Three on Munich

Following up: The New York Times has a follow-up story on the Munich Ratings Summit. "Not censorship", says the author of the plan, surprising no one. Tigr writes "Many people complained that the Bertelsmann Foundation Memorandum was available only in PDF format. I took the time to convert it into ASCII. The result is available. Read it while it is not yet declared unlawful. " Javier Candeira undertook a translation of our recent Munich article into Spanish and it has been posted on the Barrapunto.com site, which also uses the slash engine. Someone who speaks better Spanish than I do will have to tell me if it's a good translation or not.

Comments

Ratings are always censorship

[konstant]

It's a seductive argument they're putting forward: ratings aren't censorship! They put power back in the hands of parents! You can easily fall into the delusion that ratings enhance the choices, and thus the freedom, of consumers.

Not so for three reasons.

1) When a ratings system is in place, parents or others in positions of responsibility swiftly come to rely upon them. How many in the audience have had their parents at one time or another deny them permission to view a movie based solely on the rating given by the MPAA? My hand is raised. But consider: who judges what rating the movie should receive? The parent, or a pseudo-governmental body that may adhere to a moral code the parent does not share? Because the parent is endowing the oversight body with the right to judge what is violent content, what is obscene content, and what is sexual content, they are essentially replacing their morality with the morality of an unaccountable body. And you know the Christian Coalition would push extremely hard to ensure their members were on that board. They do something very similar with schoolboards and the MPAA right now.

2) This plan creates the framework for future censorship. You can just see it: 10 years down the line. Some moralist says to his/herself "Say, we have the ratings system, we have the oversight board, we have the browser modifications.... let's make it manditory." All they need to do is enact one little law, requiring children under the age of such-and-such cannot watch content above the rating such-and-such. Gone to the movies lately? How do you like that "voluntary" ratings system?

3) Economic favoritism. Companies with the bucks to lobby and/or work with the oversight agency can get lower ratings, thus increasing their audiences. Companies with smaller coffers are stuck with what they get. Hence the powerful few sites like Yahoo and AOL bubble to the top while the underclassed but virtuous sites like slashdot sink slowly downward and downward into ratings hell. Just look at Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. If that film had received an X, how many of you would have seen it? But because the producing company had the bucks to work in a feedback loop with the MPAA, they managed to censor Kubrick's work down to a level "acceptable for children".

I do not want my internet experience to be dictated by the capacities of "vulnerable kids".

-konstant

Killing an ant with a flamethrower

[SolaRJetmaN]

In the movie Brazil, people essentially went through hell doing paperwork and dealing with bureaucracy, and the governing agencies told them it was to keep down terrorism. One of the key points of the movie is when a character asks, (to paraphrase) "Do you know any terrorists?"

Here we see the same thing. I only had time to read about the first 10 sections, but it seemed that everyone was proposing that some independent agency or the like do something. The expense of a group of institutions designed to implement and enforce this ratings proposal blows my mind. But companies and politicians will support and pass it, because voters and stockholders are shaking in their boots about terrorism and child pornography.

But I pose the question: how many child pornographers do you know? How many children that you know have built bombs and hurt people from seeing it on the Internet? That your family and friends know? Sure, there are a few. We hear all about them on Dateline. But are there so many that we should spend millions of tax dollars on this proposal? A proposal that has to be described by its proponents as "not censorship?" A proposal that imposes bureaucratic slowdown on the fastest communication method ever invented?

The tyranny of the majority strikes again.

Not censorship?

[Signal 11]

I disagree. Look at our movie ratings system - if you run an unrated film, it's likely to not see more than a small handful of theatres. And those that do show unrated films may wind up fines or additional cost for non-conformance.

The very same thing could happen with ISPs, and infact is already occurring without gov't. intervention. Read the AUPs of a few major ISPs? "You will not offend, annoy, or otherwise piss off anybody - if you do, we'll revoke your access". So if you make a website that say, deals with safe sex for teens, you may wind up not being able to post it anywhere.

The biggest threat from censorship isn't the government - it's ISPs caving in to (un)popular demand by their public officials. If we create a voluntary ratings system, it won't be long before reactionary politicians demand a kind of RBL for non-compliant ISPs by compliant ones. If you want to reach the maximum number of customers - you comply with the ratings / censorship system so they don't blacklist you.

--

Above The Law?

[Greg W.]

This is truly frightening. I've seen the other articles covering Bertelsmann's manifesto, but now that it's been converted to ASCII, I can actually read it. I couldn't get past the first page without feeling the need to respond to it.

It's worse than everyone said it was.

5. Governments: supporting and reinforcing self-regulation

Self-regulation cannot function without the support of pub- lic authorities, [...]

Huh? We can't regulate ourselves without outside help? That doesn't even parse.

8. Hotlines: communicating and evaluating content concerns

[...] Legislators should [...] shield them from
crimi- inal or civil liability incurred in the proper conduct of their
business ("safe harbor").

This is what really set me off. They're proposing to set up a government-endorsed censorship team which will operator above the law.

I can't read any more of this thing. I'm too disgusted already.

Illegal information

[jflynn]

All throughout the memorandum, the concept of illegal information is bandied about, like it really was taken for granted and obvious. I'm going to use the child porn issue as an example, because its the hottest button in my view.

Granted, the coercion of children to create pornographic information is to be despised and prosecuted, but I do not see a necessity that the information resulting from these activities should necessarily be illegal to possess or distribute. Even the Bertelsmann memorandum notes the wisdom of not holding ISPs liable for possession of material created by third parties passing thru or being stored in their networks. Let's prosecute the people who abuse children, I don't have any problem with warrants for ISP logs for that purpose. But lets think a little before suggesting that possession of the wrong patterns of 1's and 0's can get you locked up.

For one thing, given the number of children actually being abused by their own families, it seems a bit silly to spend countless dollars to attack one infintesimal part of the real problem that just happens to be highly visible now because of internet publicity. If child abuse is a concern for you, and it should be, don't think that pictures on the internet comprise the full extent, or even the ugliest part of the problem. Most of it happens in the privacy of the home by those supposedly taking care of those children. If protection of children *must* happen, *at all costs*, then lets start with video cameras in all rooms of everyone's home. Then you might have a handle on the problem.

There are too many impossible dividing lines. There are naked children in religious art, so you need to get into the intent of the artist and the reaction of a typical viewer to define child pornography. Just try to define what is art and what is porn, you may know it when you see it, but writing down the difference *for everyone* is another matter. There are other sticky questions, like does it matter if no children were actually involved in the production, e.g. erotic cartoons? How about purely textual erotic stories? What if a download is accidental, e.g. spam, or offline reading of newsgroups -- is that still something they should lock you up for?

I don't like the concept of being locked up for possession of information. It is more effective to legislate against the real problem -- real world activities that endanger real people of any age.

Re:Illegal information

[Hobbex]

It says a good deal about the health of this forum (slashdot) that you were moderated up for this comment: in just about any political debate you would have been flooded with comments attacking you relentlessly for evening drawing a breath to defend the undefendable.

Pedophiles fall within the realms of what I refer to as the "terrophiles", the group of people who, through their unquestionable evil, can be used as an argument for any infringement on freedom.

There other such groups: Terrorists of course (see any cryptography vs US regime article) and even normal sex offenders (how many privacy advocates are out there fighting for the sex offenders who, having served their time, are seeing their names publicly displayed and posted?)

There was a large debate here a few years ago regarding whether possession of Child Pornography should be made illegal. My favorite quote from the whole debate was from one of the proponents of the law, who said, quote:

"Human rights do not apply to pedophiles."

Time to call Webster's and redefine human I guess.

Another quote I remember from the whole CDA debate, which I believe comes from Wired or somewhere like that stated:

"alt.sex.bondage.hamster.duct-tape is a good place to start, because who is going to defend someone who does _that_ to a hamster?"

On a different topic, child porn is far from the only illegal information by our current regimes. Besides any information that you may have aquired without its "owners" permission, threats, computer programs (viruses, troyans, other malware) and even certain knowledge (cryptography, weapon plans) are all illegal today. Even hacking a site on the Internet, highly punishable almost everywhere is in reality just the creation and distribution of information (tcp/ip packets).

Try asking to have any of the above back, and you are bound to here about the terrophiles. I promise...

-
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

How about this?

[JM_the_Great]

Instead of having all the governments of the world decide how we should `regulate' (a.k.a. censor) the Internet, we should let the private industry decide this. This will allow for a much better system and let the users of the Internet (how many congressmen/women use the Internet daily?) choose what they want.

Also, here are some interesting thing I noticed about the Memorandum:

I. It calls racist speech illegal. This is a German law and is not true for many other places. You cannot censor American hate speech just beacuse of a German law. (Free Speech anybody?)

II. Why is everything "for the the Children"?

III. What excactly is "Internet Misuse"?

IV. "Properly encased with collaboration from government"? What does this mean?

V. A new Computer Crime Agency? Why can't the agencys already in place (FBI, NSA, etc...) do this?

VI. How do the governments want to get a "High degree of compliance"? (maybe by force (is this really self-regulatory?))

VII. Why do we need laws protecting ISP's right to delete thing on their server? It's their server, their money, they can delete anything they want (unless they have an agreement that they woln't delete it).

VIII. If people are scared of getting online beacuse of Porn, etc... there is always blocking software (however ineffective, it does a okay job for the casual surfer). In any case, this is a pretty stupid reason to disadvantage your kids in the future.

IX. About the tax incentives thing, it sounds a little bit like using political power to push an agenda (regulating (*cough* *cough* censoring *cough*) the Internet).

That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
JM

Some standard misconceptions that need fixing

[ajs]

This document displays some fundamental misconceptions that we (yes, slashdotter, this means you) have been allowing to propagate for far too long. The first is that there is such a thing as an "end user" of the Internet. The very term implies a model akin to television or movies where a small group of providers spew content to the masses.

This is not the Internet that I know. The internet that I know (and have used for over 10 years now) is a peer-to-peer network, and if we're to overcome the misunderstanding that denies the existance several hundred million PROVIDERS of information, we must find a way to communicate this.

There are three basic flaws with the existing "end-user" model:

1. People who just use browsers still contribute through chat rooms, forums, feedback services (hi!) and hosted services like Geoyahoo or whatever.
2. The Web != The Internet. This document addresses things that could be done to label content. Pray, how do they intend to label ftp? gopher? telnet? ssh? What if I log into a shell account am I an end-user? What if I start using "write" to send nasty messages to all of the other users?
3. Everyone's a server. We're solving (through sheer technical stuborness) the problem of dynamic IPs. Anyone with Linux (or BSD or even WinNT) can run apache. Heck, it's likely already set up if you're running Linux! There are content editors out there by the dozen. So, how do you police? You really can't and that's what this document is all about.

You see, they know what I'm saying. They just don't want to admit it. If we get the word out, and stop the beuracracy from forming that would change the Internet into a publish/subscribe format, the world will have to adapt and find new ways to cope with globally accessable information.

Of course, then the document has some of the OTHER standard problems. The evils of "child pornography" are touted. You know, VHS was going to carpet the world in kiddie porn. It was going to be the end of civilization as we know it. What happened? You can find kiddie porn in just about any media outlet that is not completely obsolete. Why? Because humans have an instinctive affection for children, and many men are so hard-wired for sex that any source of affection rips out their cerebral cortex.

On the other hand, it's a very small segment of the population (some of them execs...) who cannot control themselves. I know, I know, if there were just a little more kiddie porn and terrorists, we could clamp down on all this darn free speach and get some controls in place before someone starts talking about how poorly the government functions.

But, as Dennis Miller said, "That's just my opinion, I could be wrong."

Of course it's not censorship...

[dpdx]

...it's merely the precursor, or the "enabler" to censorship.

To use an analogy, if I load a gun, cock the lever, and place it on the table, I'm not killing anything; I'm merely making it really, really easy for someone else to.

By the same token, if I'm subject to a system whereby all content must be rated in several ways with regard to subjects of interest to censors, it won't take much more than the flip of a switch for someone in power to censor my content.

Side Note: There's a glitch in Slashdot, such that all of the topics come up as posted 0 times, at any rating.

0 cluons detected...

[Anomie-ous Cow-ard]

This thing is just another pro-buisness censorship proposal (censorship-enabler==censorship IMO) loaded with buzzwords. Take this quote for example:

Internet filtering: ensuring youth protection and freedom of speech

Isn't freedom of speech the right to communicate without being filtered? So how does filtering ensure it? And as for youth protection, the "protect the children" argument has been hashed and rehashed and shot down so often...

For the moment i'm going to ignore their value judgements ("harmful to children" and all that), since you either agree with me or i won't be able to change your mind. Let's look instead at their "layer cake" proposal for filtering the web [section 4]

Their bottom level is PICS. Basically, this means you put meta tags in your page rating your content in whichever categories the particular PICS-rating-system author chooses. Most of the time, the authors try to claim their categories are value-neutral. At least someone this time was intelligent enough to realize that's completely impossible when rating on topics that are by necessity subjective to the individual rating the webpage.

They do claim, instead, that they chose words designed to "lead to convergent practices". Apparently they don't understand us, that some people will purposefully apply their terms divergently to defeat their system; protesting, avoiding blockage, making the site look like the nastiest porn palace ever to get more traffic, etc. And no matter what the vocabulary, it is still impossible to have everyone, everywhere in the world agree on the dividing lines between categories, leading to more divergence. To help PHBs and consultants obfuscate meaning, they propose the term 'intersubjectively convergent' with only definition by context. (More buzzwords, too. 'inter-' and 'convergent')

Their first 'layer' then is individual content rating. But they say that unrated sites should face no penalties, and should not be blocked without the "end-user's" consent. So the deciding factor is whether you can live without their 'incentives' for rated sites and the visitors who will block the vast unrated body of content. Especially depending on the size that this could add to the pages (how many K of META tags does their vocabulary take up?), this could turn out to be a good tradeoff for nonrating. Combine that with the divergence above, and layer 1 falls pretty flat.

Layer 2 has third parties putting together "filters" that block based on the PICS ratings. They make it sound that anyone can create and distribute these, but probably most people are going to stick with the M$, Netscape, or ISP default in their browsers, with probably at most a dozen fourth party ones used by the majority of people. Yes, there will be a lot available out there, but people who still have a blinking 12:00 on their VCR aren't likely to look beyond the major brand names. And if there's a category that their competitors fall into, wonder if corporations will block them?

Layer 3 is basically SurfWatch or CyberSitter, the same old concerns with spider-generated blocklists and such. Seeing this layer, i would be very unsurprised to find censorware makers on the guest list for this private little party...

My overall impression reading this 'recommendation' is one of overwhelming deja vu. The same arguements, the same proposals, just in a new package and with a few new people on the bandwagon.

-----------

You may feel this is a load of generalizations and possibly unwarranted conclusions. It probably is. My goal wasn't to present an airtight courtroom case, but to provide some food for thought and further discussion. Don't reply to me, reply to the points i put forward.

-----

munich agreement

[deckard]

how appropriate that this proposal originated at munich, where adolf hitler got his political start in the NSDAP. i couldn't imagine a more appropriate place for this proposal to emanate from. with disgust deckard

Ok, so what do we do about it..

[Weezul]

I suppose we can all stop buying Random House books and those of us who live in Germany can raise a stink about it directly, but what can people in other countries do? Example: if you live in England or some other european nation it might help to call your representitives and tell them that you do not want a unified censorship system because you don't want Germany/France/etc. to have control over your speach.

Also, how much of this will be non-legislative cowaperation from the other companies at the conferance? And what can we do to fight that? It would be nice to see something of a list of companies that were there next to there compeditors who were not.. then I could just call up said company and tell them I'm switching to there compeditor because they support censorship.

Also, what kind of protocoll modifications are we looking at here.. Linux/Apache may own the server world (as in NT no longer sold at all) before this is implemented.. could we make support for the protocoll modificatios a highly non-standard and difficult to install patch? Would it be prudent to adjust the Licenses of these programs to restrict censorship support? (Linus/Apache Team save us!)

Can will hurt Bertelsmann (boycott Random House?). How can I make shure I don't buy anyhting that comes thourgh them? Would someone like to set up a FAQ or site on how to avoid givng them any money. Could we watch them very closly and gradually make the net anti-Bertelsmann? I notices a link to there holdings here.

Finally, we should keep in mind that this will hurt everyone execpt the few companies that are large enough to censor themselves.. and we should be selling Bertelsmann hate in whatever way people will be most receptive. Example: If you live near a smaller publisher you can perhaps get them to call elected officials (who don't want to put the constituants out of work) and complain.

Jeff