Computer underground Digest Sun June 29, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 51 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #9.51 (Sun, June 29, 1997) File 1--The Work Has Just Begun File 2--The CDA and SafeKids.COM File 3--Extinguishing the CDA Fire File 4--AskAsia Covers Hong Kong Handover File 5-- CyberWire Dispatch Award for Meeks (fwd) File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 05:38:02 -0700 (PDT) From: "Brock N. Meeks" Subject: File 1--The Work Has Just Begun Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu ((Brock Meeks' work can also be found at: http://www.msnbc.com/news)) Source - fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Here's my commentary filed with MSNBC yesterday: The CDA is Dead, Now the Work Begins WASHINGTON - As a plaintiff in the lawsuit charging the Communications Decency Act was unconstitutional from jump street, I'm joining with millions of other Net users in cheering the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the law as a fundamental violation of First Amendment rights in cyberspace. And just as soon as everyone is finished patting themselves on the back they should just as quickly give themselves a swift kick in the ass because if you think the court's decision brings an end to this issue, you're sorely misguided. There's a hell of a lot of work still ahead. First let me toss out some congratulations: To the Supreme Court justices for winning the judicial slam-dunk contest. The wording of the court's opinion couldn't have been a more stinging indictment of a gutless Congress and administration that passed this bill simply because it was politically expedient. Here's part of the court's "in-your-face" decision: "The CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. Although the government has an interest in protecting children from potentially harmful materials the CDA pursues that interest by suppressing a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to send and receive. Its breadth is wholly unprecedented. The CDA's burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the Act's legitimate purposes." Second, love him or hate him, former Sen. Jim Exon, the father of the CDA, deserves to be recognized for bringing a legitimate issue to the national stage. He energized a host of forces, from advocates to industry, and in the wake of turmoil he left behind, many good things have happened: --Congress has become more hip to the Internet, though it still has a long way to go. --Advocacy in cyberspace has finally gelled in a way that was unthinkable before the CDA came on the scene. --Parents and educators are for the first time forced into looking at this problem seriously rather than hiding their heads in the sand. --Industry got off its lazy ass and began to find ways to solve a problem it knew was there but hoped no one would notice. BACK UP AND PUSH But enough congratulations. All advocates opposing this bill, including myself, should be ashamed that we let it get to this point in the first place. We will suffer for our sins for a very long time. Even as I type this column, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has announced she will soon introduce the "Childsafe Internet Act." Murray said that the court's ruling "leaves open a large vacuum. No one wants to return home after work to find a child downloading pornographic material." To solve this "dangerous" problem, as Murray puts it, she has a seven-point plan that includes: --Putting blocking software in the hands of every parent. --Creating a parental warning alongside copyright protections on each home page. --Creating incentives for Web page creators to rate their own pages for content. --Making it a criminal offense to mis-rate a Web site. --Making it a criminal offense to steal sites previously rated as child-safe. --Making it a felony for anyone to solicit or exploit child-safe chat rooms. --Creating an 800 number hot line where parents can rat out Web sites they believe carry harmful material. If you're a parent and your kid has access to the Internet you need to get involved in that process. There is so much wrong with this plan that it makes my head hurt. Seems to me there are First Amendment issues at risk in Murray's plan. (Require warning notices?) What does "steal" a Web site mean? (Murray provided no details to her announcement). And suddenly, stupidity - the mis-rating of a Web site - is going to be a criminal offense? Please spare me this kind of congressional "protection." This is what I mean by saying there is still much work to be done. Congress still doesn't get it. And if we all just sit back and rest on our laurels after the court's decision, we will likely find ourselves back at square one, fighting another unconstitutional bill. So everyone needs to work at educating their congressional representatives. Let them hear from you now and often. THE PARENT TRAP If you're a parent and your kid has access to the Internet you need to get involved in that process. Period. End of discussion. Any parent from this day forward who tries to use the excuse, "I can't even program my VCR - how can I oversee my child's use of the Internet" should be upbraided on the spot for abdicating their parental responsibilities. Parents could get away with seeing that flashing "12:00" on the VCR with no other ramifications other than some slight embarrassment. Not so with the Internet. We're talking children here: Your kids. My kids. Learn how to use the tools available that allow you to craft a reasonably safe environment for your kids on the Net. I say "reasonably" safe because nothing is perfect. In light of that, you'll have to take an additional step: Talk to your kids. Yes, talk. Get involved - they are your kids, after all. You didn't give your kids bikes without teaching them to ride and telling them where it was appropriate to ride. Same goes for the Internet. And it wouldn't hurt to have an open and frank discussion with your kids about sex, either. I realize this may be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but listen, folks, we don't have a choice anymore. There is a lot of crap out there on the Net. Talk to your kids about it; take the mystery out of it. If you get really desperate, saddle your kids with a really slow modem and make downloading porn more work than it's worth. (I'm only partially joking there.) HOLD INDUSTRY'S FEET TO THE FIRE An entire industry has sprung up around protecting kids from porn on the Internet. These are the so-called "blocking software" programs. Most of these programs are heinous in that they block much more than porn, including political speech, animal-rights activism sites and other sites that have nothing to do with porn. These programs, with their built-in political agendas ("we know what your kid should see, trust us") are a pock mark on our software industry. Fortunately, most of these programs allow parents to configure the software as it comes out of the box so that it suits your own values. The main problem is how these programs are constructed, blocking by URL or keyword, which means that sites dealing with "sex education" might be blocked because of the word "sex." A better approach is "direct address blocking" (DAB), such as is found in a new program called "X-Stop." DAB uses the numerical IP address of a site, instead of relying on the "word filtering scam," says Mike Kangior, government relations director for X-Stop. Now, X-Stop is no panacea, either: Someone in X-Stop's back room is deciding for you what sites get blocked and which ones don't. But at least these guys have a better software solution than simply blocking by the ineffective method of keywords. Finally, I believe that industry has missed a tremendous entrepreneurial opportunity throughout this entire debate over the CDA to create "family friendly" ISPs. These would be ISPs that promise to block access to certain areas of the Internet right at the server level. Granted, such services wouldn't be for everyone, but it's my guess that there is a large number of parents that would find such a service to be an oasis in a sea of uncertain content. CDA supporter Donna Rice Hughes of the Enough is Enough anti-porn activist group said that the court's decision "puts more of a burden on parents." I think that's the first thing she has said since this debate began two years ago that I've agreed with. The burden and responsibility of your children's experience on the Internet is now squarely in your hands. Rejoice in the extra work and continue to fight for the right to keep your job as a parent and tell Congress to stay the hell away. Meeks out... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:04:55 -0700 From: Larry Magid Subject: File 2--The CDA and SafeKids.COM Safe Kids Online -- http://www.safekids.com -------------------------------------------------- The Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act (CDA) is a clear victory for free speech on the Internet. Congress, in an attempt to protect children from online pornography, passed a bill last year that would have denied adults the right to post and read material that is otherwise protected under our first amendment. With the court's decision, the freedoms enjoyed by other media also apply to cyberspace. Although Congress's response was overreaching and unworkable, most members of Congress who voted for the CDA did so in a sincere effort to protect children from potential dangers online. With or without the CDA, those dangers must be recognized, put into context and dealt with in a manner that maximizes child safety while continuing to protect adults. Cyberspace -- like society as a whole -- is primarily a positive place for children, adult and families, but like the rest of the world, it does have its dangers. These dangers, as well as positive steps that families can take are outlined in the brochure "Child Safety on the Information Highway" which is available in print (by calling 800 843-5678). It's also available several places online including the National Center for Missing Children's Web Site (www.missingkids.com) and my own child safety site, Safe Kids Online (www.safekids.com). SafeKids.Com also offers additional material about online child safety including links to companies that make filtering software, additional articles on this issue and links to organizations dedicated to protecting children on and off the net. Feel free to link to it or mention it in any upcoming stories on this issue. Also, please let me know if you have information on this subject that I can link to from SafeKids.Com. Best, Larry Magid ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 13:58:32 -0500 From: Jonathan D. Wallace Subject: File 3--Extinguishing the CDA Fire ((MODERATORS' NOTE: The following is from Jonathan Wallace of The Ethical Spectacle. More information can be found on: http://www.spectacle.org)) EXTINGUISHING THE CDA FIRE The Supreme Court's Masterful Reno v. ACLU Opinion Jonathan D. Wallace, Esq. jw@bway.net Jonathan Wallace is a New York-based executive and attorney who, as publisher of The Ethical Spectacle, was a plaintiff in Reno v. ACLU. He is the co-author, with Mark Mangan, of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996), a book about Internet censorship. "As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship." With these words, the Supreme Court closed its simple, clear and masterful opinion affirming the District Court's decision in ACLU v. Reno. The Communications Decency Act (CDA) is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court's decision will stand as one of the most important First Amendment decisions of the 20th century. The Court, whose freedom of speech jurisprudence has so often recently been fragmented and confusing, has issued a clear, logical and correct statement which will be the cornerstone of free speech decision-making into the next century. In its ruling, the Court hits a number of extremely important bases. The CDA is Unconstitutional The Justices agreed that the CDA violates the First Amendment due to its vagueness and overbreadth. Calling the CDA "a content-based blanket restriction on speech", they also noted its ambiguity ("each of the two parts of the CDA uses a different linguistic form") . They were very concerned that serious speakers on issues like "birth control practices, homosexuality," and "the consequences of prison rape" would be chilled by the CDA. The severity of its criminal penalties "may well cause speakers to remain silent rather than communicate even arguably unlawful words, ideas and images." The government argued that the CDA was not vague, since its indecency language overlaps part of the three-part Miller standard utilized in obscenity prosecutions. Both the CDA and the Miller standard hold that the material in question must be "patently offensive" under contemporary community standards. (Generally, obscenity is the most hard-core stuff; Reno v. ACLU leaves obscenity laws in place and deals only with the issue of non-obscene "indecent" speech.) The Court acerbly noted that a term which is not vague in context may be vague when standing alone. In a memorably droll footnote (fn. 38), it explained itself: "Even though the word 'trunk', standing alone, might refer to luggage, a swimming suit, the base of a tree, or the long nose of an animal, its meaning is clear when it is one prong of a three-part description of a species of gray animals." The Justices concluded that the CDA "unquestionably silences some speakers whose messages would be entitled to constitutional protection." Caging the Pacifica Monster Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court let a ravening monster out of its cage in its Pacifica v. FCC decision, popularly known as the "Seven Dirty Words" case. In Reno v. ACLU , the Court has put Pacifica back in its cage. Until Pacifica, the Court had always justified censorship of radio and television based on a doctrine known as "spectrum scarcity". In other words, the government's role in assigning frequencies in the scarce broadcast spectrum led to a role in reviewing content as well. In Pacifica, the Court unnecessarily resorted to a new, and extraordinarily muddy, new rationale, "pervasiveness". The fact that broadcast comes into the household, and that children turning a dial may stumble on indecent programming, justifies censorship of indecent speech, the Court said. Ithiel de Sola Pool, a prescient communications scholar, wrote in 1983 that the pervasiveness doctrine would someday be used to justify "quite radical censorship". This prediction almost came true in 1996. The pervasiveness doctrine was used by the religious right and their Congressional fellow-travelers as a major justification for passage of the CDA. The Supreme Court gave further grounds for anxiety by using pervasiveness as a rationale for censorship of non-scarce cable television in its Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC decision. The Court has now emphatically declared that the Net is not pervasive. (One attorney at the ACLU press conference on the day the decision was issued commented that Reno v. ACLU is Justice Stevens' penance for having written Pacifica.) The Court adopted the careful and thorough findings of the District Court, which it summarized as follows: "Though [indecent] material is widely available, users rarely encounter such content accidentally....." The existence of warning screens and document descriptions dictates that "'the odds are slim' that a user would enter a sexually explicit site by accident." Unlike radio and television, use of the Net requires "a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial." The Court specifically held Pacifica inapplicable to the Internet. That case, it noted, involved a civil order directed to the timing of an indecent program (after ten o'clock at night would have been acceptable, mid-afternoon was not.) The CDA, by contrast, was a criminal statute which would effectively chill much constitutionally protected speech. Moreover, there was a long history of broadcast regulation prior to Pacifica (here, the Court seems to be saying, somewhat tautologically, that you can regulate something if you have always regulated it.) "The Internet, however, has no comparable history." Using the word "invasive" in lieu of Pacifica's "pervasive", the Court concluded: "[T]he Internet is not as 'invasive' as radio or television." And, just in case anyone was in doubt, it added that the Net is not scarce, either: "[T]he Internet can hardly be considered a 'scarce' expressive commodity. It provides relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communications of all kinds." The Power of Analogy Until recently, courts analyzed new technologies by reference to older, similar ones. For example, in the last century the courts decided that the correct legal regime for the telephone could be determined by regarding it as a kind of telegraph. A strong analogy gives clear legal guidance and avoids messes; it saves everyone's time. For example, the telegraph analogy would deter a legislator from introducing a bill to apply rules to the telephone inconsistent with treatment of the telegraph. For the last quarter century, the Supreme Court has departed from the road of analogy where new media are concerned. Instead, it has taken the view that for freedom of speech purposes, every new medium is unique and presents particular problems. At the same time, it has issued a series of extremely muddy and fragmented decisions, from Pacifica through last year's Denver, in which the plurality said that selecting an analogy wasn't necessary and, in fact, would be of no help. This was reminiscent of the famous scene in Treasure of the Sierra Madre in which the bandits posing as federales exclaim, "We don't need no filthy badges". The Court defiantly announced that it don't need no filthy analogies to get its work done. This willful blindness to the usefulness of technological precedent has enabled the Court to trip all over itself , announcing that cable is not to be treated like broadcast television (Turner v. FCC I) and then saying that it is in fact to be treated like television (Turner II and Denver ). I worked with attorney Jamie Stecher to file an amicus brief in Reno v. ACLU on behalf of Jon Lebkowsky and SiteSpecific Incorporated urging the Court to cure its analogical deficiency and declare that the Net should be treated like print media. The dissenters, disturbingly, seem to adopt a geospatial analogy for the Net (one promoted, of course, by the term "cyberspace" itself) and discuss Net regulation as a "zoning" problem. I discuss the dissent further below. Unlike the District Court, which analogized the Net variously to print and the telephone, the Supreme Court decision doesn't rely on analogy to reach a result. However, the Court makes a couple of highly significant off-hand references: "The Web is thus comparable, from the readers' viewpoint, to....a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications...." And again: "Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders and newsgroups, [any Net user] can become a pamphleteer." The latter statement leads immediately to the Court's conclusion that "our cases provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium." The "cases" referred to are Pacifica and some other pro-censorship precedents which the Court distinguishes as inapplicable to the Net. In the complex dance of Constitutional litigation, the Court applies standards of various strictness to determining the constitutionality of laws. Its highest standard of review is so-called "strict scrutiny", which says that to survive, a law must be based on a compelling government interest and use the least restrictive means of reaching the goal. Laws evaluated under a "strict scrutiny" standard rarely survive, so the battle is mostly won when you get the Court to agree to apply the "strict scrutiny" standard. By applying its highest standard to the Net, after referring to the Net as a library and Net users as pamphleteers, the Court is tacitly acknowledging that the Net should be treated like print media, which has always had the highest level of First Amendment protection. Elsewhere in the opinion, the Court takes a slight step back from this conclusion. It has long batted away almost every kind of restriction on the content of non-obscene print communications; as the District Court observed, Congress would not have been able to pass a "Newspaper Decency Act" with a straight face. Judge Dalzell of the District Court was emboldened to observe that the print-like nature of the Net led to the conclusion that "Congress may not regulate indecency on the Internet at all." The Supreme Court observes in its footnote 30: "Because appellees do not press this argument before the Court, we do not consider it." And the Court goes on in the footnote also to re-affirm that the government has a "compelling interest" in protecting minors from indecent, patently offensive speech. Thus, the Court leaves open the possibility that it may still tolerate a higher level of censorship for the Net than it has for print. Looked at this way, Reno v. ACLU may say nothing more than that the scattershot CDA fails where a more sniper-like approach may prevail. Sarcasm The Court is too polite to chastise Congress in plain language for holding no hearings while hastily passing an unconstitutional bill. Nonetheless, the opinion is full of hints of the Court's exasperation at Congress for wasting the taxpayers' money and everyone's time. In footnote 24, the Court quotes some un-named Representatives who thought that the CDA "would involve the Federal Government spending vast sums of money trying to define elusive terms that are going to lead to a flood of legal challenges..." And it goes on to quote Senator Leahy, who led the fight against the CDA: "The Senate went in willy-nilly, passed legislation and never once had a hearing, never once had a discussion other than an hour or so on the floor." Ratings Systems and Censorware As the euphoria induced by the Reno v. ACLU decision wears off, most free speech advocates are aware that more legislation and more court battles will follow. As noted above, the Court left the door open for Congress to pass a more narrowly drawn statute--and the same day of the decision, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wa.) announced legislation that would make a Net-rating system mandatory. President Clinton simultaneously called for "a V-chip for the Internet". Although no universally accepted rating system exists for Net content, the issue of ratings, and the related one of filtering software (I will mischievously use the pejorative term "censorware"), were constantly in the background at the ACLU v. Reno trial. Both sides made as much use as possible of the existence of ratings platforms such as PICS, ratings systems such as RSACi, and censorware such as Surfwatch. Our side argued that these alternatives made government intervention unnecessary, as parents could protect their children through selective application of these technologies. The government argued that the existence of these choices essentially rendered the CDA harmless, as speakers could defend themselves from criminal liability by giving an adult rating to their sites. The District Court didn't buy it, and in her opinion Chief Judge Sloviter made an oft-quoted statement that technology which doesn't yet exist cannot be used to save the constitutionality of a statute. The Supreme Court agreed. The CDA included a defense that the speaker has taken "good faith, reasonable, effective, and appropriate" measures to prevent indecent speech from reaching minors. Our side had contended that it would be virtually impossible to prove that one had met the four parts of this test, while the government rejoined that almost any user of a self-rating system would be protected by this provision. The justices noted: "It is the requirement that the good faith action must be 'effective' that makes this defense illusory. The Government recognizes that its proposed screening software does not currently exist." However, in its opening description of the Internet, the Court duly noted the existence of censorware, as the District Court had before it: "Systems have been developed to help parents control the material that may be available on a home computer with Internet access." Although the Court did not base any legal conclusions on this finding, some advocates have argued that this mention supports the theory that further government action is unnecessary due to the existence of these products. Some advocates of Net freedoms continue to promote the existence of voluntary ratings systems and censorware as important protections against further government intervention in our on-line rights. The danger is that legislation such as that proposed by Senator Murray will mandate ratings and the use of censorware. Once this happens, use of such systems and products is no longer voluntary, but becomes part of a system of government censorship. In all fairness, these advocates mainly agree that they would draw the line at government imposition of ratings or censorware. Their opponents argue that if you trumpet loud enough and often enough that something is good for you, sooner or later the government will attempt to make it mandatory. This issue was not before the Court, and nothing in the opinion can really be read as a comment on the constitutionality of such a scheme. I believe that Murray's bill or Clinton's promise of a V-chip for the Internet would fail due to prior case-law (most of it dealing with MPAA movie ratings) that prohibits the government adoption of private ratings systems. (For relevant case-law, see my paper on use of censorware in public libraries.). Community standards The Miller standard defines obscenity in terms of "contemporary community standards." This has led to results like the prosecution of Amateur Action sysops Robert and Carleen Thomas in Tennessee for posting materials on their California-based BBS which violated Memphis community standards. The CDA took a page from this book by defining indecent material similarly in terms of "community standards." Though the CDA's proponents claimed that it would create a consistent national standard for Internet indecency, the CDA was ambiguous. There was no way to determine from its language whether local standards were intended, as in the obscenity law, or whether the statute really intended a national standard , as in certain FCC regulations which refer to "contemporary community standards" for the broadcast industry. There was even disagreement among free speech advocates as to which kind of standard the CDA intended. The danger of applying local community standards to the Internet is, of course, that the most restrictive community gets to set the tone for the entire Net. (There is also the question of whether and how the standards of a single U.S. community could be applied to the global Internet.) Though the Justices didn't need to face this question directly, they drop some interesting hints. In their footnote 38, they state that the CDA clearly intended to apply Miller's local community standards approach, not set a national standard. (I agree with this finding; if Congress had wanted to, it could have more closely mirrored the FCC language by writing something like "contemporary standards for the Internet community"). Later, they observe that the community standards language "means that any communication available to a nationwide audience will be judged by the standards of the community most likely to be offended by the message." This suggests pretty strongly that Congress should stay away from community standards in any further Net legislation it considers. It also indicates that the Court may be ready to review the applicability of the Miller standard to prosecutions for Internet obscenity. The Heckler's Veto The overarching rationale of the CDA's supporters was that it was a necessary measure to protect our children. I personally had the questionable pleasure of debating Patrick Trueman of the American Family Association on national television, and he accused me of trying to promote the seduction of our children by pedophiles, simply because of my anti-CDA stand. Forty years ago, in the Butler v. Michigan case, the Court overturned a state law which banned the sale of books unfit for children, using the often-quoted phrase that such legislation burns down the house to roast the pig. In other words, while the protection of children is an extremely important goal, we will not do so by interfering with the legitimate rights of adults to speak, or listen to, matters not fit for children. The Court again confirmed that the government has a "compelling interest" in protecting children from indecency (a matter not seriously disputed, though the ACLU did make an attempt in the District Court to counter this on principle). Citing the Butler language, the Court said that the CDA, "casting a far darker shadow over free speech, threatens to torch a large segment of the Internet community." The CDA's ambiguous provisions included a section punishing anyone who attempted to send indecent material knowingly to a minor, or to a group knowing that a minor was included. While the CDA's advocates, like Patrick Trueman, painted graphic images of individual pedophiles sending indecent mail to susceptible targets, our side pointed out that every chat room, every Usenet group and every Web page may potentially be joined or viewed by minors, making the "knowledge" requirement meaningless. While the two dissenters, Justices O'Connor and Rehnquist, would have upheld the "specific child" provision of the CDA for one-on-one communications like those imagined by Trueman, the majority refused to rewrite the law to make it less vague. In so doing, they hit on the striking image of the "heckler's veto": "[A]ny opponent of indecent speech....might simply log on and inform the would-be discoursers that his 17-year-old child....would be present." The Dissent's Zoning Approach Justice O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurred with the Court's overall holding on the CDA, but would have preserved the "specific child" provision as it applied to one-on-one situations. Their arguments in favor of preserving this one application of the CDA relied on a "zoning" analogy. Justice O'Connor wrote that she regarded the CDA "as little more than an attempt by Congress to create 'adult zones' on the Internet. Our precedent indicates that the creation of such zones can be constitutionally sound." She then cites a long list of state statutes prohibiting minors from entering pornographic theaters and bookstores, liquor stores, bars and poolhalls. " [A] zoning law is valid if (i) it does not unduly restrict adult access to the material; and (ii) minors have no First Amendment right to read or view the banned material." She agrees that applied to the Internet "as it exists in 1997", the CDA violates the first part of this test, restricting adult access to material. As for the second branch of the test, she holds that "the universe of speech constitutionally protected as to minors but banned by the CDA....is a very small one." She describes cyberspace as an area not yet "zoned" but eminently "zoneable": "[I]t is possible to construct barriers in cyberspace and use them to screen for identity, making cyberspace more like the physical world and, consequently, more amenable to zoning laws." But she agrees that the law cannot be upheld based on technology not yet available. "Until gateway technology is available throughout cyberspace, and it is not in 1997, a speaker cannot be reasonably assured that the speech he displays will reach only adults because it is impossible to confine speech to an 'adult zone'." Thus, the two partial dissenters hold hope out for a day in which laws like the one proposed by Senator Murray can create "adult zones" or, as free speech advocates would put it, "ghettoes" for disfavored speech. Conclusion The Reno v. ACLU opinion is a clear, strong statement which will serve as a bulwark for Net free speech determinations for many years to come. However, by stopping just short of a categorical statement that cyberspace should be treated like print media, it exposes the Net to at least one more battle, over mandatory ratings systems and censorware. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:49:56 -0400 From: Peter Suciu Subject: File 4--AskAsia Covers Hong Kong Handover After 155 years of British colonial rule, Hong Kong will return to Chinese control as of July 1st. AskAsia will be providing coverage of this historical event at: http://www.askasia.org Join AskAsia to find out how this unprecedented historical event will affect people, the economy and the future of Hong Kong. Found in the Information/News section of AskAsia, Scenario92s for Hong Kong92s Future is designed to get people thinking about the transition, it92s potential outcome, and provide contextual and historical information to foster discussions. In addition, AskAsia provides Hong Kong related links to Asian newspapers, newsmakers, historical and reference information and breaking news stories. If you would like any additional information on AskAsia, please contact us via e-mail. Best, Peter Suciu New Media Specialist Connors Communications 212-807-7500 ------------------------------ Date: Wed 18 Jun 1997 13:06:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Brock Meeks Subject: File 5-- CyberWire Dispatch Award for Meeks (fwd) ((MODERATORS' NOTE: James Warren, in his 29 June '97 column in the Chicago Tribune, described Brock Meeks as "a mix of gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson and investigator Jack Anderson." Rather apt, and it's good to see the mainstream beginning to appreciate Brock's writing)). CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1997 // June 17th // Jacking in from the "Envelope Please" port: New York--CyberWire Dispatch received the top award for "Best Online Feature" from the Computer Press Association during its 12th annual awards ceremony for its investigative story "Keys to the Kingdom" that exposed the hidden agendas hard coded into so-called blocking software programs. Dispatch immediately announced it was doubling its subscription because, hell, let's face it, you strike while the iron's hot. (Which is a saying I never understood. What difference does it make whether an iron is hot or not? Does the burning add any more to the displeasure of having a six-inch crater carved into your skull from the iron? Ah, but I digress...) The award makes Dispatch a back-to-back winner. Last year CWD won the top honor in the "Best Investigative Story or Series" category for its articles exposing the twisted story of Carnegie Mellon University undergrad Marty Rimm's attempt to pass off a flawed study of online pornography as a definitive case history. Dispatch also exposed Rimm's calculated and deceptive manipulation of Time magazine which resulted in the infamous "Cyberporn" cover story fiasco. The judges said CWD authors Brock N. Meeks and Declan McCullaugh "produced an investigative piece on a serious and important subject--a rare feat in any media. 'Keys to the Kingdom' revealed that parental control software--which ostensibly filters out pornographic Internet sites--actually restricts access to all types of material both innocuous and important. Thus, software users unwittingly restrict their rights of free speech and access to information. This story, colorfully written and packed with details, raised this important issue to the online community and resulted in high profile follow-ups with mainstream media such as the Washington Post, New York Times and the Wall St. Journal." In other words, the judges got it. Of course, "colorfully written" is a code word for "it was packed with profanity, twisted tales of drug and alcohol abuse and flirtation with a gender bending source." Kids, don't try this home... The software blocking controversy continues to this day, with few changes being made. One company, CyberPatrol, is now changing the way its software handles the blocking of sites so that it doesn't sweep in non-offending content. Currently, CyberPatrol truncates a blocked site's URL without regard for any other site that may be caught in that blocking net. For example, if CyberPatrol wants to block a URL with "cybersex" in the domain name, the company simply blocks on the word "cyber" meaning that a site called "cyber-highschool" would be caught in CyberPatrol's "CyberNot" list and therefore not accessible. At least CyberPatrol is working to eliminate the problem. Another nefarious software program, CyberSitter, refuses to acknowledge any hidden agenda in its blocking patterns. CyberSitter continues to block a host of sites that deal with topics other than pornography, such as the National Organization for Women and Peacefire.Org. The latter site has become a leading critic of CyberSitter and that critical voice appears to be the only reason why it's blocked by CyberSitter. Brian Milburn, president of Solid Oak Software which developed CyberSitter, continues to boast of how his program is being heavily used by Christian groups such as Focus on the Family. At the same time, Milburn is fond of sending out disparaging Email to his critics. When Dispatch wrote about Milburn's failed attempt to threaten this publication with legal action based on the bogus claims of copyright violation, Milburn wrote that Dispatch is "nothing more than a trickle of piss in the river of life." I'm sure Focus on the Family would love to put that quote in their brochures hawking Milburn's software to its membership. The Real Heroes =============== The real hero behind this award is "Red" our transvestite source that passed CWD what was essentially the smoking gun: the lists of block sites of several software programs. These lists of blocked sites are essentially trade secrets and are therefore encrypted. The lists are the ultimate "little black book" of every naughty site on the Net, hence the "keys to the kingdom" title of our piece. But Red was able to break the encryption and read the lists in plain text. What Red saw there shocked and dismayed him, er, her, er, whatever... and passed the lists on to CWD. The other hero here is Declan McCullaugh, currently the Washington Correspondent for Time magazine's "the Netly News." Declan did the majority of the reporting as I pointed him in this direction and that and let him run with it. Meanwhile, I was doing most of the heavy drinking, trying to grind out my copy on a daily basis for HotWired's Netizen where I was covering the most boring fucking presidential campaign since Rutherford B. Hayes beat whomever back in whatever year. Declan ground away at the story, dogging it like a crazed rat terrier. If not for his efforts, the story might still be unwritten. That the story might still be unknown had not CWD written it is a sad commentary on the state of "computer journalism." Where is all the hard nosed, down in the dirt investigative journalism when it comes to the computer and online industry? You have to look long and hard to find it. The San Jose Mercury News took home this year's award for "Best Investigative Story" for a story about how thieves are stealing chips. "No longer content to hijack a truck or bribe employees to look the other way, high-tech thieves have escalated into kidnapping, coercion and brutality to get their hands on components literally worth more than their weight in cocaine or gold," the judges wrote of the Merc's story. The Merc also walked away with the "Best Overall Coverage in a General Interest Newspaper" so it's not a big leap to see them cop the investigative award, as well. [Side Note: CWD's "Keys" article was originally entered in the investigative story category. Someone on the CPA committee moved it to the online feature category because the investigative category was for print only! Don't ask me why; CWD won in this category last year. Not to take away from the Merc's story, but boys, if CWD goes head-to-head with your chip story, CWD kicks your ass. We'll see you next year, same time, same place.] So where are all the investigative stories? The New York Times was no where to be found last night, neither was the Wall St. Journal or the Washington Post or Business Week. The fact is, journalists covering this industry give it too much of a free ride. Yes, there are scathing product reviews oooohhhh, now there is some top notch muckraking journalism. This industry is making profits that border on obscene. And when there is that much money at stake there is dirt, big time dirt. But few are looking. A concerted effort needs to be undertaken to hold this industry's feet to the fire, hell, we need to burn this industry down and rejoice in what rises from the ash. Thanks to judges for their efforts; wading through the more than 1,000 entries received this year must have been a grueling task. And thanks to the CPA committee for this award and for your hard work in putting the awards ceremony together. (I got riled up giving my speech last night and forgot to thank the CPA for the award.) And a special nod to Adaptec who ponied up the money for the whole event and to Dee Cravens, the company's vice president for communications, who had a few choice things to say about the shaky nature of "computer journalism" as well. Good on you, Dee, as CWD's Aussie readers like to say. Thanks to Declan for his hard work on the story and "fuck you" to Josh Quittner, who is El Heffe for Pathfinder.com and the real brains behind anything intelligent Time Inc. does in print or online dealing with cyberspace, for stealing Declan away from me before I made the jump to MSNBC as their chief Washington Correspondent. Thanks to Red for all his, er, her, er, whatever, efforts in bring this story to the public's eye. And thanks to my insightful and ballsy editors at MSNBC who continue to allow me to write CWD without any restrictions or constraints. Last but not least, a huge thanks to you, the CWD reader. You've made CWD into a publication like no other on the Net. You've supported Dispatch with your feedback, both positive and negative and have helped create a brand name for CyberWire Dispatch that is one of the most recognizable in Cyberspace. I owe you a lot and try to live up to that with each Dispatch. So, that said, when you get the bill in the mail doubling the subscription price for CWD, remember, it goes to a good cause, the furtherance of take no prisoners journalism in cyberspace. Pay the bill promptly, CWD is going for a "three-peat" in next year's awards. Meeks out... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. 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