing this in April of 1999, David Burt ignored our corrections. Despite our offering all the raw data on CD-ROM, for the cost of the media, he just accused us of lying.

You can't say anything to that, without getting into a yes-you-are no-we're-not. We'd put out two press releases about this already. We told him to order the CD-ROMs and check for himself. Then we moved on.

But his meme began to spread. In June, the company that made the blocking software pulled the same trick, reported the results to Sen. John McCain - and then issued a press release about it. Our group was now cited as supporting their software by proving its accuracy. Since the numbers were so big anyway, they just used the 300 figure and called it an "accuracy rate of 99.9994%."

A group I've never heard of, the American Decency Association, now points to our study and says: "Filters Work!" They source is another group I've never heard of, the Michigan Decency Action Council. Word gets around.

So when I opened up the report "Internet Filtering and Blocking Technology," published by the Family Research Council and distributed at their Holland presentations, I was not surprised when I found the same meme on pages 9 and 14. (I was surprised to see them divide 64 into 54,000,000 and get 6 parts per million. But as long as they've blown the numbers so badly, a little botched division doesn't make any difference.)

I talked to two of the FRC techies about this and tried to explain what was wrong with the numbers. I got some mild interest. Will the FRC correct and reprint this report? Of course not. Admitting that DavidBurt fudges numbers might be a bad tactical move. The concluding two sections of the report have 31 footnotes, 28 of which reference no one but Mr.Burt.

I choose to be an optimist about the marketplace of ideas. I believe that truthful memes will proliferate in the long run, because enough people's brains select for truth.

But in the meantime, it's frustrating when my team takes below-the-belt punches from the guys who don't care about what's true.

I don't expect everyone reading this to share my memeplex on this issue. I know from reading the comments that many Slashdot readers think censorware in libraries is a good thing, and that's fine. In fact, I'll bet many of you are grinding your teeth that I keep using the word "meme" so damn much. That's fine too.

All I ask is that, when your memes start arguing with my memes, you make them fight fair. It's only right.

A woman walks quietly onto a bare stage with mysterious lighting and pulls open a massive double door. Behind it is revealed a mysterious machine in motion, gears and pulleys, flaps and treads, and projected onto it a distorted image from the century's brand-new medium: film. At the League of Women Voters meeting in Holland's library on Monday night, I felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play, perhaps one like George Bernard Shaw's HeartbreakHouse. Click for more...

Many of Shaw's plays deal with the absurdity of modernity. As Shaw wrote HeartbreakHouse in 1919, he was looking back over the old century he was from, but also turning his gaze forward to the new era of technological whirligigs: their promise and, more often, their price. In the production I saw at the ShawFestival, the crazy machinery and projected film images from the era set the tone for Shaw's bemused, puzzled, sad question: what on earth are we to do now?

Monday night's meeting at the library was an informational forum arranged by the League of Women Voters. It opened with a detailed talk by a lawyer about exactly what the local ballot initiative means in legal terms, which was interesting to me but which many attendees found tedious. Oddly enough, the first item on his agenda was the First Amendment, which he simply skipped as too complicated. In the final analysis, of course, it may be the only legal issue of any importance.

After a half-hour of careful explanation, the co-chair of one of the local pro-filtering groups took her turn at the lectern, and began her talk by listing the organizations that were for and against filters in libraries. Those in favor: 2500 local signers of the petition, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, our beloved governor John Engler, her group Holland Area Citizens Voting Yes, several Republican groups I didn't catch, and I think she would have mentioned Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Mother Theresa if they weren't dead.

The groups against filters? The Gay/Lesbian Alliance, and Feminists For Free Expression - who, she was careful to point out, believes that the proper response to "badporn" is "goodporn."

Well, isn't that special. No word on whether the Communist Party or Atheists International had taken sides on the issue.

She repeated that the library does not track patron usage and so does not know if there is a problem with pornography. This is one of the contentious issues - with tens of thousands of patrons using the internet in the last four years, there have been only six instances where someone had to be removed for violating library usage rules. Only one of these is known to involve viewing pornography. In that respect, Holland is probably fairly typical; my local library has roughly the same number of complaints proportional to number of terminals.

I wanted to point out that, even if the library did keep logs, it would be a full-time job just to keep figures on the appropriateness of patrons' reading choices. I know. I've written perl code to break down a month's worth of school and library logs in the state of Utah: a gigabyte gzipped. We still don't have good figures. About four-tenths of a percent of websurfing is inappropriate for libraries, is our best guess. But we don't know.

When the first anti-filtering speaker got up, almost the first words out of his mouth were that he wasn't affiliated with the gay and feminist groups mentioned - and a nervous laugh and smile. I can't blame him.

I was the first one to stand up with a question. I briefly mentioned the fact that, in Loudoun County, a federal judge had declared library censorware to be a violation of the First Amendment and struck it down - after an extended and expensive legal dispute. I asked how, hypothetically, such a dispute would impact the city.

I was hoping to get people thinking about the way that a simple vote could divide the community. Holland has the potential to become one of the nation's test cases, and I'm not sure the city realizes what it's getting into.

But the woman who walked to the lectern to answer my question was KimberleyFraser of the Family Research Council, to whom I had addressed a Slashdot openletter earlier that same day.

I'd told Kimberley last week that I would be writing such a letter, and told her she'd get a chance to respond. I made it clear that her response would not be edited in any way. I'd just print it as she wrote it. Free publicity.

But when she got to the mike, the first thing she said was that she would not be responding. Why? Take a look at that letter again. Each Slashdot story has a clever little "dept." that it's "from" - this story pointed out that the Blue-Footed Booby was blocked by the stupid software, so I ran it "from the don't-look-at-those-boobies dept."

I'm not sure if any Slashdot regulars are even reading the depts. - I've never gotten e-mail or read a comment that even mentions them. But Ms.Fraser did. She informed us that she would not be responding to the letter because it was "from the don't look at those boobies department" (pause for dramatic effect). She held aloft a printout of the Slashdot page and shook it. From my chair I could see the yellow streaks of highlighter.

I'm not sure she even understood that the boobies in question were birds. She may not have read the whole letter. She then proceeded to share more comments, as many as she was allowed in her one minute to answer my question. It seems many of the blocked sites I'd listed were (as I said) from products besides SurfWatch, as if that entitled her to ignore SurfWatch's own errors; then she started making another point and her minute ran out. She walked out of microphone range saying that the debate would be continued. Debate?

The anti-filtering side did manage to stand up and talk about the effect of legal action on the community. I'm sure nobody remembers what they said.

Another question was on how patrons will know that material is blocked, so that errors can be unblocked. Good question - our analysis of the Utah logs shows that, in practice, errors are almost never corrected. For some reason, patrons just don't want to go to their librarian to say, "please let me look at this page that apparently is hardcore pornography."

The example that the Family Research Council has been using to show how easy it is to unblock sites is The Onion (and this was what Kimberley said in her answer). They've been standing up in front of audiences while their techies click at the keys, showing first how The Onion is blocked as obscenity, then how with a swift adjustment of the filter, we can read the story Local Prostitutes Eagerly Await Dentists' Convention. Then - I'm not making this up - Kimberley reads the first few paragraphs of that story, to illustrate how lascivious it is.

The funny thing is that their demonstration illustrates the opposite. Their techies only type in www.theonion.com to be unblocked; graphics.theonion.com remains blocked, so the pictures don't come through. They've actually been demonstrating how difficult it is for librarians to make on-the-fly corrections to blacklists. Nobody has seemed to notice.

After some more questions, an exchange developed where the director of the library ended up pointing out that attendants are near the internet terminals, and explaining the procedure to follow if someone is offended by inappropriate material. (Some people do complain: the last complaint I heard about was the BritneySpears site, though I doubt they thought it was offensive for the same reason that I do.)

The meeting closed with Kimberley retorting, "If my child sees porn, how will you erase that image from his mind?" I assume that was a rhetorical question. "A library attendant is good," she said, "but an attendant can't throw his body between the child and the screen." It was late and the building was closing; that pretty much wrapped things up.

In my work with the Censorware Project over the last two years, I've gotten used to analyzing blocking software in intricate detail. Often I think we know more about some software packages than even their manufacturers; in any event we pore over megabytes and gigabytes of data to learn as much as we can.

That knowledge is worth nothing at meetings like these. Nobody cares how the software works. Nobody is interested in terms like keyword blocking, overbroad blocking or underblocking, nor even information on effectiveness or First Amendment legal issues. The issue will be decided purely on the basis of emotion. Gigabytes evaporate down to two bits of data: (1)there exists porn; (2)filters block porn. There seems to be nothing more that anyone wants to know.

Through much of HeartbreakHouse, the characters talked past each other, unable to communicate, unable to understand. At the end, the stage that had served as workshop and sitting-room for the entire play slowly cracked open, drew apart, and a chasm grew between the rear of the stage and the front. The players, now set outside on a balcony, talked fearfully as the lights reddened and the first mortars of the GreatWar were heard in the distance. As Shaw and his audience knew in 1919, all of their talk, their whole world from the past, was now a faded backdrop of meaningless words to the machine guns, zeppelins, aeroplanes, and tanks of the modern era. Technology itself had caused the chasm between centuries. Some things never change.

A woman walks quietly onto a bare stage with mysterious lighting and pulls open a massive double door. Behind it is revealed a mysterious machine in motion, gears and pulleys, flaps and treads, and projected onto it a distorted image from the century's brand-new medium: film. At the League of Women Voters meeting in Holland's library on Monday night, I felt like I'd walked into a ridiculous play, perhaps one like George Bernard Shaw's HeartbreakHouse. Click for more...

Many of Shaw's plays deal with the absurdity of modernity. As Shaw wrote HeartbreakHouse in 1919, he was looking back over the old century he was from, but also turning his gaze forward to the new era of technological whirligigs: their promise and, more often, their price. In the production I saw at the ShawFestival, the crazy machinery and projected film images from the era set the tone for Shaw's bemused, puzzled, sad question: what on earth are we to do now?

Monday night's meeting at the library was an informational forum arranged by the League of Women Voters. It opened with a detailed talk by a lawyer about exactly what the local ballot initiative means in legal terms, which was interesting to me but which many attendees found tedious. Oddly enough, the first item on his agenda was the First Amendment, which he simply skipped as too complicated. In the final analysis, of course, it may be the only legal issue of any importance.

After a half-hour of careful explanation, the co-chair of one of the local pro-filtering groups took her turn at the lectern, and began her talk by listing the organizations that were for and against filters in libraries. Those in favor: 2500 local signers of the petition, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, our beloved governor John Engler, her group Holland Area Citizens Voting Yes, several Republican groups I didn't catch, and I think she would have mentioned Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Mother Theresa if they weren't dead.

The groups against filters? The Gay/Lesbian Alliance, and Feminists For Free Expression - who, she was careful to point out, believes that the proper response to "badporn" is "goodporn."

Well, isn't that special. No word on whether the Communist Party or Atheists International had taken sides on the issue.

She repeated that the library does not track patron usage and so does not know if there is a problem with pornography. This is one of the contentious issues - with tens of thousands of patrons using the internet in the last four years, there have been only six instances where someone had to be removed for violating library usage rules. Only one of these is known to involve viewing pornography. In that respect, Holland is probably fairly typical; my local library has roughly the same number of complaints proportional to number of terminals.

I wanted to point out that, even if the library did keep logs, it would be a full-time job just to keep figures on the appropriateness of patrons' reading choices. I know. I've written perl code to break down a month's worth of school and library logs in the state of Utah: a gigabyte gzipped. We still don't have good figures. About four-tenths of a percent of websurfing is inappropriate for libraries, is our best guess. But we don't know.

When the first anti-filtering speaker got up, almost the first words out of his mouth were that he wasn't affiliated with the gay and feminist groups mentioned - and a nervous laugh and smile. I can't blame him.

I was the first one to stand up with a question. I briefly mentioned the fact that, in Loudoun County, a federal judge had declared library censorware to be a violation of the First Amendment and struck it down - after an extended and expensive legal dispute. I asked how, hypothetically, such a dispute would impact the city.

I was hoping to get people thinking about the way that a simple vote could divide the community. Holland has the potential to become one of the nation's test cases, and I'm not sure the city realizes what it's getting into.

But the woman who walked to the lectern to answer my question was KimberleyFraser of the Family Research Council, to whom I had addressed a Slashdot openletter earlier that same day.

I'd told Kimberley last week that I would be writing such a letter, and told her she'd get a chance to respond. I made it clear that her response would not be edited in any way. I'd just print it as she wrote it. Free publicity.

But when she got to the mike, the first thing she said was that she would not be responding. Why? Take a look at that letter again. Each Slashdot story has a clever little "dept." that it's "from" - this story pointed out that the Blue-Footed Booby was blocked by the stupid software, so I ran it "from the don't-look-at-those-boobies dept."

I'm not sure if any Slashdot regulars are even reading the depts. - I've never gotten e-mail or read a comment that even mentions them. But Ms.Fraser did. She informed us that she would not be responding to the letter because it was "from the don't look at those boobies department" (pause for dramatic effect). She held aloft a printout of the Slashdot page and shook it. From my chair I could see the yellow streaks of highlighter.

I'm not sure she even understood that the boobies in question were birds. She may not have read the whole letter. She then proceeded to share more comments, as many as she was allowed in her one minute to answer my question. It seems many of the blocked sites I'd listed were (as I said) from products besides SurfWatch, as if that entitled her to ignore SurfWatch's own errors; then she started making another point and her minute ran out. She walked out of microphone range saying that the debate would be continued. Debate?

The anti-filtering side did manage to stand up and talk about the effect of legal action on the community. I'm sure nobody remembers what they said.

Another question was on how patrons will know that material is blocked, so that errors can be unblocked. Good question - our analysis of the Utah logs shows that, in practice, errors are almost never corrected. For some reason, patrons just don't want to go to their librarian to say, "please let me look at this page that apparently is hardcore pornography."

The example that the Family Research Council has been using to show how easy it is to unblock sites is The Onion (and this was what Kimberley said in her answer). They've been standing up in front of audiences while their techies click at the keys, showing first how The Onion is blocked as obscenity, then how with a swift adjustment of the filter, we can read the story Local Prostitutes Eagerly Await Dentists' Convention. Then - I'm not making this up - Kimberley reads the first few paragraphs of that story, to illustrate how lascivious it is.

The funny thing is that their demonstration illustrates the opposite. Their techies only type in www.theonion.com to be unblocked; graphics.theonion.com remains blocked, so the pictures don't come through. They've actually been demonstrating how difficult it is for librarians to make on-the-fly corrections to blacklists. Nobody has seemed to notice.

After some more questions, an exchange developed where the director of the library ended up pointing out that attendants are near the internet terminals, and explaining the procedure to follow if someone is offended by inappropriate material. (Some people do complain: the last complaint I heard about was the BritneySpears site, though I doubt they thought it was offensive for the same reason that I do.)

The meeting closed with Kimberley retorting, "If my child sees porn, how will you erase that image from his mind?" I assume that was a rhetorical question. "A library attendant is good," she said, "but an attendant can't throw his body between the child and the screen." It was late and the building was closing; that pretty much wrapped things up.

In my work with the Censorware Project over the last two years, I've gotten used to analyzing blocking software in intricate detail. Often I think we know more about some software packages than even their manufacturers; in any event we pore over megabytes and gigabytes of data to learn as much as we can.

That knowledge is worth nothing at meetings like these. Nobody cares how the software works. Nobody is interested in terms like keyword blocking, overbroad blocking or underblocking, nor even information on effectiveness or First Amendment legal issues. The issue will be decided purely on the basis of emotion. Gigabytes evaporate down to two bits of data: (1)there exists porn; (2)filters block porn. There seems to be nothing more that anyone wants to know.

Through much of HeartbreakHouse, the characters talked past each other, unable to communicate, unable to understand. At the end, the stage that had served as workshop and sitting-room for the entire play slowly cracked open, drew apart, and a chasm grew between the rear of the stage and the front. The players, now set outside on a balcony, talked fearfully as the lights reddened and the first mortars of the GreatWar were heard in the distance. As Shaw and his audience knew in 1919, all of their talk, their whole world from the past, was now a faded backdrop of meaningless words to the machine guns, zeppelins, aeroplanes, and tanks of the modern era. Technology itself had caused the chasm between centuries. Some things never change.

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

Last month I shared with you some news about the pressure to install blocking software on the Holland library's Internet terminals. I promised to dive into the trenches of the struggle, and report occasionally to Slashdot on what was happening. There's been a lot to report, but more to do. Over the next two weeks I'll catch you up on what's been happening. Today, a peek into the heart of the matter: an open letter to the local Family Research Council, on the flaws of their favorite software. Click for more.

Last Wednesday, the library board opened up its auditorium for two and a half hours for three presentations on blocking software. The local branch of the FRC went first and put SurfWatch through its paces. They showed an unfiltered Internet on the left, SurfWatch on the right, and demonstrated how a search on "breast cancer" was successfully not blocked. Then they put child pornography on the wall of the library auditorium, demonstrating what SurfWatch would block.

For my presentation, I had brought a computer, but asked them if they would mind my demonstrating the software's flaws on their own laptop, to show I had not misconfigured anything. They agreed.

I spent much of my presentation talking about the size of the Internet and why most blocking was done by robots. Then I spent several minutes just listing some of the sites found blocked in some of our earlier studies at the Censorware Project.

Then I turned to the keyboard to illustrate some bad blocks. I ran out of time before getting to most of them. Some I did show but so quickly that many of those watching may not have realized what was going on.

Afterwards, Kimberley Fraser, who gave the Family Research Council presentation, asked me about some of what I'd said. I ended up asking her if I could respond to her in the form of an open letter. She agreed.

Below is that letter.

Dear Ms. Fraser,

As you know, at Herrick District Library last Wednesday night, your group gave a demonstration of SurfWatch's successes and then I showed some of its failures. I went through these failures rather quickly and didn't give the audience much of a chance to see the details of what I was doing.

You asked afterwards if I could provide verification of some of these points of failure, and I am delighted to do so.

First of all, regarding the colossal list of wrongly-blocked sites that I spent so much of my presentation reading, please consult our Web site. These wrong blocks were found in our reports on five other popular blocking packages: X-Stop, Cyber Patrol, WebSENSE, X-Stop again, SmartFilter, and Bess. You will find these reports at http://censorware.org/reports/.

There was some confusion in the question-and-answer period about whether these wrongly-blocked sites were also blocked by SurfWatch. Surely not all, and I have no reason to believe very many of them, are still blocked by SurfWatch or any other software. As I explained, when wrong blocks are publicized, they are usually unblocked quickly to minimize bad press.

Now, regarding the errors of SurfWatch itself. Note that some of its past errors are cataloged at http://peacefire.org/censorware/SurfWatch/. I am not sure whether I found time to describe those erroneous blocks or not.

In any case, here is information that hadn't been reported before. The following are all sites which I had prepared for Wednesday night, not all of which I was able to demonstrate. Please consult with your technical staff and confirm that each of these URLs and searches is wrongly blocked using the same category ("Sex") that you use in your tests and that you would recommend for public libraries.

http://www.gaydaze.com/sstory/curfantasy.html
"Daisies for my Wife," by Harold Roppers, a science fiction short story.

http://censorware.org/essays/sex_lies_jt.html
"Sex, Lies, and Censorware," an essay by my colleague Jim Tyre that is critical of SurfWatch.

http://intertain.com/store/browse.html
The bookstore at Intertain.com. Starting from that Web page, click "Browse," then "Love, Sex and Marriage." All categories of books on that page, 600 books total, are blocked, including books on domestic violence, natural childbirth, and African-American families.

http://www.wap.org/ifaq/sex/marriage.html
"Marriage." A humorous look at marriage through the eyes of children.

http://netdetours.com/archive/sex.html
"Sex and Politics: A historical look at affairs of state." A comparison of the Clinton sex scandal to scandals of other historical figures.

http://www.wwf.org/galapagos/booby.htm
The World Wildlife Foundation maintains information about the animals found on the Galapagos islands. SurfWatch refuses to let us read about the Blue-Footed Booby.

Searches on the following phrases are blocked, on (almost) any search engine:

safe oral sex
testicle cancer
sexually abstain
abstain from sex
sexual abstinence
no sex
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (book title)
Smart Sex (book title, safe sex guide)
Voyeurism in the French Novel (book title)
Save Sex (title of both book and FRC poster campaign)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/013000tv-voyeurism.html
"Television's New Voyeurism Pictures Real-Life Intimacy." The New York Times looks at shows like "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." (In the question-and-answer period, one gentleman suggested that this page was blocked for a suggestive photo that appeared in the print edition of the Times. Please confirm that the Web page has no photo.)

http://www.rainbow.ch/chribru/chris/odonnell.htm
A Chris O'Donnell fan page.

http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/6834/
"Alternative Healing Resources: A Reference Guide for Balancing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit."

http://www.lesbigay.com/equal_rights/equality.html
"The Equality Project: Dedicated to promoting education and acceptance of all genders, sexualities, races, and religions."

http://www.magiccarpet.com/%7ecgrafe/diamondgallery/
"Diamond Gallery Sports Cards." Baseball and football cards for sale or trade.

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Crime/Crimes/Sex_Crimes/Child_Pornography/
Four of the thirteen anti-child pornography sites listed on Yahoo are blocked. "All Against Child Pornography," "Anti Pedophile Network", "Adult Sites Against Child Pornography," and "Defence for Children International."

http://cnn.com/starr.report/
The Starr Report, in every place it appears on the Internet (this URL is just one example).

http://afa.net/Pornography/pornography.html
And finally, the American Family Association, which launched the pro-blocking-software initiative in Holland, is blocked.

I believe your technical staff will confirm what I have found to be true: that all of these are blocked as pornography by your software. Please let me know what your team says. Thank you.

Jamie McCarthy
jamie@slashdot.org

You think your community is conservative? Holland, Michigan, home of the Slashdot Geek Compound, is a conservative community. "Y2K," according to yard signs on my way to last night's library meeting, stands for "Yes 2 King Jesus." Supposedly the city has gone to every Republican presidential candidate but one (Abraham Lincoln). Now the American Family Association has brought mandatory library censorware to a vote on Feb.22, and the measure's opponents have a tough six weeks ahead of them. This is the first time the battle over library filters has come near my community, and my first close look at the grass roots of a First Amendment struggle. Click for more.

The conservative community isn't the only reason that the AFA has chosen the Holland area, in my home state, to be one of its important fronts in the library blocking-software war.

There is an unusual law in the city of Holland that allows any measure to be brought to a ballot vote by petition. This is good in that it brings democracy directly to the people. Unfortunately, if a couple thousand people signed a petition demanding that the mayor must part Lake Michigan or forfeit his salary, that issue would go on the ballot. Democracy doesn't always make sense.

You may have seen press about the Republication presidential candidates campaigning in our fair state. This is because our governor pushed the primary ahead this year, so that we are now one of the first states to cast a ballot for the nominees. Registered Republicans will be going to the polls on Feb.22 to decide which candidate they like best.

Registered Democrats don't get to vote on GOP candidates and largely don't care. But in the city of Holland, thanks to a last-minute petition drive spearheaded by the AFA, there will be one additional issue on the ballot: mandatory blocking software in the city library.

Ironically, the surrounding townships help pay for the same library, but because the petition-to-ballot law applies only in the city, they won't be voting on how their money will be spent.

Holland Republicans, already at the polls to nominate a candidate, will merely have to check one more box. Holland Democrats, assuming for the sake of argument that they exist, will first have to learn that they can vote on Feb.22, and then take the trouble to drive down to the polls for the sole purpose of, as the AFA will surely characterize it, forcing children to look at pornography.

Not that it's quite that simple - the issue surely doesn't break precisely across party lines - but: Ouch! Putting the issue on the ballot on the same day as the Republican primary was a brilliant strategic move. If this is what local politics are all about, maybe I'm glad I haven't gotten involved before.

But if last night's meeting at the library is any indicator, it's not over yet.

The meeting was sponsored by Families for Internet Access, a small Holland group working to oppose library blocking software. Roughly 200 people showed up in the basement of the library to discuss the issue, including at least three Slashdot readers. The large majority were clearly opposed to filters. Luckily, the minority was vocal enough that at least some of their views could be heard, so it wasn't too one-sided.

Don Wildmon, president of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based AFA, says "a community's taxpayers own the local library," and it's going to be interesting to see if that's true. The Holland library has had few problems with inappropriate material to date. The computers in the children's section are not on the net. The internet terminals in the adult section are clustered closely in a well-lit area; patron sessions are limited to 30minutes once per day, and library staff walk through the area frequently to enforce this rule. Even with access restricted to brief sessions, there is almost always a line waiting to use the next computer.

In the four years they've offered internet access, there have been a total of six incidents where a patron had to be removed for causing a disturbance. Of these, only one involved viewing of inappropriate material (it was unclear whether or not this was pornography). To put this in perspective, there were 26,000 patrons who used the internet last year alone.

It seems a bustling, crowded public area in a public library, in front of a big window facing a busy street, is not an environment where people commonly go to look at porn. Imagine that. As one of last night's presenters said, "there is an effective filter in place already, and that is the good people of Holland." It seems clear that censorware is a solution in search of a problem - at least in this community.

But the AFA knows how to look for a problem. The pamphlet that they circulate on library "safety" suggests some ways to determine whether a library has "come under the influence of the American Library Association." The "citizen activist" is urged to "use these helps to learn if your library is a community friend or foe":

"Inquire if your library ... celebrates ALA's 'Banned Books Week.'"

"Search for classic scholarly books. A healthy selection should be available. Suggested titles... Principia Mathematica by Sir Issac Newton." [sic]

"On your library's computer, go to www.yahoo.com or any of the popular Internet search engines. In the search field enter the following: XXX,hardcore,nude"

Are those really the best ways to determine whether a library has a problem with pornography?

Incidentally, I've not gotten confirmation, but the rumor is that the local AFA will be recommending SurfWatch as their filter of choice. In which case, that last suggestion is an interesting one. I purchased and installed SurfWatch on my home computer this weekend, and it blocks me from accessing Yahoo. I still can't figure that out, considering the company that sells it partners with Yahoo.

The AFA has also been claiming support from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). But at Monday night's meeting, he said he can't specifically support the local initiative because he doesn't know what it's all about. In fact, when the AFA's position was described to him, he interrupted to ask what "AFA" stood for.

In the end, it may not matter whether the problem of inappropriate library material exists or is manufactured. The AFA also recommends that its activists "take [their] concerns through the library chain of command," but in Holland, they refused to meet with the library and went straight to the ballot instead. The voters will decide whether censorware gets installed, and the public's chance to learn about the issues may be limited at best.

In the next six weeks I hope to get a "view from the trenches" of Holland's First Amendment struggle, and to bring it to Slashdot. I'll make no bones about the position I take on the issue. I'll try to focus less on why blocking software is a bad idea in libraries - I'll leave it to other websites to explain that - and more on how the memeticwarfare ^[*] is being conducted. I'll be reading all your comments. Check the YRO section, too, for updates not quite important enough for the Slashdot homepage.

Because this month, mandatory library censorware is a hot topic in Holland. Next month, it may be in my home town. And the month after that - yours.

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

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Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

----------

Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

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Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

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Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

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Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

Our interview guests this week are American Jim Tyre and Australian Irene Graham. Both are long-time, well-known online free speech and anti-censorware activists; links from Monday's call for questions can tell you all about them. Anyway, here are their answers to your questions. They'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about censorware and why it's not a good thing. There are also a lot of good tips about online and political activism in general contained in their answers; you may want to read this to pick up on those even if censorware and free speech aren't your personal "hot button" issues. (mucho more below)

1) Censorship: problem or symptom?
by Signal 11
I believe censorship is a result of various groups / countries wanting to protect their cultural identity (which includes their social taboos). The second thing I want to put forward is the fact that the internet is a culture-neutral medium - it breaks down the traditional geographical barriers that seperate us from other countries. Witness cultural exchange programs, founded under the premise that communication == exchange of ideas. That generally promotes a "blending effect" (for lack of a better description) between cultures.

My question is simple: in light of this, attacking censorware is only attacking the symptom, not the cause. What solutions do you believe are reasonable for accomodating the concerns of these groups? Going one step further, should they be accomodated?

Jim:
You're correct that censorware is only a symptom there is a reason why, for example, every year librarians and others "celebrate" Banned Books Week but I'm not certain that I agree with the premise that the Internet is a culture-neutral medium, particularly in the context of a censorship discussion.

To some cultures, whether national or here in the U.S., every advance in technology has been a threat. Planes, trains and automobiles have changed many cultures, and so has or will the Internet. In many nations, the Internet itself is a threat, which is why some try to keep it out completely, or to allow it only under highly controlled circumstances. A content-free Internet would be culturally neutral, but an Internet which includes hundreds of sites about The Satanic Verses can hardly be considered neutral to many in Tehran or Islamabad.

In the context of the Internet, any attempt to accommodate a particular group is fraught with danger. (Some) parents were concerned with what their kids might be exposed to, so censorware was developed for home use. But the moralists were not satisfied, so laws like the CDA were enacted. When it was struck down, in part because censorware was touted as a less restrictive alternative, legislators pounced and introduced legislation (still pending) requiring the use of censorware in certain schools and libraries, not just for children, but for adults as well. And of course, as discussed in YRO, there are renewed multinational efforts to revitalize and impose PICS.

History has shown that it is a fundamental mistake to believe that censors can be accommodated. If one wants to preserve a cultural identity, the way to do it is to inculcate the positive values of that identity, not to pretend that other cultures do not exist.

2) What can we do?
by Ex-NT-User
It seems the majority of governments that are instituting censorship legislation are doing this "behind their populations backs". And certainly without majority support of the people they govern over. Mailing/calling our representatives doesn't seem to help much since they just blow us off for special interest groups.

So what can we as individuals do prevent this? What other avenues can we take?

Irene:
I think one of the problems is that many politicians see the people on the Net as being a special interest group, so which special interest group should they listen to? Some politicians, for example, claim that people on the Net don't care about protecting children - you'd think no-one on the Net had kids if you didn't know better.

The problem of changing such perceptions is exacerbated by the tendency of people on the Net to do anything they can by email and not being willing to devote a little time to understanding the political processes involved.

So there's not just a question of what individuals can do, but what they shouldn't do. Here's some examples to explain what I mean from the recent anti-censorship campaign in Australia...

Some people set up email lists to automatically send the same message to all Australian politicians - it sounded like a great idea and heaps of well-intentioned people used these. The problem was, apparently, that many people sent rude, abusive emails. This is not the way to get one's point across and encourages the view that people on the Net are different from "ordinary" people. At the same time, the politicians who were already opposing the Bill received messages abusing them. Unfortunately, this encourages them to say "why bother?" - why shouldn't they support the pro-censorship lobby who quite likely aren't rude and say thank you?

During the campaign here, I rang the offices of my "representatives" who happened to be members of the opposition party just to say thanks for opposing the Bill. The staffers who answered the phone practically fell over themselves thanking me for bothering to call - they were so, so tired of the abusive emails and calls from people who hadn't even bothered to check what their policy was.

At one stage in the campaign here, it was reported that filter rules had been added to the Parliamentary email system, to give politicians the option of filtering anything about the Net censorship Bill into a separate folder. They were receiving too much email, which was interfering, apparently, with their ability to find email on other topics.

Another issue is that computers make it arguably too easy to just copy and paste texts that the cyber-liberties groups issue as suggestions, or that someone else has written. Standard texts are generally given little credence by politicians - they see it as just part of a campaign, too easy, from someone who doesn't care enough to bother writing their own views.

As well, there's the problem that many people don't even know what's going on. They don't read the newspapers regularly, certainly not the IT sections, and in Australia the TV news didn't mention the Bill until -after- the Senate approved it. Talk to people "in the streets" and you're likely to find even though they're not on the Net yet, they comprehend well enough to know the proposed legislation is silly, but hadn't heard about it. The spam problem has also made it quite difficult to get alerts out to a large portion of the Net community - those who don't subscribe to anti-censorshiop news/mail lists but who would be horrified to know what's happening in the halls of Parliaments.

So I think there's probably more don'ts than dos:

• discourage people from bulk emailing politicians,
• Discourage use of standard texts - and spend time writing in your own words,
• write snail mail or send faxes or phone up - in that order - don't email,
• ask for an opportunity to meet to discuss the matter - you've more chance of succeeding with this if your letter makes clear that you can provide useful information and are capable of rational, not emotional, discussion,
• find out what your representatives' views are before you contact them, or ask, or say something like "if you believe .... then....", don't assume what they know or think,
  
• respond to government inquiries, Senate Committee inquiries and the like. Don't leave this just to organisations and don't just write saying basically "I agree with [insert cyber-liberties group name]'s submission". Regrettably, this immediately marks you as just part of a "special interest" group,
• send thank you letters, or call to say thanks, when appropriate,
• talk to people off the Net about the Net - this is really important in terms of offsetting the power of the traditional media and the scare stories they love to distribute,
• write to newspaper/magazine editors etc when you see Net scare stories, and also write to them about why sensible stories are relegated to IT section (this happens in Australia more often than not, where they're mostly only seen by the already converted),
• read up on how to lobby politicians - there are books about this as well as Net resources such as:

Aust: http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
USA: http://www.neosoft.com/vtw/cda-lobby.html

Another idea is the "Adopt a Politician" efforts that have been undertaken in some areas. Individuals offer to help a politician learn about a particular Net issue - or the Net in general - before the next round of silly legislation hits their desk. Of course, not all politicians want to learn, but some do.

And:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead.

3) Free speech in other countries
by /
As more countries' citizens get exposed to the internet and to the ideas of unbridled free expression, do you see further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in their charters or constitutions? Or do you see technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has or millennia?

Irene:
I'd like to think the former, but I fear the latter's more likely.

Speaking from an Australian perspective, I think mere access to the Net has changed a lot of peoples' views about the supposed merits of censorship. When people see the potential for being jailed for saying something on a mailing list that they can say without fear off-line, what censorship is suddenly looks entirely different. No longer is it something that only applies to film distributors, publishers and the like.

Knowledge that people in other countries aren't subject to the same level of censorship can certainly encourage and bolster opposition to it. We had a case, http://rene.efa.org.au/censor/rabelais.html, in Australia recently where the student editors of a university journal were prosecuted for publishing an article called "The Art of Shoplifting". The judge said something like "nowhere in the world" would they be allowed to publish it. Someone on the Net knew that wasn't correct and drew relevant information to the defence team's attention which helped in their decision to appeal. Although they lost the appeal, a lot of attention was drawn to the case, surprisingly even in the traditional media - it seemed everyone was opposed to the prosecution. Eventually the prosecution dropped the charges. The law's still in place, but maybe the politicians etc who called for the students' scalps so to speak will think twice in future. I think the Net made a difference in this case in several ways - easier access to relevant information and knowledgeable people overseas and as a medium for communicating what was happening.

In short, it's becoming much more difficult for governments to justify their policies by saying "nowhere in the world" etc because ordinary individuals can more easily find out it isn't true. Not only that, they can read about, and discuss, why other countries have different policies and make up their own minds about what's best.

That is, of course, frightening to governments, so there's undoubtedly a severe risk of "technology being harnessed to keep the masses in check as it has for millennia". Many people saying no to censorship is the only thing that's even likely to stop it happening.

The question is, who'll win the race? Censorware developers claiming to have the "perfect" censorware seeking government contracts and/or industry contracts "encouraged" by government? Or increasing numbers of people on the Net getting informed and deciding to make their views known to politicians?

The "Internet industry's" reaction to government demands for censorship can also present problems as we're seeing in Australia right now. Government enacts legislation saying ISPs must block sites on government demand or face large fines. The Internet Industry Association (IIA) comes up with a way around the technical problems for them, that will make their life easier. IIA represents 60 of the some 700 ISPs in Australia but their recently approved Code of Practice for ISPs is now effectively law applicable to all ISPs.

The IIA Code requires that ISPs "provide for use, at a charge determined by the ISP, an Approved Filter" to each customer. So we're going to have users paying for censorware whether they want it or not. The IIA says that some ISPs will provide it for free, but the censorware vendors obviously won't give it to ISPs free. Even if the ISPs don't charge for it separately, they'll include the cost in Net access fees. There's no requirement for ISPs to offer users their choice of censorware, or provide any warnings as to the shortcomings of the filter, yet IIA claims this forced provision of censorware "empowers" the user.

Although users don't have to install or use the censorware, there's several potential censorship problems and I'll mention just one here.

ISPs complain about "clueless" requests for technical help from users. I've no doubt they do get such calls and that they take up a lot of their time. But what will happen when they start getting calls from those people who want to install the censorware (I assume there'll be some) but who have problems doing so? It will be an extremely undesirable outcome of the law if the ISPs incorporate censorware in their registration process/disk so it's automatically installed on a user's computers with the defaults set to block=on. Many people won't want to use censorware and a lot of these programs are very difficult to uninstall. Will ISPs themselves know how to do that, or give any sort of priority to customers trying to get rid of something the government requires the ISPs to provide? Will the censorware block access to the few (if any) web pages around that explain how to remove it? This scenario may not happen, but it's certainly possible some ISPs could do this. As it is, many people don't know the questions they should ask before opening an account with an ISP and this Code seems likely to make the problem worse for unknowledgeable people.

The Australian government has, for the moment anyway, dropped its requirement that ISPs block overseas content at the server level, probably because of a combination of massive public opposition and the industry etc pointing out that it's not "technically and commercially feasible" at present. Some of the censorware vendors tell the government it is and/or soon will be. Government mandated provision of censorware to every Australian Internet user will certainly place a great deal of extra money in the pockets of censorware suppliers - money that may well be used for developing censorware more suitable for installation on ISPs servers or backbones. I don't think the threat of censorship facilitated by technology is over in Australia yet, it may just be on hold. The Code of Practice ISPs have to comply with by law can be changed quite easily.

So, looking at the Australian experience for example, it's difficult to say whether access to the Net will lead to further local pushes to enshrine free-speech protections in law, or whether technology will be harnessed to keep the masses in check. There are numerous governments far more repressive than Australia's and technology being harnessed is obviously more of a threat in countries that don't claim to be democratic. One thing I am sure of is that anyone who promotes the development of censorware as a means of staving of government censorship either has rocks in their head, or doesn't know how repressive some governments can be. If you build tools that facilitate censorship, some governments will use them.

4) A proposal
by dclydew
It is obvious that "censorware" is a fatally flawed tool. Using technical solutions for social issues doesn't work. However, it's also clear that many parents don't want a T-1 full of porn available to their child every Monday through Friday. So I'd like feedback on the following proposal:

In areas where minors have access to public internet services (school/libraries), they would be given an account. This account would be accessible via a smart "library" card. The account is identified by account# only. These account#'s are logged along with sites that are visited by minor. At the request of a parent/gaurdian, a report can be generated so that they can determine if their child is acting within the acceptable boundaries set by the family unit. No one else would be permitted to use this reporting tool. This takes censorship out of the hands of everyone except the people legally responsible for the minor.

I belive that this approach removes all unnecessary layers of argument and leaves us with one question:

Should anyone (parents/gaurdians included) have the right to control what their child sees/hears/views for entertainment/etc. ?

This question obviously has a precedence: Children under 18 are not permitted to purchase pornography, tobacco, etc. However, a parent could permit their child to have such things. Perhaps by purchasing the items for the minor.

Please give me your thoughts....

Jim:
To be honest, my first thought is Orwell's 1984, or perhaps even some of David Brin's writings. You've just made it legal for the government to keep tabs on every Internet site visited by every minor, so long as the minor is using a government machine (public schools and libraries are a part of the government). Those who know me know that I'm not ultra-paranoid about government, but giving this much data to the government frightens me. I recognize that your intent is that the data only be made available to the parent or legal guardian, but can you think of a meaningful guarantee that it can't be misused? As I write this, I can't. (I suppose a script could be written which would automatically encrypt the data only to the parent's PGP public key or similar, but I'm thinking in terms of what would work for the vast majority, not just a fairly small minority.)

Now suppose, hypothetically, that rock-solid guarantees could be made. Where, and how, do you draw the age line? The actual age of majority differs somewhat among the states, but let's assume it is 18. Should a 17 year old be scrutinized as closely as a 9 year old? What if the 9 year old is particularly mature, the 17 year old particularly immature? And by the way, some states grant far more independent rights to minors than do most states or the federal government. For example, in California and Florida, a first trimester pregnant 14 year old has exactly the same right to an abortion as does a first trimester pregnant 30 year old no parental consent or judicial approval is required. (The U.S. Constitution sets minimum standards for individual rights; the states can not drop below the federal minimums, but they can, and some do, recognize more rights as a matter of independent state law.) If a 14 year old California girl has a right to an abortion without parental consent, would you give the parent access to the log of abortion-related web sites the girl has visited?

Then one gets to discrimination based on medium. In most public libraries, an unattended 15 year old can pull any book he or she wants off the shelves and read it cover to cover without the parent ever knowing. Should the rules be different if the text of that same book happens to be on the Internet?

Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to raise their children as best they can, to try to instill in them a moral code, whatever that code might be. If the parents choose to home school, that is their right, but if the parents let their children go out into the world, as most do, they do so knowing full well that their children will see/hear/read/do things which the parents will never know about, hoping that the children's upbringing will serve them well. Why should exposure to the Internet be different from everything else to which the minor is exposed?

Incidentally, proposals like yours have been considered and rejected both by pro-censorship types and by anti-censorship types. The pros don't want anyone, and particularly not minors, to have access to certain kinds of information. The antis don't want government assisting restrictive parents. What the so-called silent majority would say is anyone's guess.

5) Rhetoric of anti-censorship
by H3lldr0p
What arguments have you used to try and persuade people that censorware is not an acceptable answer to whatever problem they are currently having with the world at large?

I ask for two reasons. I have been a fan of Bradbury for some time and will always suggest that everybody needs to read _Fahrenheit 451_, but I have also recently read Ken Burke's "Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle.'" He argues therein that _Mein Kamf_ should not be censored on the grounds that history might repeat itself if we are unaware of what has gone on before.

Jim:
As a preliminary note, I am not familiar with Burke's work, but absolutely I oppose censoring Mein Kampf, or any other work I find extremely distasteful. And I say this as a Jewish person who had a number of ancestors exterminated in the Holocaust.

What works? One thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a lawyer is that you have to tailor your approach, consistent with that which is verifiably true, to your intended audience, while (hopefully) adding in something new and unexpected. For example, in our early reports, we at The Censorware Project stressed what we sometimes call collateral damage or overblocking -- wrongful bans of innocuous and valuable sites. This emphasis worked fabulously in our early reports, such as our first report on X-Stop in October 1997. Not only did the usual suspects take notice, but groups such as Filtering Facts and Family Friendly Libraries, which previously had specifically endorsed X-Stop, abandoned it like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

But while the point remains as valid today as it was then, more people have heard it before and say, in effect, "tell me something new." So in our most recent report on Bess, done about five months ago, we did exactly that, in part because a major focus of Bess is schools instead of public libraries.

In K-12 schools, you would think that the primary focus would be on blocking hard core sex sites, so we opened some eyes when we reported, based on our tests of real proxies actually in use in a number of schools, that Bess did not block HardCoreSex.com, as well as lots of other porn sites, most of which were not new - and we did not spend a great deal of time searching extensively for unblocked porn sites. In other words, while showing plenty of examples of the usual overblocking, we added in the new (for our reports) element of meaningful underblocking, a more attention-getting point to those who don't care about overblocking, because "It's for the children."

Not coincidentally, our Bess report was released on the day of the IPO of N2H2, Inc., the company which makes Bess. The stock price plummeted on the first day, and continued to do so for a good long while after, though it has since rallied. Whether there was a cause and effect is an exercise I will leave to market analysts and Slashdot readers.

One point which has to be emphasized, particularly if addressing a new product: there is no magic bullet, nor will there be absent a quantum leap in artificial intelligence technology. Each new product, and even each new release of an existing product, comes to the market with an almost teflon-like quality, magically cleansed of the foibles of its predecessors, because so many want to believe that censorware can do what the vendors claim it can do. It isn't so.

6) How much is too much?
by zantispam
I for one dislike censorship in all of it's forms. However, does government demand it?

Let me explain a bit...

Ok, here in the US, we have a right to free speech. Conversely, we have no right to be heard. What this means is that it's theoretically ok for me to say "I think that Clinton is a green donkey!". It also means that no one has to hear what I just said. Whether it be a function of censorship, or just because most people think I'm nuts, my view has not been heard. Nowhere am I guaranteed this right.

The problem with this is that it makes censorchip `legal', in a way. The [insert favorite agency to pick on here] can choose not to grant my right to be heard, and that's (unjustly, IMHO) ok.

My question is: Does government, in any form, require censorship to function? Put another way, do we necessarily have to give up our right to be heard by choosing to live in any type of society? Put a third way, is the right to be heard equal to the right to privacy (unlawful search and siezure).

Jim:
An important distinction needs to be made here, and that is where you want to be heard. If you want me to hear you while I am in my private home, you can't barge into my home, uninvited, in order to make sure that I hear you. Similarly, if a parent chooses to use censorware on their home computer in an attempt to protect or isolate a child, you can't force your Internet speech onto that home computer.

But while "censorship" can be used with a broader meaning, your reference to a favorite agency leads me to believe that you are talking about censorship by the government. If that is the case, then your premise is largely incorrect. There is a substantial body of case law dealing with so-called public forums, and their offshoot, limited public forums. There are exceptions to every rule (I did say that I'm a lawyer, didn't I?), but generally speaking, if the government makes available a public forum, it can not deny your right to be heard based on the content of your speech, so long as the speech itself is not unlawful (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is the usual example). A public library is not constitutionally required to offer any Internet connections at all, but if it does provide access, it cannot discriminate based on the desirability of the speech, particularly with adult listeners. As a private citizen, I can decide that I only want to "hear" comments on slashdot which are scored 3 or better, but the government cannot decide that for me.

Of course, while I may have a right to have my lawful Internet speech heard in a wired library, this does not mean that I have a right to equal time with cnn.com. If their site gets more views than mine, c'est la vie.

You might be able to tell that I've been struggling a bit with your question, and it just occurred why - you really aren't talking about censorship at all if, at long last, I'm getting the question. In the narrow sense, it is censorship if the government prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. In a broader sense, it is censorship if any third person (or software imposed by a third person) prevents or deters me from speaking or you from hearing me. But it is not censorship at all, using any common meaning of the word, if I decide, of my own volition, that I simply do not want to hear what you have to say. Contrary to what at least one person has written, censorware opponents do not want to force anyone to read that which they do not want to read. Sorting information, deciding what is important to us, what is not, is something we do constantly, on and off of the Internet.

That is entirely different from someone else, and particularly the government, blocking you from information which you do want to read.

7) censorship, apathy, and the general population
by Requiem
How can we attempt to show the general population that censorship is not a good thing? It seems that people accept the spoonfed excuse of "it's for your own good"; how can we get people to think critically about the situation and come to their own conclusions?

Irene:
I'm not at all sure that people do accept "it's for your own good". In my experience, people in favour of censorship are usually worried about the effect seeing or knowing something will have on _other_ people. They're usually quite confident of their own ability to critically analyse information and decide for themselves whether or not it's a good idea to act on it, and of their own ability to control their own children (usually anyway). It's what other people, or other people's children, will do that worries them.

Try reversing that - saying to such people that _other_ people approve of censorship because they're worried about that person's inability to cope with information and you could have quite an interesting conversation. This won't work with everyone, but it will make some people start to think about their assumptions.

The American Library Association's site contains some useful information about motivations for censorship and tactics.

One thing that can make people start to question the merits of censorship is to make them aware of what's censored. The problem with censorship is most people have no idea - they never see what's censored - so they assume it's really really bad stuff (whatever that is in their view).

The banning of the shoplifting article I mentioned earlier was quite useful in this regard in Australia. Although it was banned in print, someone put it on the Web. A lot of people who read it couldn't believe there were laws that could put people in jail for distributing it - they saw it as intended humour, satire (not the best literary work but all the same). The law was made to look more ridiculous when one of the judges included the whole article in his decision upholding the ban on it. The Court decision, including the article, was published on the Web.

The Net's very helpful in this regard. When, say, a film's banned or cut, one can usually find a detailed review of it, or people overseas talking about in newsgroups or wherever. Governments' claims that banning is necessary to protect society etc. sound very silly when it's known that the film was released uncut in numerous other countries and there's no reports of any harm being caused.

It only takes a few examples of what's banned outright, or cut from films, to make some people start questioning their previous certainty that "government knows best."

With regard to the people who believe studies have proven that viewing something causes violence or whatever, about the only thing you can do is to learn about the research and studies for yourself so you can speak knowledgeably and argue about it if necessary. A section of my web site contains useful information and links in this regard.

8) Legal question.
by Weezul
Frequently censorware seems to target anti-censorship (sites/people) as much as they target porn (this was especially a problem in Australia). What can be done about this?

Are there laws in the U.S. or Australia that would allow people who censor anti-censorship sites to be sued?

Irene:
I don't know of any Australian anti-censorship sites targeted by censorware. If you have details I'd be interested in hearing about it.

In Australia, it's doubtful such sites/people would have much redress other than defamation, and proof of damage would be difficult. Same applies to ordinary user sites. A business blocked by censorware could consider an action for defamation, or deceptive business practices under the Trade Practices Act.

Jim:
Targeting anti-censorship sites is a problem here in the U.S. as well (Irene has answered about Australia). The Censorware Project, Peacefire and The Ethical Spectacle are among many anti-censorship sites which have been banned at various times by the censorware makers. (Interestingly, pro-censorware/censorship sites such as Filtering Facts and The American Family Association have been blacklisted as well.)

There is no specific law which would allow the owner of a blocked anti-censorship site to sue the censorware maker. Censorship, in the legal sense, involves state action, but there is no state action involved in the mere fact that a censorware vendor has added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist. However, there are at least three instances in which the owner of a wrongfully blocked site might be able to sue a censorware vendor or user.

First, if the censorware is being used in a public institution such as a public library, the site owner may well have standing to sue the institution for blocking the constitutionally protected speech at the site. In the Loudoun County, Virginia Public Library lawsuit, the action was commenced by library patrons, but the ACLU intervened on behalf of content providers whose sites were blocked in the library. The Library Board tried to argue that the providers had no standing to intervene, but the Court disagreed.

Second, one needs to look at the blocking category being used to block the site. The ACLU, for example, has been blocked by some vendors under the category "activist" or similar. Certainly I don't condone such blacklisting, but the categorization is factually correct. On the other hand, suppose that the site is miscategorized by the censorware vendor as a porn site instead of an activist one. (If you think that is ludicrous, read a mini-essay I wrote earlier this year.) Some have posited that the censorware vendor might be liable for libel. I would not bring such an action I defend those sued for libel, regardless of whether I agree with their particular speech but I do expect that the owner of some site wrongfully blocked as a porn site will test the waters.

Third, under either federal law or the laws of various states, there may be a claim for consumer fraud or false and misleading advertising if the vendor bans sites under incorrect categories. Most of the vendors have wonderful sounding statements on their sites about how carefully they make their lists and check them twice, but virtually every serious investigation of censorware has shown such statements to be utterly false. In some states, a remedy under this theory may be available only to customers who purchased the censorware in reliance on the false representations, but in other states, such as mine (California), virtually any member of the public could bring such an action.

----------

Next week we have *two* interviews to celebrate the year's end: First, L0pht Heavy Industries, with answers Friday. And in a separate "bonus" interview post Monday we'll be collecting questions for Jon "Maddog" Hall about Linux in the next century; Jon's answers will run Saturday (for obvious symbolic reasons). Enjoy!

This week's interview topic might almost be called "Censorware: Threat or Menace." Our guests are both experienced anti-censorship activists; Jim Tyre is a founding member of the U.S.-based group , The Censorware Project and is also closely allied with Peacefire.org; Irene Graham is a Board Member of Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), an on-line civil liberties group (not related to EFF) who also maintains this site. Chosen questions will be forwarded to Jim and Irene Tuesday. Their answers will be posted Friday.

This week's interview topic might almost be called "Censorware: Threat or Menace." Our guests are both experienced anti-censorship activists; Jim Tyre is a founding member of the U.S.-based group , The Censorware Project and is also closely allied with Peacefire.org; Irene Graham is a Board Member of Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), an on-line civil liberties group (not related to EFF) who also maintains this site. Chosen questions will be forwarded to Jim and Irene Tuesday. Their answers will be posted Friday.

Lawrence Lessig - the name may be familiar from the Microsoft trial - has written an excellent book, which I've taken my time reviewing because I felt I had to read it twice to grasp the full import. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace covers the real future of your liberties on the internet, and it is not a happy book. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace author Lawrence Lessig pages 297 publisher Basic Books rating 10/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 0-465-03912-X summary A gloomy look at the forces which shape the internet.

Slashdot isn't the first to review this book. Declan McCullagh (Wired), Andy Oram, and Carl Kaplan (NY Times) have all taken a look at it, he's been interviewed, there's an audio debate (mp3 format) between Lessig and McCullagh, and at least a couple of other places have all mentioned it and it is, at this writing, 134 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. I was privileged enough to receive a review copy of the book some time ago, but my review has been delayed because the book is too deep to easily sum up. It's a book about law, and about policy, and about the internet, which doesn't require any grounding in any of the above, but it seems like it would be appropriate for people at almost any level of knowledge - if you know more, you'll get deeper insights, and if you know less, you'll get the basics. A fractal book, in other words. An almost philosophical work, disguised as a law book.

To start with, Lessig's book is a counter to John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Barlow had a good idea, a good goal, but he was totally and completely wrong about how to achieve it, and his declaration and the mindset it embodies has and will do great harm to the future of civil liberties on the internet.

Cyberspace is not and has never been independent of real life, or of government. What it has been is a place where the rules of real life were hard to enforce. That doesn't mean that the rules don't exist - just that it has been hard to make people obey them. The problem for people, like me, who like this state of affairs, this lack of enforcement, is that there's no reason cyberspace has to remain in its current state.

Cyberspace wasn't designed to enforce real-world rules. Such enforcement wasn't built in to the code that runs the internet, was consciously avoided in the early internet designs, and therefore regulators have been working in an environment unfriendly to them. Copying of digital works is easy. Transmitting and receiving content, even forbidden content, is easy. Etc.

But just because it was designed that way once, does not mean that it need be that way in the future. There are tremendous forces (business and government) that would prefer an internet which is friendly and cooperative to regulators. The people building the internet of tomorrow are not professors and geeks, they're CEO's and to a lesser extent, bureaucrats. If the architecture of the internet is "adjusted" to favor regulation instead of disfavor it - and the current internet builders all have reasons to favor regulability - regulating behavior on the internet is not impossible, it's trivial. Lessig has a short chapter on "is-ism", the belief that just because something is, so must it always be. Applied to the internet, this is "We are free, and will always be so." Wrong, wrong! The internet is totally man-made, and what man has made, man can change.

It is hard for me (or Lessig) to emphasize this point too much: the people who claim that we should keep our hands off the internet are completely playing into the hands of government and business. While the net-libertarians have buried their heads in the sand, the net is being changed, constantly, to favor regulation by business and by government.

Lessig takes a look at the infrastructure of the internet and how it is changing for the worse. There's another terrible flaw in thinking about the internet, which runs roughly: "whatever restrictions are placed, someone of technical competence can get around them". This is not true, not if the architecture is designed to support those restrictions rather than oppose them.

The internet, says Lessig, is about to "flip" from "unregulable" to "totally regulable". When that occurs (neither Lessig nor I think there's an "If" involved), who will be regulating the place? Currently corporations, with guidance from government - guidance coming in the form of regulations like CALEA, which make demands not on individuals, but on the code. Once the code is altered to be conducive to regulation, regulation follows naturally.

Lessig makes a great point about open source software. Closed source code which incorporates regulation (censorware is the easiest example, but there are many others) means that the people who are regulated can't even tell exactly what regulation is occuring. When the source code is available, you can at least tell exactly what you can and cannot do, or exactly how your privacy is being infringed. Open source code is inherently less suited to enforcing regulation on users.

I can't do justice to the book without rewriting it. Lessig is deeply skeptical about the ability of the U.S. government to initiate policies which promote, rather than denigrate, the civil liberties we have come to take for granted in cyberspace. Government is busy selling off our freedom to corporations through mechanisms such as ICANN. But no one else is going to do it - and with a government actively hostile to liberties or even one that adopts a hands-off approach, freedom in cyberspace is headed downhill at a tremendous pace.

I recommend this book to almost anyone who cares about the future of the internet. It's well-written - he's a good teacher. It's got some awesome examples - like how Communist Vietnam is more effectively libertarian than the U.S., because it doesn't have the infrastructure of control that we do. It is a scholarly work, but the footnotes are pushed off to the end - they alone are worth the price of the book to a serious student, but someone looking to just read can skip them without problems. It's a deep and thus far unmatched view of what will shape the net of tomorrow, the most inspiring book I've read this year.

Some of Lessig's other papers and articles are available on his home page. The book has a promotional website as well, available at code-is-law.org or what-declan-doesnt-get.com.

Pick this book up at fatbrain.com.

keefer writes "Since I know /. readers are generally fans of various ZD magazines anyway, I thought I'd pass this along that I saw from Blue's News. The gist is that programmer Randy Pitchford at Gearbox Software gave a .plan update talking about a piece Family PC(a ZD mag) did relating to some under-17-year-old supposedly being able to pick up Half-Life: Opposing Force, an M-rated game (17+), without incident at a CompUSA store. However, um, the game isn't even done yet, let alone gold or on the shelves."

I thought I'd post this in the YRO section for a couple of reasons. One is that it's starting to reverberate, and has generated at least one counter-editorial. But the second is a larger point. Half-Life and similar games are marketed to adults, not children; the 20-30 year old age group purchases almost all of these types of games. Yet attackers want to restrict the sales of these games to anyone on the basis that they're unsuitable for children. The fact that Family PC misjudged the game's release date when making up their article (remember, this had to be written months ago to make it to publication now, they probably forecast that the new game would be on sale by now) makes the attack more obvious, but these sorts of attacks happen all the time from the "save the children" crowd. (Family PC makes most of their income from advertising filtering software and similar snake-oil parental protective measures.) This is how you whip up the troops to go censor the internet or whatever other target you have in mind.

The so-called Children's Internet Protection Act requires that any school or library receiving federal "universal service assistance" funds must install censorware. It'll be interesting to see how technology already ruled unconstitutional will now be mandated. CNet has a good status update, chock-full of facts and links.

The Internet Free Expression Alliance has sent a letter, signed by the ACLU and thirteen other groups, to every House and Senate conferee on the bill. Click below to read it.

September 28, 1999

Sen./Rep. ___________
Address
Washington, DC

Re: Internet Filtering Mandate for Schools and Libraries

Dear ____________:

The undersigned organizations write to express our concerns about section 1402 of the House-passed Juvenile Justice bill, which would mandate that schools and libraries receiving "E-Rate" universal service funds purchase and use Internet filtering software to regulate access by minors.

We believe that the majority of Americans share our conviction that parents and teachers -- not the federal government -- should provide children with guidance about accessing information on the Internet. Clumsy and ineffective blocking programs are nothing more than a "quick fix" solution to parental concerns, often providing a false sense of security that children will not be exposed to material which parents may find inappropriate.

The provision's one-size-fits-all federal solution for school districts and communities throughout the country denies parents, schools and local libraries the opportunity to consider other approaches to Internet safety, including training classes to help children bring critical skills to the Internet; adult supervision of Internet use by minors; highlighting recommended sites to assist parents in navigating the Internet; and establishment of limited time periods for supervised use of the Internet by young children. The choice to embody one or several technological or non-technological solutions in an "Acceptable Use Policy" is best made by local authorities in light of local conditions, values and resources.

The technology that Section 1402 would enshrine in federal law is evolving, but in its current immature state it is often ineffective. As a result, filtering software frequently restricts access to valuable, constitutionally protected online speech about topics ranging from safe sex, AIDS, gay and lesbian issues, news articles, and women's rights. Religious groups such as the Society of Friends and the Glide United Methodist Church have been blocked by these imperfect filtering tools, as have advocacy groups like the American Family Association. This type of arbitrary censorship is a blatant violation of the First Amendment when mandated by the federal government.

Under the Supreme Court's 1997 decision in Reno v. ACLU, the Internet is accorded the highest level of First Amendment protection. Therefore, any attempted regulation of Internet speech is constitutionally suspect. Section 1402, with its use of the constitutionally vague "harmful to minors" standard, is unlikely to withstand First Amendment scrutiny.

The proposed legislation would require schools and libraries either to expend scarce resources to comply with federal law, or forgo participation in the universal service program. Thus, Section 1402 unconstitutionally conditions the receipt of federal funds on the waiver of First Amendment rights. See FCC v. League of Women Voters of California, 468 U.S. 364 (1984). If this type of condition were constitutional, there would be no limit to congressional micro-management of local school curricula. In addition, those schools and libraries which have already adopted a local Acceptable Use Policy will be compelled to implement filtering software, thereby increasing the expense associated with Internet usage by minors.

Finally, filtering technology not only denies children the ability to receive online speech that they have a constitutional right to receive; it also prevents adults who rely on public libraries for Internet access from receiving materials which may be "deemed to be harmful to minors," but which adults have a right to receive.

For the foregoing reasons, we urge you to consider alternatives to a federal requirement to employ filtering and blocking technologies. Those other approaches, as outlined above, are more likely to be effective and less likely to violate the Constitution.

Respectfully submitted,

American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
Christopher Finan, President

American Civil Liberties Union
Laura W. Murphy, Washington Office Director

American Library Association
Claudette Tennant, Assistant Director, Washington Office

The Censorware Project
James S. Tyre, Co-Founder

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Coralee Whitcomb, President

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Shari Steele, Director of Legal Services

Electronic Privacy Information Center
David L. Sobel, General Counsel

Freedom to Read Foundation
Judith F. Krug, Executive Director

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
Joan Garry, Executive Director

Journalism Education Association
H. L. Hall, President

National Coalition Against Censorship
Joan Bertin, Executive Director

NetAction
Audrie Krause, Executive Director

Peacefire.org
Bennett Haselton, Co-ordinator

People For the American Way
Catherine LeRoy, Public Policy Director

CNet has a good status update on censorware, chock-full of facts and links. So-called "filtering" products are quietly inching toward a nationwide mandate in schools and libraries that take federal funds. It also turns out they are supported by the Catholic Church.

As promised last Friday, here's more on the Munich conference. Pay attention or wait to be forced to label your internet content. It's your choice.

A number of articles have appeared in the online press about Munich. Half of them are just rehashes of press releases - nothing very useful there. Some of them are fairly in-depth (we think CNET and the NY Times had the best coverage), but none of them really give you the big picture. We're going to try to. Let us know how we do.

The first thing that the press is missing is that there are (well, were) two meetings in Munich, not one. The first is the one you heard about: a meeting called by the Bertelsmann Foundation, part of the huge Bertelsmann publishing empire, which sponsored the Internet Content Summit. They're getting together to have a little feel-good session about "self-regulation" of internet content. By self-regulation they don't mean that end-users regulate their own behavior; they mean that ISPs regulate users instead of government doing so directly. Users will still be regulated, of course. And the regulation will be driven by what the national government wants. It's just that government will lay their heavy hands upon the ISPs, and the ISPs will act as the enforcers rather than law enforcement. Think of it as a distributed system - government assumes the role of a second-line rather than first-line manager. At a previous internet content summit, this type of regulation was described as "soft law" versus "hard law", and we think that's a good way to think about it. They are not talking about voluntary, individual actions of corporations - they are talking about imposing laws and restraints on the citizenry through another means. Self-regulation = soft law, but law nonetheless.

The first meeting is interesting for a number of reasons, but not terribly ominous - the people meeting were not previously working together, and all that will come out of it is thoughts and ideas. The second meeting is rather more dangerous.

The second meeting, scheduled in conjunction with the first, was of the principals of INCORE, Internet Content Rating for Europe. This group consists of a number of European corporations and protect-the-children groups and their sole goal is to establish a single rating system for use across Europe (they're also coordinating with Australia). Of course, the members of this group overlap significantly with the first - for example, Jens Waltermann, director of the Bertelsmann Foundation and sponsor of the first meeting, is also one of the prime movers in INCORE - which ought to tell you why the Bertelsmann conference is so slanted towards ratings systems as the sole means of protecting the children.

But why is this going forward? As at least one slashdot poster pointed out in the discussions of last week's article, rating systems have been discussed before, and haven't come to anything yet.

What happened is the government (the European Commission, in this case) decided to get serious. They buckled down, and at the end of 1998, allocated funds to be spent on the development of a global rating system. About $11 million is allocated to be spent on developing this system, so the corporate participants can be reasonably assured of being reimbursed for all their plane fares and hotel costs. (Question: if it's so voluntary, how come the government is paying people to develop it?)

The European Commission's plan runs from January 1999 to December 2002, four years. 1999 is scheduled for development and meetings. 2000 is scheduled for rollout and beta testing. 2001 and 2002 are allocated for the encouragement process and tweaking - making sure everyone is toeing the line. There's plenty of time allocated because it's important to make sure that the resulting rating system aligns with national laws - for instance, since Germany outlaws hate speech, one of the rating categories will involve hate speech, and Germany will outlaw the transmission of any content rated in this category into the country. Laws can be "hung" off the rating categories, if they're set up properly.

The rating system will be based off the American Recreational Software Advisory Council's system, that they originally developed for video games and then, when threatened by Congress with the CDA, transformed for internet content. (The funny thing is, for the first year that RSACi was being promoted for use on webpages, it still had all the original references to video games. Pretty sad.) RSAC was recently folded into the Internet Content Rating Association, basically so they can revamp the RSACi system and submit it to the European Commission for approval and funding. Who is the chairman of ICRA's board of directors? Jens Waltermann again. Are you beginning to see a pattern?

Civil liberties groups world-wide have finally recognized the threat that government-mandated rating systems pose to the internet. The ACLU was the first major group to speak out against them, in their 1997 paper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?. But for this Munich conference, the chorus was loud and close to unanimous - the Global Internet Liberty Coalition condemned it, the ACLU condemned it, Electronic Frontiers Australia condemned it, Internet Freedom (UK civil liberties group) condemned it.

Several civil liberties groups managed to wrangle themselves invitations to the conference. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is attending and distributing a book free of charge to all participants (besides the attack on free speech, EPIC is irritated because the European Commission has also recommended that online anonymity be strictly prohibited for all European Union residents - after all, if they're anonymous, it's harder to make them obey the law). Nadine Strossen of the ACLU published the statement she's making to the Conference, harshly opposing the labeling requirements; even Esther Dyson, a tremendous supporter of rating systems, expressed her unease at the slant of the conference.

Strossen's comments above neatly summarize the civil liberties community's objections to so-called self-rating systems, and we urge all readers to take a look at that link above. She makes several points:

1. Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored
2. Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly
3. Conversation Can't Be Rated
4. Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation
5. Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers

Strossen is far more eloquent than we are, and she makes the points extremely well. Take a look, it's worth your time.

But back to the conference. The main document to come out of the conference is their Memorandum on Self-Regulation (538K), released yesterday. A number of "internet experts" contributed to the report - mostly these same people we've been seeing, representatives of the companies that want the Net to be kid-friendly (increase profits!) and protect-the-children groups from throughout Europe, and representatives from various governmental agencies. They lay out their censorship proposal in some detail. The basics are laid out in a single phrase: "Content providers worldwide must be mobilized to label their content...".

Prepare to get mobilized.

"It is in the best interest of industry," they say, to take the steps necessary to "enhance consumer confidence" and meet "business objectives." The suits invited must all have nodded their heads to this one: if only they could get the obnoxious people off the net, then all the soccer moms and grandpas would feel safe enough to fire up a browser and finally type in their credit card numbers.

So, problem: naughty stuff on the net. Answer? Open source! <spit>

On p. 59 of the 60-page memo is a neat diagram that looks almost like an API to a multi-layer code library. Except in this case, the bottom slice is the underlying technology of censorship (PICS), and the top slice is the user's experience of censorship (at the browser).

Sitting on top of PICS is Layer 1, in which the content creators - that's you, me, and everyone else who makes anything public on the internet - label our data with a "basic vocabulary" of keywords. If we write porn, we call it porn. Simple enough so far?

Next comes Layer 2, which is where the fun stuff starts to happen. Here, third parties can invent "template profiles." These combine the keywords in interesting ways. The idea is that in one country, the ratings systems will typically rate porn as bad but violence as OK; in another, perhaps the opposite; someone else will invent a profile for use in schools that blocks everything noneducational; a profile for your company's router might block all sports but let profanity through; a national profile for Australia might block all sex but let stupid political grandstanding through; and so on.

These template profiles should be, according to Bertelsmann, "open source."

How are they going to do this? They can't rely on a NetNanny or SurfWatch to rate the net: censorware has been a dismal failure in practice, the software just doesn't work because there's too much of the net and too few censorware employees to evaluate it all.

What they need instead is for you, the author, to do their work for them. Remember that "basic vocabulary" of keywords? It turns out you're not just going to pick porn vs. non-porn. Oh no. After all, you have to provide enough information for the profiles to work with.

That means you're going to be rating everything you publish according to:

"e.g.: gratuitous violence,
frontal nudity,
explicit sexual acts,
crude language,
vulgar language,
sports,
extreme hate speech,
arts,
aggressive violence,
death to humans,
medicine,
non-explicit sexual acts,
strong language,
history, ..."

E.g.? E.g.!? There's more?

Well, there has to be more. In fact, Bertelsmann has only scratched the surface. In order for there to be enough "template profiles" to be worth mentioning, the variety of keywords has to be extreme.

Be ready to run down a checklist for everything you write and decide whether it contains gratuitous or non-gratuitous violence, explicit or non-explicit sex acts. Please rate from 1 to 10 how much art and history was in that last post of yours. Don't think you'll have a choice about doing it - your ISP will be enforcing it upon you, as a condition of service.

And the "template profiles" that are provided for the end user? These profiles are just simple sets that group the predefined keywords together. If I'm the CEO of NetSitterPatrol, I group keywords 1, 3, 5, and 12 together and call it "NetSitterPatrol Profile."

And if I'm a national government that's cracking down on porn, violence, hate speech, or vulgar language (your government wouldn't do anything like that, would it?), I'll just add the keywords for indecency, abortion information, hate speech, racism, or whatever else I want to censor, and give the list to the backbone providers in my country to filter out and protect the delicate citizens. Hey look, I'm an open source programmer!

by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy

As promised last Friday, here's more on the Munich conference. Pay attention or wait to be forced to label your internet content. It's your choice.

A number of articles have appeared in the online press about Munich. Half of them are just rehashes of press releases - nothing very useful there. Some of them are fairly in-depth (we think CNET and the NY Times had the best coverage), but none of them really give you the big picture. We're going to try to. Let us know how we do.

The first thing that the press is missing is that there are (well, were) two meetings in Munich, not one. The first is the one you heard about: a meeting called by the Bertelsmann Foundation, part of the huge Bertelsmann publishing empire, which sponsored the Internet Content Summit. They're getting together to have a little feel-good session about "self-regulation" of internet content. By self-regulation they don't mean that end-users regulate their own behavior; they mean that ISPs regulate users instead of government doing so directly. Users will still be regulated, of course. And the regulation will be driven by what the national government wants. It's just that government will lay their heavy hands upon the ISPs, and the ISPs will act as the enforcers rather than law enforcement. Think of it as a distributed system - government assumes the role of a second-line rather than first-line manager. At a previous internet content summit, this type of regulation was described as "soft law" versus "hard law", and we think that's a good way to think about it. They are not talking about voluntary, individual actions of corporations - they are talking about imposing laws and restraints on the citizenry through another means. Self-regulation = soft law, but law nonetheless.

The first meeting is interesting for a number of reasons, but not terribly ominous - the people meeting were not previously working together, and all that will come out of it is thoughts and ideas. The second meeting is rather more dangerous.

The second meeting, scheduled in conjunction with the first, was of the principals of INCORE, Internet Content Rating for Europe. This group consists of a number of European corporations and protect-the-children groups and their sole goal is to establish a single rating system for use across Europe (they're also coordinating with Australia). Of course, the members of this group overlap significantly with the first - for example, Jens Waltermann, director of the Bertelsmann Foundation and sponsor of the first meeting, is also one of the prime movers in INCORE - which ought to tell you why the Bertelsmann conference is so slanted towards ratings systems as the sole means of protecting the children.

But why is this going forward? As at least one slashdot poster pointed out in the discussions of last week's article, rating systems have been discussed before, and haven't come to anything yet.

What happened is the government (the European Commission, in this case) decided to get serious. They buckled down, and at the end of 1998, allocated funds to be spent on the development of a global rating system. About $11 million is allocated to be spent on developing this system, so the corporate participants can be reasonably assured of being reimbursed for all their plane fares and hotel costs. (Question: if it's so voluntary, how come the government is paying people to develop it?)

The European Commission's plan runs from January 1999 to December 2002, four years. 1999 is scheduled for development and meetings. 2000 is scheduled for rollout and beta testing. 2001 and 2002 are allocated for the encouragement process and tweaking - making sure everyone is toeing the line. There's plenty of time allocated because it's important to make sure that the resulting rating system aligns with national laws - for instance, since Germany outlaws hate speech, one of the rating categories will involve hate speech, and Germany will outlaw the transmission of any content rated in this category into the country. Laws can be "hung" off the rating categories, if they're set up properly.

The rating system will be based off the American Recreational Software Advisory Council's system, that they originally developed for video games and then, when threatened by Congress with the CDA, transformed for internet content. (The funny thing is, for the first year that RSACi was being promoted for use on webpages, it still had all the original references to video games. Pretty sad.) RSAC was recently folded into the Internet Content Rating Association, basically so they can revamp the RSACi system and submit it to the European Commission for approval and funding. Who is the chairman of ICRA's board of directors? Jens Waltermann again. Are you beginning to see a pattern?

Civil liberties groups world-wide have finally recognized the threat that government-mandated rating systems pose to the internet. The ACLU was the first major group to speak out against them, in their 1997 paper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?. But for this Munich conference, the chorus was loud and close to unanimous - the Global Internet Liberty Coalition condemned it, the ACLU condemned it, Electronic Frontiers Australia condemned it, Internet Freedom (UK civil liberties group) condemned it.

Several civil liberties groups managed to wrangle themselves invitations to the conference. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is attending and distributing a book free of charge to all participants (besides the attack on free speech, EPIC is irritated because the European Commission has also recommended that online anonymity be strictly prohibited for all European Union residents - after all, if they're anonymous, it's harder to make them obey the law). Nadine Strossen of the ACLU published the statement she's making to the Conference, harshly opposing the labeling requirements; even Esther Dyson, a tremendous supporter of rating systems, expressed her unease at the slant of the conference.

Strossen's comments above neatly summarize the civil liberties community's objections to so-called self-rating systems, and we urge all readers to take a look at that link above. She makes several points:

1. Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored
2. Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly
3. Conversation Can't Be Rated
4. Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation
5. Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers

Strossen is far more eloquent than we are, and she makes the points extremely well. Take a look, it's worth your time.

But back to the conference. The main document to come out of the conference is their Memorandum on Self-Regulation (538K), released yesterday. A number of "internet experts" contributed to the report - mostly these same people we've been seeing, representatives of the companies that want the Net to be kid-friendly (increase profits!) and protect-the-children groups from throughout Europe, and representatives from various governmental agencies. They lay out their censorship proposal in some detail. The basics are laid out in a single phrase: "Content providers worldwide must be mobilized to label their content...".

Prepare to get mobilized.

"It is in the best interest of industry," they say, to take the steps necessary to "enhance consumer confidence" and meet "business objectives." The suits invited must all have nodded their heads to this one: if only they could get the obnoxious people off the net, then all the soccer moms and grandpas would feel safe enough to fire up a browser and finally type in their credit card numbers.

So, problem: naughty stuff on the net. Answer? Open source! <spit>

On p. 59 of the 60-page memo is a neat diagram that looks almost like an API to a multi-layer code library. Except in this case, the bottom slice is the underlying technology of censorship (PICS), and the top slice is the user's experience of censorship (at the browser).

Sitting on top of PICS is Layer 1, in which the content creators - that's you, me, and everyone else who makes anything public on the internet - label our data with a "basic vocabulary" of keywords. If we write porn, we call it porn. Simple enough so far?

Next comes Layer 2, which is where the fun stuff starts to happen. Here, third parties can invent "template profiles." These combine the keywords in interesting ways. The idea is that in one country, the ratings systems will typically rate porn as bad but violence as OK; in another, perhaps the opposite; someone else will invent a profile for use in schools that blocks everything noneducational; a profile for your company's router might block all sports but let profanity through; a national profile for Australia might block all sex but let stupid political grandstanding through; and so on.

These template profiles should be, according to Bertelsmann, "open source."

How are they going to do this? They can't rely on a NetNanny or SurfWatch to rate the net: censorware has been a dismal failure in practice, the software just doesn't work because there's too much of the net and too few censorware employees to evaluate it all.

What they need instead is for you, the author, to do their work for them. Remember that "basic vocabulary" of keywords? It turns out you're not just going to pick porn vs. non-porn. Oh no. After all, you have to provide enough information for the profiles to work with.

That means you're going to be rating everything you publish according to:

"e.g.: gratuitous violence,
frontal nudity,
explicit sexual acts,
crude language,
vulgar language,
sports,
extreme hate speech,
arts,
aggressive violence,
death to humans,
medicine,
non-explicit sexual acts,
strong language,
history, ..."

E.g.? E.g.!? There's more?

Well, there has to be more. In fact, Bertelsmann has only scratched the surface. In order for there to be enough "template profiles" to be worth mentioning, the variety of keywords has to be extreme.

Be ready to run down a checklist for everything you write and decide whether it contains gratuitous or non-gratuitous violence, explicit or non-explicit sex acts. Please rate from 1 to 10 how much art and history was in that last post of yours. Don't think you'll have a choice about doing it - your ISP will be enforcing it upon you, as a condition of service.

And the "template profiles" that are provided for the end user? These profiles are just simple sets that group the predefined keywords together. If I'm the CEO of NetSitterPatrol, I group keywords 1, 3, 5, and 12 together and call it "NetSitterPatrol Profile."

And if I'm a national government that's cracking down on porn, violence, hate speech, or vulgar language (your government wouldn't do anything like that, would it?), I'll just add the keywords for indecency, abortion information, hate speech, racism, or whatever else I want to censor, and give the list to the backbone providers in my country to filter out and protect the delicate citizens. Hey look, I'm an open source programmer!

by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy

Now that the new hardware is in place, I'm happy to announce the first new section on Slashdot: Your Rights Online [YRO] is a place where we can go into greater depth on the issues surrounding freedoms and liberties on the Net, and really in the world at large. So much happens in this area that the Slashdot Homepage just doesn't have enough room to host it all, so while YRO will appear on Slashdot when I think its relevant to everyone, it will largely stand alone. Read on to learn more about the section.

The Net is changing fast, and so are many of the issues surrounding your rights online. The US Policies on Encryption Export, governments filtering websites from their citizens, and right now, the PICS project In fact, the PICS project is what the first article's about. It's part 1 of 2.

YRO will be maintained by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy Their job will be similiar to what the existing Slashdot Authors do; read submissions and pick the best articles for publishing, just in a more focused area. In addition, they'll be writing original articles when it's appropriate. YRO will have room to post many stories that wouldn't have been able to appear on Slashdot, while Slashdot will continue to post the stories that we think are more relevant to everyone.

Michael Sims is a programmer for the Department of Energy and online free-speech activist who administers censorware.org. He swears that there won't be a nuclear catastrophe on January 1, 2000. Jamie McCarthy writes perl code all day; if he ever gets free time he works on The Holocaust History Project or censorware.org. He owns every book Theodore Sturgeon ever wrote.

We're pretty excited about this. I hope you are too. Now let's just see if it works...

Now that the new hardware is in place, I'm happy to announce the first new section on Slashdot: Your Rights Online [YRO] is a place where we can go into greater depth on the issues surrounding freedoms and liberties on the Net, and really in the world at large. So much happens in this area that the Slashdot Homepage just doesn't have enough room to host it all, so while YRO will appear on Slashdot when I think its relevant to everyone, it will largely stand alone. Read on to learn more about the section.

The Net is changing fast, and so are many of the issues surrounding your rights online. The US Policies on Encryption Export, governments filtering websites from their citizens, and right now, the PICS project In fact, the PICS project is what the first article's about. It's part 1 of 2.

YRO will be maintained by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy Their job will be similiar to what the existing Slashdot Authors do; read submissions and pick the best articles for publishing, just in a more focused area. In addition, they'll be writing original articles when it's appropriate. YRO will have room to post many stories that wouldn't have been able to appear on Slashdot, while Slashdot will continue to post the stories that we think are more relevant to everyone.

Michael Sims is a programmer for the Department of Energy and online free-speech activist who administers censorware.org. He swears that there won't be a nuclear catastrophe on January 1, 2000. Jamie McCarthy writes perl code all day; if he ever gets free time he works on The Holocaust History Project or censorware.org. He owns every book Theodore Sturgeon ever wrote.

We're pretty excited about this. I hope you are too. Now let's just see if it works...

Please read this press release from The Censorware Project. Their target today is Bess, a new piece of protect-the kiddies software from N2H2 that seems to be even more defective than some of its competitors. Look at the list of sites Bess bans (it's in the Censorware Project press release), and at some of the ones it allows to pass. Then laugh. I did, but sadly, because many U.S. legislators want this kind of software installed in all public schools and libraries. I could go on and on here, but why bother? Read the Censorware Project press release for yourself. It may lead you to a few porno sites, but at least they're ones that have passed Bess's scrutiny, and that's all that counts, right?

Please read this press release from The Censorware Project. Their target today is Bess, a new piece of protect-the kiddies software from N2H2 that seems to be even more defective than some of its competitors. Look at the list of sites Bess bans (it's in the Censorware Project press release), and at some of the ones it allows to pass. Then laugh. I did, but sadly, because many U.S. legislators want this kind of software installed in all public schools and libraries. I could go on and on here, but why bother? Read the Censorware Project press release for yourself. It may lead you to a few porno sites, but at least they're ones that have passed Bess's scrutiny, and that's all that counts, right?