The Censorware Summit: A Preview, from The Netly News

******************

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html

The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com)
July 16, 1997                        

The Censorware Summit
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
                                             
        SurfWatch's Jay Friedland still blushes when asked why his
   program once blocked part of the White House web site. Named
   "couples," the offending page triggered the hypersensitive software's
   dirty-word filter -- and amply illustrated the problems accompanying
   so-called "smut blocking" technology.

        Today, Friedland and more than a score of industry and nonprofit
   groups are visiting the White House to promote technical means of
   stopping Junior from visiting playboy.com. President Clinton is
   expected to endorse such measures over attempts to revive broad
   criminal laws like the ill-fated Communications Decency Act, which he
   supported. But this new approach suffers from all sorts of problems.

        For one, how do you winnow out material that's inappropriate for
   kids while avoiding embarassing missteps like the "couples" debacle?
   Certainly Friedland's firm can't hope to review the millions of web
   pages already online. Already spooked by a promised CDA II, the
   industry has offered an answer. High tech firms, taking a hint from
   the broadcasters, are seriously backing Internet rating systems for
   the first time.

        For instance, Netscape today will promise to join Microsoft and
   include the PICS ratings framework in the next version of its browser.
   Search engines such as Yahoo and Excite will announce they're
   supporting PICS to refine and limit searches, sources say. IBM will
   unveil a $100,000 grant to RSACi, a PICS-based rating standard
   originally designed for video games but adapted for the Web. The
   industry giant will also pledge to incorporate RSACi into future
   products.

        RSACi, which has been plagued by a number of serious flaws, works
   like this: You connect to its site and fill out a form self-rating
   your site for nudity, sex, violence and foul language. Then you take
   that tag, which might read something like "(n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0)" -- if
   your site is innocuous -- and slap it on your web page.

        But RSACi wasn't designed to classify news web sites. It's a
   video game rating system, and its coarse, clumsy categories -- from
   "creatures injured" to "wanton and gratuitous violence" -- are better
   suited to shrink-wrapped boxes of Doom than to the archives of
   msnbc.com. To comply with the system, MSNBC editors would need to
   review and rate each story -- which is why the site stopped using
   RSACi, The Netly News reported in March.  
   
        Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
   calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
   rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
   what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
   about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
   that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
   clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
   says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
   criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
   supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET 
   and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a 
   "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
   certainly not objective.)

        Not surprisingly, civil libertarians are screaming bloody murder.
   They do have a point. After all, netizens are fresh from a stunning
   Supreme Court victory that firmly established that the Net should
   enjoy the same First Amendment protections as print publications.    
   Since magazines aren't forced to sport warning labels, why should the
   White House pressure online publications to do the same? And, more
   importantly, why should the industry give in instead of standing on  
   principle and resisting all attempts by the federal government to   
   muzzle online speech? 
   
        "Some businesses who make their money from people on the Net  
   appear far too eager to ignore the massive First Amendment protection
   the CDA decision gave cyberspeech -- and even more eager to adopt and
   impose on all of us the potential sinews of censorship: PICS and
   RSACi," says Don Haines, legislative counsel at the ACLU. (This     
   critical attitude may have been what spurred the White House to       
   disinvite the ACLU from today's summit, then hurriedly re-invite them
   after the ACLU put out a press release.)
   
        Of course, today's White House summit plays against the backdrop
   of a threat from a CDA II. Some members of Congress, such as Sen. Dan
   Coats (R-Ind.) have pledged to try again with more legislation. Yet
   others seem more willing to compromise. "The Supreme Court has shot
   down the option that I worked hard on," says Rep. Bob Goodlatte       
   (R-Va.), a staunch CDA supporter who will be at today's summit. "They
   said we can't go that route. I'm certainly interested in developing 
   other options. I want to put the burden on pornographers. One of the
   ways to do that is to have Congress pass legislation that would make
   it difficult for people to misrate their web site."

        Rep. Goodlatte is one of a half-dozen congresspeople who will 
   attend the noontime meeting, along with oppositional CDA forces such 
   as the American Library Association and the Electronic Frontier
   Foundation. Together they will witness the unveiling of          
   netparents.org, a joint effort of the Center for Democracy and
   Technology and the Voters Telecommunications Watch. The site allows
   parents to "find some family-friendly" censorware-enabled service
   providers in their area. A handy tool that we suspect will be used not
   only to find ISPs that provide blocking tools, but to find the ones
   that don't.
   
###

At 07:44 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>        Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
>   calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
>   rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
>   what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
>   about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
>   that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
>   clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
>   says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
>   criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
>   supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET 
>   and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a 
>   "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
>   certainly not objective.)

I can't remember how RSACi authenticates the tags. I assume they are either
signed by a CA or not authenticated.

1) If the tags are signed by a CA.
Who operates the root CA? Who will operate the CA that issues RSACnews
tags, also knows as Online Publishing Licenses.?

2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
"government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"? Just as the
various GAK proposals do not make sense unless GAK is mandatory, online
rating systems do not make sense unless "misslabeling" sites will become a
felony.


--Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
  PGP encrypted mail preferred.
  DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56.
  http://rc5.distributed.net/

As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan

On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:

> At 07:44 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >        Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
> >   calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
> >   rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
> >   what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
> >   about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
> >   that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
> >   clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
> >   says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
> >   criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
> >   supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET 
> >   and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a 
> >   "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
> >   certainly not objective.)
> 
> I can't remember how RSACi authenticates the tags. I assume they are either
> signed by a CA or not authenticated.
> 
> 1) If the tags are signed by a CA.
> Who operates the root CA? Who will operate the CA that issues RSACnews
> tags, also knows as Online Publishing Licenses.?
> 
> 2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
> What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
> "government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"? Just as the
> various GAK proposals do not make sense unless GAK is mandatory, online
> rating systems do not make sense unless "misslabeling" sites will become a
> felony.
> 
> 
> --Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
>   PGP encrypted mail preferred.
>   DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56.
>   http://rc5.distributed.net/
> 
>

X-Mailer: MR/2 Internet Cruiser Edition for OS/2 v1.29i b27

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In <Pine.GSO.3.95.970716111552.13849C-100000@well.com>, on 07/16/97
   at 11:16 AM, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> said:

>As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
>it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan

This doesn't sound like the "voluntary" system that the "news" media has
been advertising.

Perhaps they were too busy peddling Toilet Paper & Tampons to report the
most important part of the story: "Clinton Administration wants Mandatory
Rating System for the Internet".

The mechanics of RSACi are really secondary to the fact that the FEDS want
to force them on us.

- --
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html -
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Of course it's not what the news media have been saying, at least vocally.
They often get suckered in by slick press releases and prepackaged pap. I
sometimes wonder if my sitting next to a reporter during an event and
telling him/her what's really going on ever changes what they write about
or how they say it. I suspect it does.

-Declan


At 15:34 -0400 7/16/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>In <Pine.GSO.3.95.970716111552.13849C-100000@well.com>, on 07/16/97
>   at 11:16 AM, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> said:
>
>>As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
>>it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan
>
>This doesn't sound like the "voluntary" system that the "news" media has
>been advertising.
>
>Perhaps they were too busy peddling Toilet Paper & Tampons to report the
>most important part of the story: "Clinton Administration wants Mandatory
>Rating System for the Internet".
>
>The mechanics of RSACi are really secondary to the fact that the FEDS want
>to force them on us.
>
>- --
>- ---------------------------------------------------------------
>William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
>Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0
>
>Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
>PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
>OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html -
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-------------------------
Declan McCullagh
Time Inc.
The Netly News Network
Washington Correspondent
http://netlynews.com/

At 11:40 PM -0700 7/16/97, Bill Frantz wrote:

>What does misrate mean.  My approach would be to rate everything of mine as
>max-bad.  Is that misrating because some of what I say is suitable for
>children?  It certainly would not help the people who are using the ratings
>to find porn.

My posts would _never_ be "max-bad," whatever that peculiar term may mean.

Rather, my posts should be read by children of all ages, no matter what
fucking language I use. Children should be exposed to language and images
of all types, so all of my material would of course be "suitable for
children."

Who is to say otherwise? The Office of the Censor? The Ministry of Truth?

Of course, the apparent answer is that PICS/RSAIc labels would be applied
on a Web site basis by various licensed, credentialed, certified, and
regulated ratings agencies.

All highly unconstitutional if required by the government. On various
grounds. Besides being a nightmare to try to enforce.

If just an agreement by browser makers and search engine companies, then no
constitutional issues. (Not that I would _like_ it, but then there are a
lot of nongovernmental things I don't like.)

In any case, many of us knew this was coming. The archives will show that
several of us pointed out the extreme likelihood of PICS being used in just
this nefarious sort of way. Nothing surprising.

Those involved in mandatory censorship simply need to be <censored>, that
is all. I no longer think dialog with them is worth my time.

That the ACLU and other so-called 'civil rights' groups think that sitting
down with Bill Clinton and Al Gore and jawboning about mandatory ratings,
about collusion between companies to enforce moral standards, and about
punishment for "misrating" is just more evidence of how sick the whole
system has gotten. They should just tell the government to stay out of
content regulation of any sort, period.

--Tim May


--
[This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency
Act of 1996]
And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why
don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll
just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said:
"Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck."
So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure
enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan
really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant
while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he
came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your
brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course
God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular
Translation, TCM, 1996]

Lucky Green wrote:
> 
> At 07:44 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >        Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
> >   calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
> >   rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
> >   what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
> >   about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
> >   that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
> >   clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
> >   says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
> >   criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
> >   supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET
> >   and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a
> >   "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
> >   certainly not objective.)
> 
> I can't remember how RSACi authenticates the tags. I assume they are either
> signed by a CA or not authenticated.
> 
> 1) If the tags are signed by a CA.
> Who operates the root CA? Who will operate the CA that issues RSACnews
> tags, also knows as Online Publishing Licenses.?
> 
> 2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
> What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
> "government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"? Just as the
> various GAK proposals do not make sense unless GAK is mandatory, online
> rating systems do not make sense unless "misslabeling" sites will become a
> felony.

Ok, lets say it becomes a US felony to "misslabel" a web site.  How does
that prevent a person in the US from setting up a misslabeled or unlabed
site on a server in another country?  Also, what about person who sets
up
a site that is misslabeled on a server in the US.  Do the feds try to
extridite the person?

I think that we will find that labeling web sites is less workable than
GAK.

Doug

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At 11:16 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
>it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan
>

What ever happened to "de minimus non curat lex."  The social damage from a 
misrated website is too trivial to be believed.  Punishing it is like 
executing you for farting.

DCF  
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When protecting children, logic seems to be thrown out the window.

"Junior can find porn!"

-Declan


On Wed, 16 Jul 1997 frissell@panix.com wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> At 11:16 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
> >it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan
> >
> 
> What ever happened to "de minimus non curat lex."  The social damage from a 
> misrated website is too trivial to be believed.  Punishing it is like 
> executing you for farting.
> 
> DCF  
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> 
>

At 11:16 AM -0700 7/16/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>As for Lucky's point #2 -- Yes, I've read drafts of bills that would make
>it a Federal crime to misrate. --Declan
>
>On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
>> 2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
>> What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
>> "government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"? Just as the
>> various GAK proposals do not make sense unless GAK is mandatory, online
>> rating systems do not make sense unless "misslabeling" sites will become a
>> felony.

What does misrate mean.  My approach would be to rate everything of mine as
max-bad.  Is that misrating because some of what I say is suitable for
children?  It certainly would not help the people who are using the ratings
to find porn.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz       | The Internet was designed  | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506     | to protect the free world  | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments.  | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

On Wed, Jul 16, 1997 at 11:40:33PM -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
> What does misrate mean.  My approach would be to rate everything of mine as
> max-bad.  Is that misrating because some of what I say is suitable for
> children?  It certainly would not help the people who are using the ratings
> to find porn.

Speaking of misrating:

Of course, it would be relatively easy to set up a proxy server that
automatically labeled every page it encountered as "suitable for
children".  In fact, a smart 12-year old could put up such a proxy,
and provide uncensored views to all his friends.

Interesting legal complications, too.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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At 07:44 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>        Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
>   calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
>   rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
>   what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
>   about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
>   that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
>   clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
>   says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
>   criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
>   supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET 
>   and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a 
>   "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
>   certainly not objective.)

I hope they'll be including Ian Goddard's site with all its TWA 800 info
and reporting of other government activities. 
(http://www.erols.com/igoddard/journal.htm)

After all, he was credited as a reporter by Paris Match for his work with 
Pierre prior to the famous press conference last year.

They wouldn't be contemplating licensing of journalists, would they.

DCF

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At 11:03 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Lucky wrote:
>I can't remember how RSACi authenticates the tags. I assume they are either
>signed by a CA or not authenticated.
>[...]
>
>2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
>What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
>"government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"?

In addition to the criminal penalties which have been discussed, I think
it's possible that a mis-labeller would face a civil suit for trademark
violation or unfair competition - it's also possible to imagine a claim
that the mis-labelling is fraud (particularly if the mis-labelled site
charges for access), which can have civil and criminal penalties. (wire
fraud is also a federal RICO predicate.) 

Then again, if lots of people did it, it'd be awfully tough to sue them all. 


--
Greg Broiles                | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell:
gbroiles@netbox.com         | 
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto.