Computer underground Digest Wed Feb 14, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 15 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #8.15 (Wed, Feb 14, 1996) File 1--The CDA: Has It Fallen? Can It Get Up? File 2--EFF's open letter to Internet providers and users (2/12) File 3--Myths about our mirrors of the Zundelsite "Censored by Germany" File 4--The Net's Strange Day (Smolman's "24 hours in Cyberspace) File 5--Alan Turing Home Page File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 16 Dec, 1995) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 00:48:11 -0800 (PST) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: File 1--The CDA: Has It Fallen? Can It Get Up? [Redistribute at will.] The CDA: Has It Fallen? Can It Get Up? - Stanton McCandlish, mech@eff.org In the days after the passage of the unconstitutional "Communications Decency Act" as part of the Telecom bill, the CDA appears to be toppling just as it should have begun to ride high in the saddle of fundamentalist "victory" (though the battles are hardly over yet.) The entire Congress passed this bill (some Members knowing it was unconstititonal, and some on the other extreme not even knowing the CDA existed), with the exception of the following legislators who voted against the whole Telecom Bill: Representatives Earl Hilliard (D-AL), Pete Stark (D-CA), Pat Schroeder (D-CO), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Lane Evans (D-IL), Sidney Yates (D-IL), Barney Frank (D-MA), John Conyers (D-MI), Collin Peterson (D-MN), Harold Volkmer (D-MO), Pat Williams (D-MT), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Timothy Johnson (D-SD), Bernard Sanders (independent-VT) Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Paul Simon (D-IL), Paul Wellstone (D-MN), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and John McCain (R-AZ). (Plus a handful that did not vote.) In all, only a singe Republican, out of both Houses of Congress, voted to preserve American freedom of expression.[*] The President proclaimed, in the first State of the Union Address to mention the Internet, "When parents control what their children see, that's not censorship. That's enabling parents to assume more responsibility for their children. And I urge them to do it". Clinton then, in a signing party timed to coincide with the press attention given to the "24 Hours In Cyberspace" multimedia event, enacted a law that strips parents of the right and responsibility to decide what is appropriate for their own children. The CDA would not only fail to help "parents control what their children see" - a goal long supported by EFF, ACLU, VTW, CDT and others opposed to the "decency" bill - but actually hinder the development of tools and services to help parents and teachers filter children's Net access. * Backlash It is ironic that it took passage of this law to garner the public and media attention it warrants. For 48 hours after President Clinton's signing of the CDA into law, thousands of Web users and BBS sysops world wide took part in a "Thousand Points of Darkness" protest of the new censorship law by turning their Web page and login screen backgrounds to black, to mourn the death of the Internet as we know it. Some, including online magazines such as Factsheet Five Electric and Scamizdat, blanked out their entire online offerings, replacing everything that had been available with a single sentence: "This is what censorship looks like". The protest garnered major news coverage of the Net censorship debate for the first time. Finally the debate has shifted from false "save the children" hype to the real issue: free speech, press and association rights in new media. The "facts", figures and motives of the lobbyists and lawmakers behind the CDA are at last being more widely examined. The "black page" protest is being followed up with a long term awareness-raising and protest effort, in which particants, already numbering in the tens of thousands, wear blue ribbons, and place graphics of blue ribbons on their online services and homepages. Participants range from individual users, to online journalism sites like HotWired, to major centers of Internet connectivity like Netcom and Yahoo!, among others. As with Germany and France, where attempted censorship of online information has backfired, leading to proscribed data's immediate global availabilty from numerous anti-censorship "mirror sites", the U.S. government may have to learn the hard way. The online community is determined to knock the lesson into regulators' heads. To cater to censored U.S. users, "offshore" anonymous Internet access providers are popping up, such as Offshore Information Services Ltd - http://online.offshore.com.ai/ - offering $50/month privacy-protected accounts from tax-haven island Anguilla. In case that were not enough, an ad-hoc programmer coalition, the Decense Project - at http://www.clark.net/pub/rjc/decense.html - has produced an "de-censoring" solution, which like that of the Anguilla ISP, also provides privacy protection as a bonus: Decense, "a cgi script designed to provide a double-blind pseudonym scheme which allows a site to hide behind a chain of http servers which 'proxy' for it. Neither the user [ID] requesting the document, nor the ultimate address of the destination web site is immediately available to prying government eyes." * Action in Court and Congress The action has spread offline as well. There has already been an public protest rally in Washington DC on Feb. 10, and there are others in the works. The University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia will see a demonstration just before a scheduled speech by VP Gore. A DC "Electronic Freedom March" is gearing up, and even high school students are donning blue ribbons and demonstrating against reactive academic censorship Most importantly, the new law itself is under concerted attack in the courts and on the Hill. EFF, with ACLU and 24 other organizations, have filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DoJ), in the Phildelphia court of Judge Ronald Buckwalter, challenging the CDA on constitutional grounds. As of Feb. 13, Judge Buckwalter has not only commended the plaintiffs on a well- written lawsuit, but has put the case on the fast track, demanding a DoJ response by Wed. Feb. 14. The Judge further indicated that he will likely grant plaintiffs' motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO), by Thu., Feb. 15 at the latest, without further hearings. The TRO would prevent enforcement of the CDA pending a hearing before and decision from a panel of three judges, on a motion for a longer-term preliminary injunction that would prevent all enforcment of the "decency" provisions until the real meat of the case is settled - whether the CDA stands up to constitutional challenges. The hearing on the long-term injunction should take place within the next few weeks. And the balance of the legal "tests" the CDA must face are very much in plaintiffs' favor. Though the DoJ has agreed to make no arrests under the new statutes between now and the probable issuance of a TRO this week, content and access providers should be warned that the FBI and other Justice Dept. agents may later decide to prosecute for CDA violations committed during this time, if they eventually win the case - a possibility everyone should be concerned about. And plaintiffs' attorneys warn that even the little assurance provided by DoJ for now is rather meaningless since it has not been put in writing. The Justice Dept. and the Christian Coalition are expected to present, as evidence supporting the CDA, the most vulgar content they can possibly find online - though this tactic could backfire. After all, the CDA does not address pornography (obscenity) at all, since it is already illegal online or offline, but rather targets indecency, a broader category including nudity in almost any context, or "indecent" words like those found in any PG-rated movie. In the mean time, the Telecom bill has been delivered a one-two-punch by some of the legislators that voted against it the first time around. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), like Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), was a high-profile participant in the WWW Blackout protest, and has, with Sen. Russ Feingold, introduced a new bill (S.1567) to repeal most of the CDA. This legislation will likely need to be re-examined and modified to make sure it actually succeeds in the goal of removing the threat posed by the Communications Decency Act. * Women's Groups and Others Join the Battle Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-CO) is attacking another dangerous provision of the Telecom Bill - an amendment outlawing the online distribution of certain kinds of abortion-related information. The amendment in question was slipped into the leviathan telecommuncations "deregulation" package by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), who also shepherded the final version of the CDA. Schroeder announced that she will introduce a bill, when Congress re-convenes on Feb. 26, to repeal this less well-known Telecom Bill assault on free expression. (It should be noted that although Rep. Shroeder voted against the Telecom bill in the final vote, she can be partially blamed for the existence of the CDA in that bill - she voted "yes" on it in committee deliberations, along with a majority of her colleagues.) The "abortion gag rule" in the Telecom bill is also being slammed in in another lawsuit, Sanger v. Reno, filed in New York by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, and many other plaintiffs. In this case, U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter has (according to ACLU releases) admitted the unconstitutionality of the CDA, and also agreed to hold off enforcing it for a while. East District of New York Chief Judge Charles P. Sifton has asked Chief Judge Jon O. Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to convene another 3-judge panel to decide this case. Sifton has not granted a TRO or injuction. The Judge appears to find the DoJ's assurances sufficient evidence that this particular provision will not be enforced or chill free speech. His decision may also rely on the fact that the section of the ancient Comstock censorship law modified by the Telecom Bill to ban abortion info online, has not been enforced in many years. However, no court has yet to rule the Comstock Act unconstitutional, leaving some people worried for the short term, even if they expect an eventual favorable decision from the 3-judge appellate court. Content providers and internet users, as well as women's groups, are also not pariticularly comforted by the platitudes of supporters of the abortion info ban, who have disingenously claimed they simply want to update the Comstock law for consistency reasons and to show support for "Christian" ideals, but don't expect anyone to actually be censored under the new revisions. Plaintiffs' attorney Simon Heller said, "We are extremely pleased that the Clinton Administration has recognized the invalidity of this law. However, we believe a court ruling against the provision barring receipt or provision of abortion information is still necessary to prevent a future administration or radical right-wing members of Congress from wielding it against women's health care providers and advocates." * Shifting Lines It is clear that the Internet and computer industries do not support the Communications Decency Act, though most organizations in these fields did not act, other than to support EFF and other advocacy groups, until too late. It has shocked the commercial world as well as the general public that Congress would actually pass a bill so terrible. The industry is, however, increasinly participating in protest, and legal, action against the CDA, realizing that such important decisions as what we each should read or avoid cannot be left up to government. Even the usually Beltway-shy Microsoft is taking a stand; in an AP interview, the company's leader, Bill Gates, said of the Internet regulation attempt, "Unfortunately, it means we're going to have to spend some time in Washington, DC. In the first 15 years of Microsoft history, we never visited Washington." And content producers of all sorts are expressing concern, even outrage, from upstart multimedia giants, to major print publishers, all of whom now find not only their free press rights but also their livelihoods threatened. As journalism organizations have flocked to the pro-speech side, only one news association, to our knowledge, has offered anything but derision for the CDA. (Newspaper Association of America President John Sturm expressed support for the telecom bill as a whole, citing only disappointment at the censorship, and support of the "motives of the conferees to protect children from obscene and indecent material". One wonders how closely Mr. Sturm has questioned those motives.) It is clear that the fundamentalist organizations and legislators behind the CDA have neither an understanding of the medium and issue, nor any particular desire to inform the public or the media. The Family Research Council - http://www.frc.org - disinformed readers by quoting and explaining in their newsletter the obscenity restrictions from an older draft of the bill (which they helped replace with an unconstitutional "indecency" version) in an attempt to imply that the FRC and their favorite bill would prohibit online distribution of obscenity. Religious right spokespersons, as well as CDA sponsors like Exon and Hyde, repeatedly tell the press and tv news programs that they are trying to "protect children from pornography" as if somehow unaware that their bill actually makes it more difficult to prevent children from being exposed to inappropriate materials, by removing all incentive to continue developing services and software which genuinely perform this needed function. But perhaps even the moralists are having second thoughts (or trying to save face): Confronted with World Wide Web co-creator Tim Berners-Lee's free Net filtration software, Christian Coalition spokersperson Heidi Strup conceded that the program "definitely would be a useful tool for us." One must wonder how and why the CC and its allies failed to realize this 6 months ago. More education and outreach is clearly needed, so that legislators do not fear the net, so that lobbyist groups do not push for unneeded and hazardous legislation, and most importantly so that the general public have a better understanding of their free speech rights and recognize the early warning signs of censorship threats. On the other side of the issue, organizations like Voters' Telecom Watch (http://www.vtw.org), with help from local activists (see, for example the "Tennessee Hit List" of bad legislators at http://www.people.memphis.edu/~mddallara/hitlist.html) vow to bring the Net constituency into its own in upcoming elections. They are gearing up to vote out legislators and other officials at all levels who betray the trust of their voters by pushing for censorship. The online voting bloc will have a number of people to remove from office, it seems, given Congresspersons like Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-VA), chair of the House Telecom Committee, who seems to consider the CDA's assault on the Constitution an inconsequential matter to be fixed by "technical corrections" to the bill later in the year. And what about Vice-President Al Gore? For all his "Information Superhighway" hype, Gore stronly supported passage of the legislation, since, after all, the courts can take care of the unconstitutional stuff. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) echoed both sentiments, at an "ask the politicians" event in Kalamazoo, MI, claiming that the CDA was only "one small page in a very large bill", and stating that he knew it was unconstitutional and (you won't believe this) that it is "always necessary to test the Constitutionality of some legislation", ergo no service providers would get hurt! Perhaps Sen. Levin considers this a game, but online voters may just cure him of that notion come election day. And let's not forget legislators from Connecticut and other states, who did not even know the CDA was in the Telecom Bill - they passed it without reading the bill at all, much less understanding it's impact. * Civil Disobedience (and Decidedly Uncivil Obedience) At present EFF cannot advise what to do and not do under the CDA. No one can. The law is too vague and overbroad to be applied meaningfully. Some sites are already closing, with more providers broadly self-censoring their content. The moderator of an amateur radio discussion group closed the forum down, saying only, "I have closed my mailing lists to minors, not in protest but for my own protection. Since I enforce rules of conduct for the lists, I think I'm too close to being part of content creation to be safe should one of the subscribers post a 4-letter word." If the judges in the cases challenging the CDA need any evidence of the chilling effect of this legislation, this should be all they need. Other content providers, including many who had never thought of posting "offensive" materials at all, are engaging is widespread civil disobedience, deliberately violating the new Act. A particularly creative example can be found at http://coolheart.infi.net/exon/index.html - you can send a Valentine'd Day card to Sen. Exon, reading "In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I would send you an example of some of the nudity I've found on the Internet - Enjoy", and including your choice of several classic works of art, including Michelangelo's "David" and Boticelli's "Birth of Venus". Yet more are being "uncivilly obedient", complying - barely - by ROT13-encrypting "dirty words", putting "CENSORED!" banners all over their web pages, replacing scatological terms with legislators' surnames, and other actions of visible obedience-under-duress. Still, helpful as these actions may - or may not - prove to be, some protest activities are decidedly unhelpful. "Spamming" Senate and House email addresses, particularly with indecent material is self-defeating. Please remember that this legislation passed because legislators by and large were too ignorant of the medium to recognize that the Net is not really a den of pornographers and terrorists. Irresponsible and overtly threatening gestures - especially threat letters or dirty stories - will only prove to legislators' minds that they were right after all. Lastly, please keep in mind that obvious civil disobedience can be dangerous, particularly as "Oklahomans for Children and Families" and other local fundamentalist groups are on the prowl, vowing to report to police any CDA violations they find. The current hold on enforcement of these laws by the Justice Dept. does not even mean you can't be prosecuted for violations occuring now (assuming the court cases fail, which is probably not a good assumption, fortunately), only that you won't be prosecuted right now. Stanton McCandlish, Online Activist & Webmaster Electronic Frontier Foundation San Francisco - Feb. 13, 1995 [* I observe that only one Republican voted against the CDA because it is a fact. This does not constitute an endorsement of the Democractic Party or any other kind of endorsement on my or EFF's part.] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 19:42:33 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh Subject: File 2--EFF's open letter to Internet providers and users (2/12) Open Letter from Electronic Frontier Foundation to Internet Providers & Users Feb. 12, 1996 The Electronic Frontier Foundation 1550 Bryant St., Suite 725 San Francisco CA 94103 USA +1 415 436 9333 (voice) +1 415 436 9993 (fax) Internet: ask@eff.org Dear U.S. members of the Internet community: Now that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) has been signed into law, many decision makers in business, academic, and other organizations are writing EFF to inquire whether and how to bring their systems into compliance with the new statute. We have received a deluge of inquiries about assessing the risks of non-compliance, and of simply maintaining the status quo and operating as usual. We believe, as do many members of Congress, that this law is patently unconstitutional. The new statute violates the First Amendment by being both overbroad and vague. This makes it exceedingly difficult for us to advise you in a reliable way about what you can do to avoid risks (other than the unacceptable choice of having to shut down altogether). During the time between filing our Feb. 8th court challenge against the CDA, and either a preliminary injunction against enforcement or a final ruling in the case, we have only two suggestions which we feel we can responsibly make to you. First, if you operate a general purpose system, our advice is to please be patient and do not overreact to the current cries for censorship. It is precisely because the CDA language is difficult to understand and apply, that we cannot advise you yet what the proper procedures are. No one can, and that is why the CDA will ultimately fail. Freedom of speech in the electronic world is fragile --don't risk damaging it before it's clear that you have to. Second, if the fundamental focus of your business is distributing sexually explicit materials, we suggest you implement a procedure to screen out minors. Provisions in existing US law suggest that acceptable ways to screen out minors are: * to require credit card numbers to gain access; or * to use a password system and verification of user identity and age; and * to have procedures in place which allow immediate removal of a user if s/he is discovered to be a minor. If you are contacted by a government authority in regard to a possible violation of the new law, please notify us immediately. This way we can work to address the legal issues of your specific situation and we can keep track of how law enforcement agencies are interpreting the CDA, and share this information with others who are trying to understand and evaluate this law. And, with this information, we may be able to provide better guidance in the future. Again, we believe that the restrictions that have been included in the legislation will be struck down in court. We have sought a temporary restraining order (TRO), and plan to follow it with a request for a preliminary injunction, to prevent enforcement until the court renders a final judgment in this case. A judge is expected to hear on our request for a TRO within a week. In the meantime, while your are evaluating how to best manage risks, we urge that you do not make any decisions based on hasty reasoning or fear of liability. EFF is here to help you proceed in a reasonable and cautious manner that emphasizes preserving the integrity of your service as well as the First Amendment. Sincerely, Lori K. Fena Executive Director Electronic Frontier Foundation ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Feb 1996 22:05:52 -0800 From: Rich Graves Subject: File 3--Myths about our mirrors of the Zundelsite "Censored by Germany" Followups set. The story thus far: Starting January 25th, at least three German ISPs restricted access to webcom.com at least temporarily because one user's files contained materials called "the Zundelsite" denying that Nazi Germany murdered millions of Jews, and inciting hatred against Jews for playing "the Holocaust Hoax" on the world. On January 27th, I read a story about the blocking in the regional paper, talked about it a bit at the Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting that day (part of which was taped for a forthcoming Freedom Forum broadcast on PBS, see http://www.fac.org/) and on January 28th sent email to Zundel's online spokesperson "Ingrid" (Zundel himself has no public email address) requesting to mirror his files as a demonstration of the folly and danger of Internet censorship. At 2PM PST January 29th, Mark Lemire, the operator of a large racist BBS with Internet access who for some strange reason had not arranged to mirror Zundel's files himself, was authorized by Ernst Zundel to upload the Zundelsite files to my machine. I mirrored the files, so did others, and the rest is history. Or so some say. Myth #1: T-Online, the largest ISP in Germany, which by some reports is state-controlled, was forced by the German government to block access to webcom.com. Fact: T-Online is far from the predominant ISP in Germany. Until recently, it was a proprietary BBS with no Internet access. T-Online is not state-controlled. It does have a contract with the several state governments, as has always been required by German law. This is analogous to FCC license agreements in the US, but less restrictive. The German authorities never actually threatened to sue T-Online; it was mostly a private decision. Most people in Germany with Internet access can read Zundel's drivel any time they care to. They just don't care to. Myth #2: Some press reports had me mirroring a site originated by Declan McCullogh, an activist at CMU. Fact: Declan copied the files from me, and did not communicate directly with Zundel until some time thereafter. I had anticipated that people would link to the files, rather than copy them. Declan's redistribution of the files was certainly a surprise, and IMHO quite unnecessary. Myth #3: A tertiary mirror site at the University of Massachusetts (some totally inaccurate press reports said MIT) was "CENSORED BY UMASS AUTHORITIES" because it espoused "unpopular views." Fact: As McCarthy has tried to get across several times, he does not consider what his advisor and the chair of the CS Department's asking him to remove the files from a research workstation paid for by targeted grant funds to constitute "censorship." It certainly had nothing to do with the content of the files, as a highly misleading and irresponsible headline in the News & Observer, http://www.nando.net/, implied. Myth #4: McCarthy, the operator of the "censored" UMass mirror site, has been subjected to endless harassment by people who think he is a Nazi. Fact: McCarthy received one such message, and never told the press about it. Rumors of "PC" harassment of Lewis were entirely fabricated by Zundel and his white supremacist friends. We are not at all pleased with irresponsible media outlets like the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, and The News & Observer which chose to fan the flames of a controversy that did not exist. Myth #5: Rich Graves ran the Stanford University Mirror Site, as reported by Declan on his Web pages and in his representations to the press. Fact: This use of Stanford's name and reputation was never encouraged by me, and in fact Declan was flamed rather thoroughly both privately and publicly for refusing for some days to remove this link text. Myth #6: Rich removed his mirror in response to controversy surrounding the use of university resources for political purposes. Fact: This was a complete fabrication of a writer for the Stanford Daily student newspaper, http://www-daily.stanford.edu/, who has been flamed and I think disciplined for same. None of her sources gave any indication of controversy. In fact as soon as I realized that this was a big deal, I stopped using my work address and accounts, shifting everything to this private account, rich@c2.org. By the time the Daily story ran, there were no files relevant to this issue on Stanford machines. Nobody in any position of authority at Stanford has said anything at all negative to me about my involvement in this incident. The removal of the files was simply a personal ethical choice based on the improper use of Stanford's name, my well-founded belief that Zundel is a liar and a fraud, and the presence of other mirror sites and press reports that made my original site no longer necessary. Myth #7: Rich is a free-speech activist who has also offered to host files from Sendero Luminoso and the Communist Party (source: Steve Pizzo in the February 1st Web Review, http://www.gnn.com/wr/). Fact: The email message obtained by Steve Pizzo was satire. Sendero Luminoso was an inside joke. Steve Pizzo (and a few other irresponsible journalists) made no attempt whatsoever to contact me to verify statements and views that they attributed to me. While I have been a member of EFF and the ACLU for some time, it is inaccurate to call me an activist. Myth #8: Even one of the mirror sites was motivated by some kind of backlash against "Politically Correct Jewry." Fact: This is simply untrue. In fact, throughout this process, I have been in close contact with several friends involved in Holocaust remembrance. I would not have acted as I did had they not at least tacitly approved. Myth #9: Rich has been in cahoots with the Zionist Cabal all along and tricked Zundel into handing over his files. Fact: BWAHAHAHA!!! Myth #10: The "Jew Nazi Censors" at the Simon Wiesenthal Center are responsible. Fact: The Simon Wiesenthal Center has stated no position on the Zundelsites, and was not involved in pressuring T-Online. See http://www.wiesenthal.com/ for information directly from the source, without the distortions echoing here. Myth #11: The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent letters to the presidents of the universities mirroring Zundel's files demanding their removal. Fact: This report, spread in comp.org.eff.talk and some smaller press outlets, had absolutely no basis in fact. I would very much like to learn the source of this rumor. Myth #11: webcom.com represented the extent of Zundel's Internet presence, and the German censorship would have been effective had it not been for the mirror sites. Fact: ezundel.cts.com has address 204.212.157.52. All mail and posts from Zundel's official spokesperson "Ingrid" originates from this IP address. On January 24th, before any of this "censorship" happened, Joe Bunkley, a notorious racist at Georgia State (covered in Time Magazine, active in newsgroups and Stormfront-L) offered to host Zundel's files on Georgia State's web server. Myth #12: Zundel is just a historical revisionist, not a Nazi. All those "PC Jews" are overreacting. Fact: How about The Skeptics Society journal, which has criticized just about every odd belief including Judaism, for a neutral source? See http://www.skeptic.com/02.4.miele-holocaust.html for a skeptical view of the Holocaust that accepts the legitimacy of some Holocaust revisionism, strongly supports the right of Holocaust revisionists to speak freely, and characterizes Zundel as an anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi, with some rather choice direct quotes? Why don't you try calling Zundel himself? And follow the money. Follow the money. Myth #13: Rich regrets his role in mirroring Zundel's files. Fact: Not at all. It needed to be done. Whether the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Zundel and his racist Neo-Nazi friends is irrelevant; had he been perceived to be effectively censored, that perception would have set a very bad precedent for the Net. I will fight for Zundel's right to speak freely tooth and nail. I just wish he would speak freely, without lying all the time. For many anti-censorship activists, "fight hate speech with more speech" seems to be just another cliche to throw around. With issues such as these, I believe it is vitally important that good people support both freedom *and* truth simultaneously; for if you lose either one, the other is meaningless. Myth #14: There is any significance to the number of myths. -rich Institute for Ernst Zundel Revisionism http://36.190.0.210/~llurch/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/ "First, bring down Zundel's suffering in terms of numbers and events, both real and imagined, to what it really was, not what they say it was, what they exploit for their own political, financial, and geopolitical purposes." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 12:30:43 -0500 From: Philip Elmer-DeWitt Subject: File 4--The Net's Strange Day (Smolman's "24 hours in Cyberspace) [The following is copyright material from the 2/19/96 issue of TIME (the one with Marc Andreessen on the cover) posted by permission. For information about reposting, e-mail ped@well.com.] The Net's Strange Day What was intended as a 24-hour celebration turned out to be a time of protest in cyberspace By Michael D. Lemonick Rick Smolan's "24 Hours in Cyberspace" was supposed to be a round-the-clock, planet-spanning online party, a feel-good cyberfest celebrating the paradigm-shifting possibilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Smolan, the photographer and entrepreneur behind the hugely successful Day in the Life series of photo books that have documented everyday life in Spain, Japan, Australia, the U.S.S.R and the U.S., hoped to do the same for the growing world of interconnected computers. But by coincidence--and a turn of political events--the 24 hours Smolan chose to document turned out to be anything but a celebration. For they fell on the very day last week that President Clinton signed a telecommunications bill containing easily the most reviled piece of legislation in cyberspace: the Communications Decency Act. The law imposes stiff penalties for posting or transmitting "indecent" material online--a provision that would strip from online communications the First Amendment guarantees that protect the written and spoken word. So, as Smolan's team of 150 professional photographers (and some 1,000 amateurs) fanned out around the world with digital as well as conventional cameras trying to capture images showing how the Internet is making a difference in people's lives, another group of Net pioneers was preparing to save the network from what they see as an all-out government attack. And while Smolan's editors worked feverishly to construct a colorful series of Web pages out of the flood of photos pouring in to "Mission Control" in San Francisco, hundreds of Internet protesters turned their Web sites black. Civil libertarians argue that the Decency Act would, in the name of protecting children, criminalize everything from safe-sex information to The Catcher in the Rye. Says Shabbir Safdar, co-founder of the activist group Voters' Telecommunications Watch: "They basically want to turn the Internet into Barney the dinosaur." The Clinton Administration had opposed earlier versions of the bill but refused to hold up the entire Telecommunications Act to get rid of it. Pressed on the issue, a defensive Al Gore told reporters, "We're obligated to administer the law, but we said from the start this particular provision will stand or fall in court." A preliminary decision in that regard could come as early as this week. No sooner had Clinton signed the bill than the American Civil Liberties Union and nearly two dozen other plaintiffs filed suit in federal court to have the indecency clause declared unconstitutional. The Department of Justice has a week to show cause why the judge should not impose a temporary restraining order. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, have agreed not to enforce the new law for now and stipulated in court that a second provision, criminalizing the electronic distribution of abortion information, was a violation of free speech. Back in Smolan's Mission Control, though, the Decency Act was mostly a side issue. Smolan declined to drape his pages in black, although he did include a fiercely worded attack on the legislation by Internet activist John Perry Barlow, and he did agree late in the day to add to his "Welcome" screen a blue ribbon signifying solidarity with the protesters. But he did not go out of his way to cover the protest; it is mentioned only briefly in the story that accompanies an electronic image of the Clinton signing ceremony. Indeed, Smolan's site gave few indications that cyberspace is anything but a realm of bliss. Among the thousands of images that streamed into San Francisco were ghetto kids in California playing computer games, Bhuddists monks spreading the word online and wheelchair-using students in Thailand communicating with disabled kids all around the world. If the project proved anything, it was that nothing leaps over national boundaries like the Net. The photos showed that, whether American, Vietnamese, Malaysian or Albanian, computer users hunched over their screens all look pretty much alike. Indeed, however inadvertently, Smolan may have advanced the cause against cybercensorship. At least some of the 1 million people estimated to have visited his Website last week saw--perhaps for the first time--that despite what some politicians would have us believe, the Internet carries much more than dirty pictures. --Reported by David Bjerklie/New York and David S. Jackson/San Francisco Copyright Time Inc. 1996 Philip Elmer-DeWitt ped@well.com TIME Magazine philiped@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:01:06 From: DBat@GNN.COM(David Batterson) Subject: File 5--Alan Turing Home Page The Late Great Alan Turing in New Web Site by David Batterson Alan Turing (1912-54, a gay computer genius among other things, founded computer science (1936), cracked the German U-boat Enigma cipher during World War II (1939-45) led the world in schemes for computer software (1945-47), started the Artificial Intelligence program (1946-50) and a non-linear dynamics program in biology (1950-54). Andrew Hodges, author of the biography, "Alan Turing: the Enigma," has created the Alan Turing Home Page on the Web. As Hodges put it, "Alan Turing was the originator of the computer as we understand it now. He was also an openly gay man. In 1952 he was arrested and although unrepentant at his trial had to submit to humiliating treatment with hormones Estrogen) to avoid going to prison. He found himself under watch. In 1954 he ended his life. He ate an apple dipped in cyanide." Hodges created the Web site to increase awareness of Turing's life, and to promote the book. The Alan Turing Home Page contains information from the book, a chronology of events and the amazing accomplishments in Turing's life, photos and a "scrapbook." There will be a permanent San Francisco Mirror Site of the Alan Turing Home Page in the near future, which duplicates the original Web site in England. The original site is located at: http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/~ahodges/Turing.html. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Dec 1995 22:51:01 CDT From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 16 Dec, 1995) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. 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