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/
-----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 - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM80iOI9Co1n+aLhhAQEhegQAw/89RFP1nugfYHkPyzwluNgYmbxhEKQm 3yJ8oX7qXUx/QSp45nDurt5pMpwXax4otDM1pduCjoEEH8QSp21pBD4fxZqomtlG WVpvaFkEf5TpKy+BA/orMRdAqeUsMc17ESYu4tw3pX49yPYhSXL8MdbW5ADvuLhg SL5X9AkF1p0= =X5As -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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:
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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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------------------------- 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
-----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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM82UsoVO4r4sgSPhAQHU2QP/QI8CarUNw8fywxKvu22axFEx+S/YsSKA e9HJVdnkTMpa6dO3zMrVPfWhZKKdOklcPSLqD4Ddcw5ZO65OfOPated31Mu6SSOF pS54vpquT9SGdoRhHZclnGFTW262RMDCG30YCDHEa4bHigSMSPHfKL+BJUDJEcQK oRiOed1meBY= =p/tQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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:
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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.
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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
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM80Iw4VO4r4sgSPhAQGBawQAqL/1UbEROm7XXrbGoza1zhg1Qx5RJBkx KKRpM7MPSyj0iiTsMIXFdtRT7BwIBZf+UZwlnNJXAUDCcEjaSlsnP9ODzBHxJNQ0 O0q/Kkq2V5aIzwXCitWpBaOBhD7IAsOyantwHmc5gB+avwKo1HlX1gd3Yz6EHCnx OfMZ2XzuLRI= =nuMh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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.
participants (10)
-
Bill Frantz -
Declan McCullagh -
Doug Peterson -
Duncan Frissell -
frissell＠panix.com
-
Greg Broiles -
Kent Crispin -
Lucky Green -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III