Censorware to be Mandatory in Schools, Libraries

It was supposed to be done by September 30, but Congress finally finished its budget for this year. Because it works best with our sometimes-bizarre legislative system, this year, like every year, hundreds of unrelated measures were rolled up into one massive package and crammed through the door. Your grandchildren may look up at you with a puzzled expression, fifty years from now, and say "grampa" (or gramma), "did you really use an unfiltered internet, back in the olden days? Wasn't that scary? How did you ever survive with all that porn jumping out at you?" If that happens, just sigh, and think back to the olden days -- December2000 -- before censorware became mandatory in public institutions nationwide.

The massive spending bill has been passed by the House and Senate, and President Clinton is expected to sign it soon. Despite some noises from the Clinton administration mildly protesting censorware, the small amendment making it mandatory is not considered to be an important enough issue to veto an entire appropriations bill.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment.

As the ACLU says,

Earlier this year, an 18-member commission appointed by Congress rejected the idea of mandating the use of blocking software, which is notoriously clumsy and inevitably restricts access to valuable, protected speech. A wide spectrum of organizations have opposed blocking software mandates, including the American Library Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the conservative Free Congress Foundation and state chapters of the Eagle Forum and the American Family Association.

"There was an Alice in Wonderland quality to this debate," said Marvin Johnson, a Legislative Counsel with the ACLU's Washington National Office. "With its vote, Congress rejected the advice it asked for from the panel it appointed."

The "wide spectrum of organizations" extends from educators to The New York Times to strongly conservative political/religious groups. For more on the COPA Commission and its recommendations, see our stories from July and August.

Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet.

The text of the self-declared "Children's Internet Protection Act" is available from CDT. It uses the term "technology protection measure" to describe the software.

In related news, Peacefire, an advocacy group for youth free-speech rights, released a tool to provide one-click disabling of some popular censorware programs.

Meanwhile, the ACLU will be suing to stop this bill from taking effect. This is not a slam-dunk like the CDA was. They're in for a tough fight. Here are three reasons why:

1. The CDA's language was very broad. This bill targets its material precisely: obscenity, child pornography, and "harmful to minors" material. Of course there is no "technology protection measure" in existence which can censor only this material, or even claim to censor only this material.

2. The CDA covered speech. This bill addresses the right to read that speech in a public institution.

3. This bill regulates institutions which are taking public money and how they may use it. Legally, and also in many people's minds, it is more permissable to enact regulations which go against the grain of the Constitution if they are tied to acceptance of public funds.

(The classic example is that the Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable search and seizure, but when the government provides public housing, it sometimes tries to say that the 4th Amendment does not apply. Same situation, different Amendment.)

Brock Meeks is more optimistic, saying the bill is "doomed." The key issue, I think, will be whether censorware can work. If it does not work, if it cannot work, then the language of the bill is irrelevant; our Congress might as well have demanded a "technology protection measure" to give all our kids 200 IQs and an lifetime supply of free donuts.

When I get in the mood to be optimistic, I think about all the stories we hear from students who are already forced to use this software. It seems like everyone has an anecdote about how they were blocked from doing legitimate research for school.

So maybe if this legislation survives, in ten years, all the kids who grew up with first-hand experience with censorware will start to vote. That's about the only bright side I can see.

For now, Brown v. Board of Education is the example I'm keeping in mind. The Supreme Court, after a half-century of segregated schools, decided that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" -- the theory might be OK, but it had failed in practice.

The courts should evaluate the "technology protection measures" by what they do, not by what the law demands they do. The theory might be OK, but in practice, all the technology that I've looked at blocks much more than it should. I'll be hoping for a verdict that reads: "technology protection measures are inherently censorship."

And, hopefully, now -- not after a half-century.

Comments

NitPick

[Masem]

This is not 'censoring', though it is a slipperly slope away from that.

Censoring means that the material that may be considered harmful is removed prior to public disemination. I can censor a TV show by bleeping the words in the audio track before it is broadcast. Censoring is ALWAYS done by the distribution end.

Filtering means that the material that may be considered harmful is removed or altered at the recieving end. I can filter a TV show that is coming down live from the network satelite during that 15 second delay before further sending the signal out along cable lines. Filtering is ALWAYS done by the recieving end.

This bill is NOT about censorware, but filterware.

Now, some might argue that this will effectively censor some sites out there. But this is not correct. Take the physical example of 'banned books' such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Sure, the book may be banned from school and public libraries, but there are other means to get the book: from a store, from a friend, possibly by online text. The book is in no way censored since the material is still readily available in some form. Same with online information, say that Slashdot is blocked by these filters. Certainly there are other was to access it, from private internet connections or net-cafes. No one is denying you any access to that site whatsoever, just that the public institution feels that they need to filter it for the public good.

Thus, this bill does not threaten anyone's 1st amendment rights in any way. You still have your freedom of speech and expression, and you still have ways to hear others if you so choose, just that in public institutions, what *you* may want to hear is not in the best of public interest, and thus needs to be filtered.

Now, mind you, this bill sucks. Yes, it does leave it up to the community to decide what to filter, but it should leave more to the communities than just that. In addition, filtering software is inefficient, and can filter legitamite sites as well as As some other articles on the net state, communities have already passed regulations that they will not implement filters due to any easy way to set a community standard and the lack of good software.

So while I expect the ACLU to challenge it, I'd rather see states challenge it as it violates several distinctions of federal and state powers. I'd also like to see groups like Peacefire tackle the problem and raise the issue that no filtering program is sufficiently good at this point in time to be setting national standards for them. Until such a time where we can dynamically determine if the content on such a page (including images) are not up to the standards of the given community, any national filtering solution will fail (and since I doubt we'll get to such a point in 10 years, this bill is waaaay before it's time).

I'd rather see a better approach in the sence of voluntary ratings for sites, and mandating that public institution must enable such features on a browser to conform with that ratings system. Then make it a civil offense to misrate your site after being notified that the site is improperly rated (or some other such action to avoid the quick-fire lawsuit type persons). Certainly 90% of the sites out there probably won't need to rate themselves, and those that do could be making sure that their site flies under the filtering radar (such as a breast cancer site making sure they indicate that they are a health-related site). Yes, it's not a perfect solution, but it's a better direction than filtering software.

But again, filtering != censoring, but a few slipperly slope arguments get you there. "Well, if X is blocked at public schools, why shouldn't it be blocked from the web overall?" doesn't follow logic, but a sympathic judge might eat it up. Any filtering law must state that it's for the purpose of maintaining community standards in public places and does not attempt to interfere with free speech rights granted in private places of home or business.

Re:So?

[Mawbid]

Are you new here? This isn't about people's ability to view porn in libraries; it's about people's ability to view material that censorware products erroniously classify as porn in libraries.
--

raised by the state

[MenTaLguY]

I don't want the government telling me what is and what is not appropriate for my children. I'll make that decision.

Then quite frankly, you really should not be sending your children to an institution where the government acts in loco parentis.

In other words, if you don't want the government dictating the way your kids are raised, don't let the government raise your kids.

Re:raised by the state

[ChristTrekker]

I don't want the government telling me what is and what is not appropriate for my children. I'll make that decision.

Then quite frankly, you really should not be sending your children to an institution where the government acts in loco parentis.

In other words, if you don't want the government dictating the way your kids are raised, don't let the government raise your kids.

And this is exactly why the federal gov't should not be involved in education in any way, shape, or form. Where in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution is the federal gov't given authority to have any say in educational matters? Nowhere.

A Democratic president is expected to sign this into law. The Republicans no longer have this plank in their platform. Don't expect this to change any time soon. The Constitution party supports parental control of their children's education though. The Libertarians have a somewhat similar view. Limit the gov't to what it's actually allowed to do, and we'd be better off. Doesn't the Constitution matter any more?

We don't need vouchers. What we do need is for the federal gov't to not tax us for education in the first place. Let parents choose where their children go to school, and let them finance it directly, or at a county or state level. All the DOE is good at is wasting money while test scores continue to drop.

Re:Taxes pay for pornography?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

With a simple authorization by a professor or some other administrator, a student could be given full unrestrained access for academic studies. Its not as if censorware would render the internet useless. It would simply be protecting our greatest national resource.

This attitude, quite frankly, scares me.

There seem to be a lot of laws these days that apply to large chunks of the populace, but aren't intended to actually be enforced...except when the Powers That Be® feel like it. "We can just suspend the law if we really think we need to" just doesn't make good policy.

There's more at stake here than a need to Protect The Children® from naked people. The ability of students, still learning to form "informed opinions", need to be able to see more than the narrow (and sometimes bizarre) collection of sites allowed by a censorware filter. Political sites (yes, including those of a non-extreme nature) seem to be a regular thing showing up in the block lists. Our political structure in the USA is already messed up enough - I'd really rather there be at least a chance that future voters will be able to get enough information to make good decisions, even if they aren't wealthy enough to have their own private internet hookups.

Bear in mind, also, that the implication here is that libraries will have to go out and spend the money appropriated from us in taxes for commercial censorware, which gives a private organization control over the content viewable in a public organization. Perhaps a "public" peer-reviewed, open, server-based filter wouldn't be so bad, but as far as I know no such option currently exists.

So, to sum up, I think the risk involved in keeping people (especially younger individuals who may not have the experience yet to know when important information is being hidden from them) without private internet connections from seeing things that a private company's corporate agenda doesn't like is a far greater risk than having Little Johnny perhaps see a naked person before one of the library employees walks by and makes him stop...

I am also bothered in general by a bunch of sequestered, overpaid, lawyer-types in a little corner of the country determining what my local library can and can't do, but that's a whole other issue...

A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.

Re:I don't know why this suprises people.

[ShinGouki]

that's the major problem, though. censorware _never_ _EVER_ works like it's supposed to. We've all seen the graphically stupid, albeit funny, stories about censorware blocking sites that have no business whatsoever being blocked. Beyond the galling thought that we're entrusting decisions on how to educate the youth of this country to a piece of sofware, what makes it even worse is that we're entrusting decisions on how to educate the youth of this country to a horribly broken
-dk

Re:I don't know why this suprises people.

[flimflam]

It occurred to me that perhaps the purpose of having blocking software in schools really isn't to block objectional material per se, but to serve as a more subtle method of indoctrinating our children to get accustomed to, and accept the concept of being told what they can and cannot see. For this purpose the actual effectiveness of the software isn't terribly important, what matters is that children get used to asking permission to view certain material, and accepting that there are some things they really shouldn't see.

Re:censor what?

[mpe]

there's always a few sites that use a "questionable" word in a completely different manner

Very few words which are exclusivly "questionable". Indeed many words used in porn have completly unrelated uses outside porn. Hence some of the apparent bizare classifications of the like of sports clubs (lots of sports use "balls" of some type or other), entertainment equiptment (best ensure that there is no mention of CDs or TVs) as "porn". Let alone you can only use nails (and not "screws") in construction. With loads more similiar stupidity being likely with the kind of programs used to compile blacklists.
If someone could write a program to do the job then the program would probably be entitled to be classified as a sapient being.

Re:I don't know why this suprises people.

[interiot]

Or, as Senator McCain's Committee stated:

• The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed the compelling interest of the government in protecting children from exposure to sexually explicit material. As stated by the Court: "It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that the State's interest in safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor is compelling."

• ... a court is also likely to look to related, non-Internet situations that have arisen in the past. These precedents include decisions regarding the selection or removal of books in schools or libraries, and the selection of content for publication in school-sponsored student newspapers. The Supreme Court has ruled that schools are non-public forums that are outside the general marketplace of expression. Accordingly, school boards have significant discretion to restrict content and expression within that environment. Under this doctrine, school officials only violate the First Amendment when they limit access to materials "for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in them, when that action is motivated simply by the official's disapproval of the ideas involved."

  In situations where a school has restricted access to certain material, courts tend to consider whether the school's decision bore a reasonable relationship to a legitimate pedagogical concern. For example, a school district's decision that students exposed to violence, nudity, or "hard" language is a view-point neutral "legitimate pedagogical concern."

--

Some Points

[interiot]

Some points:

• It's not actually an official law until President Clinton signs it.
• The very same day that the president signed COPA into law, the ACLU filed a suit against it (and they've been winning so far).
• CIPA is different from COPA and CDA though, in many ways. One of the main differences is that COPA and CDA were criminal statutes, bound by stricter due-process considerations. CIPA is just an incentive-based "suggestion", similar to the 55mph thing, and so it's not bound by constitutional considerations as much.
• This law has been introduced 9 times over the past two years, all by Republicans.
• The American Library Association strongly opposes such a law.

Also, one of the peices of evidence that the proponents put forth was a statement by the CEO of Net Nanny Software (yeah, he'll be objective):

• A general perception exists that Internet filtering is seriously flawed and in many situations unusable. It is also perceived that schools and libraries don't want filtering. These notions are naive and based largely on problems associated with earlier versions of client-based software that are admittedly crude and ineffective. Though some poor filtering products still exist, filtering has gone through an extensive evolution and is not only good at protecting children but also well-received and in high demand.

This is obvious political FUD, and very dangerous IMHO because it goes along with the innovation-meme and it gives critics a way to immediately brush off any counter-evidence. But the opponents of porn filtering DO use outdated evidence often, and it's something they should be careful of. Because there are a lot of current studies that show that filters still suck badly.
--

Re:My experience (a good filter is)...

[British]

So why would porn webmasters want to get around filters to give kids access? They all want your credit card anyway, and kids don't have credit cards.

On the flip side, the kid(s) could just get their parents credit card out.

Re:Loophole?

[jamienk]

Also, since when is "harmful to minors" unprotected speech? I know obscenity and child-pornography have high-profile supreme court decisions supporting their lack of free-speech protection. but "harmful to minors?" What the fuck is that? Does that relate dto the "7 words you can't say on TV" thing? (Which by the way, you now apparently can say on TV...maybe).

Re:And so it begins

[TheCarp]

You know... I never thought of it from that angle.

I mean, certainly - I hate censorware. I think the very idea of even TRYING to stop a person from accessing information that is available to the world is wrong.

However, this could be quite interesting. Thinking back, yea - kids raised around such things always find out how to get around them. Subverting authority, in even the most slight and novel way is definitly a kids major past time.

Kind of reminds me of when I found out how to subvert foolproof on the Macs at school (easy - ... by clicking and holding in the right places at the right times, one could keep elevated priviliges to make modifications to restricted files)

I used to use it to change all of the icon colors (with labels)... just for shits and giggles. Then there was that one time that I littered the box with porn in mischievous ways (last day of class for us seniors).

Ahh.... school was fun. Maybe its good that the kids are getting a new toy to play with. It truely does facilitate learning... learning how to get around restrictions, and make the best of a bad situation :).

-Steve

Note, just required to be in, not effecient...

[11thangel]

Just because there is censorware doesnt mean it has to work. My school has had websense installed for 2 years now, and i have more backdoors through it than i can count. I still find it funny that the biology website used by half the sophomore class was blocked because it had "learning games" in the meta tags. Even funnier that websenses own website was blocked under "Tastless".

Schools Yes, Libraries No

[sachsmachine]

IANAL (yet), but it seems to me that although the law's got a pretty good shot at surviving the courts as far as schools go, libraries will be a tougher sell. The Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act in part because "[i]n order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve."

It seems to me that the federal government could easily make the argument that censorware is the least restrictive means for stopping students (who are minors) from viewing indecent speech; since the goal they outlined was preserving the rights of adults, the students are probably out of luck. Plus, since schools have special powers over students, there's generally little protection for those who would want to look at various banned materials through school computers.

Libraries, on the other hand, serve a general public (i.e., people over 18) and would probably be subject to a much greater degree of scrutiny. There, any filtering would impinge on adult speech (although it's possible that they would turn it off for 18-and-over). One court has already found that libraries can't use filterware to stop adults from viewing legal material, and it based its decision in part on that clause from the CDA opinion.

The upshot of this is that, unless the courts decide to change their minds, students will just have to use the public libraries more often...

(I wonder, though, whether it might be possible to challenge individual software programs one-by-one rather than go after the law on its face -- after all, it shouldn't be too hard to show that each one blocks perfectly legitimate sites and thus impermissibly restricts speech...)

And the funny thing is....

[11223]

... a long, long, time ago, there were no professional porn vendors on the web. Just people spreadin' porn on USENET, which you could very well avoid. HTTP was the cleanest protocol, and very useful (as long as you were only looking for research papers or computer programs).

If you remember this internet, please help join the fight by switching to lynx, links, or telnet nameofsite 80 right now!

as a parent...

[tewwetruggur]

as a parent and an uncle of 14 (nothing like getting married and, BAM, instant uncle*12), I feel that it is entirely the parent's responsibility to watch out for their kids. Not watch out for porn, not watch out for the "bad guy", but to watch and care for their children. Yes, children can be curious - so if they stumble, make sure they know what is right and wrong for them. There are many things suitable for myself (or the other 3 of tewwetruggur) to view/read, but that doesn't make it ok for our kids. WE need to be the censors for our children, WE need to be the educators, WE need to get off our lazy asses and take our own action. If people really feel that censorware for the internet is the way to go, then we must make sure that this censorware works - no more of this half-assed "defense". Since this falls into the hands of companies selling their censorware services, then they must be held accountable if they fail - either a failure to block was is not permissible, or a failure to let through what is permissible.

I've seen far too many parents think of school as a form of daycare for their kids. That is pathetic - school is to learn, and learning means making mistakes. Do I mean that all kids should make the mistake of viewing porn at the age of 7? No, certaintly not - nor do I think that a child should be able to paruse the internet unsupervised. If people have a problem with this, then they really need to re-think their priorites. Perhaps they should get out from behind their crapmed desks and volunteer some time at their childrens' schools. Then they can re-assume part of the responsibility without censorware.

Sure, that's all nice and idealistic, but that's also part of why it has become so sad.

It's constitutional

[Chuck Flynn]

At least as far as the funding is concerned, it's constitutional. The Federal government might not have any constitutional basis for telling local governments and states what to do, but it does have plenary power to raise whatever funding it wants and spend it generally.

Just look at highway funding: under 23 U.S.C. 158, a state which fails to comply and raise its minimum drinking age to twenty-one has 5% of its federal highway funds withheld during the first year of non-compliance and 10% of such funds withheld in each succeeding year. This is entirely constitutional, because the state always reserves the option of not caring and not receiving the funds it wouldn't have raised anyway.

The first-amendment issues are important and interesting. But unfortunately, they're the only constitutional issues relevant here.

Censorware must block Football then.

[Pont]

Football is indisputeably harmful to minors.

Football causes many, many injuries to minors who participate in it every year. Sometimes, these injuries are permanently crippling.

Football related crime is quite common as well. Team jackets are used as gang colors. Innocent children have been murdered as a result.

Furthermore, professional football players are the worst hedonists on the planet. They do drugs, they rape women, and they are loose with money! How on earth could we let these people be role models for our children?

So by all means, any library or school that is using my tax dollars should ban American football because it is "harmful to children."

[/sarcasm]

totally wrong: the Net does not belong to the U.S.

[Preposterous Coward]

Adding a .xxx TLD would solve nothing. Even assuming that lawmakers could have jurisdiction to fine operators that did not voluntarily comply (they'd obviously just move their hosting to some country that didn't care what the U.S. thinks), you make the assumption that there is some single, universal definition of "porn" that applies worldwide. This is completely incorrect. Different countries, and even different communities within a single country, have different standards for decency. Maybe you think Playboy is risque enough to qualify for .xxx status even though it shows only nudity and no depictions or simulations of sex acts. Fine. Many Europeans, who tend to be much more accustomed to open depictions of nudity in advertisements and on television, could well disagree. On the other hand, a fundamentalist Islamic country like Iran could well consider even pictures of a woman in a bikini to exceed the bounds of propriety.

The fundamental problem here is first defining "porn" (or other objectionable material) in such a way that it will never exclude material that citizens are indeed allowed to access, and second dealing with the reality that the definition of objectionable varies dramatically from place to place on a Net that is worldwide. Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court once claimed that he can't define pornography, but that "I know it when I see it". Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly provide for a clear delineation between something that would be allowed in .com versus .xxx, even disregarding the global implications of a scheme like this.

what is truly sad...

[tewwetruggur]

what is truly sad is that some feel there is a need for censorware in the first place.

Hopefully, after enough kids can't research their projects/reports because they've been blocked from non-offending sites, something will finally be done for real and/or censorware will go away... I'm getting tired of the government just putting on cheap band-aids, handed out by congress.

The real problem here

[Angst Badger]

The real problem here isn't a legal one, it's cultural. Thanks to the way the Victorian Era poisoned our culture, Westerners in general and Americans in particular have a morbid fear of sexuality. This fear is so deeply entrenched that it doesn't seem odd that exposing a (female) nipple in public is a criminal offense, and may be a felony in some instances.

Some (though hardly all) feminists have muddied the water by suggesting that pornography denigrates women. There is much truth to this argument, but they are incorrect in their estimate of the underlying cause. Pornography denigrates women not because it treats women as objects -- though obviously it does -- but because the pseudo-religious opposition to pornography treats women as toxins from which society must be protected. To a lesser degree than in Islamic society, but for much the same reasons, the more stringent standards for female body coverings rest on the premise that women are a corrupting influence on men, and that they cannot be trusted to control their instinctual imperatives, and at the same time insisting that they must yield to the instinctual imperatives of dominant males.

Our society is choked with people who -- and I don't care what pious excuses are offered for this -- are deeply afraid of sexuality, and more often than not full of fear and loathing for female sexuality. (Before anyone flames, please don't think that I'm arguing that male-oriented porn is either a realistic or healthy representation of female sexuality. But it wouldn't matter if it were.)

The contest between censorship and anti-censorship in America has got squat to do with civil liberties. It is a battle against an entrenched, institutionalized form of mental illness, a phobia of sexuality that manifests itself in the form of political oppression on the grand scale and domestic terror on the personal scale. Those who oppose censorship can shout all day long about free speech and they will utterly fail of effect because they are not addressing the real hidden agenda. We must take a stand in favor of sex and sexuality as a healthy, normal, and necessary part of human existence and refuse to knuckle under to this morbid anti-sex psychopathology no matter what political or religious mask it uses to hide its shame.

--

Ok

[mwalker]

So Congress has just allocated a ton of money so that the teachers who can't get the VCR to stop blinking 12:00 can use software to control the students who help them program the VCR for class movies.

Oh, you bet.

If I were in high school right now I'd have the octal version of goatse.cx memorized.

Suckers.

Michael Sims shut-down of Censorware Project site

[Seth Finkelstein]

Dear moderators: This message is not a troll. It can be checked for authenticity against the archived copy on egroups, at http://www.egroups.com/message/cyberia-l/32993

I believe, given what Michael Sims (yes, that Michael Sims, Slashdot/YRO editor) did against Censorware Project, this information is important to this discussion. And I'll take any karma hit for it.

The http://censorware.org site has been taken down since the following was posted, more than a month now.

Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 16:49:46 EST
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@BWAY.NET>
Subject: The Censorware Project

I've been trying hard to avoid washing dirty laundry in public, but a couple of recent posts have raised the issue and I'd like to give an account of what happened to the Censorware Project (the site at http://censorware.org is now offline). What we have here is the spectacle of a group member who volunteered to act as webmaster effectively closing a group which wants to continue, because the domain happened to be registered in his name.

The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein, Bennett Haselton, Jamie McCarthy, Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time--around two years as I recall--we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other products.

Even though two of us were attorneys--Jim and myself--we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along.

Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight was to take the site down for a week, exactly as Seth says in his mail. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is over." I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.

Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.

I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about a five week period, I wrote Sims several more emails asking him to delete my name from the site if he wasn't going to transfer the domain. Again, I received no reply.

Today, Sims took the Censorware Project site offline again, with a message which says "Due to demands from some of the people who contributed, in however minor a fashion, to this site, it has been taken down." Judging from some email I received from him today, this means me.

Its a sad thing, both because we got some good work done and because some of the other members of the group were eager to continue and in fact have continued working, while deprived of the Censorware Project site, name, email aliases and public recognition. These further efforts are appearing on Bennett Haselton's Peacefire site, www.peacefire.org. (I applaud the work but take no credit as I have not been involved in some time.)

On the page currently at www.censorware.org Sims makes the following request: "If you are interested in volunteering to fight censorware, please contact me." One of the reasons I made this post was so that anyone considering working with Mike can make an informed decision.

Yawn...

[Captain Sarcastic]

Oh, yes, the old straw man argument... "We don't allow Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler/Music Bondage magazine in the library, so we need to apply that to the Internet..."

Now, if I recall correctly, there was a Supreme Court ruling that indicated that content-based censorship was unconstitutional. The argument was that "you can't go through books and mark out or cut out the offensive passages."

It was accepted that libraries could choose not to carry particular books based on the concept of limited resources - "We can't afford to subscribe to every single magazine or buy every book on the market, so we have to make decisions based on that." However, once the library holdings were acquired, the library staff could not go through and start marking out the "naughty bits."

Well, guess what - the Internet is a magazine. The library pays regularly for access, and receives the information from the providers through its network link, rather than throught the U.S. Mail. That is the simplest way to look at Internet access at the library, and if we do that, then it's plain that Internet filtering would come under the heading of content-based censorship.

Now, how much public money will get spent defending this viewpoint is anyone's guess, but nobody said that democracy was cheap.

And so it begins

[bfree]

I can't help feel that what the this will really do is ensure that we have another generation of hackers and crackers. Think about it, now every American schoolkid will join forces to ensure that every piece of censorware has a nice big hole in it that everyone knows about, maybe if the censorware companies are good enough we may even see some work to match the demos scene of the 80s (the best programming ever IMHO). Who do you think is more intelligent, the firms writing the software or the kids......I know where my money goes

Nary a censor in this house...

[indiigo]

My children and Grandchildren won't understand filters, because I sure as hell won't filter their home access.

And I'll go through the process of having their sites signed off at libraries and schools. Most schools provide a "authorization" policy if the child requests a questionable policy.

I'll make it as difficult as possible for the schools and the libraries.

I encourage others to do the same. The first amandment guarantees this.

what are the failures of this?

[small_dick]

as i recall, there used to be a number of problems.

kids can't get info on (potentially lifesaving) condoms or sexual behavior;

women can't look for info on brest cancer;

problems finding chicken recipes (the alarm in the library goes off cuz you typed "chicken breast" into a search field);

Historical issues (searching for info on "the gay nineties", "Cock and Bull", "pussywillows", "The Owl and the Pussycat", "Wild Ass Images")

It's rather fascinating to watch our government doing so much to validate the all the concerns voiced in books like 1984. Things they said "would never happen here".

Technology Shift A) results in less employees needed. Employees are then terminated, since "America is not a social experiment".

Technology Shift B) results in the obsolescence of CD and DVD technology, and record/video companies are against the wall. Solution : pass protectionist legislation and villify the technology, because "The business of America is Business"

This reminds me of that old SNL skit where the moralists are removing the breasts/penises from marble and brass statues.

What a horribly sick society. Body parts are not bad, the horrid myths handed down through generations have made them bad.

Once again, America's Government is failing to think/consider its behavior. The larger issues will have negative ramifications for decades to come.

Unbeleivable that we have at least four more years of increasingly stupid legislation coming up as the right wingers crank up their religious propaganga/profit machines.

Federally funded, my ass

[gunner800]

The federal government has a number of restrictions placed on its power. Certain powers (or domains of regulation) are reserved for the states.

The federal government is bypassing those restrictions.

They aren't even hiding it. The two "main" presidential candidates debated over how, exactly, each of them will bypass the restrictions. They have such wonderful plans based on skirting around the Constitution. And, I must admit, that some good has been accomplished by federal meddling in state business. However, I see a shift in power and in form of government that I want to call people's attention to. Personally, I usually feel that federal government is too powerful, but it is better that you disagree with me fully informed than agree with me blindly.

The federal government taxes states' citizens, then threatens to withold funding for "state run" programs from state which do not pass certain laws or meet certain requirements. They do this, in part, in order to bypass those restrictions on their authority.

Recently, president Clinton signed a law stating that any state which did not set a 0.08 blood alchohol level standard for DUI would lose (some) federal funding for highways. The DUI laws (and standards) are entirely in the states' authority, not the federal. In effect, the federal government has usurped a power reserved for the states.

"Usurped" may be too strong a word; each state can, after all, simply decline to meet that standard. They will lose federal funding, but they can simply fund the roads themselves.

Federal funding my ass. The fed will tax the citizens of the states who choose not to comply, then send that money out of that state and into another. They state cannot "make up for" the lost revenue; they can, at best, tax the citizens even more to fund the highway projects. But they still pay, either way.

The federal government is, in effect, saying "We want to have something happen, but we don't have the authority to pass a law to make it happen. So we are going to tax you to fund programs that you like, then later threaten to withold your own money from you unless you do what we want to you. Yeah, we know we're aren't supposed to be involved in this sort of thing, but the program is 'state run' and simply 'federally funded'."


My mom is not a Karma whore!

I don't know why this suprises people.

[Invictus_A]

Schools have always been about indoctrination. They teach useful skills, but they are also about instilling the values of the nation that they are in. If you cannot control the content of what is taught to some extent, they do not work as well as they should.

Loophole?

[YvRich]

So, if the bill specifies obscenity, child pornography, and "harmful to minors", would it be possible to use, as a loophole, the fact that there simply isn't any software that can target specifically this material?

As in, "we're perfectly willing to obey the law, and just as soon as suitable software is released, we'll get right onto installing it."

Re:This crap

[Faulty Dreamer]

Are you having a bad day?

Like most public places, the people that are noisiest are usually the most illiterate, idiotic and moronic of the bunch. Slashdot is just an extension of that. If you read at -1 you would assume that nobody seems to be able to read beyond a comprehension level of the average kindegartener.

But, something that gets ignored way, way too often nowadays is that it isn't the Internet that makes people stupid. It isn't any one thing. It is the way they are raised, the way they are taught, and the type of family they are brought up in. These things, along with the type of person they are (their genetic make-up if you will) are the only things that determine whether or not someone is stupid, or a misfit.

Misfits are not made by the Internet. Much like Heavy Metal back when I was in school, it is the misfits that are attracted to the Internet (just like they were attracted to Heavy Metal back in the day). And just because a large number of very, very vocal people display some tendency to be one way or another, you cannot assume that the root cause of that is whatever their favorite pass-time is. The cause lies elsewhere. It is the fact that they display these traits that they are attracted to this place as a pass-time. The trolls seek the other trolls, and the place where they can get the biggest rise out of the most people. Slashdot is an example of that.

But to assume that closing people off from that is going to improve the mental prowess of our youth is a grave mistake. You cannot teach by removing negative stimuli. If the Internet is a negative stimuli at all (and that is very questionable) you must teach children to use the appropriate areas of the Internet and avoid the negatives.

I see a frightening trend in this day and age when it comes to child rearing. It is the "protect until raised" mentality that has already caused a number of problems for people of my generation (and younger). People that believe this are raising children that have no idea that there even are negative things out there. And they really think that this is a good thing to teach. They don't understand that you cannot just cut children off from any possible negative stimulous. You have to teach them how to deal with that stimulous and how to avoid getting sucked into "bad situations". If not, we end up with children that cannot cope with reality when they are adults. They get out in the real world on their own and they just aren't able to cope with the problems that they are faced with.

Sure, mothers and fathers wish that they could protect their children from everything they ever could have to face. But all you will do if you raise your child to believe that the world is a safe and happy place, with absolutely nothing to worry about, is create a situation where the child either never leaves home, or never develops the ability to cope with reality at all.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but we must not succumb to this "let the government protect us" any more than we must raise our children to believe that mommy and daddy will always make sure that anything that comes near you will be filtered, sanitized and made safe. Asking the government to make rules that "protect the children" is doubly stupid in that it assumes that the parents themselves (the ones that subscribe to this idiotic "protect at all costs" mentality) are not capable of raising their own children the way they see fit. And not all people want to be told how they will raise their children.

I say it's high time that people stop being so lazy about parenting and just accept that it isn't going to be easy. You teach your children and show them what life is about. You had better not expect the government to do it for you. If you do, you will eventually end up with a generation of people that absolutely are incapable of thinking for themselves. While the big-business and government driven parts of society would absolutely love this, there is a point in time when people (at least, the ones with a few brain cells left) will get tired of being told what to do. And if you think that revolution is out of the question, then it is time for you to go study some of your history lessons.

Too many rules, too little tought. It seems to be the motto of the day anymore. I wish that there was some way to collectively slap the face of humanity and make them see how ridiculous it is. But, all I can do is bitch on slashdot. More's the pity.