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Computer underground Digest Sun Apr 5, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 21
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, #10.21 (Sun, Apr 5, 1998)
File 1--CYBERsitter
File 2-- Announcement: PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI)
File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Voyagers. April 4, 1998.
File 4--"Feds Dishing up Spam" (press release)
File 5--"Computers, Ethics and Society", Ermann & Williams
File 6--SLAC Bulletin - Apr 1 '98
File 7--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: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 23:26:37 -0600
From: Bennett Haselton <bennett@peacefire.org>
Subject: File 1--CYBERsitter
In the last issue someone pointed out that they had found the decoded list
of sites that CYBERsitter blocks, at:
http://atropos.c2.net/~sameer/cybersitter.txt
This list is indeed accurate. About a year ago, Peacefire put a program on
the Web that made it possible for people to unscramble the list of sites
blocked by CYBERsitter from the encrypted list that came with the program.
The encryption scheme they were using was very simple -- they XOR'ed every
character in the file with 0x94 -- and the CSDECODE program simply reversed
that process. I didn't want to put the list of blocked sites itself on
Peacefire.org because I was worried that they might be able to get us for
Copyright infringement if I did that, so I posted the program itself and
told people where they could download CYBERsitter if they wanted to
unscramble the list.
Naturally, CYBERsitter was furious and threatened legal action anyway:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9964,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/story/3355.html
So much I expected. What I didn't expect is that most of the media started
reporting that this "bunch of hackers had posted a program to break the
code on CYBERsitter", deliberately worded in such an ambiguous way as to
make people think that we were posting a program for kids to hack around
the software, which csdecode specifically does not do. C-Net, for example,
originally titled their story "Teen Disables Filtering Software" and said
that we were helping kids hack around CYBERsitter; their original version
of the story is at:
http://peacefire.org/archives/cnet.on.cybersitter.1st-version.txt
We called them up and threatened all kinds of action that were completely
out of our range, unless they corrected it, so the next morning they
changed the story and posted the amended version which is now at:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9964,00.html
which was titled "Teen Exposes Filtering Software" instead of "Teen
Disables Filtering Software" as well as some other minor changes.
The list of blocked sites may be out of date, but you can still download
CYBERsitter and run csdecode to find out what it blocks. Csdecode can be
downloaded from:
http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/CYBERsitter/csdecode.shtml
Please note that it will not work with CYBERsitter 97, only with
CYBERsitter 2.12.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 16:19:16 +0100
From: "Richard K. Moore" <rkmoore@iol.ie>
Subject: File 2-- Announcement: PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI)
Dear cyberjournal community,
writers & publishers (via Bcc:),
Announcement>
PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI)
- a new incarnation of <cyberjournal@cpsr.org> -
In collaboration with "CADRE Productions Unlimited" (CPU), and with
the hosting support of "Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility" (CPSR), I am pleased to announce a revamp of the
cyberjournal list -- a dedication to an expanded mission in support
of _Social Responsibility_ on a GLOBAL scale: the PEOPLES PRESS
INTERNATIONAL (PPI).
PPI aims to connect people to people, worldwide, bringing you the
_real_ news of the world -- the news Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner,
the UPI, Reuters, the API, and the New York Times don't think you
need to see.
WHERE WILL PPI GET ITS NEWS?...
...from stringer reporters, amateur and professional, all over the
world -- on the ground where the news is happening, uncensored and
up-to-the-minute...
...from the culls of dozens of Internet lists -- the
exceptional/pivotal postings that are deserving of worldwide
exposure...
...from you, our writer/publisher subscribers, who are encouraged
to send in those items of your own which would be of interest
beyond your shores...
...from our network of independent journalists and analysts who
have chosen PPI as a venue for their best and most topical essays
and investigations...
...and from you our readers, who welcome a chance to have _your_
voice heard on the issues of the day.
HOW WILL THE NEWS FEED BE FORMATTED?...
From now on each cyberjournal/PPI posting Subject will be prefixed
by a tag denoting what type of news item it is, and will identify
the source of the material along with the topic/subject:
- PPI-ALERT> source: subject
- a posting which urges action on the part of the reader -- to join
a letter-writing campaign, to provide information or contacts in
support of an action, etc.
- PPI-BULLETIN> " "
- a news bulletin: an item of worldwide interest, though not to
every audience
- PPI-ANALYSIS>
- an essay or investigative report by a distinguished observer
- PPI-EDITORIAL>
- an opinion/analysis piece by CADRE editorial staff or by a guest
contributor
- PPI-BACKGROUND>
- a background study -- bringing in historic, economic, political,
or philosophical observations that shed light on today's events
- PPI-FIRST-PERSON>
- a report by an "ordinary person", perhaps poorly expressed or
with grammatical errors, but which "tells it like it is" from the
front lines
- PPI-READERS-VOICE>
- a comment, again by an "ordinary person", on recent news or on
any other topic of widespread interest
- PPI-RENAISSANCE>
- a report on the progress of the Democratic Renaissance and of the
global coalition movement striving to bring it about
HOW CAN YOU ACCESS THE NEWS FEED?
You can subscribe to cyberjournal@cpsr.org, getting the real-time feed
directly into your mailbox, or you can access the always-current PPI
Archives, and pull down what you need...
http://cyberjournal.org/cadre/PPI-archives
To join cyberjournal, simply send:
To: listserv@cpsr.org
Subject-- (ignored)
---
sub cyberjournal Jane Q. Doe <-- your name there
HOW CAN THE PPI NEWS FEED BE USED?
All material published by PPI is available for free and unrestricted
use in non-commmercial venues or in in small-press (ie, "struggling for
existence") venues, such as small-town newspapers. Commercial (profitable)
media venues may inquire regarding republication rights. All material is
copyrighted by the original source and by PPI.
NOTICE TO LIST-OWNERS AND WEBSITE-OWNERS:
You are invited to link your websites to <http://cyberjournal.org> and to
request a cross-link; list-owners are invited to use the PPI news feed as
a regular source of material supplementary to your other sources.
HOW MUCH TRAFFIC WILL THERE BE ON PPI?
Traffic will be limited to two or three postings per day.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 11:35:46 -0500
From: Richard Thieme <rthieme@thiemeworks.com>
Subject: File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Voyagers. April 4, 1998.
Islands in the Clickstream:
Voyagers
When we come to a new place or enter a new environment, the landscape looks
all of a piece, and we have to learn how to see it in depth and detail.
Our interaction with new cultures teach us over time how to understand them
When I moved to Maui in the eighties, I lived about thirty feet from the
ocean. From the sea wall, when I looked out at the channel that defined the
"pond" among our islands, all I could see was water. Nothing but water
Of course I could see the other islands and waves breaking over the reef,
but the ocean itself looked like nothing but undifferentiated water.
Last week I returned to Hawaii to speak about spirituality and technology.
During the week, two canoe builders from the Marshall Islands made a public
presentation and shared some of their lore, long believed to be lost. "Some
of our navigators are trained to detect six different swells by the feel of
the canoe," one said. Others specialized in navigating by the stars or
weather. Despite the repression of their culture (and the explosion of
dozens of nuclear bombs on their islands), they had somehow kept alive the
knowledge of their ancestors.
They used tangled knots to map the night skies and learned to discern the
subtle interacting patterns of the swells by crouching in canoes on what
looked to a "mainland haole" like a perfectly calm sea. When they looked
out at the ocean, they saw a lot more than just water.
After a few years on the island, I could see at a glance the direction of
the wind and the complex pattern of the currents. That told me what I was
likely to encounter when I went diving or spear fishing. I knew where the
fish would be feeding, how to co-exist with morays and reef sharks, how to
use the surge of the sea to slide without effort toward prey. The angle of
the sun under the water, the length of the seaweed, the Kona wind, all
correlated with the feeding habits of the fish on the reef. The sea
resolved itself into a complex, richly detailed environment.
What I learned was child's play compared to the intimacy with which
islanders know the ocean. Someone who lives on the mainland might look at
the water and see only a barrier, whereas islanders see an open invitation,
a whole world waiting to be explored, both highway and home.
The journey into ourselves and the journey into the symbolic landscape that
defines our culture - of which the Internet is an emblem - are the same
journey.
When we first turn inward, the landscape may seem opaque, but as we explore
through meditation, prayer, and other disciplines, we too discover both a
highway and a home.
It's as if someone who spent his or her entire life on land hears for the
first time about the ocean. The word calls forth an image and a desire,
and that is the beginning of the journey. We make our way to the water's
edge and look out at the singular immensity of it. Some plunge in; others
take scuba lessons, letting others coach them. When we first snorkel or
dive on a tropical reef, we are amazed at the beauty and variety of living
forms. That beauty can be a trap. If we're not careful, we stay at that
depth instead of learning to go deeper. If we do go deeper, new worlds are
disclosed, new possibilities for communion with ourselves, others, and the
universe of which we could not have dreamed.
Over time, we become as comfortable under water as on land, and our
framework expands to include the sea and what is under the sea as well as
the narrower life lived in the air. We move back and forth between them
easily. Air and water become dimensions of a single reality.
The first explosive photos taken by the Hubble telescope showed the
richness and complexity of space, a technology disclosing new possibilities
for action. As those possibilities percolate into our consciousness, what
it means to be a human being is transformed.
That's how it felt too when I downloaded my first browser and tumbled like
Alice into cyberspace, emerging from underground eight hours later,
oblivious to the passage of time.
The Internet is a vast sea of possibilities, a symbolic representation of
our collective consciousness and our collective unconscious. When we
explore the Net, we are exploring ourselves. The Net is a swirl of
invisible currents. We learn to surf swells of meaning that surge back and
forth like the sea. We learn to follow currents of information, feeling the
swells interact in subtle and complex ways. We become voyagers in the sea
of information in which we are immersed, plunging through high seas in
outrigger canoes. We make our own tangled starmaps that represent and
remember for us how to find our way home.
There is ultimately only ourselves to know. When we try to understand
everything, we do not understand anything at all, observed Shunryu Suzuki.
But when we understand ourselves, we understand everything.
The Internet is not so much a set of skills as it is a culture. Guided by
mentors, learning like wolves to hunt together, we learn how to hang in the
medium. The images on our monitors are icons, windows disclosing
possibilities far beyond our home planet. Inner and outer space alike are
explored by tele-robotic sensory extensions, revealing the medium in which
we have always been swimming. Consciousness is the sea, and the sea is all
around us. The secrets that we think are lost are simply waiting to be
found: Supra-rational modes of knowing. Connection and community of such
depth and complexity that we grow giddy with delight. A network in which we
are both nurtured and fulfilled, each node of the web a reflecting facet
like one of Indra's jewels, reflecting each of the others and the totality
of the whole.
**********************************************************************
Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by
Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions
of computer technology. Comments are welcome.
Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this
signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns
online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or
(3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network,
email for details.
To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to
rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the words "subscribe islands" in the
body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe
islands" in the body of the message.
Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer
focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and
organizations.
Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1998. All rights reserved.
ThiemeWorks on the Web: http://www.thiemeworks.com
ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 23:47:49 -0600
From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
Subject: File 4--"Feds Dishing up Spam" (press release)
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9803/31/beat/
HEARD ON THE BEAT: FEDS DISHING UP SPAM
March 31, 1998
Web posted at: 11:43 AM EST (1143 GMT)
The FBI uses many methods in its crusade against crime and,
according to a few angry residents of cyberspace, one of those
methods looks suspiciously like "spam."
In February, the FBI sent bulk e-mail, titled "Militants Call for
Anti-U.S. Attacks Worldwide," to thousands of online addresses.
The missive warned that Islamic militants had issued "a religious
decree calling on Muslims everywhere to attack U.S. citizens,
facilities and allies of the U.S. around the world."
While it may have been considerate of the FBI to issue the
warning, it left people like John Bolding, owner of a tiny
software company in Tucson, wondering why he was one of its
recipients.
A fanatical foe of spam, unwanted bulk e-mail, Bolding conducted
an investigation of his own. He said he learned that the message
had been sent to thousands of high-tech companies, even though
they weren't terrorism targets.
Bolding said he was perplexed, then outraged. "They're using tax
dollars to send out spam," said Bolding, who posted the FBI
message on his company's Web site, at
http://www.firstbase.com/spam.htm
FBI officials said the e-mail messages were simply a new wrinkle
in a long-standing effort to raise awareness of terrorism by
sending advisories to companies that want occasional updates.
The FBI assembled the e-mail list partly from various published
directories, said Ron VanVranken, an FBI spokesman. He added that
the agency received only two complaints and removed those
addresses.
"We just want to protect Americans," said VanVranken. Bolding said
he had his name taken off the list, although the agent he
contacted asked him if his attempts to block the e-mail were part
of "some kind of new un-American subversive activity."
So while Bolding still gets hundreds of spam messages each week,
none of them is from the FBI, restoring normalcy to his
relationship with the spy agency.
"Except there is a sedan parked out front with guys wearing trench
coats," he said. "Just joking."
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:03:27 -0800
From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <rslade@sprint.ca>
Subject: File 5--"Computers, Ethics and Society", Ermann & Williams
BKETHICS.RVW 980131
"Computers, Ethics and Society", M. David Ermann/Mary B.
Williams/Michele S. Shauf, 1997, 0-19-510756-X, C$29.95
%A M. David Ermann
%A Michele S. Shauf
%C 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario M3C 1J9
%D 1997
%G 0-19-510756-X
%I Oxford University Press
%O C$29.95 800-451-7556 fax: 919-677-1303 cjp@oup-usa.org
%P 340 p.
%T "Computers, Ethics and Society, Second Edition"
Ethics. Don't talk to me about ethics.
Computer industry the size of a planet, security specialists sleeping
under every bush, a zillion philosophy students and what do we do? We
write a textbook.
It's so depressing.
It has been seven years since the first edition of this book was
published, and five years since I reviewed that first edition. I was
rather looking forward to it at the time, it being the only title I
had found to address this all important issue. I was a bit chagrined
to find that it was, a) a series of articles, rather than a book; and,
b) a textbook. Well, courses on computer ethics are important, and in
the interim there have been both other textbooks and serious
examinations of the topic for the working professional. I've gotten
over my disappointment that the book was a textbook, but still find it
to be flawed *as* a textbook. As with other, similar, works, some of
the disappointment arises from the fact that, so far, this is close to
the best we can do.
The apparent organization of the material is good. The first section
of papers deals with general ethical theory. Unfortunately, the
background is somewhat limited, dealing only with utilitarianism,
generally simplified to "the greatest good for the greatest number",
and some minor variations. (Kant's "Categorical Imperative" is
covered, but it can easily be seen as a special case of utilitarianism
where "badness" is exponential.) The first paper, "Ethical Issues in
Computing," stands as an overview of topics to be covered in the book.
As such, the piece can't be faulted for a lack of depth. However,
what analysis there is in the essay betrays a reliance on facile
reasoning and presumptions based on strictly anecdotal evidence, or no
evidence at all. In this regard, it foreshadows too much of the
material in the book overall. The second and third papers,
"Information Technologies Could Threaten Privacy, Freedom, and
Democracy," and "Technology is a Tool of the Powerful," demonstrates
another shortcoming of the book: an emphasis on theoretical societal,
rather than practical personal, responsibilities and issues. As the
material begins to examine generic ethical principles in light of
specific problems, the treatment becomes uneven, although by and large
it offers little except further problems in defining moral action. (I
was sad to see that a first rate treatise on privacy as it relates to
monitoring of criminal offenders; lucid, readable and almost poetic
while casting an insightful new light on the subject; has been
removed.)
In light of my comments about a social bias to the book, it may seem
strange that part two is entitled "Computers and Personal Life."
However, personal action and responsibility is in the minority. Four
papers deal with privacy, commerce, and employment, again pitting the
individual against the mass, if not the state. The excerpt from
Gates' "The Road Ahead" (an unremarkedly ironic inclusion given the
current debate and legal battles over "ownership" of the desktop) is
nothing more than a bit of blue sky pronouncing. The articles by
Postman, Gergen, and Broadhurst are better informed, but no closer to
ethics. Eugene Spafford seems to be the only contender in the
personal activity arena.
"Computers and the Just Society" is definitely back with the person
against the principality, paying particular attention to employment
(in the aggregate) and privacy (as being eroded by legislation against
encryption). There is a nod to cyberspace and the law on the way
through, but it isn't much improvement over the first edition.
(Aristotle and Augustine didn't even make the cut this time out.)
Part four, on "Computing Professionals and Their Ethical
Responsibilities" shows titular promise, but is back on the individual
against society once more. Indeed, there is little that is specific
to the computing professional. A paper on "whistle-blowing' is clear
as to the issues, but finally ambiguous as to any answers. Steven
Levy's piece on Lotus Marketplace is a bit depressing when you realize
the final outcome: Lotus never did release marketplace, but a number
of recent "products" are much greater invasions of privacy.
Given the almost absolute emphasis on society, I was rather surprised
to see only one paper, and that tangentially, related to the rise of
the Internet. The net has become a major force in society, both in
spreading hate literature and other disinformation, and in promoting
democracy and discourse. The second edition does not appear to have
taken the opportunity to come up to date in this regard.
Much of the material collated here is interesting, and worthwhile
background for a course in computer ethics, but it doesn't go
anywhere. The quality is very uneven and, ultimately, much of the
writing is disappointing. The section and subsection headings often
bear only the most tenuous connection to the contents, although
related articles to tend to have some commonality. As course reading
material, this book could be very useful in the hands of a good
instructor. As a resource for those working in the lines...well, I
suppose we keep looking and hoping.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993, 1998 BKETHICS.RVW 980131
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 07:33:41 -0500
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@bway.net>
Subject: File 6--SLAC Bulletin - Apr 1 '98
SLAC Bulletin, April 1, 1998
-----------------------------
The SLAC Bulletin is a low-volume mailer (1-5 messages per month)
on Internet freedom of speech issues from Jonathan Wallace,
co-author of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt 1996) and
publisher of The Ethical Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org). To
add or delete yourself:
http://www.greenspun.com/spam/home.tcl?domain=SLAC
The following is my testimony submitted to the U.S. Senate in
oppositio to the McCain bill which would require installation of
censorware in federally-supported libraries and schools.
What Censorware Means to Me
by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
In the past year I have become an activist against the use of
censorware in government institutions. Of the wide variety of
issues pertaining to free speech which I might have chosen, how
did I select this one? The answer is that I didn't go looking to
pick a fight with censorware; it picked a fight with me.
I practiced law for ten years specializing in computer-related
matters, then became an executive in a software business. For
years I had day-dreamed about starting a newsletter on ethical
issues as an avocation, but the cost seemed prohibitive; the
newsletter I sent my law clients cost more than a dollar a copy,
so it seemed impossible for me to reach a significant audience. I
wasn't rich, and I couldn't afford it.
In 1994, the World Wide Web came along, and I learned HTML, the
"mark-up" language in which Web pages are created. That happened
to be the year I turned 40, and I made up a list of things I
wanted to accomplish; finally starting my ethics newsletter was
one of them. On January 1, 1995, issue number 1 of The Ethical
Spectacle went on-line at http://www.spectacle.org. It included
articles on campaign finance, Schindler's List, and making the net
accessible for minorities. Thirty-seven more monthly issues have
followed since then. The expense of publishing the Spectacle is
under $100 a month, exclusive of my time.
A goal listed in the Spectacle mission statement: "Promoting
freedom of speech, compassion, fairness and humility as the
fundamental building blocks of private and public life."
Within a few days, people had found the Spectacle and were
beginning to send me letters about it. I received a monthly status
report from the company on whose server the Spectacle lives: more
than 1,000 people had read it, more than 3,000, 8,000,
12,000....Today upwards of twenty to thirty thousand people read
it every month. I have received email from readers in Sweden,
France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Brazil and many other countries. Publishers have
requested and gotten permission to reprint my work in textbooks,
law journals, and library science publications. Hundreds or
thousands of other Web sites around the world link to mine, and
many of them have republished my essays. Pieces I wrote have been
passed around on Usenet and private mailing lists, leading more
readers to the Spectacle.
During 1995, I had signed a contract with the publishing firm of
Henry Holt, for a book on Internet censorship. Ironically, in
that book, Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, published in early 1996, Mark
Mangan and I recommended censorware as a private approach to
avoiding pornography. Between the time that we delivered the
manuscript and its appearance in bookstores, censorware products
began blocking the Spectacle. The first Web page of mine blocked
by any product was the one dedicated to our book
(http://www.spectacle.org/freespch). It was promptly barred by
Cyberpatrol and later by I-Gear as well. Cyberpatrol has also
blocked Nizkor, the leading Holocaust site, and Deja News, a
Usenet archive used by programmers, attorneys, public relations
consultants and others to obtain technical and business
information.
Through the winter and spring of 1995, I prepared a special issue
of the Spectacle for June of that year: a compilation of material
about the Auschwitz death camp. Entitled "An Auschwitz Alphabet",
it contains excerpts from works by Primo Levi,
Elie Wiesel and Tadeusz Borowski, among other Auschwitz inmates.
The "Alphabet" is located at
http://www.spectacle.org/695/ausch.html. I had no idea of the
impact this simple work would have: it accounts for more than 40%
of Spectacle readers. Teachers all over the world have assigned it
to their classes, and students from many countries have thanked me
for creating it. Here are a few of the responses I have had.
>From teachers:
"I just discovered your work online and am impressed! I am
teaching a second level composition course thematically based on
the Holocaust..."
"I just wanted to let you know that I found your site as I was
gathering resources to teach a unit on the Holocaust to my middle
school students....your site is going to be a fabulous resource."
"I am teaching summer school--U.S. history, 20th century--and
found the Alphabet a powerful tool..."
>From students:
"I am a tenth grade student in Australia, and I would like to
congratulate you on this homepage."
"I am an Abilene Christian University student. Your information is
wonderful and greatly appreciated."
"I'm in eighth grade and your page helped me the most..."
And here is the single most moving message I have ever received on
the Internet, from a young Italian girl:
"I read all the books of Primo Levi, I hope for one best world.
I'm only 14...I'm not a Jew but I will don't forget..."
If these students or teachers had been accessing the Net from
computers with the Cybersitter or X-Stop products installed, they
would never have been able to see An Auschwitz Alphabet.
Cybersitter blocked the whole Spectacle site from about February
1997 until its most recent release. Cybersitter also blocked the
National Organization for Women and Peacefire, a student free
speech group. X-Stop blocked a portion of my site until recently,
when (the ACLU informs me) it began blocking the entire Spectacle
domain.
The July 1995 issue of the Spectacle, appearing the month after
"An Auschwitz Alphabet", was entitled "Threats to the Net" and
covered several of the cases we would describe in more detail in
the book. (Its address is http://www.spectacle.org/795/). It
contained discussions of the Jake Baker and Amateur Action cases,
and the Communications Decency Act. The concluding essay was
entitled, "We Don't Need New Laws." This issue of the Spectacle
was quickly blocked by X-Stop's "felony load" version. This is
the release which the publisher touts as blocking only obscene
material, hence "felony". It is the same release which blocks the
Quaker pages, the Aids Quilt and the American Association of
University Women.
Late in the year, I added a new section to the Spectacle site
called "The Free Speech Dictionary"
(http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/musm/). It was a series of
brief definitions of free speech terms: "hate speech,"
"pervasiveness", "fighting words", "libel", "obscenity". The
Dictionary was blocked by the Bess product.
Another product that will not allow access to much of the
Spectacle is Web Chaperone, which is the only one
of these products to block by keyword alone. I am told Web
Chaperone cannot distinguish between an essay about Catharine
MacKinnon's views on pornography and the "Hot Nude Women" page.
So that makes six, count 'em, six censorware products which block
all or part of the Spectacle--a sober, intellectual, rather dry
publication, without prurient photographs or stories, which
aspires to be an electronic equivalent of print magazines like The
Nation, The National Review or The Atlantic. And those are only
the ones I know about. If only one or two of these products had
blocked my pages, I might have concluded it didn't mean anything.
Being on the blacklists of six censorware products proves to me
that this kind of software will inevitably block speech like mine
on topics
like freedom of speech and the Holocaust.
Being blocked by all this software has led me to make an
investigation of censorware and to become a founding member of The
Censorware Project (http://www.spectacle.org/cwp). Each time I
look into what one of these products blacklists, I found out about
more Websites completely lacking any pornography--on topics like
censorship, scuba diving, pet care, political activism. Many of
them are run by people who don't have my legal skills or
visibility, or the willingness to make a fuss to get their pages
unblocked. Most have no way of even finding out which censorware
products block their sites.
At least four of the products which blacklist the Spectacle are
currently installed in public libraries or schools: Cybersitter,
Cyberpatrol, Bess, and X-Stop. This bothers me intensely,
because I always thought these institutions were in the business
of providing access to pages like An Auschwitz Alphabet and the
Free Speech Dictionary, not blocking them. One of the letters I
got about the Alphabet was from Cenie Ho, a young student at the
Djakarta International School. That school later installed
CyberSitter, so Cenie and her classmates can't read An Auschwitz
Alphabet any more.
When libraries install censorware, it is usually because of
community pressure, and fundamentalist groups are involved. At the
library board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia which resulted
in a decision to install X-Stop, Dixie Sanner of Enough is Enough
commented that putting library staff in charge of selecting
Internet content is like "putting the wolf in charge of the
henhouse." Why are we allowing people who hate and fear librarians
and have no conception of the diversity of speech to dictate
national library policy?
I'd like to close with three quotes which, read together, state
more eloquently than I can the guiding philosophy of the American
doctrine of free speech:
John Milton: "Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou
art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each
matter....Prove all things, hold fast that which is good."
John Stuart Mill: "[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression
of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as
well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the
opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is
right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error
for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit,
the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced
by its collision with error."
And finally, Justice Holmes, who stated the operative metaphor for
the First Amendment in his dissent in Abrams v. U.S.:
"[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting
faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the
very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good
desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best
test
of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the
competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon
which their wishes safely can be carried out."
I believe that the strands uniting the thoughts of these three men
are humility, tolerance and optimism-the humility to know that we
do not know all the answers; the tolerance of other people's
ideas; the optimism that everything will come out all right if we
permit free speech. Dixie Sanner and her organization Enough is
Enough do not manifest humility, tolerance or optimism when th
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
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Subject: File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
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