Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 16:04:48 -0500 To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu From: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh) Subject: FC: Nat'l Law Journal and The Independent on CWD and net-filters Sender: owner-fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu Attached are portions of two articles from the National Law Journal and London's The Independent following up on the CyberWire Dispatch that Brock and I put out earlier this month on the rather unusual behavior of net-filtering software. The original CWD is at: http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/Declan_McCullagh/ http://cyberwerks.com:70/cyberwire/cwd/ (eventually) -Declan =========================================================================== The National Law Journal Monday, August 5, 1996 Page A13 By Ann Davis ...Civil libertarians are demanding to know: since when were the National Organizaton for Women or the Endangered Species Coalition in the same class as devil worshippers? How can photos posted by animal rights groups be categorized as "gross depictions"? Caught in a dragnet of blocking software are web sites on everything from the safe use of fireworks to safe sex, according to a report by the Internet-based news service CyberWire Dispatch. To blocked groups' disappointment, however, Internet legal experts say any lawsuit against private computer censors may be a losing proposition... [Mike Godwin is quoted.] ...A cyber-Deep Throat recently leaked the lists to two Internet investigative reporters, Brock N. Meeks and Declan B. McCullagh. Blacklisted sites include a Silicon Valley council of the National Rifle Association and Cyber High School, whose web address is similar to that of a gay video site... [Snapshot of CyberHigh's web page included] As a lawyer for CompuServe, Inc., Mr. Cunard meets potential legal challenges with skepticism. The free speech angle? Implausible against a private entity, he said. Discrimination claims? Difficult, unless you can prove the Internet is a place of public accomodation. Tortious interferrence? not likely, because most web site operators don't require subscriptions and therefore don't have a duty to those who access their sites. =========================================================================== The Independent (London) Monday, July 22, 1996 By Charles Arthur REAL ALE IS TOO STRONG FOR THE AMERICAN MORALISTS Programs to protect children from Net porn are keeping them out of a vast range of sites, says Charles Arthur [...] Since last July, programs such as Cyber Patrol, NetNanny and Cybersitter have sold thousands of copies. Some have distribution agreements with organisations such as BT and CompuServe. The makers boast that their products "includes a bad site list of thousands of Wed sites that are not suitable for children" and "allow parents to censor what their children access on the Internet." So far, so good - except that many of those "banned" sites include many British sources holding very useful or entirely innocent information. And the morality underlying many of the bannings is very American, and quite unlike that which a British parent might be expected to apply. Among the British sites on the World Wide Web which your child would be unable to access when using the programs are the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), the Prison Lexicon (which provides information about penal reform), the computing department of Queen Mary and Westfield College, Imperial College, the University of Stirling, the Internet connection companies Demon and Zetnet, and Telephone Information Services - which offers weather and share reports but not sex lines. Between them, the programs prevent access to tens of thousands of sites on the Internet. But they effectively apply an American system of morals - on religion, weapons, drugs, alcohol and sex - to the data which British children might be expected to know about, or could obtain from newspapers. None of the operators of any of the sites mentioned above was aware that they were "blocked", and all were mystified by it. "Which self-selected Mary Whitehouse put us on their list?" asked Iain Lowe, research manager of Camra. In Camra's case, the answer is a team of researchers at Microsystems Software, based in Farmingham, Massachusetts, which has been selling Cyber Patrol since July 1995, and now claims 80 per cent of a fast-growing market. "Camra's site is blocked under our code for beer, alcohol, wine and tobacco," said Dick Gorgens, the company's chief executive. "It was added on June 10 when it was advertising a beer festival." Mr Lowe responded, "We don't promote underage drinking. But pubs in this country are allowed to apply for childrens' certificates: all the family can go. And we have had inquiries to our site from GCSE students doing projects on the economics of the brewing industry." Mr Gorgens denied that the program was imposing American morals onto British users. However, the panel which reviews the banning of sites includes no Britons, although it does include representatives from the National Rifle Association and the right-wing anti-pornography Morality in Media group. [...] "A close look at the actual range of sites blocked by these programs shows they go far beyond just restricting 'pornography'," said Brock Meeks, an Internet journalist and consultant who, with fellow journalist Declan McCullough, obtained a decoded list of the sites banned by the programs earlier this month, July, and revealed their indiscriminate breadth in an Internet mailing list, Cyberwire Dispatch. Steve Robinson-Grindey, who runs the Prison Lexicon site, said "It is effectively an electronic encyclopaedia of everything concerning prisons and penal affairs in England and Wales. It is extensively used by schools and universities for information. Even the People's Republic of China allow access to the site." He thought it might be banned because "obviously they rely on search words for filtering - in which case they would discover the words sex, AIDS, homosexual, and so on. But they failed to realise these words were being used in serious material." [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- fight-censorship is archived at http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/top/