Free speech debate on MSN Encarta

[Joe Block]

At 8:57 PM 3/23/96, Mark M. wrote:
On Sat, 23 Mar 1996, I wrote:
>> However, I don't think it likely that many ISPs will go this route from a
>> liability point of view - if some parent is paying them to filter out smut,
>> and little Zippy finds a brand new x-rated site, chances are some irate
>> parent will sue them.  With the proliferation of new pages, it is
>> impossible for anyone to keep up, unless the authors voluntarily include
>> some smutscan codes in their pages.
>
>Couldn't the proxy be configured to deny access to all "unrated" pages?

Yes.  The same filter software that Exonizes the language could also
replace the whole html body with "Access Denied" if the ratings codes
aren't present.

>Of course, this would mean that some kind of standardized web page rating
>system be devised; however, I think there are already several proposals for
>rating schemes.  BTW, does anyone know how such a proxy system could be
>used in all Internet traffic, not just the web.  It is not very difficult
>to get a gopher client or telnet client to communicate with a web server,
>bypassing any access restrictions.

CERN will already proxy gopher & ftp as well as http.  There is another
package, delegate, that will proxy nntp & telnet.  However, the main
problem with using proxies as a censorship tool is that nothing prevents
the client software from just not using the proxy.  By the time Zippy is
old enough to care about hunting down smut/bomb designs/drug formulae,
Zippy is a lot more likely to know how to do this than the parental units,
in a manner undetectable by the parent (invisible System Folder/Windows
directories with unsanitized browser prefs files comes immediately to mind
- now that 1GB drives are common, it isn't too difficult to hide them)

>ObCrypto: The next step would be a rating system using digital signatures
>and the proxy software being setup to trust certain signatures more than
>others.

I agree, if you're going to bother with rating pages, digitally signing the
signature so that terrorist X can't just copy the "Good Clean Fun" rating
code into his Phosgene formula page is the only rational solution.

Gotta love that overhead, though.


Joseph Block <jpb at miamisci.org>

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