Computer underground Digest Wed Feb 18, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 12 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, #10.12 (Wed, Feb 18, 1998) File 1--Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught File 2--ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit File 3--Ethical Spectacle Joins ACLU Censorware Case File 4--Re: CuD 10:11--Comment on ever-continuing CyberSitter thread File 5--Re: Cu Digest, #10.11, More on CyberSitter File 6--CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS File 7--Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife" File 8--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: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 19:06:36 -0500 From: Paul Kneisel Subject: File 1--Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught Tuesday February 17 12:32 PM EST Cops 'lured' into Net sex and caught SAN FRANCISCO (Wired) - Police in four states say they're the victims of what amounts to a cybersex sting in reverse, the latest in a string of Internet pornography cases getting headlines around the United States. The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, reports that the officers encountered a 17-year-old Illinois girl in chat rooms - and that their email relationships quickly became sexually explicit. The girl then told her mother about the contacts with deputies in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, and her mother informed authorities in those states. Discipline followed. The chain of events - which included one North Carolina deputy sending the girl a photograph of his genitals - led an attorney for one of the officers to decry what he suggests was a setup. "This young woman has gone around the country, as best we can determine, and made contact with a very vulnerable element of our society - police officers - and then drawn them in and alleged some type of sexual misconduct," said Troy Spencer, the attorney for one suspended Virginia officer. "She's a cyberspider." Among other high-profile Net porn cases in the past two weeks: Voters in Snow Hill, Maryland, recalled their mayor - who is also a sheriff's deputy - for allowing his squad car to be used in a porno photo shoot. Mayor Craig Johnson was turned in by Websurfing local teens who recognized the car. A 42-year-old San Diego man was arrested February 7 after the FBI was tipped off to newsgroup picture files that showed him having sex with his 10-year-old daugher. A Jacksonville, Florida, man was arrested after technicians working to upgrade his computer happened upon pictures of children engaged in sex. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 18:19:02 -0500 (EST) From: owner-cyber-liberties@aclu.org Subject: File 2--ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit Source - ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update February 16, 1998 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACLU Enters VA Library Internet Lawsuit On Behalf of Online Speakers In a cyber-law first, the American Civil Liberties Union last week asked a federal court in Virginia to rule that the government cannot prevent Internet speakers from communicating with interested library patrons. Acting on behalf of a diverse group of eight plaintiffs, the national ACLU and the ACLU of Virginia are seeking to intervene in a lawsuit over the use of Internet filters in Loudoun County libraries. "This case presents important questions about whether the government can prevent Internet speakers from communicating constitutionally protected information online to people whose only access to the Internet may be their local public library," said Ann Beeson, ACLU National Staff Attorney. The library's Internet policy purports to block access to materials that are "pornographic" or "harmful to juveniles." But the ACLU's complaint charges that by using blocking software to implement the policy, the library board is in fact "removing books from the shelves" of the Internet with value to both adults and minors in violation of the Constitution. The eight plaintiffs are: The Safer Sex Page, created by John Troyer. Banned Books Online, created by John Ockerbloom. American Association of University Women Maryland (AAUW Maryland). Rob Morse, an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. Books for Gay and Lesbian Teens Youth Page, created by 18-year-old Jeremy Myers. Sergio Arau, the popular Mexican artist and rock singer known as "El Padrino." Renaissance Transgender Association, a group serving the transgendered community. The Ethical Spectacle, created by Jonathan Wallace. Ultimately, the library controversy may lead back to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in Reno v. ACLU, striking down a federal Internet censorship law that sought to restrict access to online speech. In its sweeping decision, issued in June 1997, the Court confirmed that the Internet is analogous to books, not broadcast, and is deserving of the highest First Amendment protection. The ACLU was a lead plaintiff and litigator in the suit. The ACLU also won a victory in a recent library blocking software controversy that was resolved without litigation. On January 27, officials in Kern County, California agreed to allow all library patrons to decide for themselves whether to use blocking software, after the ACLU warned that mandatory blocking was unconstitutional. In objecting to the block on their clients' speech, the ACLU's complaint noted that websites offering opposing views are not blocked. "For example, Defendants do not block sites opposing homosexuality and transgender behavior, opposing employment by women outside the home, favoring Internet censorship, and promoting abstinence rather than safer sex practices." In related news, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) this week held a hearing on .Internet indecency. and introduced new legislation that requires libraries and schools that apply for discount funding for Internet access to certify that they will provide blocking or filtering features for minors. (See discussion below) Complete information on the ACLU filing in Loudoun County, links to plaintiffs' web pages, and related cyber-law cases, can be found on the ACLU Freedom Network at . Information about the ACLU victory in Kern County can be found at: =========== About Cyber-Liberties Update: ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update Editor: A. Cassidy Sehgal (csehgal@aclu.org) American Civil Liberties Union National Office 125 Broad Street, New York, New York 10004 The Update is a bi-weekly e-zine on cyber-liberties cases and controversies at the state and federal level. Questions or comments about the Update should be sent to Cassidy Sehgal at csehgal@aclu.org. Past issues are archived at To subscribe to the ACLU Cyber-Liberties Update, send a message to majordomo@aclu.org with "subscribe Cyber-Liberties" in the body of your message. To terminate your subscription, send a message to majordomo@aclu.org with "unsubscribe Cyber-Liberties" in the body. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 15:25:55 -0800 (PST) From: "T.L. Kelly" Looks like this coming session of the US Congress may set the direction for intellectual property/freedom of expression, so now's the time for those of us in the US to convey our views to our representatives, especially while they are in their home districts during the break. The National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication belong to the Digital Future Coalition, and the DFC is strongly supporting two bills: 1. Senator John Ashcroft's "Digital Copyright Clarification and Technology Act" (S. 1146) and 2. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) "Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act" (H.R. 3048). These two bills will protect the future of access to information, to an open exchange of knowledge, to the Internet, and to teaching and research as we know it. These bills balance and correct much more restrictive and punitive legislation that is now being considered in Congress. Without these bills, we may face a future in which *fair use is abolished* in the digital era and in which only teachers and students who can afford to "pay-per-browse" can access, quote from, and analyze electronic information. The DFC is urging all its members to contact their House Representatives, requesting *co-sponsorship* of H.R. 3048 and their Senators, requesting support for S. 1146. Handwritten letters and personal visits are most effective. Please consider visiting your representative's local office while Congress is in recess (until Jan 26). And please alert your colleagues and students about this important legislation. A brief summary of H.R. 3048 appears below; more details are available at the Digital Future Coalition's website (http://www.dfc.org). To find out who represents you in Congress, visit http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/legislative/email.html More details on H.R. 3048 follow: The Boucher-Campbell Bill, H.R. 3048 What Does It Do? Why Does DFC Support It? Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Tom Campbell (R-CA) have introduced the only comprehensive bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that will maintain balance in the Copyright Act by preserving for consumers, educators, librarians, researchers, and other Netizens fundamental rights in the digital era. Like a similar bill introduced by Senator John Ashcroft (S. 1146), this comprehensive, balanced bill has the strong support of the DFC. If you agree with us that the House of Representatives should adopt the Boucher-Campbell bill instead of the legislation proposed by the Clinton Administration (H.R. 2281), we encourage you to send an e-mail to your elected Representative in the House. (To contact your Representative, click here to connect to a Library of Congress compilation of e-mail directories--the site also includes a helpful "Who represents me in Congress" section and regular mail addresses.) Section 1. The bill is known as the "Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act." Fair Use. Section 2 would amend section 107 of the Copyright Act to reaffirm that a finding of "fair use" may be made without regard to the means by which a work has been performed, displayed, or distributed. Thus, just as teachers, librarians, and others may make "fair use" copies of portions of copyrighted works today in the analog world, they may do so tomorrow in the digital world. Library Preservation. Section 3 would amend section 108 of the Copyright Act to allow libraries and archives to use new forms of technology to make three copies of endangered materials for archival purposes. First Sale. Section 4 would amend section 109 of the Copyright Act to establish the digital equivalent of the "first sale" doctrine. Under current law, a person who has legally obtained a book or video cassette may physically transfer it to another person without permission of the copyright owner. Section 4 would permit electronic transmission of a lawfully acquired digital copy of a work as long as the person making the transfer eliminates erases or that copy of the work from his or her system at substantially the same time as he or she makes the transfer. Distance Learning. Section 5 would amend sections 110(2) and 112(b) of the Copyright Act to ensure that educators can use personal computers and new technology in a broad range of educational settings in the same way they now use televisions to foster distance learning. In addition, Section 5 would broaden the range of works that may be performed, displayed, or distributed to include the various kinds of works that might be included in a multimedia lesson. Ephemeral Copies. Section 6 would amend section 117 of the Copyright Act to make explicit that electronic copies of material incidentally or temporarily made in the process of using a computer or a computer network may not serve as the sole basis for copyright infringement liability, such as when a work is viewed on the World Wide Web. Unfair Licenses. Section 7 would effectively preclude copyright owners from using non-negotiable license terms to abrogate or narrow rights and use privileges that consumers otherwise would enjoy under the Copyright Act, such as their fair use privilege, by preempting state common and statutory law, such as the proposed changes to the Uniform Commercial Code. Black Boxes. Section 8 would implement the anti-circumvention and copyright management information provisions of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. The treaties do not require the broad prohibition of software and devices that might be used by infringers as proposed in the legislation drafted by the Clinton Administration. Consistent with the treaties, section 8 would create liability only for a person who, for purposes of infringement, knowingly circumvents the operation of an effective technological measure used by a copyright owner to limit reproduction of a work in a digital format. The bill also would create liability for a person who knowingly provides false copyright management information or removes or alters copyright management information without the authority of the copyright owner, and with the intent to mislead or induce or facilitate infringement. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 23:02:57 -0500 (EST) From: jw@bway.net Subject: File 3--Ethical Spectacle Joins ACLU Censorware Case HE ETHICAL SPECTACLE JOINS ACLU LAWSUIT AGAINST CENSORWARE IN VA. LIBRARY For immediate release Contact: Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net New York, New York, February 6, 1998--The Ethical Spectacle, a monthly webzine focusing on the collision between ethics, law and politics in our society, is a plaintiff in an ACLU litigation filed today against the library system of Loudoun County, Virginia. (Spectacle URL: http://www.spectacle.org). "I welcome the opportunity to work with the ACLU again," said Jonathan Wallace, a New York-based software executive and attorney who is the Spectacle's publisher. Wallace was also a plaintiff in two other ACLU actions, ACLU v. Reno (which invalidated the Communications Decency Act) and ACLU v. Miller (overthrowing the Georgia anti-anonymity law.) Last fall, the Loudoun County board of library trustees passed the nation's most restrictive Internet policy, mandating the use of censorware on terminals used by adults as well as children. Attorney Robert Corn-Revere of Hogan and Hartson in Washington D.C. filed suit on behalf of nonprofits People for the American Way and Mainstream Loudoun, and a group of local parents and educators. Today's ACLU action, termed an "intervention" in the existing Loudoun litigation, is on behalf of the Spectacle and a group of other websites blocked by X-Stop, the software from Log On Data Corporation installed by the Loudoun libraries. The two actions argue that the use of blocking software by public libraries violates the First Amendment. "I have no idea why Log On blocks my site," Wallace said. "It does not meet their criteria of blocking only material that is obscene under federal law." Last October, Wallace, who writes frequently on censorware issues, published "The X-Stop Files" (http://www.spectacle.org/cs/xstop.html), an article revealing that X-Stop also blocked the Quaker website, the American Association of University Women, the AIDS Quilt, and numerous other socially valuable sites. The Ethical Spectacle has also been blocked in whole or part by four other censorware products. Wallace commented, "This proves that censorware companies, and the people who scan the web for sites to add to the blacklist, are incapable of distinguishing between illegal speech such as obscenity, and protected speech about censorship, pornography, safe sex and other controversial topics." Wallace is co-author with Mark Mangan of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), a book about Internet censorship. (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/) He is also a member of the Censorware Project, an activist group which recently published its first report, "From Ada to Yoyo: Blacklisted by CyberPatrol". (http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 09:42:18 -0800 From: Joe Clark Subject: File 4--Re: CuD 10:11--Comment on ever-continuing CyberSitter thread Well, didn't want to leave his/her name, so I respond to the list: > What I mean is, no one is forcing anyone to actually use Solid Oak's > software. If Solid Oak wants to sell an inferior product, let them (we all > know another very large company that's been doing this since 1981). Just > like the consumer has a right to choose what he buys or not, so should the > merchant have the right to sell crap if he so chooses. Solid Oak has as much right to sell censorware as you and I have to defend or decry it. My problem is when -- through clever marketing, media hysteria, reactionary protectionism, and witless bandwagoning -- an information filtering product, using bogus filtering methods and with a thinly-disguised political agenda, becomes widely used as a means of "protection". There is more danger here than regular system crashes. From what I've been able to read, Solid Oak is riding the wave of net-porn hysteria to peddle its own conservative agenda. Really useful filtering software would be adaptable to the filtering agendas of *any* user -- even Wiccans :-) -- instead of reinforcing popular ostrich-ism. Like, imagine if Windoze was none-too-subtly monarchist, as well as bloated. [And as an aside, has Solid Oak been getting PR ideas with the Co$?] > While I'm on the subject, I would also like to add that I really don't > understand this problem you Americans seem to have concerning the protection > of your children against material deemed unfit for their eyes. I mean, it's Well, it's long been noted that we're excessively and unrealistically puritanical about sex, but we *do* love violence, so give us a break. :-) "Protect our children" has become an even more strident battle cry in recent years because it's one of those unassailable concepts like "family values" and "public safety" that can be used as a reactionary's lever against the increasingly rapid and chaotic nature of societal change. Once you accept the pre-eminence of the concept, any means to that end can be justified. From the standpoint of a political manipulator, this is valuable; instead of looking like someone who wants to restrict freedom of information for long-term political capital, for example, one can appear to be a champion of the defenseless. Understand that, while it probably doesn't live up to the Netopian view, the net is dangerous to certain groups in ways wholly different than pornography. In the past, centralized publishing/broadcasting (required by expensive equipment) resulted in centralized information control. That puppy's out the window now -- even dogs have web pages. Also, political manipulators, marketeers, and PR craftspersons know the value of a slick presence in tweaking the public will -- but slickness-of-presence doesn't always require the big clams it used to. Groups used to influencing through the media now find their messages lost in the herd -- and these groups don't lie down easily, nor do they wish to "play along". Remember the days before .com? > not as if a child will 'accidently' stumble upon some hardcore pornography > while just browsing the web; if you find your 10-year old downloading > material from sites containing sexually explicit material, you can be sure > he/she's doing so by his/her own will, or would you argue that those "press > here if you are 18 or older"-buttons got pressed all by themselves ? The > same applies to IRC, the child still has to make the decision to actually > join a channel where such material is being spread. I am in general agreement with this, but if you use search engines you can get some pretty mixed results. Example: my ten-year-old daughter is into the "American Girl" line of dolls. The other day I was looking for their website. Try a search for "american girl" on infoseek and tell me what most of the hits are! I'm not sure a ten-year-old conducting the same search would be able to tell that some of those could lead to preview photos that would live long in their memories. Not every anatomical macro closeup is buried behind a VISA-card gateway or an 18+ sign. In fact, this provides an excellent example of why simplistic exclude/include rules, based on keywords, are untrustworthy -- whether online, in politics, or inside our own noggins. We naturally tend towards simplistic generalizations (else we'd be mighty confused all the time) -- but we also naturally tend to fart. It's a question of when it's more appropriate not to. > Basically, I feel that if you cannot trust your child to not actively go out > and seek such material, then you should not be letting your child wander > about the net unattended. (the same applies to any other medium imo) True enough. If you don't trust your child not to actively go try to buy a Playboy at the convenience store, you should not allow them access to print materials. Have I got that right? ;-> -- Joseph S. Clark http://mailer.fsu.edu/~jsclark Systems usability, visual design, documentation, & training Administrative Information Systems The Florida State University ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Feb 98 15:04 EST From: Michael Gersten Subject: File 5--Re: Cu Digest, #10.11, More on CyberSitter This is a reply to "Deleted", who was asking about cybersitter and similar products. Although some companies do make inferior products, those products can be reviewed, and checked out -- the product is it's own statement. Programs like cybersitter, however, do not work that way. You cannot tell ahead of time what they will block; often there is no way to tell that your site is blocked. Although they claim to do it to protect children from "unsuitable" material, that definition is arbitrary, and often includes web pages that oppose such software, or in some cases, any page hosted on the same site as one "unsuitable" page. And then there's the question of "What makes it unsuitable?". None of these programs, and their filtering staff, to my knowlege, makes any attempt to describe in any details exactly what they do and do not block. There's a good reason, actually -- if they did, and it turns out that they were blocking a site that did not meet the criteria, then there would be a lawsuit. So, these companies make themselves suit-proof, by not making any claims that can be judged in court. Nor do they give you any indication of what they actually do, and the claims that they do make are vague enough that they can get away with almost anything. The bottom line? An inferior computer can be examined, and rejected based on merit. Blocking software cannot be examined, and can only be rejected based on ads, and hope. Yet no one is regulating them by their ads (I believe this falls under the FTC's jurisdiction, yet it seems to be ducking the issue completely). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 23:10:52 -0500 From: Jonathan Wallace Subject: File 6--CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS NEW CENSORWARE PROJECT REPORT: CYBERPATROL BLOCKS DEJA NEWS, A MAJOR RESEARCH TOOL For Immediate Release Contact: Jamie McCarthy jamie@mccarthy.org February 17, 1998: The Censorware Project, an Internet activist group opposing the use of blocking software on First Amendment grounds, today released its new report, "CYBERPATROL AND DEJA NEWS: Censorware Product Blocks an Important Research Resource", available at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/. In the report, the group examines blocking of the Deja News Usenet archive (http://www.dejanews.com) by CyberPatrol from Microsystems Corp. (http://www.microsys.com). Susan Getgood, the company's director of marketing for CyberPatrol, recently announced that the product would continue to blacklist Deja News due to the occurrence of sexual speech on Usenet. (Deja News does not permit the downloading of Usenet graphics.) In the report, The Censorware Project presents the comments of numerous Deja News users--lawyers, authors, law professors, public relations consultants, editors and programmers--who use the service to research disparate topics such as email scams, software bugs, censorship and competitive business information. "Deja News is a quick way to get information on many important topics," said Jamie McCarthy, a Michigan software developer who is the spokesperson for The Censorware Project. "For example, we found that developers use Deja News to get fixes for bugs and solutions to programming problems. Many of them told us that Deja News is a better place to find information than the software vendors' own support pages." McCarthy noted that CyberPatrol is installed in a number of public libraries, including those in Austin, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts. "Libraries are in the business of distributing the kind of business, technical and current affairs information people use Deja News for, not withholding it from their patrons," McCarthy said. "In blocking Deja News, CyberPatrol is again throwing out the baby with the bathwater, just as it did when it blocked 1.4 million user pages at members.tripod.com because of a few explicit pages." The Censorware Project covered the blocking of Tripod in its earlier report, "From Ada to Yoyo: Blacklisted by CyberPatrol," also at http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/. "CyberPatrol does not belong in public libraries," McCarthy concluded. -END- -- -------------------------------------- Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net Publisher, The Ethical Spectacle, http://www.spectacle.org Co-author, Sex Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996) http://www.spectacle.org/freespch "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."--Gandhi ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 20:19:37 -0800 (PST) From: Mike Godwin Subject: File 7--Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife" Call for Contributors to EFF Book on "Cyberlife" CALL FOR AUTHORS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EFF BOOK ABOUT "CYBERLIFE" (Please feel free to reproduce this call in any online forum and on any mailing list.) The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center are soliciting your contribution to a book project titled CYBERLIFE: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ONLINE SOCIETY. This book will consist primarily of first-person accounts from people like you -- stories about the experiences people commonly have when encountering online forums, virtual communities, the World Wide Web, and the immense scope of freedom of speech in cyberspace. The book will be edited by Mike Godwin, staff counsel of EFF and fellow at the Media Studies Center (a project funded by the Freedom Forum), and should be completed by fall of 1998. -->Why assemble a book like this? There are two reasons that we have chosen to take this approach. First, the strength of the Net is its ability to give voice to individuals without having those voices translated or transmuted by editors or by traditional media institutions. While this book has an editor, his role will be primarily to choose contributions and help those contributors in preparing their texts. WeUre trying to combine the best aspects of the book-publishing world (permanence, reach into mainstream audiences) with those of the Net (diversity, disintermediated points of view). Second, other books about the Net tend to be written from a single viewpoint, and, as such, have been inadequate in countering the mainstream media's tendency to paint the Net as primarily a haven for pedophiles, hackers, terrorists, and other threatening people. For a more detailed discussion of the focus of this book, see "True Stories of Free Speech in Cyberspace," the prospectus for CYBERLIFE, appended to the end of this call for authors. -->Why should I want to contribute? One reason to contribute is to tell your story about your own experiences in cyberspace -- a story that may not have been told in previous books, or in accounts in other media. If you feel that TV, newspapers, and magazines have distorted the picture of cyberspace -- especially in the eyes of those who have not yet logged on -- this your change to help correct the record. Another reason is that you may have wanted to contribute to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and its work, but may not have had the money to do so. Since this book will be owned by EFF, its earnings will contribute to EFF's operation -- to the extent that you can help make this book better, you can help EFF remain in the black and do good work for freedom and privacy in cyberspace. Whether or not your contribution is included in the final volume, any contribution of a thousand words or more will earn you a one-year membership in EFF. And if your contribution is included, you'll get a membership no matter how long your contribution is. -->What kinds of things should I talk about? We'd like to hear how the Internet has had an impact on your life, and what different directions you might have taken because of this powerful medium. What would you change about it if you could? What do you think about government attitudes about cyberspace, and how do you feel about media treatment? What do you think about social attitudes in general toward the internet? WeUre also interested in what kinds of things you want people to know about your experiences of the online world, and about cyberspace in general. -->What about my copyright? Will EFF own my words? Will I be able to republish my story elsewhere? EFF will hold only a nonexclusive license to print your story in the book CYBERLIFE and to use it in subsequent Web-based or TV projects. You will retain the primary rights to your story, and you will not be restricted in how you use them. (You could sell the story to a magazine, for example.) Our interest is not in possessing your words but in enabling you both to contribute to EFF and to improve general understanding about cyberspace. -->How long should my story be? If EFF chooses to use it, will be it edited or changed? Your contribution can be as long as you like. Take as much space as you need to tell your story (or stories). Our editor, Mike Godwin, may in fact ask you to elaborate on parts of your contribution. Our experience has been that most people who spend a lot of time in the online world are articulate writers and have a pretty good idea about how to tell their stories. MikeUs role as editor, other than to make help each writer tell his or her story in the clearest possible way, will be a supervisory one. We expect a certain amount of give-and-take concerning editorial suggestions, but the spirit of this project is to allow individuals, as much as possible, to tell their stories in their own voices, expressing their own concerns. -->Who is this Mike Godwin guy? For more information on Mike, see http://www.eff.org/~mnemonic . -->Is there any information about myself that I have to include? You can choose to be totally anonymous if you like, although of course this would mean we can't give you an EFF membership (we wouldn't know where to send the card). Or you can choose to tell us who you are, but ask that your name not be included in the book. We'd prefer to know who you are, of course, and we definitely want to know something about your background -- things like how old you are, what you do for a living, your feelings about work, life, and cyberspace, and any other biographical information you want to share with us, or that you think might shed light on your story. -->Where do I send my story? You can send questions or stories to Mike Godwin at either mnemonic@eff.org or mgodwin@mediastudies.org. Please include your location and phone number so that Mike can contact you quickly about whether and how your contribution may be used. Please also include address information for your EFF membership. You may also post your contribution in a one of the CYBERLIFE topics on the WELL or on ECHO and share it with users at one or both of these systems. But please e-mail Mike if you do so he knows to go there to retrieve your contribution. -->How will I know whether my contribution will be used? You will be notified of the receipt of your manuscript as soon as we can do so. Mike Godwin or his assistant will contact you within 30 days of receipt of your contribution to tell you whether it will be included in CYBERLIFE. -->What is EFF anyway? And what is the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center? The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to public resources and information online, as well as to promote responsibility in new media. You can find out more about our work by looking at our Web site, http://www.eff.org. The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people. Its mission is to help the public and the news media understand one another better. For more information about the Media Studies Center, a project operated by the Freedom Forum, see http://www.mediastudies.org. ----------------------------------------------- CYBERLIFE: TRUE STORIES OF LIFE AND FREE SPEECH IN CYBERSPACE A prospectus by Mike Godwin I. There is a story about the Internet that is not being told. It is a story that has not appeared much in the tradtional news or entertainment media, both of which have oscillated in only the last four or five years from a utopian vision of the Net to a reflexively anxious and scapegoating one. Yet it is a story that urgently needs to be told very soon -- we need to tell it to each other as much as we need to tell it to our leaders and policymakers -- because we are currently creating the consensus that will govern whether and how our society will come to terms with a medium that gives ordinary people the power to routinely communicate with mass audiences. II. The Two Internets We Know A. Computer-based communications were (fore)seen in the 1970s and 1980s to be a catalyst for widespread social change. 1. The potentially huge social impact of the Internet -- the first mass medium in the history of the planet to be accessible on a widespread basis to ordinary citizens -- was foreseen at least one or two decades ago, depending on where you count from. It was arguably foreseen by sociologists Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff in their 1976 book NETWORK NATION, the first scholarly account of online social evolution, although their work precedes the appearance of the Internet as we know it today. 2. The revolutionary character of the Internet rests primarily on the fact each citizen, at least potentially, will have the power to reach audiences of a size that used to be reachable only by capital-intensive media institutions -- most notably, newspapers, mass-market magazines, and television. 3. A secondary, but nevertheless important, consequence of the Internet is that it becomes possible for individuals to access disintermediated content from anyone else on the Net. B. The first wave of stories about the Net to appear in mainstream mass media were essentially positive -- "the information highway" was seen as a boon similar to that of the interstate highway system, or perhaps even the printing press. (Sen. Gore _fils_ , writing about the "national information infrastructure" in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and elsewhere, liked to evoke the highway system, a project sponsored by Sen. Gore _pere_ decades before.) The push was on to connect every school, library, hospital, and home to the Net. 1. This wave of enthusiasm was accelerated by the development of the World Wide Web. The Web represented only one way a content producer/publisher could use the Internet. But perhaps because of its conceptual and functional similarity to traditional one-to-many publishing (newspapers, books, TV stations), the Web caught on rather more quickly than distributed conferencing systems -- which provided truly interactive "many- to-many communications" -- such as Usenet and Compuserve had done. So the Web soon displaced the other uses of the Internet, except perhaps for e- mail, in the public mind, even as it supercharged a new flood of people and capital to the Net. 2. Result: in the course of a two or three years, our society went from (typically) not knowing what a URL is to routinely placing URLs on billboards, in magazine advertisements, and even on the sides of city buses. C. The second wave of stories about the Net underscored how volatile the initial social enthusiasm had been. Like the tulip craze in Holland, the sudden Internet boom in the collective American awareness was headed for an equally sudden bust. As with many other new technologies, the blessings of computer communications were not unmixed. And the gap between a) the early utopian predictions about the Net as an unqualified social good and b) the Net as it really is, led to a backlash, both in the mainstream media and in the public mind generally. The Net, which had been lavishly praised for its potential to put the full measure of the First Amendment's speech and press freedoms into any individual American's hands, began to be seen as a threat -- precisely for the same reason! D. Traditional journalism and journalists did not function as a corrective to either of these oscillating social perceptions of the Net. In fact, they typically reflected and reinforced them. The Net is now often seen as a functioning primarily as a conduit for pornography, a zone of predation for pedophiles and stalkers, a resource for bomb-planting terrorists, a hideout for conspiring criminals, a threat to the ability of authors and publishers to be paid for their work, a source of knockoff, worthless pseudojournalism, a free-fire zone in which no one's morality, no one's children, no one's intellectual property, no one's privacy, no one's knowledge about the larger world can reasonably be thought to be relatively safe, even for a moment. Examples of news media's reinforcement of this view: 1. TIME's cover story endorsing a "cyberporn" study that later turned out to be a hoax. 2. The overwhelming passage of the Communications Decency Amendment, recently overturned by the Supreme Court for being, among other things, unconstitutionally overbroad. 3. The routine assumption in several press institutions that there is a link between the bomb attack at the Olympics in Atlanta last summer and the Internet, and the law-enforcement community's unsubstantiated statements that reinforce that perceived link. 4. The singling out of any computer-communications element to a news story -- no matter how ancillary it is to the essence of the story -- in order to make it more sensational. See, e.g., the New York Post's creation of the "Internet rapist" story last summer, based on upon the perpetrator's having met his victim first in an America Online chat room, and the national media's abortive attempt to characterize the "Heaven's Gate" suicides as being somehow linked to, or facilitated by, the cult's use of a Web site. (TIME's cover copy: "The Web of Death.") III. The Internet We Don't Know A. It can fairly be said that we know the Net is not the catalyst for utopia that it was once touted as being -- the very fact that people were so quickly able to find aspects of the Internet to complain about proves this point handily. B. But the picture of the Net as it is characterized in the current backlash is also a misrepresentation, and perhaps even more so. For one thing, the Net as a source of new terrors cannot be the same Net that continues to inspire millions of new users to log on for the first time every year, often for reasons they themselves can barely articulate. C. My thesis is that the Net has, for most of its participants, played a transformative role -- providing individuals with new opportunities, new connections with other people, new interests, and even new communities. These individuals' accounts of their experiences vary in their particulars, but they tend to have in common the fact that their use of the Net has changed their lives in some fundamental ways ... and that the changes have mostly been positive. D. If the current myth of the Net is that it is a place where, within minutes of logging on, one is confronted with offers of pornography or with rude propositions or with invasions of one's privacy, then it is long past time to generate the "counter-myths of the Net" -- the near-archetypal (yet true) stories that so many "netizens" have in common with each other. These stories have to become as much a part of our collective perception of the Net as the horror stories already have done, if only because the social consensus necessary for preserving freedom of expression on the Net depends upon a majority of us recognizing and being able to articulate what it is that we value in it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 8--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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