Computer underground Digest Wed Apr 3, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 27 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, #8.27 (Wed, Apr 3, 1996) File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #3 (day 3) File 2--CDA HEARING REPORT--Day 3, April 1 File 3--Howard Rheingold's Affidavit File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Mar, 1996) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 18:09:24 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh Subject: File 1--CDA Court Challenge: Update #3 (day 3) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The CDA Challenge, Update #3 --------------------------------------------------------------- By Declan McCullagh / declan@well.com / Redistribute freely ------------------------------------------------------------ April 1, 1996 PHILADELPHIA -- Chief Judge Dolores Sloviter's mouth fell open in astonishment this afternoon when net.culture guru Howard Rheingold testified that some online communities elect cyberjudges to hear disputes. Sloviter asked if realspace judges "can escape to this community?" Judge Stewart Dalzell wondered: "How are they selected? Is there impeachment?" The court's questions of Rheingold -- who appeared in a glowing blue suit, an iridescent pink shirt, and the first tie he's worn in a decade -- showed that the judges hearing our challenge to the CDA are trying hard to understand the Net. But while the three-judge panel was fascinated by Rheingold, they just didn't connect with him. This was due largely to the skilled lawyering of the Department of Justice's Patricia Russotto -- the Marcia Clark of this case. During her cross-examination, Russotto repeatedly steered Rheingold away from describing relatively understandable online communities like the WELL -- and towards hangouts like MUDs and MOOs that he said are inhabited by "dwarves, wizards, and princesses." Belittling those online communities, Russotto repeatedly dismissed them as "these fantasy worlds" and tried to confuse the judges by tossing a string of acronyms at them, staccato. Judge Dalzell rose to the challenge: "All right, I'll take the bait. What's a MUD?" Like Dalzell, Judge Sloviter is enjoying this case. As the chief judge of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, she usually deals with lawyers, not expert witnesses, and clearly likes to quiz them herself. Responding to Rheingold's description of MUDs, she said: "I don't know about being a wizard, but I'd be a princess." Eventually the line of questioning turned to BBSs, and Russotto tried once again to damage Rheingold's credibility, saying he had stated under oath that BBSs were "open to everyone" but had just testified that adult BBSs were not. He clarified, and rallied when asked if he let his 11-year old daughter surf the Net unsupervised: "I teach her that just as there are nutritious things to put in your body, there are nutritious things to put in your mind." Russotto continued, rapidfire: "Do you really think that Hamlet depicts sexual or excretory acts in a patently offensive manner?" "You have not participated in virtual communities built around trading sexually-explicit images, correct?" "You are aware that sexually-explicit networks can form around a BBS?" "Virtual communities can form around such a BBS?" "Some Usenet newsgroups carry sexually-explicit materials?" "An ISP can decide to carry certain newsgroups?" "The particular server you're on could decide to carry the alt.sex and alt.binaries hierarchy?" The tension had heightened earlier in the day, just before lunch, when Russotto tried to prevent Rheingold from testifying. When we introduced the celebrated author of "Virtual Communities" as our witness, Russotto objected: "We would submit that his expert opinion is not relevant to this case." Battering Rheingold with a quick series of questions, the DoJer forced Rheingold to stumble. ACLU attorney Chris Hansen quickly rescued his witness and Sloviter overruled Russotto's objection: "The court will hear Mr. Rheingold." Over lunch in the courthouse cafeteria, I talked with Rheingold, who was understandably nervous from the drumming he had experienced minutes earlier. Of course, the very fact that we were chatting like old friends demonstrated the power of a virtual community -- we had communicated in one form or another every day for the last year, but we had never met in person before. Like the man himself, Rheingold's testimony was interesting and colorful, unlike that of Bill Burrington, the director of public policy for America Online, who was the first witness of the day. A good number of courtroom observers, including myself and some reporters, snoozed through most of Burrington's statements. I was more-or-less awake enough to realize that Burrington was once again characterizing AOL as a "resort pool with lifeguards" next to the wild, untamed ocean of the Internet, with its predators and sharks: "There is a channel to the Internet. You can be whisked out into the sea." His evils-of-the-Net description confused Judge Sloviter, who asked: "When you say whisked out into the sea, you don't mean involuntarily whisked?" Tony Coppolino from the DoJ cross-examined Burrington. Coppolino seems to be the most cyber-savvy DoJer and the leader of their legal team on this case. Like Russotto, he doesn't pass up an opportunity to damage the credibility of our witnesses: Judge Sloviter: "How many newsgroups are available on AOL?" Burrington: "Up to 20,000." Judge Dalzell: "I thought someone said 30,000." Coppolino: "I have a stipulation here saying 15,000." Pressed by Coppolino, Burrington admitted that AOL didn't carry Playboy or Penthouse because the material was "inappropriate for families and children." Later Coppolino suggested that AOL has problems with pedophiles and child pornographers, asking Burrington to describe a case where an AOLer found children's names from a chat room then sent them sexually-explicit images. Burrington parried: "This is the first such incident. We terminated his account immediately and are cooperating with Federal law enforcement." When HotWired honcho Andrew Anker took the stand, the questioning turned to alt.sex.bondage. Judge Sloviter started by asking: "What is alt.sex.bondage? What does that mean?" Turns out that HotWired had published a story about the newsgroup, though by the end of the questioning, the judges seemed convinced that HotWired was a net.porn haven and were surprised when Anker estimated that much less than 10 percent of his web site's content was sexually-explicit. Again, Judge Dalzell tossed us a few sympathetic questions: "If you were to label your web site as adult, would it scare off advertisers?" After some brief testimony by ACLU plaintiff Stephen Donaldson of Stop Prisoner Rape, Barry Steinhardt took the stand. Steinhardt is the associate director of the ACLU -- I first got to know him when he blasted CMU for censoring its USENET feed years ago -- and was subject to an antagonistic cross-examination from Craig Blackwell. Blackwell relied on his boss Tony Coppolino for technical tips, and stumbled a few times, like when he confused AOL with a web site on the Internet: Blackwell: "The ACLU has two Internet sites, right?" Steinhardt: "No. We have one Internet site and we are a content provider on America Online." During the DoJ's questioning of Steinhardt, a few points emerged: * The content the ACLU posts to the web and AOL is educational. * The ACLU controls content on its web site but not in AOL chat rooms and discussion groups. * The ACLU is concerned that the CDA subjects it to liability for "indecent" material, including George Carlin's monologues it has placed online. * The DoJ is trying to draw a distinction between "indecent" images of couples engaged in sexual intercourse and educational "indecent" material that they will claim is not going to be prosecuted under the CDA. We're still wondering who the DoJ will call as their pro-CDA witnesses. The two prime suspects are someone supposedly from the Department of Defense and a computer scientist from Carnegie Mellon University. I suspect that the DoD guy is the gent who's been sharing the second row of courtroom seats with me -- a grey-haired gentleman always sporting a nondescript grey flannel suit. He's been sitting on the DoJ side of the courtroom (the ACLU is on the left, of course), and after court adjourned he was confabbing with them about plans to meet later in the day. I walked over and asked Grey Flannel Suit if he was with the DoJ, and he replied: "I just do some computer work for them." I was asking Grey Flannel for his name when DoJ attorney Jason Baron jumped between us: Baron: "He can't talk to you." McCullagh: "Why don't you let him make that decision for himself?" Baron: "I make decisions for him." McCullagh: "What's his name?" Baron: "He has no comment." I'll bet anyone five bucks that Grey Flannel is from the NSA. The other pro-CDA witness is almost certainly Dan Olsen, a Mormon who is the head of the computer science department at Brigham Young University and the incoming director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. (The HCI Institute at CMU is known as a dumping ground for faculty who can't make the cut in the justly-renowned CMU computer science department.) Of course, CMU is the school that is considering what cyberlibertarian attorney Harvey Silverglate calls an "Orwellian speech code," and erotic USENET newsgroups are still banned from almost all campus computers. Since CMU spawned Marty Rimm, who tried to sell his unethical research to the DoJ and whose study helped pass the CDA, it's appropriate that CMU affiliates are helping the DoJ defend the damned CDA after all. Today's testimony ended our case, with the exception of one of our witnesses who couldn't make it earlier. Albert Vezza is the associate director of MIT's Lab for Computer Science and a PICS guru who will be testifying for us on April 12 or April 15. With the exception of Vezza, those two days will be devoted to the DoJ's arguments alleging that the CDA is constitutional and should be upheld by the court. Stay tuned for more reports. --------------------------------------------------------- We're back in court on 4/12, 4/15, and 4/26. The DoJ will reveal the identity of their expert witnesses on 4/3 or 4/8. Mentioned in this CDA update: Howard Rheingold CMU and the Rimm study CMU's HCI Institute Dan Olsen at BYU Censorship policy at BYU Censorship at CMU USENET censorship at CMU HotWired / WIRED PICS information These and previous CDA updates are available at: To subscribe to the fight-censorship list, send "subscribe" in the body of a message addressed to: fight-censorship-request@andrew.cmu.edu Other relevant web sites: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Apr 96 23:24:19 PST From: jblumen@interramp.com Subject: File 2--CDA HEARING REPORT--Day 3, April 1 CDA HEARING REPORT--Day 3, April 1 By Mark Mangan, markm@bway.net, co-author of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/). Please repost freely in relevant forums. I arrived at the third day of the hearing and said hello to the free speech contingent. We all rose as the three judges entered the court, then took our seats and prepared to begin. Facing us was the panel--needless to say, all dressed in black. Judge Dalzell, a balding gentleman with wild, white hair, glasses and an easy going demeanor. On the right sat Judge Buckwalter, with glasses, a greyish full head of hair and a somewhat serious disposition. In the middle sat Judge Sloviter, a woman with a bright smile, darkish pulled back hair and a laptop opened in front of her. She is the head judge of the panel and the 3rd circuit court of appeals. She ran the proceedings. Unusually, all of the direct testimony from the plantiffs in this case was received in written form. The DOJ then had the opportunity to call the plaintiffs, and their witnesses, into court for some cross examination. The government did not come out blazing with tough questions. In retrospect it seems that they were simply trying to show that the CDA is not at all broad and those who would fall afoul of this toothless new law, could easily take precautions to sidestep prosecution. First up to the stand was William Burrington, an Assistant General Counsel for America Online. He was well dressed and well spoken: clear, concise, and prepared. As the DOJ's Tony Cappelletti questioned him, he did much to educate the panel on the nature of online services in relation to the Internet at large. In describing his company, Burrington chose the metaphor of a closed, private pool: it has lanes, lifeguards, and hands which check the temperature of the pool. AOL also provides a quick channel out to the sea of information--the Internet. In contrast, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer a straight, unmonitored conduit out to this sea. He went on to explain how AOL draws together original content from some third parties, such as the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and other popular newspapers and magazines. Judge Sloviter asked about Penthouse and if AOL carried it. Burrington responded, "No." Looking for smut, she tried to continue her questioning, but admitted "I don't know any more" such magazines. DOJ: "I know one more. Do you have Hustler?" WB: "No. We have Boating magazine." Some laughter rippled through the courtroom. The government then asked Burrington about magazines such as Smithsonian Monthly. If AOL provided pictures of naked people from remote African tribes (as seen in National Geographic) would this, in his opinion, put it at risk of being prosecuted under the CDA. Burrington's response: "Absolutely." They then went into a discussion of America Online's Terms of Service, which enforces its own kind of decency standard. Burrington explained that AOL, with 4 to 5 million users, promoted the concept of community and banned hateful, obscene, harmful, and offensive material. Burrington explained the parental control features that allow the holder of the master account to restrict certain functions and areas of the service for children with a different userid on the same account. Parents can block access to any or all of the different chat rooms as well as "Instant Messages" between members. In the context of the Internet, parents can restrict newsgroups or just disable the ability to download binary graphic files from usenet messages. AOL has also permenantly blocked certain groups which "are so obvious on the face to carry such things as child porn." Burrington then described AOL's negotiations with certain companies that offer filtering services for the World Wide Web, saying that his company expected to integrate such controls by the summer. AOL has also agreed to incorporate a browser which is compliant with the rating system standards being developed. Importantly, he explained that AOL could never expect to control the content of the Internet in the way it monitors its "pool." When Burrington was questioned about the ability of children to get to all AOL offerings if they obtain the password, he stressed the importance of parental responsibility. He said giving the kids the keys is like leaving the keys in the car in the garage. He also stressed the fact that AOL has created a community which encourages users to keep their eyes out for any criminal activity. WB: "We are trying to educate parents. Just because you are in front of a computer screen, don't throw away common sense. Just like in the physical world, don't leave your children alone in shopping malls." When asked by Judge Buckwalter whether he felt AOL was complying with the good faith defense of the CDA, Burrington responded, "I'm not sure. I don't know. There are many parts of it that are not clear." When asked by Judge Sloveter about the "surveillance" on AOL, Burrington became unusually defensive about this term. He said he prefered the word "patrolling." Judge Sloveter: "I don't know what else to call it." WB: "Our people are sensitive to that." The judges were finished and Burrington stepped down. He had given a polished testimony, covering all the bases and never at a loss for words or a clear explanation. During a brief recess I talked to a few people who were a bit skeptical of AOL's indecency policy and vague "Terms of Service," which seemed to broadly restrict much of the material covered under the CDA. Perhaps they felt that the government would be able to make the argument that if an online service can competently and peacefully enforce decency in their pool, the FCC can do it in the sea. Personally, I felt that Burrington presented an excellent example of an alternative for children. The testimony showed that the government is not implementing the "least restrictive means" of caring for our children if there are other choices and online alternatives. The next plantiff to take the stand was Stephen Donaldson, the president of Stop Prisoner Rape. A man with a buzzcut, long sideburns and reserved demeanor, Donaldson answered affirmatively to questions establishing that his organization attempted to inform the public about the problem of prisoner rape and the concomitant issues of sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS. When asked if his Web site included a lot of "street language," he answered, "most prisoners are not educated in latin. They use anglo-saxon english." Donaldson's testimony was short. He simply made the point that much of the material on his site is of a serious nature and in a language that prisoners, many of them uneducated, can understand. He feared that much of the material--stories, advice, and statistics--would be found illegal under the CDA. Up next was Andrew L. Anker, the president of Hotwired. DOJ lawyer Craig Blackwell started with a reference to an exhibit that recently ran on his site, that included material by Allen Ginsberg. Blackwell asked if was concerned that this would be prosecuted under the CDA. AA: "I don't understand what patently offensive' and indecent' mean and under what community standards they would be prosecuted. Considering the vague language, I'm concerned about everything." Blackwell then talked about a Wired magazine piece on "alt.sex.bondage" that recently ran on the site. Judge Sloviter interrupted to inquire about "alt." When told that it meant alternative, she asked, "So people can talk about alternative sexual bondage?" The judges then began to hit Anker with some tough, direct questions. Buckwalter: " You are a content provider doing nothing to identify your content and restrict your material to minors." AA: "Yes." Judge Dalzell raised the concept of the PICS rating system. This had first been mentioned during Burrington's testimony, at which time Judge Sloviter asked for a technical explanation. Before he could answer, however, she asked Cappelletti if someone more technical would be called later to go over this and he answered yes. This concept continued to intrigue the judges, who subsequently brought it up a few times. Unfortunately neither the court nor the witnesses were properly versed on the subject. Judge Dalzell: "Are you familiar with the PICs proposal? It would involve self-rating. How would you rate yourself?" Anker was unprepared to pigeonhole his site according to a hypothetical system--particularly one that he was not familiar with. He avoided the direct question. Judge Dalzell: "If it were based on the movie rating system, how would you rate yourself?" AA: "To be honest..." Judge Sloveter (interrupting): "--we assume you're being honest." Anker did not like the line of questioning and tried to extricate himself from it. He attempted to show that it was more complicated than a single rating for the whole site. When he explained that he did not agree with how this system mildly rated violence which he found more offensive than the gratuitous sex shots in film, Judge Dalzell kept on him. Asking about the Ginsberg material: "So what would you rate it: G? PG? R?" He then brought up the alt.sex.bondage article: "Would you have to rate the whole thing NC-17?" AA: "Well, there are a lot of pages, a lot of systems?" Anker was simply not prepared to rate his site on the stand. He said that he had children and would not want them to read the al.sex.bondage article, but was noncommittal on how to block them via a rating system. Howard Rheingold was then called to the stand. He was dressed in a bright pink shirt, a crazy colored tie, and a pastel, aqua-blue suit. He has a buzz cut and a big mustache. The government immediately stood up to argue that he could offer nothing factual or relevant to the case and had not even reviewed any of the sites in question. Judge Sloviter seemed ready to boot him, when Chris Hansen intervened to explain that the debate was not just about Web sites and Rheingold was being offered to describe the community aspects of the Net--on which he had written a very popular and well-respected book. Judge Sloviter acquiesced, "It will be accepted for what it's worth. Now let's break for lunch." When everyone returned Rheingold described MUDs and MUSEs, which allow people to interact in real time creating fantasy lands online. The DOJ lawyer asked what exactly would be limited in these virtual community discussions on the Net if the CDA were enforced. The DOJ lawyer put on a high brow tone and tried to come right at him: "Do you think Michelangelo's David would be found as depicting sexual or excretory functions or organs in a patently offensive manner according to community standards?" Rheingold kindly brought her full force to a full stop: "Which community?" The court stopped dead for a moment as he effectively touched one of the absurd holes of the CDA language. She fumbled around and continued somewhere else. She raised the question of his daughter that he had mentioned earlier, eliciting that he did not supervise her on the Net. HR: "No. I teach her that just as there are nutritious things to put in your body, there are nutritious things to put in your mind." The questioning returned to the subject of MUDs, MUSEs and certain moderated groups that he had started. But the philosophical bent of his replies seemed to irk the panel--particularly, Judge Sloviter, who perhaps thought his dress was a mockery. When the lawyer was done she questioned him about the nature of these MUDs and MUSEs. Judge Sloviter: "So stop me if I'm wrong,... this fantasy world allows people to masquerade,... or rather correct me if I'm wrong, ... this fantasy land --" "...actually, no, let me add--" Rheingold tried to interrupt but she bluntly gestured that she had not finished. Judge Sloveter (a bit impatient): "It allows them to masquerade, so they can play act and pretend they are other people..." Rheingold pulled up and interjected his point: "You're leaving something out. These users create an environment independent of whether they are there or not." Sloveter looked at him. "Leave that for the existentialists." It was a harsh statement, the court hushed and it looked as though Sloviter had it in for him. In response to a question raised earlier in the testimony about how much sexual content existed in these online fantasylands, Rheingold had thrown out the number 10%. Sloveter now came back with it. "What would happen if sexual content were removed? You said less than 10% existed..." Rheingold tried to respond--she continued, "...they could still play their castles in the air." With the head judge of this panel and the 3rd circuit court of appeals hitting him with her attorney blows, there wasn't much he could do. His testimony ended soon after. Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the ACLU, was the last to take the stand. He took his oath and the questioning began with the normal rigamorole about who he is and what he does. Soon he was talking about the ACLU's Web site and its presence on AOL. The DOJ introduced a particular discussion which had recently taken place on their online bulletin board, had involved the former Surgeon General Joyce Elders and covered masturbation. He expressed his fear that such serious kind of debate would be prosecuted by the government if found online. When asked if the ACLU site had posted any sexually explicit pictures, Steinhardt responded, "No. But we wouldn't hesitate to. If we had the site up during the Mapplethorpe controversy, we would have certainly put up examples of his work." He was being a little agressive, trying to throw it back in the DOJ's face. Steinhardt recounted an incident in which an organization which goes by ACLU (Always Causing Legal Unrest) posted a Jake Baker story on their bulletin board and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) let it stand--in the name of free speech. He then quickly digressed into a quick discussion of the Jake Baker case for the court's edification. (See http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/baker.html) The court turned to the exhibit of the posted story and it must have turned their stomachs. (Baker liked to write about mutilating and raping young, innocent women.) When it was the judges' turn they recalled an earlier statement in which Steinhardt had said the ACLU had reviewed the possibility of limiting access to their site to adults via a credit card verification system and found that it would cost $144 thousand for a month. Buckwalter raised the hypothetical of the passage of the CDA: "I don't think you would shut down your site. I think you would find a way to raise the money." The judge seemed to be goading him. Steinhardt said, "You can't put a price on free speech in cyberspace. And if you did, the ACLU probably couldn't afford it." Bringing up the self rating system, Judge Dalzell then asked, "Would the ACLU rate itself?" Steinhardt responded that the rating system is an "empty vessel where third parties could step in and rate. I don't want to rate the ACLU, but I'm sure there are others who would." Referring to how he understood the PICS to work, the Judge returned, "If you don't rate, you're blocked. What would you rate yourself?" Steinhardt: "We offer important, educational material for minors and would rate ourselves G. Others would probably rate us X." Judge Sloviter: "Would you not, as a matter of principle, refuse to rate yourself?" Steinhardt: "Yes." Although some of the more interesting moments came when the judges questioned the witnesses, there were virtually no major cracks in the whole of the testimony. The DOJ was rarely aggressive and seemed on the whole to be taking notes for later, rather than pursuing a strategy. The case resumes on April 12 when the government will begin presenting its witnesses. On April 3 it will file papers with the court revealing who these witnesses are. ----------------------------- Jonathan Wallace The Ethical Spectacle http://www.spectacle.org ACLU v. Reno plaintiff http://www.spectacle.org/cda/cdamn.html Co-author, Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996) http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 14:32:51 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh Subject: File 3--Howard Rheingold's Affidavit [This is the rough draft of Howard Rheingld's affidavit. Read it! --Declan] I, Howard Rheingold, declare that: (1) I am a parent of an eleven year-old daughter, Mamie. My wife, Judy, and I recently celebrated our 28th anniversary. I'm an active PTA member, a small business owner, and a voter. My wife and I believe strongly that parents have an obligation to teach our children values, to give them the opportunity to make their own moral choices. We also believe that open communication among citizens, free from fear of government control, is what holds democracies together. (2) I've written books about technology and its effects on people and institutions for the past ten years ("Tools for Thought," 1985," "Virtual Reality," 1991, "The Virtual Community," 1993). I write "Tomorrow," a column about the Internet and its effects, syndicated by King Features. I spend hours a day online, and have done so for ten years. I have a real life with real people around me as much as anyone else, but much of my business and social communication takes place online. For me, it's a real place, inhabited by real people who can forge deep bonds.. (3) I know from long personal experience that people can build communities from the relationships they grow online with other people who share their interests and concerns. The new medium that connects computers and communications networks transforms every desktop into a printing press and place of assembly, a component of community-building in technological society. An important part of civic life takes place there. (4) Among the many things left out of the distorted popular image of the Internet are people for whom the Net is a lifeline: the cancer support groups, the disabled people who find a new freedom in this medium, the artists and educators and small businesses who use the Internet as a way for citizens to publish and communicate to other citizens. Experience has taught me that many-to-many communication, used wisely, can magnify the power of individuals to discuss and publish and make possible collaborative thinking among people all over the world. (5) In my life, the virtual community became my real community. The people I first got to know in open, group conversation online have become my friends in the real world where real things happen to people. I sat with two people when they were dying, spoke at two funerals, danced at two weddings, passed the hat quietly among other virtual community members to help out a member in dire circumstance. The community I know takes place among people who matter to me, and online communication is what that enables thousands of geographically dispersed interest groups to build communities. For people who live in remote areas, who share certain special interests, from mathematics to politics to the problems of being an Alzheimer's caregiver to the civic affairs of a small town or large city, virtual communities enable people to form associations that can enrich their lives and often carry over into face to face society. In modern society, it is often difficult to find people who share interests and values; the virtual community enables people to find and get to know one another and to establish relationships they might otherwise never have formed, relationships that often carry over into face to face friendships. (6) I grew so fascinated with the nature of online communities that I travelled the world, visiting virtual communities in Japan and Europe, as well as America. I interviewed the people who built the ARPAnet and grew it into the Internet. I interviewed the people who built the Minitel system in France. In both instances, these media for social communication were never intended for people to communicate in new ways. The ARPAnet was a defense-funded experiment in remote computing over telecommunication wires because it was necessary for the scattered ARPA computer researchers to run their data on each other's computers. The programmers who built the first network started using it for social communication. The early ARPA directors were wise enough to see that a new medium for group communication had emerged, unexpectedly. Minitel was designed as a distributed database, an electronic yellow pages, but people insisted on using it to chat. (7) The emergence of "social computing" via the Internet is an example of people using a new tool as a means of human to human communication, and the medium of many to many communication is still in its infancy. People are not only building communities, but businesses, and political information and communication associations. We have only begun to see the social and civic uses people will make of the emrging medium. As these examples show, the real virtue of cyberspace is its ability to permit and even encourage innovation. If strict standards had been set at the beginning, or if planners had insisted on one structure, and by either means prohibited the ARPA or Minitel from carrying email and other messages, one of the most vibrant and important parts of cyberspace would never have developed. (8) The topics that people discuss online constitute an enormous variety. Every scientific specialty you could think of has its electronic mailing list, text archive, web site. Support groups for scores of diseases are especially important online. The online breast cancer or AIDS patients in a small town who don't have any other support group, the Alzheimer's caregivers and others who cannot leave the house or hospital, the disabled who find a liberating barrier-free space online, derive vital knowledge, comfort, and human connection for people in need. The nonprofit organizations that set up shelters for battered children and abused spouses. The international networks of medical researchers who collaborate to cure disease. So many people will suffer tremendously if censorious laws shut down Internet providers and unmoderated forums where nobody can guarantee that nobody will say a taboo word at some time. Some of these topics of necessity will involve speech that discusses "sexual or excretory activities or organs.' In some cases, the people speaking or the people listening will be minors for who the information is important and useful. It would be a tragedy if fear of prosecution for failing to police the utterances of every member of a virtual community would lead to the closing of communities that alleviate suffering and help people cope with some of the difficulties of modern life such as life-threatening diseases or domestic violence. (9) Several months ago, a very bright and articulate young man by the name of Blaine Deatherage sent me an e-mail questionnaire as part of a school project. I started an electronic correspondence. I learned, after I got to know him, that he was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, is confined to a wheel chair in near-total paralysis, and has trouble communicating vocally. I didn't know that. All I knew was that he had a lively mind and a way with words. Blaine and millions of others like him have no other place to go. He's only sixteen. To deprive him of adult conversation in the chess groups he participates in online would be a tragedy. The groups to which he belongs, such as the chess discussions, are likely to choose to exclude all minors rather than risk the consequences should an adult member of the community use a taboo word. (10) The examples of community I've mentioned are real people to me. When my long online friend and sometime online verbal opponent Tom Mandel grew fatally ill, he said goodbye online. The poignance of that experience, and the looks on the faces of Tom's online friends when I stood up for him at his funeral and gave a eulogy, are definitely real to me. When Casey needed an operation, enough of her online conversational partners bought posters from her to finance the medical procedure. When Kathleen Johnson announced that she was dying, dozens of us, including myself, took turns sitting with someone we had only known from the words we had read on a computer screen. (11) My daughter has used e-mail and the Internet for social communiction and for researching her homework since she was eight years old. I told her that she knows to use common sense and be alert when dealing with adult strangers. If someone she doesn't know calls on the telephone, she knows not to answer personal questions. I told her that some people aren't who they pretend to be in real life and in cyberspace, and just because someone sends her e-mail, it doesn't mean that person is a friend. She knows the importance of nutritious food for her body, so I told her that she has to be careful to put nutritious knowledge into her mind, because the Internet consists of all kinds of mind-food, some of it not very nutritious. I told her that if anyone said anything to her or sent anything to her that made her feel bad or suspicious, that it was okay and a good idea to show it to mommy or daddy. (12) When I wired up her fifth-grade class to the Internet, on a line donated by a local small Internet service provider, I told her class that they were pioneers. I told them there were wonderful ways to learn and communicate with interesting people on the Internet, and they were going to show the rest of the people in the school, the school district, the county, how you could help us use the Internet as a fun way to learn. I told them that if they were caught doing anything they wouldn't be proud to do in front of their parents, then the experiment would fail, and the other classes and schools would probably think Internet for fifth graders is a bad idea. But I also told them that I was showing them how to do this because I knew I could count on them to make the right decisions. They didn't fail me. (13) Many people think cyberspace is just the World Wide Web and solely involves information retrieval. That is incorrect. As the ARPA and Minitel example illustrate, many if not most people who use cyberspace find the most important and most used parts to be those that facilitate many to many communication. Thus, I believe the most important parts are newsgroups, chatrooms, mail exploders, and the like. There are many different ways people around the world can use the network to communicate with each other. Many scholarly and scientific groups use an automated service that sends e-mail to everyone in the group of subscribers, who can automatically send their responses to everyone in the group. There is no human moderator who decides which e-mail to send to the group. People who participate in such groups generally regulate their behavior voluntarily. Bulletin board systems and conferences and newsgroups are different ways of organizing public group conversations where nobody is the moderator or editor. (14) There are moderated groups where an expert in the field acts as editor, deciding which of the submissions are published. Moderators generally do not screen the membership; they only decide what is published. (15) If the Communications Decency Act is enforced, all unmoderated sites will either have to go out of business or set up pre-screening to make sure only adults get access. Most unmoderated sites are non-profit. They have a volume of both participants and of messages that is too large and too widespread to permit prescreening. In addition, many unmoderated sites have been set up long ago and the person who set them up is no longer involved. Thus, there is no one around to do the screening. For these reasons, many of the sites would have to be totally eliminated.I fear that moderated groups won't fare much better. They also have so much volume that no mderator can screen each message and presecreen each subscriber. (16) Even if a moderator could screen each message, I'm afraid that the standards of the Act are so vague that they won't know what to screen. (17) I'm concerned about the difficulty of defining a "community standard" for a worldwide network. The way the Internet works, if a geographic standard is applied to everyone in US jurisdiction, it would have to be that of the most conservative place in the country. That would stifle the net, not only domestically, but globally. (18) I am convinced that screening of sexual and other objectionable material can be accomplished with the kinds of software filtering that all major online services and several commercial companies have offered. I believe the power to determine what goes on or off the prohibited list of knowledge in my household should stay in the household, and shouldn't be seized by the State and used against citizens who don't conform to the moral standards of a small segment of the population. (19) Probably the most important potential of the Internet is in community-building. People who are able to make contact with others who share interests, to continue conversations with people in other locations, of other races and beliefs and political persuasions, to get together with fellow citizens locally and nationally, are engaged in activities that are vital to the health of civic life and democracy. I fear that a chilling effect on the use of online forums could damage these important activities. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct." Executed on March 25, 1996." ____________________ Howard Rheingold ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 4--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Mar, 1996) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. 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