Date: Tue, 02 Jan 96 09:06:55 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V8#001 Computer Privacy Digest Tue, 02 Jan 96 Volume 8 : Issue: 001 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Volume 8 1995: The Year We Struggled with On-line Censorship (an essay) Info on CPD [unchanged since 11/22/95] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 02 Jan 1996 08:13:41 -0600 (CST) Subject: Volume 8 Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Welcome to Volume 8 of the Computer Privacy Digest. I wish you all a happy new year and look forward to a good year of work and turmoil. In this special issue we will take a closer look at on-line censorship. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: deselms@primenet.com (Gregg L. DesElms) Date: 01 Jan 1996 23:52:01 -0700 Subject: 1995: The Year We Struggled with On-line Censorship (an essay) Organization: Primenet In reviewing various newsgroup activities in the past several days with respect to the astonishing and troubling news about CompuServe and the German government on Friday, I am surprised at the number of people willing to accept some form of censorchip on the Internet. Upon hearing and reading the story on Friday, I found myself moved to author an essay (which I have now submitted for publication). I have posted a pre-publication copy of it here for all who are interested to read: -------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE ---> 1995: The Year We Struggled with On-line Censorship -------------------------------------------------------------------- by Gregg L. DesElms Copyright © 1995. All rights reserved. Use by permission only. -------------------------------------------------------------------- This year, as with most years, during the weeks after Christmas we are being inundated with television, radio, magazine and newspaper "Year-in-Review" stories. Of course none of us will ever forget the horrified faces of the families and friends of victims in the Oklahoma City bombing. We watched with nervous anticipation as we witnessed the uncommon heroism and admirable humility of a courageous, young Navy pilot who lived for a week in the forest and then was rescued after being shot down over Bosnia. And, as much as for any other reason, 1995 should be remembered as the year when peace in eastern Europe finally became a real possibility. But many Americans miss other important stories in the news. Perhaps they're too busy, or too interested in watching old M*A*S*H reruns, to really care. According to a study released just days before the end of 1995 and published by the Times-Mirror Center for the People and the Press, fewer than 1-in-4 Americans pays very much attention to the news at all. So, many of them probably either missed or simply didn't appreciate the irony of having one of the year's final stories on December 29th, carried by most major news organizations, and describing how the German government demanded that the on-line computer information service giant, CompuServe, Inc., censor German users' access to more than 200 Internet Usenet newsgroups, ostensibly because of their pornographic content. And, even more unsettlingly, it appears CompuServe has decided to comply. This story, of course, comes on the heels of the decidedly ridiculous brouhaha a month or so earlier in which America On-line, Inc. banned (and then nearly immediately withdrew said ban on) the use of the word "breast(s)" in user chat rooms, posting areas and e-mail. It was in 1995 that the debate over pornographic or otherwise unsuitable prurient materials on the Internet and on-line services really heated-up. In July the Senate approved the broadly restrictive Communications Decency Act, and in August the House approved its Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment amendment, all while the White House was proposing compromises. Meanwhile, in early December, in an impressive organized protest against censorship on the Internet, thousands of on-line computer users telephoned, FAXed and e-mailed their concerns to senators, congresspersons, and other government officials while House and Senate conferees attempted to reconcile the two bills for final approval and presentation to the President. Computer users' fears that a wave of censorship is about to descend upon the Internet, on-line services and other forms of electronic media are valid. It is my belief that censorship, in any form, howsoever well-intentioned (albeit fundamentally misguided), is among the most dangerous affronts to freedom and liberty as we know it. It is as sinister and imminently devastating to a free society as violent crime, drugs, epidemics -- even war. Of all our fundamental rights as Americans, perhaps none is so simultaneously fundamental to our rights as human beings than the free exchange of information and ideas, no matter what the form. In the name of protecting the innocent against the harm to them that may be done by their exposure to certain, admittedly objectionable and morally repugnant materials, there are those among us who would unhesitatingly denude our ability to exchange information of kinds and for reasons personal and, therefore, not within their purview to judge or regulate. In order to secure some form of misguided, temporary and illusory safety, these people would, without losing a moment's sleep or having given any thought to the devastating secondary effects such reckless actions could ultimately have, cash-in our fundamental rights as citizens and as humans to freely express ourselves and to freely consume the expressions of others so that, having responsibly informed ourselves, we may act to materially affect the society in which we must live. Without momentarily leaving my keyboard to consult a quotation reference, I will risk being in error when I attribute to Benjamin Franklin the following (most probably paraphrased) quote: "Those who would sacrifice essential, fundamental liberties to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." As citizens in a free and diverse society, each of us must take responsibility for our respective small parts in helping to ensure that everyone, friend and foe alike, has the ability to live according to whatever personal, lawful standards they choose, and to freely exchange information in any way they desire or deem necessary as long as doing so does not infringe on the rights of others. I do not deny that placing pornographic materials into a public forum where children may access them with the same ease as they may access Dr. Seuss stories or articles from the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, at the very least, problematic and disturbing. By all means, we must find a way -- a legal, constitutional way -- to protect our children from premature exposure to prurient materials which could not possibly be of any rational educational value to them during those critical, formative years when we should be endeavoring to shape their minds and their moral characters in preparation for lives as productive and contributing citizens of our society and of this global village. But we already have laws which, when properly applied, could adequately punish those who, by placing pornographic materials into what is fast becoming another form of the public domain (Internet newsgroups, for example), are virtually guaranteeing that those materials may be easily obtained and viewed by children. We simply need to be able to identify the culprits. It is the anonymous nature of the Internet which allows this, not the existence of the Internet itself, nor any of its component parts. Instead of shutting off access to any part of the Internet, I believe we should, instead, simply work to ensure that no access is anonymous. Slander and libel laws help to ensure that no one may, with impunity, make statements about us in public or in the public media, whether spoken or written, which are not provably true. These laws work, in part, because the responsible mediators of the media routinely require that the speaker or writer simply identify him or herself, thereby inflicting the stark burden of personal accountability. History has shown that personal accountability within a community is a much more powerful natural deterrent to bad or unacceptable behavior than a club, a stone wall or a padlock. Personal accountability to a community is the ingredient that makes the old African adage, "It takes an entire village to raise a child" a functional, workable concept. Enforcing individual, personal accountability, not wholesale censorship, is the first step in ensuring that the Internet will be a place where children and adults may explore and research confidently and freely, and where diverse viewpoints may be shared without fear of governmental oppression or reprisal. These are the seeds, the seeds of personal accountability and not the seeds of censorship, which we must plant for our children today. The example we set for them should not be that we would silence those who write that which we do not wish to read on the Internet, but rather that we make them accountable by asking them not to write it anonymously. And when an individual breaches community trust by using the Internet to expose children to materials which they should not see, it should not be the media by which he disseminated those materials that should be held accountable, but rather the individual himself, who freely chose to do so with full knowledge of the community consequences. Those of us who use the Internet wisely and responsibly, and who routinely regulate what our children see, hear and do there, deserve to have it kept free, open, diverse, thought provoking, intellectually stimulating, morally challenging and subject to the same First Amendment protections as any other form of media. If MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, in his fascinating book, Being Digital, is even remotely accurate in his thoughtful, futuristic view of our world and his concomitant assertion that today's Internet is merely the forerunner of a complex, ubiquitous, massive personal telecommunications infrastructure that will ultimately supplant most forms of media as we know them today, then surely keeping the Internet free, open and uncensored now is as important to maintaining the basic tenets of our society as has been any battle or war fought at any time in this nation's history. Government sponsored, involuntary prior restraint and censorship, no matter what seemingly harmless form it might take -- no matter what common good it might, at first, seem to accomplish -- simply has no place in a free society. Be it the Internet, television, radio, newspapers, books, magazines, pamphlets or a preaching heretic standing atop a broken-down wooden crate on the sidewalk at the corner of 5th and Main, we must -- all of us -- jealously guard, with every ounce of our beings, our precious civil liberties as guaranteed to us by our Constitution and our glorious Bill of Rights. We must remain ever vigilant to ensure that those who would sacrifice our liberties in order to purchase for themselves a little temporary safety, as Benjamin Franklin so wisely and profoundly warned us two centuries ago that someone among us might attempt to do, are wholly unsuccessful. In a speech to the New York Press Club in 1912, Woodrow Wilson said, "Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance." And in the history of our great nation, far too many men and women have willingly laid down their lives in battle to help ensure that our Constitution and Bill of Rights would continue to guarantee our liberty and our way of life. For the moment, the Internet is a bit of a digital, electronic mystery to many Americans. But do not allow the fact that it is not a body-strewn, battle-scarred clearing in a bloody foreign war to mask its importance to all Americans as today's battleground for our freedoms tomorrow. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Gregg L. DesElms is a 39-year-old computer consultant and free-lance writer living and working in the Midwest. His Internet e-mail address is deselms@primenet.com where you may write to him directly. ------------------------------------------------------------------- KEYWORDS: Censorship, Internet censorship, prior restraint, CompuServe, German Government, Year-in-Review, news, media, Internet, Usenet, newsgroups, on-line, pornography, America On-line, AOL, Communications Decency Act, Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment amendment, Exon, Cox-Wyden, liberty, liberties, freedom, rights, children, ideas, pruient, safety, Benjamin Franklin, public forum, Dr. Seuss, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, anonymity, anonymous, accountability, responsibility, slander, libel, deterrent, citizens, society, Global Village, Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, telecommunications ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- *END* ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 22 Nov 1995 14:25:54 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 11/22/95] Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. 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Web browsers will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Web: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V8 #001 ****************************** .