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WaldoJ asks: "I recently acquired an old Dell P133. So I fixed it up, and now it's got 32MB of RAM and 1.6GB of storage, running Linux and, as of these evening, it's running Sendmail, Apache and Mailman. I've got it plugged in with the rest of my servers, and I intend for this little system to serve as a free mailing list server for local organizations. Technically-speaking, everything is covered. But I can't help but wonder what sort of practical problems that I'll run into, like teaching folks how to administer a list on Mailman, understand what good a mailing list is, obeying mailing list etiquette, etc. Has anybody set up a community mail server like this? I'd like to avoid running into known, documented problems. OTOH, if this hasn't been done, I want to make sure to keep careful notes so that others can set up something similar with a minimum of hassle."

WaldoJ writes: "One of my sites, nancies.org, has been doing very well, traffic-wise. Hundreds of thousands of page views each month. But our banner provider, ContentZone, is fundamentally evil. They've been sued by their clients, and they don't pay us enough. Flycast has been bought by Engage, and they're apparently not so hot either. DoubleClick? Don't get me started. It would be great if we could run the site without ads, but the hosting alone would kill us. We tried the donations route, but that's no good. My question is this: Which banner network is the least evil? Which lies the least? Which pays the best? It sure would be helpful to get some input." If you have to have ads for your site, it would be nice to get the most out of the hits your site does get without the hassles. Any recommendations?

There's a boatload of censorware news today, enough for two or three Slashdot stories -- but to conserve electrons, we're bringing it to you all in one easy-to-download package. First, Peacefire has a report on the accuracy of intelligent skin-tone-scanning software, one month after its company said they'd have it working in a month. And since the CEO of ClickSafe spoke at the COPA Commission meeting yesterday, Peacefire ran a check to see how many COPA-related sites its AI blocks. Finally, Waldo Jaquith has a report from the meeting itself which should be sobering but cracked me up anyway. Pay attention, everyone, these are the folks who are going to censor your Internet.

The Child Online Protection Act, passed late last year and then struck down early this year, is still under appeal. Colloquially it's known as "CDAII." Part of what the Act does is establish a Commission that meets every so often -- the Commission's website has details on its mandate and so on.

(Update, a few minutes later: make that "injunctified," or whatever one says for a law against which an injunction has been applied, instead of "struck down." Sorry; IANAL.)

Speaking at the Commission meeting yesterday and today were the CEOs of several major censorware companies. Among them was Michael Stephani, whose company Exotrope makes a product called BAIR.

BAIR

BAIR checks images as they download onto your computer, and claims to be able to tell the difference between pornography and other types of images. The "AI" in its acronym stands for artificial intelligence, running on supercomputers.

When the Wired story on BAIR came out last month (a story "borrowed" from Peacefire -- I'm not going to get into it), Wired quoted the company as saying "they plan to fix the errors within the next month." What errors?

"BAIR incorrectly blocked photographs of Yellowstone, the Baltimore waterfront, Snoopy, boats, sunsets, dogs, vegetables and even a Wired News staff meeting.

"It rated as acceptable for minors -- even on the most restrictive setting -- explicit images of oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

That was one month ago. How's BAIR doing now?

Peacefire retested the same 50 pornographic images that they'd used last month (which presumably BAIR's programmers would have paid extra-special attention to). Their new report finds that, instead of zero, the number of blocked images is now: 34. I've got a great slogan for them: "now your children can only see 32% of the web's oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

One's respect for these programmers is dampened a little, though, because there's more to Peacefire's report. It seems, in a random sample of 50 photos of people's faces, BAIR blocked ... how many? ... 34.

Maybe that slogan should be: "now your children can only see 32% of the web," period.

It's wonderful to live in a world where artificial intelligence offers limitless possibilities. Its website suggests that "Because Artificial Intelligence can be taught to recognize a variety of patterns," -- oh, OK -- "our BAIR can be taught to evaluate other categories such as violence or illegal activities. The BAIR is currently undergoing training in these areas to provide additional filtration selections."

ClickSafe

Richard Schwartz, CEO of ClickSafe, also spoke yesterday at the COPA Commission meeting. Just for kicks, Peacefire decided to try out their spiffy AI software too.

Insert marketblurb here: "...by combining cutting-edge graphic, word and phrase-recognition technology, ClickSafe has achieved accuracy rates of over 99% (according to recent sample tests). ClickSafe can precisely distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate sites (e.g. sites related to issues such as breast cancer will not be blocked)."

What Peacefire did was test this software against the website of the COPA Commission itself, and related sites such as those of speakers or Commission members. They found that blocked pages included:

• The Child Online Protection Act itself, in original and amended form;
• The COPA Commission FAQ;
• Biographies of Commission members Stephen Balkam and John Bastian;
• Bio of Commission member and famed anti-porn crusader Donna Rice Hughes, as well as AppendixA from her book Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace;
• A list of technologies the Commission examines;
• The scope of what the Commission is called upon to do;
• A service agreement from a little company called Network Solutions, whose rep chairs COPA's meetings;
• "About the ICRA" (the makers of RSACi, "a simple, yet effective rating system for web sites which both protected children and protected the rights of free speech");
• Bible study tools: "We hope these free resources foster a desire for Christians to learn more about the Bible, deepening their relationship with God" unless they're using censorware;
• The American Family Association (a conservative Christian group that is trying to force censorware into public libraries, including those surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound);
• The ACLU, the EFF, and the Center for Democracy and Technology;

and so on.

When I spoke with Bennett about this, he commented that the strange thing was that these flaws are so easy to find; you'd think someone would have run these simple tests already. If anyone reading wants to get their name in Slashdot (and other news media too), censorware is a gold mine of untested misinformation. Buy a product, design a solid unbiased test for it, run the test, and send us what you find. Repeat until the whole world has a clue.

The COPA Commission Meeting

The following is an account of yesterday's COPA Commission meeting, by Waldo Jaquith. Keep in mind that this meeting's purpose, according to the Scope & Timeline Proposal which is blocked by ClickSafe, is to study filtering and blocking software to learn what to recommend in its report to Congress late this year.

Folks,

For more information on the COPA Commission, see http://www.copacommission.org/. (Unless your network has ClickSafe installed, in which case you shouldn't bother.) There is an agenda for this meeting, and there are bios for most people, as well as the prepared speeches for many of the below folks. I've tried to be objective.

Oh, screw that. There's nothing objective about it. But I've tried to give useful facts, quote accurately, etc.

The whole affair, which was scheduled to start at 9:30am, didn't actually start until 10:15am. Which was good, because I didn't get there until 9:45. Although the event was being held at the University of Richmond's Jepson Alumni Center, the room felt like your basic hotel meeting room. Bad carpet, ugly chairs, poor lighting. There were enough chairs to seat about 100 people, but only 35 people were in attendance. Directly in front of the two columns of chairs was a table with chairs, facing away from the audience. This table was for people asked to testify before the COPA Commission. On the other side of that table was a long table, at which was seated the commission, all sixteen members. The result was that the people testifying, who did most of the talking, could only be recognized by the backs of their heads by the audience.

Chairman Donald Telage called the meeting to order and introduced the first panel, who was to speak for approximately 45 minutes on the topic of client-side filters. This panel included Gordon Ross, the President and CEO of Net Nanny, Mark Smith, the President of BrowseSafe, Susan Getgood, the VP and General Manager of Cyber Patrol, and Richard Schwartz, the CEO of Opportunity-America (ClickSafe.com).

Gordon Ross kicked things off with a tremendously boring ten minute speech about how client-side filters work. The only interesting comment that he made was his belief that "consumers should have the ability to analyze each and every site in the database..." [...because his product Net Nanny is the only one of the 150 censorware packages on the market that allows oversight of its blacklist. -ed] He also kicked off the First Amendment references, which nearly every speaker throughout the day would spend some time talking about, but not really saying very much.

Mark Smith from BrowseSafe occupied the next few minutes, giving a rambling speech in which he discussed censorware as if it were some far-off and idyllic concept.

"Most products focus on either client-side- or server-side-based technology. What would happen if the benefits of each could be brought together to provide the user with a new, more flexible and powerful way of surfing the web? What if every sub domain of every site had been categorized and classified by its content? Wouldn't you agree that everyone could benefit from that combination of technology? Of course you would? Now let's walk across the street to the front porch of the family of the home and try to view it from the parent's perspective. What if parents were able to determine what the child sees? What would it be like if e-mail, instant messaging, chat and other computer tools could be also controlled?"

Then, although the topic was client-side filters, he rambled on for several minutes about PlanetGood, a website that was probably unfamiliar to many in the room. He used the site's name in every single sentence for several minutes. And, naturally, he closed talking about "our forefathers" and "these inalienable rights that our forefathers entrusted to us and many of them died for."

Susan Getgood from Cyber Patrol kept things short and sweet, and took the "I'm a new mother and want to protect my children" approach. She muddled the definition of censorship somewhat, saying that "[s]ome critics confuse censorship, which is imposed by the government, with technology that a family or school can choose to use and then set to implement an individual policy." Our school system isn't a part of the government?

Richard Schwartz of ClickSafe.com touted his product nearly as much as Mark Smith promoted the mysterious "PlanetGood." He also described a system that his company has developed that sounds very much like Exotrope's BAIR. "Fleshtone has a very unique set of features [...] Through a combination?of a set of sophisticated algorithms it can establish if something is pornographic. [...] Justice Potter Stewart lives within our system, because he knows it when he sees it. It works, it's been tested out, it's over 99% effective." "We can distinguish between chicken breast and sexy breast." "A consortium of Portuguese and Australian pornographers had been hijacking people off of different sites, including the Harvard Law Review site into their pornographic sites. And then you have to reboot your computer in order to get out."

After the four had testified, we moved into the commission Q&A session. (No questions would be allowed from the audience.) A few interesting questions, answers, and comments cropped up during this portion.

Richard Schwartz, only half kidding, proposed a tax on Internet pornography.

Commissioner Gregory L. Rohde asked Richard Schwartz if his image filter could tell the difference between art and pornography. Astoundingly, Schwartz replied that it could.

Commissioner Jerry Berman asked if there were any plans to create an organization that could provide objective reviews of censorware products to help parents decide what to buy. Gordon Ross said that this had been tried a few years back with SIFT (?), and that it didn't work out.

After a short break, we began the second panel, which addressed server side filtering. Testifying was Kevin Fink, N2H2's CTO; Sunil Paul, Chairman of Brightmail; Stephen Boyles of Library Guardian (Swifteye); Michael Stephani, President and CEO of Exotrope; Ginny Wydler, Director of Standards and Policy at AOL; and Tim Robertson, CEO of FamilyClick.

The first person to say anything interesting was Michael Stephani, who made some fairly interesting claims. He said that their blacklist of sites included four million sites, and that their image-recognition software, BAIR, is 99.8% percent effective. Stephani bragged that it blocked 1 out of 6 general images and 96 out of 100 pornographic images. He pointed out (perhaps rightly) that image filtering is the only real way to filter out pornography, and also that client-side filtering would so go the way of the dodo, given the proliferation of Internet appliances. It wasn't long before he got all 'God bless America' and 'think of the children,' and eyeballs could be heard rolling throughout the room.

As Commissioners asked questions of the panel, Chairman Donald Telage admitted that he wasn't aware that client-side filters were able to use a blacklist. He was under the impression that they could only filter. I had flashbacks from the Napster hearings last week ("Can't you track their intellectual property address?")

Out of the blue, Karen Talbert asked the panel for a show of hands regarding their respective products' ability to work with high-speed connections. Obviously, everybody's hands went up.

How do these people get on the commission?

When given half a chance, Stephani got all "think of the children, my god, won't somebody think of the children?" again. He also bragged that Exotrope has a new, not-yet-released product that filters IM [AOL Instant Messaging -ed.] and even detects innuendo. Stephani said that they just got a contract to install this program on 30,000 school servers. Continuing his spectacular Old Faithful of shit, he cheerfully envisioned a time in the future when there would be "photonic switches" that would maintain a complete blueprint of everything that every user had ever done on-line. Christ, that's frightening. Stephani said that they'd spent $6.5MUS developing BAIR, and went on to point out the coincidence that Peacefire released the report showing that BAIR was 0% effective on the same day that their servers went down. Perhaps he was implying that Peacefire members hacked the server, perhaps that we were taking advantage of them, or perhaps he was just laughing at the circumstances.

There was no promised audience Q&A. That's probably because the whole event ran well over when it was supposed to end. Lacking a better approach, I rushed up to the ebullient Stephani with a copy of the newest BAIR report in hand. Although he was already talking to a reporter, he stopped when he saw my nametag ("Waldo L. Jaquith, Peacefire") and looked a little surprised. He, as well as his sidekick PR guy, enthusiastically introduced themselves. We talked for a few minutes, during which time I said that BAIR appears to suck less than many other censorware programs. But I was still fundamentally opposed to all of them. Between this and the revised report, Stephani was my new best friend. Several other people came forward to read nametags and shake hands, but I continued to talk to Stephani and the reporter, Drew Clark from Technology Daily.

Ten minutes later, when I walked out, I felt a little baffled. Stephani behaved towards me as if Peacefire had just given him the most glowing review that BAIR had ever gotten. This, despite my repeatedly pointing out that Peacefire is fundamentally opposed to filters, always will be, and BAIR is simply rather effective at performing the task that we hate.

I was disappointed that a few major points were never brought up during the discussions:

• Server-side censorware (especially that which is housed with each website) will always be a severe privacy violation, because it needs data on the user in order to establish what information to provide.
• Client-side censorware is doomed to fail because children know more about computers than their parents. The parent has to trust that little Suzy won't uninstall Cyber Patrol. But if Suzy can be trusted, why bother with Cyber Patrol?
• Internet censorship is impossible. The Internet is so large that it's a waste of time, so let's all stop. Gated community models, like AOL, Compuserve and such, are a far better way to provide a "safe" experience for kids.
• The concerns about children's wellbeing presented during the meeting mirror those that parents, since the beginning of time, have always had for their children. How can I keep my child safe when I'm not watching him? How do I know what my child is doing if I'm not around? How do I keep my children from hearing / seeing / saying bad things? Censorware makes no more sense than installing a v-chip in little Suzy's head. Get over it.

In a nutshell, I'm not sure what, if anything, was established at this meeting. It's clear that most of the Commissioners knew every little to start off with, and their opinions are being formed on what amounts to a series of sales pitch sprinkled with god-and-country references, a la mega blowout carpet sales around Independence Day. I'm glad COPA was struck down. Let's get on with our lives.

Best,
Waldo

There's a boatload of censorware news today, enough for two or three Slashdot stories -- but to conserve electrons, we're bringing it to you all in one easy-to-download package. First, Peacefire has a report on the accuracy of intelligent skin-tone-scanning software, one month after its company said they'd have it working in a month. And since the CEO of ClickSafe spoke at the COPA Commission meeting yesterday, Peacefire ran a check to see how many COPA-related sites its AI blocks. Finally, Waldo Jaquith has a report from the meeting itself which should be sobering but cracked me up anyway. Pay attention, everyone, these are the folks who are going to censor your Internet.

The Child Online Protection Act, passed late last year and then struck down early this year, is still under appeal. Colloquially it's known as "CDAII." Part of what the Act does is establish a Commission that meets every so often -- the Commission's website has details on its mandate and so on.

(Update, a few minutes later: make that "injunctified," or whatever one says for a law against which an injunction has been applied, instead of "struck down." Sorry; IANAL.)

Speaking at the Commission meeting yesterday and today were the CEOs of several major censorware companies. Among them was Michael Stephani, whose company Exotrope makes a product called BAIR.

BAIR

BAIR checks images as they download onto your computer, and claims to be able to tell the difference between pornography and other types of images. The "AI" in its acronym stands for artificial intelligence, running on supercomputers.

When the Wired story on BAIR came out last month (a story "borrowed" from Peacefire -- I'm not going to get into it), Wired quoted the company as saying "they plan to fix the errors within the next month." What errors?

"BAIR incorrectly blocked photographs of Yellowstone, the Baltimore waterfront, Snoopy, boats, sunsets, dogs, vegetables and even a Wired News staff meeting.

"It rated as acceptable for minors -- even on the most restrictive setting -- explicit images of oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

That was one month ago. How's BAIR doing now?

Peacefire retested the same 50 pornographic images that they'd used last month (which presumably BAIR's programmers would have paid extra-special attention to). Their new report finds that, instead of zero, the number of blocked images is now: 34. I've got a great slogan for them: "now your children can only see 32% of the web's oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

One's respect for these programmers is dampened a little, though, because there's more to Peacefire's report. It seems, in a random sample of 50 photos of people's faces, BAIR blocked ... how many? ... 34.

Maybe that slogan should be: "now your children can only see 32% of the web," period.

It's wonderful to live in a world where artificial intelligence offers limitless possibilities. Its website suggests that "Because Artificial Intelligence can be taught to recognize a variety of patterns," -- oh, OK -- "our BAIR can be taught to evaluate other categories such as violence or illegal activities. The BAIR is currently undergoing training in these areas to provide additional filtration selections."

ClickSafe

Richard Schwartz, CEO of ClickSafe, also spoke yesterday at the COPA Commission meeting. Just for kicks, Peacefire decided to try out their spiffy AI software too.

Insert marketblurb here: "...by combining cutting-edge graphic, word and phrase-recognition technology, ClickSafe has achieved accuracy rates of over 99% (according to recent sample tests). ClickSafe can precisely distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate sites (e.g. sites related to issues such as breast cancer will not be blocked)."

What Peacefire did was test this software against the website of the COPA Commission itself, and related sites such as those of speakers or Commission members. They found that blocked pages included:

• The Child Online Protection Act itself, in original and amended form;
• The COPA Commission FAQ;
• Biographies of Commission members Stephen Balkam and John Bastian;
• Bio of Commission member and famed anti-porn crusader Donna Rice Hughes, as well as AppendixA from her book Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace;
• A list of technologies the Commission examines;
• The scope of what the Commission is called upon to do;
• A service agreement from a little company called Network Solutions, whose rep chairs COPA's meetings;
• "About the ICRA" (the makers of RSACi, "a simple, yet effective rating system for web sites which both protected children and protected the rights of free speech");
• Bible study tools: "We hope these free resources foster a desire for Christians to learn more about the Bible, deepening their relationship with God" unless they're using censorware;
• The American Family Association (a conservative Christian group that is trying to force censorware into public libraries, including those surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound);
• The ACLU, the EFF, and the Center for Democracy and Technology;

and so on.

When I spoke with Bennett about this, he commented that the strange thing was that these flaws are so easy to find; you'd think someone would have run these simple tests already. If anyone reading wants to get their name in Slashdot (and other news media too), censorware is a gold mine of untested misinformation. Buy a product, design a solid unbiased test for it, run the test, and send us what you find. Repeat until the whole world has a clue.

The COPA Commission Meeting

The following is an account of yesterday's COPA Commission meeting, by Waldo Jaquith. Keep in mind that this meeting's purpose, according to the Scope & Timeline Proposal which is blocked by ClickSafe, is to study filtering and blocking software to learn what to recommend in its report to Congress late this year.

Folks,

For more information on the COPA Commission, see http://www.copacommission.org/. (Unless your network has ClickSafe installed, in which case you shouldn't bother.) There is an agenda for this meeting, and there are bios for most people, as well as the prepared speeches for many of the below folks. I've tried to be objective.

Oh, screw that. There's nothing objective about it. But I've tried to give useful facts, quote accurately, etc.

The whole affair, which was scheduled to start at 9:30am, didn't actually start until 10:15am. Which was good, because I didn't get there until 9:45. Although the event was being held at the University of Richmond's Jepson Alumni Center, the room felt like your basic hotel meeting room. Bad carpet, ugly chairs, poor lighting. There were enough chairs to seat about 100 people, but only 35 people were in attendance. Directly in front of the two columns of chairs was a table with chairs, facing away from the audience. This table was for people asked to testify before the COPA Commission. On the other side of that table was a long table, at which was seated the commission, all sixteen members. The result was that the people testifying, who did most of the talking, could only be recognized by the backs of their heads by the audience.

Chairman Donald Telage called the meeting to order and introduced the first panel, who was to speak for approximately 45 minutes on the topic of client-side filters. This panel included Gordon Ross, the President and CEO of Net Nanny, Mark Smith, the President of BrowseSafe, Susan Getgood, the VP and General Manager of Cyber Patrol, and Richard Schwartz, the CEO of Opportunity-America (ClickSafe.com).

Gordon Ross kicked things off with a tremendously boring ten minute speech about how client-side filters work. The only interesting comment that he made was his belief that "consumers should have the ability to analyze each and every site in the database..." [...because his product Net Nanny is the only one of the 150 censorware packages on the market that allows oversight of its blacklist. -ed] He also kicked off the First Amendment references, which nearly every speaker throughout the day would spend some time talking about, but not really saying very much.

Mark Smith from BrowseSafe occupied the next few minutes, giving a rambling speech in which he discussed censorware as if it were some far-off and idyllic concept.

"Most products focus on either client-side- or server-side-based technology. What would happen if the benefits of each could be brought together to provide the user with a new, more flexible and powerful way of surfing the web? What if every sub domain of every site had been categorized and classified by its content? Wouldn't you agree that everyone could benefit from that combination of technology? Of course you would? Now let's walk across the street to the front porch of the family of the home and try to view it from the parent's perspective. What if parents were able to determine what the child sees? What would it be like if e-mail, instant messaging, chat and other computer tools could be also controlled?"

Then, although the topic was client-side filters, he rambled on for several minutes about PlanetGood, a website that was probably unfamiliar to many in the room. He used the site's name in every single sentence for several minutes. And, naturally, he closed talking about "our forefathers" and "these inalienable rights that our forefathers entrusted to us and many of them died for."

Susan Getgood from Cyber Patrol kept things short and sweet, and took the "I'm a new mother and want to protect my children" approach. She muddled the definition of censorship somewhat, saying that "[s]ome critics confuse censorship, which is imposed by the government, with technology that a family or school can choose to use and then set to implement an individual policy." Our school system isn't a part of the government?

Richard Schwartz of ClickSafe.com touted his product nearly as much as Mark Smith promoted the mysterious "PlanetGood." He also described a system that his company has developed that sounds very much like Exotrope's BAIR. "Fleshtone has a very unique set of features [...] Through a combination?of a set of sophisticated algorithms it can establish if something is pornographic. [...] Justice Potter Stewart lives within our system, because he knows it when he sees it. It works, it's been tested out, it's over 99% effective." "We can distinguish between chicken breast and sexy breast." "A consortium of Portuguese and Australian pornographers had been hijacking people off of different sites, including the Harvard Law Review site into their pornographic sites. And then you have to reboot your computer in order to get out."

After the four had testified, we moved into the commission Q&A session. (No questions would be allowed from the audience.) A few interesting questions, answers, and comments cropped up during this portion.

Richard Schwartz, only half kidding, proposed a tax on Internet pornography.

Commissioner Gregory L. Rohde asked Richard Schwartz if his image filter could tell the difference between art and pornography. Astoundingly, Schwartz replied that it could.

Commissioner Jerry Berman asked if there were any plans to create an organization that could provide objective reviews of censorware products to help parents decide what to buy. Gordon Ross said that this had been tried a few years back with SIFT (?), and that it didn't work out.

After a short break, we began the second panel, which addressed server side filtering. Testifying was Kevin Fink, N2H2's CTO; Sunil Paul, Chairman of Brightmail; Stephen Boyles of Library Guardian (Swifteye); Michael Stephani, President and CEO of Exotrope; Ginny Wydler, Director of Standards and Policy at AOL; and Tim Robertson, CEO of FamilyClick.

The first person to say anything interesting was Michael Stephani, who made some fairly interesting claims. He said that their blacklist of sites included four million sites, and that their image-recognition software, BAIR, is 99.8% percent effective. Stephani bragged that it blocked 1 out of 6 general images and 96 out of 100 pornographic images. He pointed out (perhaps rightly) that image filtering is the only real way to filter out pornography, and also that client-side filtering would so go the way of the dodo, given the proliferation of Internet appliances. It wasn't long before he got all 'God bless America' and 'think of the children,' and eyeballs could be heard rolling throughout the room.

As Commissioners asked questions of the panel, Chairman Donald Telage admitted that he wasn't aware that client-side filters were able to use a blacklist. He was under the impression that they could only filter. I had flashbacks from the Napster hearings last week ("Can't you track their intellectual property address?")

Out of the blue, Karen Talbert asked the panel for a show of hands regarding their respective products' ability to work with high-speed connections. Obviously, everybody's hands went up.

How do these people get on the commission?

When given half a chance, Stephani got all "think of the children, my god, won't somebody think of the children?" again. He also bragged that Exotrope has a new, not-yet-released product that filters IM [AOL Instant Messaging -ed.] and even detects innuendo. Stephani said that they just got a contract to install this program on 30,000 school servers. Continuing his spectacular Old Faithful of shit, he cheerfully envisioned a time in the future when there would be "photonic switches" that would maintain a complete blueprint of everything that every user had ever done on-line. Christ, that's frightening. Stephani said that they'd spent $6.5MUS developing BAIR, and went on to point out the coincidence that Peacefire released the report showing that BAIR was 0% effective on the same day that their servers went down. Perhaps he was implying that Peacefire members hacked the server, perhaps that we were taking advantage of them, or perhaps he was just laughing at the circumstances.

There was no promised audience Q&A. That's probably because the whole event ran well over when it was supposed to end. Lacking a better approach, I rushed up to the ebullient Stephani with a copy of the newest BAIR report in hand. Although he was already talking to a reporter, he stopped when he saw my nametag ("Waldo L. Jaquith, Peacefire") and looked a little surprised. He, as well as his sidekick PR guy, enthusiastically introduced themselves. We talked for a few minutes, during which time I said that BAIR appears to suck less than many other censorware programs. But I was still fundamentally opposed to all of them. Between this and the revised report, Stephani was my new best friend. Several other people came forward to read nametags and shake hands, but I continued to talk to Stephani and the reporter, Drew Clark from Technology Daily.

Ten minutes later, when I walked out, I felt a little baffled. Stephani behaved towards me as if Peacefire had just given him the most glowing review that BAIR had ever gotten. This, despite my repeatedly pointing out that Peacefire is fundamentally opposed to filters, always will be, and BAIR is simply rather effective at performing the task that we hate.

I was disappointed that a few major points were never brought up during the discussions:

• Server-side censorware (especially that which is housed with each website) will always be a severe privacy violation, because it needs data on the user in order to establish what information to provide.
• Client-side censorware is doomed to fail because children know more about computers than their parents. The parent has to trust that little Suzy won't uninstall Cyber Patrol. But if Suzy can be trusted, why bother with Cyber Patrol?
• Internet censorship is impossible. The Internet is so large that it's a waste of time, so let's all stop. Gated community models, like AOL, Compuserve and such, are a far better way to provide a "safe" experience for kids.
• The concerns about children's wellbeing presented during the meeting mirror those that parents, since the beginning of time, have always had for their children. How can I keep my child safe when I'm not watching him? How do I know what my child is doing if I'm not around? How do I keep my children from hearing / seeing / saying bad things? Censorware makes no more sense than installing a v-chip in little Suzy's head. Get over it.

In a nutshell, I'm not sure what, if anything, was established at this meeting. It's clear that most of the Commissioners knew every little to start off with, and their opinions are being formed on what amounts to a series of sales pitch sprinkled with god-and-country references, a la mega blowout carpet sales around Independence Day. I'm glad COPA was struck down. Let's get on with our lives.

Best,
Waldo

waldoj writes: "Intel has announced their "Dot.Station," a Red Hat-powered Internet appliance. With a price around $500, I think I'll just buy an eMachine..." I wonder how much the marketroids were paid to come up with the name... the article is fairly skeptical, and I don't see enough non-vapor to know for sure.

Brian Ristuccia writes, "It looks like the ACLU has decided to help Waldo L. Jaquith, Lindsay Haisley and Bennett Haselton, three folks who were running mirror sites of the recently released Cyber Patrol paper and decoding software, respond to the subpoena and confusing e-service messages that have been sent to them via e-mail by Cyber Patrol's law firm."

Links:

• Declan McCullagh's Archive of Case Related Documents
• ACLU Press Release

Text of the ACLU's Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, March 24, 2000

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union will enter a Boston court this Monday to argue that a ban on a program allowing users to decode the Internet blocking software Cyber Patrol constitutes a "classic prior restraint on speech" in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Cyber Patrol controversy is but the latest round in a heated debate over flaws in so-called filtering software that both "overblocks" non-pornographic Web sites on subjects like Super Bowl XXX and fails to block many sites parents may not deem appropriate for their children.

In legal papers filed with the court today, the ACLU said that Cyber Patrol's lawsuit is unnecessary because the company can easily block their customers from accessing any Web site or page on which the decoding program appears, whereas some of the Web sites may be out of the jurisdiction of the court.

Acting on behalf of three U.S. Web site operators who posted "mirror" copies of the decoding program, the ACLU said their free speech rights would be violated if the court granted the company's request for a preliminary injunction against the Swedish and Canadian creators of the program.

"Under Cyber Patrol's logic, I'd be breaking the law if I bought a Ford Mustang and looked under the hood," said Chris Hansen, a senior ACLU staff attorney and lead counsel in the case. "I don't think it is asking too much for Cyber Patrol and other software companies to tell the American public exactly what their software blocks, especially when Congress wants to force both children and adults to use it."

Last Friday, March 17, U.S. District Judge Edward F. Harrington granted a 10-day temporary restraining order against the creators of the program. Cyber Patrol then sent subpoenas to the ACLU's clients, suggesting that they would be bound by that order and any future court bans.

In addition, at least one American reporter has confirmed receipt of subpoena from Cyber Patrol ordering him to reveal the name of "each and every person who produced, received, viewed, downloaded or accessed" the decoding program from his site.

The Web site operators, Waldo L. Jaquith, Lindsay Haisley and Bennett Haselton, each said that they posted the decoding program as a form of political protest against Cyber Patrol's legal actions and against "censorware" in general. Their Web sites can be found at: www.peacefire.org (Haselton), www.fmp.com (Haisley) and www.waldo.net (Jasquith).

"We thought it would be educational for some politicians, who are recommending blocking software for use in every school in the country, to see the mistakes that the codebreakers found in Cyber Patrol's list," said Haselton, 21, operator of Peacefire.org, a Web site he founded specifically to defend the free-speech interests of people under 18 on the Internet.

Haselton said that Peacefire recently decrypted the lists of sites blocked by two other programs -- I-Gear and X-Stop -- and found that they had error rates between 68 and 76 percent for blocking pages in the educational ".edu" domain.

Haselton, Jasquith, and Haisley are represented as "nonparties" to the Cyber Patrol lawsuit by Hansen of the national ACLU, Sarah Wunsch, an attorney with the ACLU of Massachusetts, David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center based in Washington, and Jessica Littman, a visiting professor of law at New York University.

In 1998, a federal district judge said that forcing adults to use blocking software like Cyber Patrol in public libraries "offends the guarantee of free speech." Last month, a proposal aimed at forcing a Michigan public library to install Web filtering software on computers was defeated by voters.

"With Congress renewing efforts to mandate use of such flawed software in public schools and libraries, the Cyber Patrol battle only serves to emphasize that information on what is blocked must be made available to consumers, let alone libraries and schools," Hansen said.

The hearing in Microsystems Software, Inc. V. Scandinavia Online, IslandNet.com, Eddy L.O. Jansson and Matthew Skala, Civil Action No.00-10488-EFH, will take place on Monday, March 27, at 2:00 p.m. in U.S. District Court in Boston.

The ACLU's opposition to motion for preliminary injunction in the case is online at http://www.aclu.org/court/cyberpatrol_motion.html. The motion to quash subpoenas is online at http://www.aclu.org/court/cyberpatrol_quash.html.

Cyber Patrol is a subsidiary of toy company giant Mattel Inc., which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

WaldoJ sent us a link to a Forbes article about geeks and college. The question is if college is worthwhile or not. It was a 4.5 year time vacuum for me. Education can't really keep pace with "modern" technology, sure, learning theory and getting some practice never hurts, but if you're already a geek, is it a waste of time? This article seems to say so.