Computer underground Digest Thu Apr 11, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 29 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 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, #8.29 (Thu, Apr 11, 1996) File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #6 File 2--LAWSUIT: Update Report, 4/9/96 File 3--why I will not rate my site File 4--AOL.COM took the *WHAT* out of "Country?" File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 12:00:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh Subject: File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #6 The CDA Challenge, Update #6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this update: BYU/CMU's Dan Olsen's net-censorship boondoggle ACLU's 4/9 motion to suppress obscene images -- DENIED The new "I am a child" Internet protocol Who cares about kids: Who are the adults? Olsen as an expert witness -- on what? April 11, 1996 PITTSBURGH, PA -- The U.S. Department of Justice wants to split the worldwide Internet into "adult" and "minor" sections. That's their plan, assuming they can find someone to testify that this audacious boondoggle is even remotely feasible under current technology. If the DoJ gets this testimony in the record, then their attorneys will argue that the Communications Decency Act is constitutional and should be upheld. Well, they found their man. The Justice Department stoolie who's testifying tomorrow is none other than Dan R. Olsen, Jr., the incoming director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, now the head of the computer science department at Brigham Young University. Olsen concocted this scheme that he calls L18, for "Less than 18." Under it, every net-user must label every USENET post, email message, FTP site file, web page, chat room, IRC channel -- any collection of public bits spewed on the Net -- if the content is "inappropriate for minors." If you think you're clever 'cuz you labeled some "indecent" materials as suitable for kids, guess again, pal. Try that trick and the Feds'll throw your ass in jail for two years and send you a bill for $250,000. (Owners of anonymous remailers might be for in some surprise visits from the Feds if their systems are used to post "indecent" stuff that's labeled L18.) The censorhappy geeks at Brigham Young University put together a demo to prove that this scheme works. First Olsen stuck L18 tags on half his web pages. Then they set up a "Netscape proxy server" so it denied access to pages with L18 tags unless the user was verified as an adult. The experiment was a success -- and a hit with the DoJ! By now cybersavvy readers are wondering: "But how will a server know how old a user is?" The DoJ has a couple ideas that they're going to throw at the three-judge panel in Philadelphia tomorrow. The government's idea seems to be that if the judges accept even one of them, they'll uphold the CDA. The DoJ's proposals are: 1. Servers with "indecent material" will register users as adults or minors. 2. Every ISP will tag accounts as adults or minors. 3. A custom router will only allow users to access "indecent" sites if an adult types in the password first. Olsen's Grand Design for the Net incorporates Proposal #1. He's pushing the idea that web servers or proxy servers with "indecent" material will give out "adult verification passwords" before you can access their web page. This means: * A lengthy pre-registration process before you can access the site. * The server has to keep a database with the identities of all the adult users, complete with the credit card numbers that presumably will be used for verification. * If you want to access hundreds of web sites with "indecent" material, you've got to get hundreds of different passwords. If you run a web site with material that a Federal prosecutor anywhere in the U.S. may find "indecent" or "patently offensive," under Olsen's plan you have to verify that your users are adults. Somehow, I don't expect overseas sites will go for this. What, doesn't the DoJ realize that we're not just talking about the U.S. here? +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ ACLU'S MOTION TO SUPRESS OBSCENE IMAGES -- DENIED! +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ It's not about cybercensorship. It's about cybersex. At least that's what the DoJ wants everyone to believe. Justice Department attorneys have been flooding the court with printouts of hundreds of pages of dirty pictures, a lot of them pretty damn raunchy. Some of them might even be "obscene" -- that is, they fall into a legal class of images that flunk a three-part test that includes only images without "serious literary, artistic, social, political, or scientific value." Pretty hardcore stuff. GIFs like coeds fraternizing with german shepherds -- with the help of 25' of rubber tubing and a Tibetan yak. On April 9, the ACLU/EFF plaintiffs filed a motion to close the floodgates on the DoJ's deluge of porn, asking that the government be barred from introducing exhibits "unless they believe in good faith the material could not be prosecuted under existing obscenity or child pornography laws." The idea behind this motion was to educate the court and remind them that the CDA outlaws "indecency," not "obscenity." EFF attorney Mike Godwin explains the difference in his forthcoming book _Cyber Rights_: The term "indecency," although never defined by Congress or the courts, is a far broader concept than "obscenity" (examples of "indecency" include George Carlin's famous "Seven Dirty Words" monologues, at least some portions of Howard Stern's radio broadcasts, and, according to one court, the text of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"). Not one of our plaintiffs has "obscene" or even titillating pictures on our web sites, but all of us are subject to a $250,000 fine and two years in prison if a minor stumbles across our URL. Yesterday the court denied our motion, saying that it understood that we weren't challenging obscenity laws and that, unlike the situation that might occur if there were a jury, the judges would not be prejudiced by any pictures introduced. The court ruled *they* were capable of understanding the difference, so there was no need to separate the materials. They did admit that we had raised an important issue, and the court understood the reason for the motion. I guess we have to trust them. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ THE NEW "I AM A CHILD" INTERNET PROTOCOL +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ There's a second way to answer the question of: "How do you know who the children are?" Another option the DoJ appears to be pushing -- we'll know details tomorrow -- is this idea of reprogramming every computer on the worldwide Internet to run software that tags users as adults or minors, so a server will know whether it can send out "indecent" material. This shifts the burden of establishing age-identity from the content provider to the business or school giving out the Internet account. It also would allow any unscrupulous net.lurker to troll for "I am a child" tags and follow them back to the originating site -- not exactly the best way to protect the children! I should have realized this DoJ strategy earlier. Last week when I was arguing with Bruce Taylor, an architect of the CDA, we went 'round and 'round on the issue of children on the Net. He maintained that every Internet user has to have an account somewhere, so the provider of that account can tag the user as a minor or adult. I asked Taylor how his proposal was possible with the TCP/IP protocol -- the nerve system the carries all the data flowing through the Net. He replied that technical problems can be solved by technical people, and wasn't there a new protocol being developed, anyway? Basically, his position was: "Your side comes across to the court as saying that it can be done but we won't do it. You're a bunch of geeks who want to protect their porn and the court isn't going to buy it." The "new protocol" being developed is IP Version 6, which the DoJ zoomed in on in cross-examination of one of our witnesses, Scott Bradner from the Internet Engineering Task Force: 13 Q Would it be fair to say, to summarize what you've just 14 said, that the IP Next Generation group is working on a new 15 generation of the IP Protocol itself? 16 A That is correct. 17 Q Does it have -- does the IP Next Generation group have 18 recommendations regarding a specific architecture of the 19 packet traffic on the Internet, including the format of the 20 packet? The DoJ is going to argue that IPv6 can include such an adult/minor tag in each datagram. Chris Hansen, the head of the ACLU's legal team, says: Olsen is going to push this tagging idea that the government has, that you can imbed in your tag -- in your address -- an adult or minor tag. They're going to suggest that the market will come into existence that will make that tagging relevant. It's more like the *judicial penalties* will evolve to make the tagging not just relevant, but mandatory! On the cypherpunks list, Bill Frantz, a computer consultant, outlines one problem: One of the migration paths suggested for IPV4 to IPV6 migration is to tunnel IPV4 packets within IPV6 packets. IPV4 packets do not provide for an adult/minor tag, so until the transition to IPV6 is fairly well along, this approach will be ineffective. If the people who are worried about minor's accessing smut want something this century, they should go with PICS. A member of the IETF replies: Neither, for that matter, do IPv6 packets -- there is no provision for them. Furthermore, were anyone to create an end to end header of that sort, it would be eight bytes of wasted space in every packet in the net, especially since the implementation of such a tag is a technical impossibility as there is no way to force the originating system to tell the truth. The "high-touch" argument against this is important as the high-tech one. I just received the following mail from someone who would be unable to continue his work if the DoJ's IPv6 scheme is implemented: We provide free anonymous access to the net to sexual abuse survivors. We don't even know who they are, nor do we care - a lot of them are hiding out from their perps, and to try and identify them would be a tremendous breach of trust, as they are depending on us for their anonymity, much as a reporter would protect their anonymous source. I also have been told by these folks themselves that some of them are under the age of 18 - hell, I've had a few that tell me that they are 13 or 14 years old, and that they are still at home, still being raped by their perps. We provide an outlet for their frustrations, emptional support, a community for them, people to talk to, and support for them if they choose to report their abuse. None of this would be possible if Taylor and friends had their way. Sure, we could trace each and every one of them back to their providers, and find out who they are, but I'm not going to do it, and I'm perfectly willing to go to jail to protect their identities. My integrity is worth a whole hell of a lot more than any government law. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ WHO CARES ABOUT KIDS: WHO ARE THE ADULTS? +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ The third way to answer the now-tiresome who-are-the-kiddies question is to turn it on its head and ask: "Who are the adults?" Hardware to answer that question already exists. The March 25 issue of Interactive Week reports that Livingston Enterprises, Inc. has colluded with Senator Exon's staff to design an "Exon box" -- a router that lets ISPs cut off unrated or "indecent" or unrated sites. To get around the block, an "adult" enters a secret password that tells the router to open a session and let the packets flow. Exon's staff is heralding this as an example of how easy it is to comply with the CDA. The only problem is that, like many such hamfisted censorship "solutions," it sucks, and it ain't going to work. One of the original architects of the Internet, David P. Reed, wrote: I do work to protect my children from inappropriate material, but pressure from Senators to mandate technically flawed solutions, and opportunistic, poorly thought-through technologies from companies like Livingston are not helpful. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ OLSEN AS AN EXPERT WITNESS -- ON WHAT? +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ As I was writing this, I started wondering why Olsen got picked as the DoJ's expert witness for tomorrow's hearing, especially when his research is *not* in distributed computing environments and protocol design. It's in human computer interaction and user interfaces. One of Olsen's former students at Brigham Young University contacted me last week, saying he had initially hoped that Olsen was "lending a neutral opinion" on technical issues "but that hope proved false." I asked if his former faculty member has "done any work relating to distributed computing environments like the Internet?" His reply: "The closest thing I'm aware of is a paper on interactive bookmarks." Network engineering that ain't. On April 7th I sent Olsen email, asking him: "What kind of research have you done related to distributed computing environments like the Internet?" As of April 11, still no response -- even though he had replied to my earlier messages almost immediately. (I wouldn't put it past the DoJ's tame attack ferret, Jason Baron, to try and muzzle Olsen as well.) Vanderbilt Professor Donna Hoffman writes about Olsen: A colleague at CMU told me that Dan Olsen is largely an administrator at BYU and will assume administrative duties at CMU as the temporary head of the HCII... I've seen his vita and talked to some colleagues in CS and related fields about his work and it doesn't seem that he has done much, if any, research related to the distributed computing environments like the Internet. His vita is difficult to parse because he has numerous items I can't identify - for example, are they book chapters, working papers, proceedings? Where were they published? And so on. He is the Editor of a new journal published by CACM which started a few months ago, related to human-computer interaction. His main research interest seems to be in user interface issues, but he hasn't published much in scholarly journals so I would conclude that his work has had little impact on the field. (I should point out here that a member of the HCII at CMU sent me mail saying that conference proceedings are the main form of publication in the field.) Still, I wonder why the DoJ couldn't get a real net-expert to defend the CDA and the network protocol schemes they're proposing? Grey Flannel Suit (aka Air Force Special Agent Howard A. Schmidt) is going to take the stand tomorrow and do a live demonstration of how he can find cybersleze on the Net. I can hardly wait! Grey Flannel has been involved in a half-dozen porn prosecutions in the past: two dealing with civilian porn sites and and four dealing with military ones. From the deposition he gave in Washington, DC earlier this week, the extent of his testimony seems to be: "I went onto the Net and found dirty pictures." The following clue as to Grey Flannel's history of porn-prosecutions flowed into my mailbox the other day: It would be interesting to find out if Schmidt was involved in _US v. Maxwell_, 42 M.J. 568 (USAF Ct Crim App 1995), a military justice case concerning a USAF colonel who used AOL to communicate "indecent language" to another servicemember and to traffic in pornographic matter. USAFOSI was clearly involved in the investigation, but no agents are named in the opinion. Flannel will be followed by our last witness, MIT's Albert Vezza, and then Dan Olsen. Stay tuned for more reports. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- We're back in court on 4/12, possibly 4/15 as a last day of witness testimony, 4/26 for rebuttal if necessary, and 6/3 for closing arguments. Mentioned in this CDA update: Michael Froomkin: "The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage" Wired: "How Anarchy Works -- Inside the Internet Engineering Task Force" Net-Guru David Reed's article: "CDA may pervert Internet architecture" Michael Froomkin's LONG article on anonymous remailers: Dan Olsen at BYU BYU's censorship policy Internet Eng Task Force Rimm ethics critique Int'l Net-Censorship CMU net-censorship University censorship Grey Flannel Suit This report and previous CDA Updates are available at: To subscribe to the fight-censorship mailing list for future CDA updates and related net.censorship discussions, send "subscribe" in the body of a message addressed to: fight-censorship-request@andrew.cmu.edu Other relevant web sites: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 09:31:30 -0800 From: telstar@WIRED.COM(--Todd Lappin-->) Subject: File 2--LAWSUIT: Update Report, 4/9/96 Greetings and good cheer, Things have been relatively quiet on the CDA front this week, as everybody is busy preparing for the hearings in Philadelphia that begin on April 12. During the next few court sessions, the Department of Justice will begin presenting witnesses in an effort to demonstrate that the Communications Decency Act is a fine piece of legislation whichwill effectively shield minors from "indecent" material on the Internet. What a farce. Too bad the DoJ is having such a good laugh at the expense of the First Amendment. Of course, we'll bring you gavel-to-gavel coverage of these hearings once they resume. And in the meantime... Declan McCullagh -- our esteemed scholar, statesman, fashion consultant, plaintiff in the ACLU case, and intrepid reporter -- has put together another excellent update on the current situation. In this installment.... Declan tells us about a new (and rather bizarre) lawsuit that has been filed in opposition to the Communications Decency Act; profiles Department of Justice lawyer Jason Baron; shows us where to find Mr. Baron's favorite Net porn pix on the Internet; and resolves the Mystery of the Man in Grey Flannel Suit. (PUBLIC SERVICE WARNING: Declan's report contains explicit language, graphic depictions of sexual acts, and several computer-related acronyms.) Work the network! --Todd Lappin--> Section Editor WIRED Magazine ============================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CDA Challenge, Update #5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this update: Yet Another CDA Lawsuit: Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno Deception and deceit from DoJ's Jason Baron URLs for the DoJ's dirty picture list The true identity of Grey Flannel Suit April 9, 1996 PITTSBURGH, PA -- Fred Cherry wants a Federal court to uphold his right to flame. Lambasting "homonazis" on USENET is his inalienable right under the First Amendment, argues the notorious netizen in his anti-CDA lawsuit filed yesterday in New York City on behalf of "Johns and Call Girls United Against Repression, Inc." Cherry's beef with the law is that under its ban on "indecency," when he gets flamed by "Australian homosexual nazis" he won't be able to flame back. His complaint charges that his "Australian opponent will have MORE freedom of speech" than he does -- unless the CDA is struck down. The self-taught amateur lawyer attached 20 pages of net.flamage as his sole exhibit. One example that was spammed all the way from soc.men to alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now: "Your ass is so blocked up that you do need some therapeutic relief for your constipation -- a condition which has backlogged all the shit right back up into your head, Fred." The indefatigable Cherry replied: So, ramming a huge dick up my ass would be a therapeutic measure, would it? You homos are the chief cause of AIDS in the United States with your huge dicks being rammed up each other's asses. And then you homos go around whining that the government isn't doing enough to find a cure for AIDS. [12/22/95] Ya gotta love this guy. He sent me mail describing his legal strategy, concluding: "Can anyone deny that I am indeed the greatest amateur lawyer since Caryl Chessman?" Of course Chessman -- California's "Red Light Bandit" rapist -- was executed in 1960, his jailhouse lawyering failing him in the end. Cherry's lawsuit was easy to prepare. He grabbed the ACLU's complaint from their web site, printed it out, added a few grafs about his net.nazi adversaries, and trotted off to Federal court. When Cherry filed his suit, which he's moved from Brooklyn to Federal court in Manhattan, he wrote: I am primarily a political activist, working for the repeal of laws criminalizing adult prostitution and the patronizing of adult prostitutes. Over the past thirty years I have found that, in the United States, homosexuals are the worst enemies of the civil rights of women prostitutes and their male clients. The Cherry v. Reno case, refiled at docket number 96 Civ. 2498, most likely will be consolidated with the American Reporter case, which is also moving forward in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. A.R. editor Joe Shea will probably fight it. Shea refused to join our lawsuit because he can't stand the ACLU and wants to do his own thing, so he'll probably try to keep Cherry's case from being joined with his. In fact, he accused the ACLU of putting Cherry up to it. +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ I would never have suspected the DoJ attorneys of trying to deceive Federal judges, but now I wonder. The DoJer I've had the most contact with is Jason Baron, a short, portly guy who tries to land roundhouse punches during cross-examination but instead keeps slipping up on technical terms. He also wrote the Justice Department's reply to our initial complaint. In that brief, the Civil Division lawyer uncritically cited Marty Rimm's cyberporn study -- featured last summer on the cover of TIME magazine -- as an authoritative reference on net.smut: This article describes material located primarily on USENET newsgroups, i. at 1865-76, and on adult commercial bulletin boards (BBS), i. at 1876-1905. Defendants offer this as an initial reference of the availability and nature of obscene and indecent material from some on-line sources, such as USENET and BBS. [sic] Maybe Baron thought nobody would notice. But there's no excuse for not knowing that the study was deliberately fraudulent: The New York Times printed an editorial exposing it; Rimm's connections with "family values" groups have come to light; Donna Hoffman and I run extensive web sites debunking the study; Carnegie Mellon University claims to be investigating the ethical misdeeds of their former undergraduate. Even attorneys who used to work within Baron's division of the Justice Department complain that Baron deliberately foisted this fraud off on Federal judges: I'm embarrassed... They should have mentioned that the "study" came under heavy critical fire almost immediately upon release. I trust the opposition will make hay of this omission. In this context, this "study" is not just another controversial report, but one whose provenance is well known to be in doubt among the relevant actors. That much should have been ackowledged in the quoted footnote, at least along the lines of, "While the methodology of this study has been challenged, defendants believe it to represent..." etc. [4/7/96] By citing this study and appending its complete text without informing the court that it was a hoax, Baron revealed the impoverished ethics of the Justice Department. Interestingly, the Code of Professional Responsibility and the Rules of Professional Conduct make it a disciplinable offense for a lawyer to "knowingly use perjured testimony or false evidence." Under Title 11, attorneys can be sanctioned for introducing false evidence. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by all this. After all, Baron is the same attorney who confuses EFF with IETF -- not to mention his additional duties as the DoJ's courtroom-cop. Recall that when I was asking the mysterious Grey Flannel Suit a question, Baron came over and interrupted us. Now I've learned that he's threatening to report me to "higher authorities" if I talk to his witnesses again. (!) Yeah, Grey Flannel Suit is going to take the stand. He's none other than the DoJ's cybersexpert witness -- Special Agent Howard A. Schmidt from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Guess that explains why Baron was so desperate to keep me from talking with him the other day. Baron's authoritarian streak showed again during the March 21 hearing, when I joined some members of the press in paging through the ACLU's copy of the DoJ's dirty pictures binder. Baron charged over and snatched it away, snarling: "Not available to the public." Well, the URLs ended up in my mailbox anyway, so here they are for your amusement: http://www.pu55y.com/hotsex/join.html http://shack.bianca.com/shack/misc/terms.html http://www.intergate.net/untmi/obbs1.html http://www.whitman.edu/~burkotwt/pornpics/lady941.jpg http://www.wizard.com/~gl944vx/gifs/01_21.jpg http://www.vegaslive.com/sgguests/ginger.html news:4hrs89k%24oap@what.why.net http://monkey.hooked.net/monkey/m/grinder/nikkita/graphics/nikki36.jpg news:313F56FD.3F19@access.mountain.net news:4hb94m%24sij@asp.erinet.com http://www.sexvision.com/web2.htm news:314048f.1657746@news.netwalk.com The DoJ has full-color printouts of these images, which are sexually explicit but *not* obscene -- Baron wanted to remind the court that placing these JPEGs online publicly would not be a criminal act without the CDA. For someone who's defending a ban on smutty stuff on the Net, Baron is surprisingly embarrassed to talk about it. Vanderbilt Professor Donna Hoffman reports: [Baron] deposed me for over 7 hours, beginning on a Monday morning at 9am. The most interesting part of the deposition was when he brought out several large binders and started going through some of the material in them and looking increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually, he spoke and started to apologize saying he might have to show me some materials and his New England background made him feel uncomfortable about it. He honestly was squirming and sweating a bit and then, after a brief lunch, we resumed and he did eventually show me some materials, but they were not surprising or of the type that I would have thought would make him squirm like that. I did wonder if it was some sort of "act," but he seemed genuinely embarassed. In hindsight, I wonder if it was because I am a woman and that was really the part that made the idea of showing me sexually explicit materials uncomfortable for him. I guess that Baron is a true "gentleman" who believes that certain topics like dirty pictures are unmentionable in mixed company. Avoiding embarrassment is just another reason to censor the stuff! On April 12, Grey Flannel Suit (aka Special Agent Schmidt) will take the stand and snarf around the net for dirty pix. He'll be followed by our last witness, MIT's Albert Vezza, and then BYU/CMU's Dan Olsen. Stay tuned for more reports. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- We're back in court on 4/12, possibly 4/15, 4/26 for rebuttal, and 6/3 for closing arguments. Mentioned in this CDA update: DoJ's brief citing Marty Rimm's cyberporn study: Text of complaint from Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno: Flamewar attached as exhibit to Fred Cherry v. Janet Reno: Fred Cherry's reasons why he filed his lawsuit: Relevant excerpt from Fred Cherry's original complaint: Rimm ethics critique Censorship at CMU The American Reporter Grey Flannel Suit Previous cases DoJer Jason Baron worked on: Joe Shea's complaints about ACLU wanting to "stand alone in the limelight": This report and previous CDA Updates are available at: To subscribe to the fight-censorship mailing list for future CDA updates and related net.censorship discussions, send "subscribe" in the body of a message addressed to: fight-censorship-request@andrew.cmu.edu Other relevant web sites: ### +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-- This transmission was brought to you by.... THE CDA INFORMATION NETWORK The CDA Information Network is a moderated distribution list providing up-to-the-minute bulletins and background on efforts to overturn the Communications Decency Act. To subscribe, send email to with "subscribe cda-bulletin" in the message body. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Apr 96 21:51:56 PDT From: jblumen@interramp.com Subject: File 3--why I will not rate my site Why I Will Not Rate My Site by Jonathan Wallace jblumen@spectacle.org It is becoming increasingly clear to most people providing information on the World Wide Web that rating systems, a fairly benign form of self-policing, will help us avoid government censorship. While commercial sites take refuge behind credit card front ends to screen out minors, amateur sites may be able to avoid indictment under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) by adopting an adult rating. Parents would then configure browsers to exclude these sites, or would give their children Internet access through providers who blocked adult-rated sites. Although nothing in the CDA expressly endorses self-rating, the judges in the ACLU v. Reno case in Philadelphia (in which I am a plaintiff) have taken an eager interest in it, asking witnesses questions like "How would you rate your site using the motion picture ratings?" and "Could browsers be configured to recognize a rating system?" On the whole, self-rating systems are a very good idea, because they allow information providers to post material for an adult audience while avoiding the accusation that they are pandering to children. However, as the Philadelphia judges discovered when they asked witness Kiyoshi Kuromya of the Critical Path Aids organization how he would rate his site, there are Web pages which cannot and should not be rated under such a system. In June 1995, I posted An Auschwitz Alphabet to the Web, http://www.spectacle.org/695/ausch.html. It is a compilation of excerpts from materials on Auschwitz, including the reminiscences of survivors. It is technically indecent under the Communications Decency Act (which bars descriptions of sexual acts or organs) because of several excerpts from the book The Nazi Doctors, by Robert Jay Lifton, describing castration and the removal of ovaries of camp inmates. Here is one example: "As for the men, after the X rays sperm was collected ('their prostates [were] brutally massaged with pieces of wood inserted into the rectum') and sooner or later one or both testicles were surgically removed, with resulting hemorrhages, septicemia, and death." In the nine months since I put An Auschwitz Alphabet on the Web, it has been visited by many thousands of people, and more than one hundred have written to me thanking me for compiling it and making it available. Some of my correspondents have revealed themselves to be minors: "I am a tenth grade student in Australia and I would just like to congratulate you on this homepage. This information has been most helpful for an assignment I am doing. So thanks." "I think this is great. I am a 14 year old boy that lives in Indiana. (USA) I really think what you are doing is important. If kids my age aren't told of this tragedy, than it will be forgotten about and the likelier the possibility of it happening again in some shape or form. Thank you." These letters make my problem obvious. I believe that An Auschwitz Alphabet, and other materials on my site with some explicit language, have literary and political value. Now, material with so called SLAP value (scientific, literary, artistic, political) can be found indecent under the Communications Decency Act, resulting in a prison sentence or a steep fine. If a self-rating system is adopted as a safe harbor, meaning that by assigning your Web site an appropriate rating you could escape liability under the CDA, I would still not want to assign my site an adult rating. Assigning an R rating to the file on human experimentation cited above, for example, would place it in exactly the same R-rated category as sexual material with no SLAP value whatever, and would prevent minors with a perfectly legitimate interest from seeing it, like the two above. Under a rating system which paralleled what we do for movies, I would either have to assign An Auschwitz Alphabet a G rating or refuse to rate it entirely. Since most browsers configured to accept ratings would probably exclude unrated material, refusing to rate your site would be the equivalent of giving it an X-rating. If so, I would have to rate An Auschwitz Alphabet G and hope for the best. I resent a system that forces me to rate material that should not have to be. Since I am pretty strongly in favor of parental control over what a child may read or see, let me explain the apparent contradiction. The law recognizes many areas in which a teenage child, though still a minor, has increased independence and privacy interests. Proponents of safe sex information, for example, argue that their information, if available to sexually active teenagers, will save lives. In such a case, parental control implies a right to keep a teenager ignorant and at risk. In other words, there are moral interests which (I know this is a risky statement) trump parental control. Ratings systems which lump An Auschwitz Alphabet together with the Hot Nude Women page ignore this distinction. Jonathan Wallace is the co-author, with Mark Mangan, of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, a new book from Henry Holt (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/), a plaintiff in ACLU v. Reno (http://www.spectacle.org/ cda/cdamn.html) and publisher of the Ethical Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 19:46:20 From: cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu Subject: File 4--AOL.COM took the *WHAT* out of "Country?" ((MODERATORS' NOTE: From the folks who banned breasts, we have the following. A CuD reader sent over the story and had the subject of the story send over his version. Dunno whether to laugh or cry)). ================================ Date--Thu, 11 Apr 1996 18:46:20 -0400 From--STEELBEAT@aol.com Subject--Signing on with AOL It has been suggested by "dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk" that you may be interested in my bizarre experience when trying to sign - on with Aol. Using the Aol Disk I followed the instructions given. I was asked to type my name and address which I did using my name "BLACKIE"and my home Town as "SCUNTHORPE" When entered, the response appeared "cannot process your account any further." Despite several attempts to ensure the information was accurate the result was the same. I then contacted the help line in Dublin (fortunately a free-phone number) to sort out the problem. After some time on hold it was explained that there were safeguards built into the System to prevent offensive or facetious entries being made.the only suggestion they could give was that it was my name causing a possible racial connotation. I then tried again using different spellings of my Name but to no avail. Back on the phone again, The support Staff were very concerned and after talking to several people who could offer no further solution I jokingly suggested it could be the name Scunthorpe causing the problem. They doubted that would be the case and said the matter would be looked into further. Back on my Computer. After trying several permutations I changed the town name to "Frodingham" (one of the Town areas) and Eureka - the program carried on as normal. I know there have been many lavatory type jokes about the four letter word to be found in my Towns name, but did not, nor did Aols Staff expect it to bar it from the Internet. The local Paper did an article on the matter and said that Aol were trying to sort it out, but in the meantime SCUNTHORPE has become SCONTHORPE as far as AOL are concerned. Please note I am not being critical of AOL as a Service, I think it is first rate, with superfast downloads and local access. Given time to expand it will be a Main Contender in the UK. Hope this is of interest Doug. ===================================================== Date--Thu, 11 Apr 1996 10:50:37 GMT +0100 From--David G. Bell Subject--AOL and Scunthorpe From the front page of the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph (final edition) of Tuesday, April 9th, 1996, issue number 30111. Printed and published by Grimsby and Scunthorpe Newspapers Ltd., Telegraph House, Doncaster Road, Scunthorpe, DN15 7RE. Re-typed by David G. Bell (dbell@zhochaka.demon.co.uk) Surfing the net in bonny Sconny SCUNTHORPE'S name has been changed to spare the blushes of millions of computer users on the Internet American and German bosses of the AOL UK service were shocked to discover the name of the town could offend. Now AOL's five million-plus members in the USA and thousands of users in Europe have been warned to refer to the town as SCONTHORPE in order not to cause offence. "There is an internal software problem," admitted a London spokeswoman for AOL which was launched in Britain three months ago by America Online and the German media company Bertelsman AG. The spokeswoman said that by re-naming Scunthorpe -- Sconthorpe -- they might be accused of "over-protecting" their members from unscrupulous people. She explained that there were safeguards built in to their system to prevent "crude language" going on the line. "We have renamed the town in order not to cause offence. But our technicians between the UK and America are now working to remove the block on the name." The ban on Scunthorpe and that four-letter word was discovered by retired steelworks mill controller Doug Blackie, of Cole Street, when he applied to join AOL UK. Each time he typed in the address Scunthorpe on his application he was met with the stock reply: "Your account cannot be processed any further." Then Mr Blackie used the free telephone service to speak to technicians in Dublin for around two hours. "They were most helpful and suggested it could be a block on the name Blackie. But jokingly I suggested it could be something to do with the old toilet gag about Scunthorpe. "So then I typed in my address as Frodingham and bingo the block was lifted." ---8<----------------------------- Notes: "bonny Sconny" is probably a reference to the the local, and somewhat ironic, phrase "sunny Scunny" used to refer to the town. Scunthorpe grew up around the steel works and is an amalgamation of several small villages, including Frodingham. ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-0303), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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