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Computer underground Digest Wed Feb 18, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 12
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #10.12 (Wed, Feb 18, 1998)
File 1--Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught
File 2--ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit
File 3--Ethical Spectacle Joins ACLU Censorware Case
File 4--Re: CuD 10:11--Comment on ever-continuing CyberSitter thread
File 5--Re: Cu Digest, #10.11, More on CyberSitter
File 6--CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS
File 7--Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife"
File 8--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 19:06:36 -0500
From: Paul Kneisel <tallpaul@nyct.net>
Subject: File 1--Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught
Tuesday February 17 12:32 PM EST
Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught
SAN FRANCISCO (Wired) - Police in four states say they're the
victims of what amounts to a cybersex sting in reverse, the
latest in a string of Internet pornography cases getting
headlines around the United States.
The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, reports that the
officers encountered a 17-year-old Illinois girl in chat rooms -
and that their email relationships quickly became sexually
explicit. The girl then told her mother about the contacts with
deputies in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, and her
mother informed authorities in those states. Discipline
followed.
The chain of events - which included one North Carolina deputy
sending the girl a photograph of his genitals - led an attorney
for one of the officers to decry what he suggests was a setup.
"This young woman has gone around the country, as best we can
determine, and made contact with a very vulnerable element of our
society - police officers - and then drawn them in and alleged
some type of sexual misconduct," said Troy Spencer, the attorney
for one suspended Virginia officer. "She's a cyberspider."
Among other high-profile Net porn cases in the past two weeks:
Voters in Snow Hill, Maryland, recalled their mayor - who is also
a sheriff's deputy - for allowing his squad car to be used in a
porno photo shoot. Mayor Craig Johnson was turned in by
Websurfing local teens who recognized the car.
A 42-year-old San Diego man was arrested February 7 after the FBI
was tipped off to newsgroup picture files that showed him having
sex with his 10-year-old daugher. A Jacksonville, Florida, man
was arrested after technicians working to upgrade his computer
happened upon pictures of children engaged in sex.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 18:19:02 -0500 (EST)
From: owner-cyber-liberties@aclu.org
Subject: File 2--ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit
Source - ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update
February 16, 1998
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit On Behalf of Online Speakers
In a cyber-law first, the American Civil Liberties Union last week asked
a federal court in Virginia to rule that the government cannot prevent
Internet speakers from communicating with interested library patrons.
Acting on behalf of a diverse group of eight plaintiffs, the national
ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia are seeking to intervene in a lawsuit over
the use of Internet filters in Loudoun County libraries.
"This case presents important questions about whether the government can
prevent Internet speakers from communicating constitutionally protected
information online to people whose only access to the Internet may be
their local public library," said Ann Beeson, ACLU National Staff
Attorney.
The library's Internet policy purports to block access to materials that
are "pornographic" or "harmful to juveniles." But the ACLU's complaint
charges that by using blocking software to implement the policy, the
library board is in fact "removing books from the shelves" of the
Internet with value to both adults and minors in violation of the
Constitution.
The eight plaintiffs are:
The Safer Sex Page, created by John Troyer.
Banned Books Online, created by John Ockerbloom.
American Association of University Women Maryland (AAUW Maryland).
Rob Morse, an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Examiner.
Books for Gay and Lesbian Teens Youth Page, created by 18-year-old
Jeremy Myers.
Sergio Arau, the popular Mexican artist and rock singer known as "El
Padrino."
Renaissance Transgender Association, a group serving the transgendered
community.
The Ethical Spectacle, created by Jonathan Wallace.
Ultimately, the library controversy may lead back to a landmark Supreme
Court ruling in Reno v. ACLU, striking down a federal Internet
censorship law that sought to restrict access to online speech. In its
sweeping decision, issued in June 1997, the Court confirmed that the
Internet is analogous to books, not broadcast, and is deserving of the
highest First Amendment protection. The ACLU was a lead plaintiff and
litigator in the suit.
The ACLU also won a victory in a recent library blocking software
controversy that was resolved without litigation. On January 27,
officials in Kern County, California agreed to allow all library patrons
to decide for themselves whether to use blocking software, after the
ACLU warned that mandatory blocking was unconstitutional.
In objecting to the block on their clients' speech, the ACLU's complaint
noted that websites offering opposing views are not blocked. "For
example, Defendants do not block sites opposing homosexuality and
transgender behavior, opposing employment by women outside the home,
favoring Internet censorship, and promoting abstinence rather than safer
sex practices."
In related news, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) this week held a hearing on
Internet indecency and introduced new legislation that requires
libraries and schools that apply for discount funding for Internet
access to certify that they will provide blocking or filtering features
for minors. (See discussion below)
Complete information on the ACLU filing in Loudoun County, links to
plaintiffs' web pages, and related cyber-law cases, can be found on the
ACLU Freedom Network at <http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/hmcl.html>.
Information about the ACLU victory in Kern County can be found at:
<http://www.aclu.org/news/no12898d.html>
===========
About Cyber-Liberties Update:
ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update Editor:
A. Cassidy Sehgal (csehgal@aclu.org)
American Civil Liberties Union
National Office 125 Broad Street,
New York, New York 10004
The Update is a bi-weekly e-zine on cyber-liberties cases and
controversies at the state and federal level. Questions or comments
about the Update should be sent to Cassidy Sehgal at csehgal@aclu.org.
Past issues are archived at
<http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/updates.html>
To subscribe to the ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update, send a message to
majordomo@aclu.org with "subscribe Cyber-Liberties" in the body of your
message. To terminate your subscription, send a message to
majordomo@aclu.org with "unsubscribe Cyber-Liberties" in the body.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 15:25:55 -0800 (PST)
From: "T.L. Kelly" <room101@TELEPORT.COM>
Looks like this coming session of the US Congress may set the direction
for intellectual property/freedom of expression, so now's the time for
those of us in the US to convey our views to our representatives,
especially while they are in their home districts during the break.
The National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on
College Composition and Communication belong to the Digital Future
Coalition, and the DFC is strongly supporting two bills:
1. Senator John Ashcroft's "Digital Copyright Clarification and Technology
Act" (S. 1146) and
2. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) "Digital
Era Copyright Enhancement Act" (H.R. 3048).
These two bills will protect the future of access to information, to an
open exchange of knowledge, to the Internet, and to teaching and research
as we know it. These bills balance and correct much more restrictive and
punitive legislation that is now being considered in Congress.
Without these bills, we may face a future in which *fair use is abolished*
in the digital era and in which only teachers and students who can afford
to "pay-per-browse" can access, quote from, and analyze electronic
information.
The DFC is urging all its members to contact their House Representatives,
requesting *co-sponsorship* of H.R. 3048 and their Senators, requesting
support for S. 1146. Handwritten letters and personal visits are most
effective.
Please consider visiting your representative's local office while Congress
is in recess (until Jan 26). And please alert your colleagues and students
about this important legislation.
A brief summary of H.R. 3048 appears below; more details are available at
the Digital Future Coalition's website (http://www.dfc.org).
To find out who represents you in Congress, visit
http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/legislative/email.html
More details on H.R. 3048 follow:
The Boucher-Campbell Bill, H.R. 3048
What Does It Do? Why Does DFC Support It?
Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) have
introduced the only comprehensive bill in the U.S. House of
Representatives that will maintain balance in the Copyright Act by
preserving for consumers, educators, librarians, researchers, and other
Netizens fundamental rights in the digital era. Like a similar bill
introduced by Senator John Ashcroft (S. 1146), this comprehensive,
balanced bill has the strong support of the DFC. If you agree with us that
the House of Representatives should adopt the Boucher-Campbell bill
instead of the legislation proposed by the Clinton Administration (H.R.
2281), we encourage you to send an e-mail to your elected Representative
in the House. (To contact your Representative, click here to connect to a
Library of Congress compilation of e-mail directories--the site also
includes a helpful "Who represents me in Congress" section and regular
mail addresses.)
Section 1. The bill is known as the "Digital Era Copyright Enhancement
Act."
Fair Use. Section 2 would amend section 107 of the Copyright Act to
reaffirm that a finding of "fair use" may be made without regard to the
means by which a work has been performed,
displayed, or distributed. Thus, just as teachers, librarians, and others
may make "fair use" copies of portions of copyrighted works today in the
analog world, they may do so tomorrow in the digital world.
Library Preservation. Section 3 would amend section 108 of the Copyright
Act to allow libraries and archives to use new forms of technology to make
three copies of endangered materials for archival purposes.
First Sale. Section 4 would amend section 109 of the Copyright Act to
establish the digital equivalent of the "first sale" doctrine. Under
current law, a person who has legally obtained a book or video cassette
may physically transfer it to another person without permission of the
copyright owner. Section 4 would permit electronic transmission of a
lawfully acquired digital copy of a work as long as the person making the
transfer eliminates erases or that copy of the work from his or her system
at substantially the same time as he or she makes the transfer.
Distance Learning. Section 5 would amend sections 110(2) and 112(b) of the
Copyright Act to ensure that educators can use personal computers and new
technology in a broad range of educational settings in the same way they
now use televisions to foster distance learning. In addition, Section 5
would broaden the range of works that may be performed, displayed, or
distributed to include the various kinds of works that might be included
in a multimedia lesson.
Ephemeral Copies. Section 6 would amend section 117 of the Copyright Act
to make explicit that electronic copies of material incidentally or
temporarily made in the process of using a computer or a computer network
may not serve as the sole basis for copyright infringement liability, such
as when a work is viewed on the World Wide Web.
Unfair Licenses. Section 7 would effectively preclude copyright owners
from using non-negotiable license terms to abrogate or narrow rights and
use privileges that consumers otherwise would enjoy under the Copyright
Act, such as their fair use privilege, by preempting state common and
statutory law, such as the proposed changes to the Uniform Commercial
Code.
Black Boxes. Section 8 would implement the anti-circumvention and
copyright management information provisions of the WIPO Copyright Treaty
and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. The treaties do not
require the broad prohibition of software and devices that might be used
by infringers as proposed in the legislation drafted by the Clinton
Administration. Consistent with the treaties, section 8 would create
liability only for a person who, for purposes of infringement, knowingly
circumvents the operation of an effective technological measure used by a
copyright owner to limit reproduction of a work in a digital format. The
bill also would create liability for a person who knowingly provides false
copyright management information or removes or alters copyright management
information without the authority of the copyright owner, and with the
intent to mislead or induce or facilitate infringement.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 23:02:57 -0500 (EST)
From: jw@bway.net
Subject: File 3--Ethical Spectacle Joins ACLU Censorware Case
HE ETHICAL SPECTACLE JOINS ACLU LAWSUIT AGAINST
CENSORWARE IN VA. LIBRARY
For immediate release
Contact: Jonathan Wallace
jw@bway.net
New York, New York, February 6, 1998--The Ethical
Spectacle, a monthly webzine focusing on the collision between
ethics, law and politics in our society, is a plaintiff
in an ACLU litigation filed today against the library
system of Loudoun County, Virginia. (Spectacle URL:
http://www.spectacle.org).
"I welcome the opportunity to work with the ACLU
again," said Jonathan Wallace, a New York-based software
executive and attorney who is the Spectacle's publisher.
Wallace was also a plaintiff in two
other ACLU actions, ACLU v. Reno (which invalidated
the Communications Decency Act) and ACLU v. Miller
(overthrowing the Georgia anti-anonymity law.)
Last fall, the Loudoun County board of library
trustees passed the nation's most restrictive Internet
policy, mandating the use of censorware on terminals
used by adults as well as children. Attorney
Robert Corn-Revere of Hogan and Hartson in Washington D.C.
filed suit on behalf of nonprofits People for the American
Way and Mainstream Loudoun, and a group of local parents and
educators. Today's ACLU action, termed an "intervention"
in the existing Loudoun litigation, is on behalf of the Spectacle and
a group of other websites blocked by X-Stop, the software
from Log On Data Corporation installed by the Loudoun libraries.
The two actions argue that the use of blocking software
by public libraries violates the First Amendment.
"I have no idea why Log On blocks my site," Wallace
said. "It does not meet their criteria of blocking only
material that is obscene under federal law." Last October,
Wallace, who writes frequently on censorware issues,
published "The X-Stop Files"
(http://www.spectacle.org/cs/xstop.html), an article revealing
that X-Stop also blocked the Quaker website, the American
Association of University Women, the AIDS Quilt, and
numerous other socially valuable sites.
The Ethical Spectacle has also been blocked
in whole or part by four other censorware products.
Wallace commented, "This proves that censorware companies,
and the people who scan the web for sites to add to the
blacklist, are incapable of distinguishing between
illegal speech such as obscenity, and protected speech
about censorship, pornography, safe sex and other
controversial topics."
Wallace is co-author with Mark Mangan of
Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (New York: Henry Holt, 1996),
a book about Internet censorship.
(http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/) He is also a
member of the Censorware Project, an activist group
which recently published its first report,
"From Ada to Yoyo: Blacklisted by CyberPatrol".
(http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 09:42:18 -0800
From: Joe Clark <jclark@SUPERNET.NET>
Subject: File 4--Re: CuD 10:11--Comment on ever-continuing CyberSitter thread
Well, <deleted> didn't want to leave his/her name, so I respond to the
list:
> What I mean is, no one is forcing anyone to actually use Solid Oak's
> software. If Solid Oak wants to sell an inferior product, let them (we all
> know another very large company that's been doing this since 1981). Just
> like the consumer has a right to choose what he buys or not, so should the
> merchant have the right to sell crap if he so chooses.
Solid Oak has as much right to sell censorware as you and I have to
defend or decry it. My problem is when -- through clever marketing,
media hysteria, reactionary protectionism, and witless bandwagoning --
an information filtering product, using bogus filtering methods and with
a thinly-disguised political agenda, becomes widely used as a means of
"protection". There is more danger here than regular system crashes.
From what I've been able to read, Solid Oak is riding the wave of
net-porn hysteria to peddle its own conservative agenda. Really useful
filtering software would be adaptable to the filtering agendas of *any*
user -- even Wiccans :-) -- instead of reinforcing popular ostrich-ism.
Like, imagine if Windoze was none-too-subtly monarchist, as well as
bloated.
[And as an aside, has Solid Oak been getting PR ideas with the Co$?]
> While I'm on the subject, I would also like to add that I really don't
> understand this problem you Americans seem to have concerning the protection
> of your children against material deemed unfit for their eyes. I mean, it's
Well, it's long been noted that we're excessively and unrealistically
puritanical about sex, but we *do* love violence, so give us a break.
:-) "Protect our children" has become an even more strident battle cry
in recent years because it's one of those unassailable concepts like
"family values" and "public safety" that can be used as a reactionary's
lever against the increasingly rapid and chaotic nature of societal
change. Once you accept the pre-eminence of the concept, any means to
that end can be justified. From the standpoint of a political
manipulator, this is valuable; instead of looking like someone who wants
to restrict freedom of information for long-term political capital, for
example, one can appear to be a champion of the defenseless.
Understand that, while it probably doesn't live up to the Netopian view,
the net is dangerous to certain groups in ways wholly different than
pornography. In the past, centralized publishing/broadcasting (required
by expensive equipment) resulted in centralized information control.
That puppy's out the window now -- even dogs have web pages. Also,
political manipulators, marketeers, and PR craftspersons know the value
of a slick presence in tweaking the public will -- but
slickness-of-presence doesn't always require the big clams it used to.
Groups used to influencing through the media now find their messages
lost in the herd -- and these groups don't lie down easily, nor do they
wish to "play along". Remember the days before .com?
> not as if a child will 'accidently' stumble upon some hardcore pornography
> while just browsing the web; if you find your 10-year old downloading
> material from sites containing sexually explicit material, you can be sure
> he/she's doing so by his/her own will, or would you argue that those "press
> here if you are 18 or older"-buttons got pressed all by themselves ? The
> same applies to IRC, the child still has to make the decision to actually
> join a channel where such material is being spread.
I am in general agreement with this, but if you use search engines you
can get some pretty mixed results. Example: my ten-year-old daughter is
into the "American Girl" line of dolls. The other day I was looking for
their website. Try a search for "american girl" on infoseek and tell me
what most of the hits are! I'm not sure a ten-year-old conducting the
same search would be able to tell that some of those could lead to
preview photos that would live long in their memories. Not every
anatomical macro closeup is buried behind a VISA-card gateway or an 18+
sign.
In fact, this provides an excellent example of why simplistic
exclude/include rules, based on keywords, are untrustworthy -- whether
online, in politics, or inside our own noggins. We naturally tend
towards simplistic generalizations (else we'd be mighty confused all the
time) -- but we also naturally tend to fart. It's a question of when
it's more appropriate not to.
> Basically, I feel that if you cannot trust your child to not actively go out
> and seek such material, then you should not be letting your child wander
> about the net unattended. (the same applies to any other medium imo)
True enough. If you don't trust your child not to actively go try to
buy a Playboy at the convenience store, you should not allow them access
to print materials. Have I got that right? ;->
--
Joseph S. Clark http://mailer.fsu.edu/~jsclark
Systems usability, visual design, documentation, & training
Administrative Information Systems
The Florida State University
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 98 15:04 EST
From: Michael Gersten <michael@STB.INFO.COM>
Subject: File 5--Re: Cu Digest, #10.11, More on CyberSitter
This is a reply to "Deleted", who was asking about cybersitter and
similar products.
Although some companies do make inferior products, those products
can be reviewed, and checked out -- the product is it's own statement.
Programs like cybersitter, however, do not work that way. You cannot
tell ahead of time what they will block; often there is no way to
tell that your site is blocked. Although they claim to do it to
protect children from "unsuitable" material, that definition is
arbitrary, and often includes web pages that oppose such software,
or in some cases, any page hosted on the same site as one "unsuitable"
page.
And then there's the question of "What makes it unsuitable?". None
of these programs, and their filtering staff, to my knowlege, makes
any attempt to describe in any details exactly what they do and do
not block. There's a good reason, actually -- if they did, and it
turns out that they were blocking a site that did not meet the
criteria, then there would be a lawsuit. So, these companies make
themselves suit-proof, by not making any claims that can be judged
in court. Nor do they give you any indication of what they actually
do, and the claims that they do make are vague enough that they
can get away with almost anything.
The bottom line? An inferior computer can be examined, and rejected
based on merit. Blocking software cannot be examined, and can only
be rejected based on ads, and hope. Yet no one is regulating them
by their ads (I believe this falls under the FTC's jurisdiction,
yet it seems to be ducking the issue completely).
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 23:10:52 -0500
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@bway.net>
Subject: File 6--CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS
NEW CENSORWARE PROJECT REPORT: CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS,
A MAJOR RESEARCH TOOL
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jamie McCarthy
jamie@mccarthy.org
February 17, 1998: The Censorware Project, an Internet activist
group opposing the use of blocking software on First Amendment
grounds, today released its new report, "CYBERPATROL AND DEJA
NEWS: Censorware Product Blocks an Important Research Resource",
available at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/. In the report, the
group examines blocking of the Deja News Usenet archive
(http://www.dejanews.com) by CyberPatrol from Microsystems Corp.
(http://www.microsys.com).
Susan Getgood, the company's director of marketing for
CyberPatrol, recently announced that the product would continue to
blacklist Deja News due to the occurrence of sexual speech on
Usenet. (Deja News does not permit the downloading of Usenet
graphics.) In the report, The Censorware Project presents the
comments of numerous Deja News users--lawyers, authors, law
professors, public relations consultants, editors and
programmers--who use the service to research disparate topics such
as email scams, software bugs, censorship and competitive business
information.
"Deja News is a quick way to get information on many important
topics," said Jamie McCarthy, a Michigan software developer who is
the spokesperson for The Censorware Project. "For example, we
found that developers use Deja News to get fixes for bugs and
solutions to programming problems. Many of them told us that Deja
News is a better place to find information than the software
vendors' own support pages."
McCarthy noted that CyberPatrol is installed in a number of public
libraries, including those in Austin, Texas and Boston,
Massachusetts. "Libraries are in the business of distributing the
kind of business, technical and current affairs information people
use Deja News for, not withholding it from their patrons,"
McCarthy said. "In blocking Deja News, CyberPatrol is again
throwing out the baby with the bathwater, just as it did when it
blocked 1.4 million user pages at members.tripod.com because of a
few explicit pages." The Censorware Project covered the blocking
of Tripod in its earlier report, "From Ada to Yoyo: Blacklisted by
CyberPatrol," also at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/.
"CyberPatrol does not belong in public libraries," McCarthy
concluded.
-END-
--
--------------------------------------
Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
Publisher, The Ethical Spectacle, http://www.spectacle.org
Co-author, Sex Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996)
http://www.spectacle.org/freespch
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."--Gandhi
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 20:19:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com>
Subject: File 7--Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife"
Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife"
CALL FOR AUTHORS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EFF BOOK ABOUT "CYBERLIFE"
(Please feel free to reproduce this call in any online forum and on any
mailing list.)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom Forum Media Studies
Center are soliciting your contribution to a book project titled CYBERLIFE:
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ONLINE SOCIETY. This book will consist primarily
of first-person accounts from people like you -- stories about the
experiences people commonly have when encountering online forums, virtual
communities, the World Wide Web, and the immense scope of freedom of speech
in cyberspace. The book will be edited by Mike Godwin, staff counsel of EFF
and fellow at the Media Studies Center (a project funded by the Freedom
Forum), and should be completed by fall of 1998.
-->Why assemble a book like this?
There are two reasons that we have chosen to take this approach. First, the
strength of the Net is its ability to give voice to individuals without
having those voices translated or transmuted by editors or by traditional
media institutions. While this book has an editor, his role will be
primarily to choose contributions and help those contributors in preparing
their texts. WeUre trying to combine the best aspects of the book-publishing
world (permanence, reach into mainstream audiences) with those of the Net
(diversity, disintermediated points of view).
Second, other books about the Net tend to be written from a single
viewpoint, and, as such, have been inadequate in countering the mainstream
media's tendency to paint the Net as primarily a haven for pedophiles,
hackers, terrorists, and other threatening people.
For a more detailed discussion of the focus of this book, see "True Stories
of Free Speech in Cyberspace," the prospectus for CYBERLIFE, appended to the
end of this call for authors.
-->Why should I want to contribute?
One reason to contribute is to tell your story about your own experiences in
cyberspace -- a story that may not have been told in previous books, or in
accounts in other media. If you feel that TV, newspapers, and magazines have
distorted the picture of cyberspace -- especially in the eyes of those who
have not yet logged on -- this your change to help correct the record.
Another reason is that you may have wanted to contribute to the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and its work, but may not have had the money to do so.
Since this book will be owned by EFF, its earnings will contribute to EFF's
operation -- to the extent that you can help make this book better, you can
help EFF remain in the black and do good work for freedom and privacy in
cyberspace.
Whether or not your contribution is included in the final volume, any
contribution of a thousand words or more will earn you a one-year membership
in EFF. And if your contribution is included, you'll get a membership no
matter how long your contribution is.
-->What kinds of things should I talk about?
We'd like to hear how the Internet has had an impact on your life, and what
different directions you might have taken because of this powerful medium.
What would you change about it if you could? What do you think about
government attitudes about cyberspace, and how do you feel about media
treatment? What do you think about social attitudes in general toward the
internet?
WeUre also interested in what kinds of things you want people to know about
your experiences of the online world, and about cyberspace in general.
-->What about my copyright? Will EFF own my words? Will I be able to
republish my story elsewhere?
EFF will hold only a nonexclusive license to print your story in the book
CYBERLIFE and to use it in subsequent Web-based or TV projects. You will
retain the primary rights to your story, and you will not be restricted in
how you use them. (You could sell the story to a magazine, for example.) Our
interest is not in possessing your words but in enabling you both to
contribute to EFF and to improve general understanding about cyberspace.
-->How long should my story be? If EFF chooses to use it, will be it edited
or changed?
Your contribution can be as long as you like. Take as much space as you need
to tell your story (or stories). Our editor, Mike Godwin, may in fact ask
you to elaborate on parts of your contribution. Our experience has been that
most people who spend a lot of time in the online world are articulate
writers and have a pretty good idea about how to tell their stories. MikeUs
role as editor, other than to make help each writer tell his or her story in
the clearest possible way, will be a supervisory one. We expect a certain
amount of give-and-take concerning editorial suggestions, but the spirit of
this project is to allow individuals, as much as possible, to tell their
stories in their own voices, expressing their own concerns.
-->Who is this Mike Godwin guy?
For more information on Mike, see http://www.eff.org/~mnemonic .
-->Is there any information about myself that I have to include?
You can choose to be totally anonymous if you like, although of course this
would mean we can't give you an EFF membership (we wouldn't know where to
send the card). Or you can choose to tell us who you are, but ask that your
name not be included in the book. We'd prefer to know who you are, of
course, and we definitely want to know something about your background --
things like how old you are, what you do for a living, your feelings about
work, life, and cyberspace, and any other biographical information you want
to share with us, or that you think might shed light on your story.
-->Where do I send my story?
You can send questions or stories to Mike Godwin at either mnemonic@eff.org
or mgodwin@mediastudies.org. Please include your location and phone number
so that Mike can contact you quickly about whether and how your contribution
may be used. Please also include address information for your EFF
membership.
You may also post your contribution in a one of the CYBERLIFE topics on the
WELL or on ECHO and share it with users at one or both of these systems. But
please e-mail Mike if you do so he knows to go there to retrieve your
contribution.
-->How will I know whether my contribution will be used?
You will be notified of the receipt of your manuscript as soon as we can do
so. Mike Godwin or his assistant will contact you within 30 days of receipt
of your contribution to tell you whether it will be included in CYBERLIFE.
-->What is EFF anyway? And what is the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit civil liberties
organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free
expression, and access to public resources and information online, as well
as to promote responsibility in new media. You can find out more about our
work by looking at our Web site, http://www.eff.org.
The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to
free press, free speech and free spirit for all people. Its mission is to
help the public and the news media understand one another better. For more
information about the Media Studies Center, a project operated by the
Freedom Forum, see http://www.mediastudies.org.
-----------------------------------------------
CYBERLIFE: TRUE STORIES OF LIFE AND FREE SPEECH IN CYBERSPACE
A prospectus by Mike Godwin
I. There is a story about the Internet that is not being told. It is a
story that has not appeared much in the tradtional news or entertainment
media, both of which have oscillated in only the last four or five years
from a utopian vision of the Net to a reflexively anxious and scapegoating
one. Yet it is a story that urgently needs to be told very soon -- we need
to tell it to each other as much as we need to tell it to our leaders and
policymakers -- because we are currently creating the consensus that will
govern whether and how our society will come to terms with a medium that
gives ordinary people the power to routinely communicate with mass
audiences.
II. The Two Internets We Know
A. Computer-based communications were (fore)seen in the 1970s and 1980s
to be a catalyst for widespread social change.
1. The potentially huge social impact of the Internet -- the
first mass medium in the history of the planet to be accessible on a
widespread basis to ordinary citizens -- was foreseen at least one or two
decades ago, depending on where you count from. It was arguably foreseen by
sociologists Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff in their 1976 book
NETWORK NATION, the first scholarly account of online social evolution,
although their work precedes the appearance of the Internet as we know it
today.
2. The revolutionary character of the Internet rests primarily
on the fact each citizen, at least potentially, will have the power to reach
audiences of a size that used to be reachable only by capital-intensive
media institutions -- most notably, newspapers, mass-market magazines, and
television.
3. A secondary, but nevertheless important, consequence of the
Internet is that it becomes possible for individuals to access
disintermediated content from anyone else on the Net.
B. The first wave of stories about the Net to appear in mainstream mass
media were essentially positive -- "the information highway" was seen as a
boon similar to that of the interstate highway system, or perhaps even the
printing press. (Sen. Gore _fils_ , writing about the "national information
infrastructure" in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and elsewhere, liked to evoke the
highway system, a project sponsored by Sen. Gore _pere_ decades before.) The
push was on to connect every school, library, hospital, and home to the Net.
1. This wave of enthusiasm was accelerated by the development
of the World Wide Web. The Web represented only one way a content
producer/publisher could use the Internet. But perhaps because of its
conceptual and functional similarity to traditional one-to-many publishing
(newspapers, books, TV stations), the Web caught on rather more quickly than
distributed conferencing systems -- which provided truly interactive "many-
to-many communications" -- such as Usenet and Compuserve had done. So the
Web soon displaced the other uses of the Internet, except perhaps for e-
mail, in the public mind, even as it supercharged a new flood of people and
capital to the Net.
2. Result: in the course of a two or three years, our society
went from (typically) not knowing what a URL is to routinely placing URLs on
billboards, in magazine advertisements, and even on the sides of city buses.
C. The second wave of stories about the Net underscored how volatile
the initial social enthusiasm had been. Like the tulip craze in Holland, the
sudden Internet boom in the collective American awareness was headed for an
equally sudden bust. As with many other new technologies, the blessings of
computer communications were not unmixed. And the gap between a) the early
utopian predictions about the Net as an unqualified social good and b) the
Net as it really is, led to a backlash, both in the mainstream media and in
the public mind generally. The Net, which had been lavishly praised for its
potential to put the full measure of the First Amendment's speech and press
freedoms into any individual American's hands, began to be seen as a threat
-- precisely for the same reason!
D. Traditional journalism and journalists did not function as a
corrective to either of these oscillating social perceptions of the Net. In
fact, they typically reflected and reinforced them. The Net is now often
seen as a functioning primarily as a conduit for pornography, a zone of
predation for pedophiles and stalkers, a resource for bomb-planting
terrorists, a hideout for conspiring criminals, a threat to the ability of
authors and publishers to be paid for their work, a source of knockoff,
worthless pseudojournalism, a free-fire zone in which no one's morality, no
one's children, no one's intellectual property, no one's privacy, no one's
knowledge about the larger world can reasonably be thought to be relatively
safe, even for a moment. Examples of news media's reinforcement of this
view:
1. TIME's cover story endorsing a "cyberporn" study that later
turned out to be a hoax.
2. The overwhelming passage of the Communications Decency
Amendment, recently overturned by the Supreme Court for being, among other
things, unconstitutionally overbroad.
3. The routine assumption in several press institutions that
there is a link between the bomb attack at the Olympics in Atlanta last
summer and the Internet, and the law-enforcement community's unsubstantiated
statements that reinforce that perceived link.
4. The singling out of any computer-communications element to a
news story -- no matter how ancillary it is to the essence of the story --
in order to make it more sensational. See, e.g., the New York Post's
creation of the "Internet rapist" story last summer, based on upon the
perpetrator's having met his victim first in an America Online chat room,
and the national media's abortive attempt to characterize the "Heaven's
Gate" suicides as being somehow linked to, or facilitated by, the cult's use
of a Web site. (TIME's cover copy: "The Web of Death.")
III. The Internet We Don't Know
A. It can fairly be said that we know the Net is not the catalyst for
utopia that it was once touted as being -- the very fact that people were so
quickly able to find aspects of the Internet to complain about proves this
point handily.
B. But the picture of the Net as it is characterized in the current
backlash is also a misrepresentation, and perhaps even more so. For one
thing, the Net as a source of new terrors cannot be the same Net that
continues to inspire millions of new users to log on for the first time
every year, often for reasons they themselves can barely articulate.
C. My thesis is that the Net has, for most of its participants, played
a transformative role -- providing individuals with new opportunities, new
connections with other people, new interests, and even new communities.
These individuals' accounts of their experiences vary in their particulars,
but they tend to have in common the fact that their use of the Net has
changed their lives in some fundamental ways ... and that the changes have
mostly been positive.
D. If the current myth of the Net is that it is a place where, within
minutes of logging on, one is confronted with offers of pornography or with
rude propositions or with invasions of one's privacy, then it is long past
time to generate the "counter-myths of the Net" -- the near-archetypal (yet
true) stories that so many "netizens" have in common with each other. These
stories have to become as much a part of our collective perception of the
Net as the horror stories already have done, if only because the social
consensus necessary for preserving freedom of expression on the Net depends
upon a majority of us recognizing and being able to articulate what it is
that we value in it.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
Subject: File 8--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
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