Groups Protest German Compuserve Prosecution

[Dave Banisar]

PRESS RELEASE
April 23, 1997
www.gilc.org

       LETTER TO CHANCELLOR KOHL URGES INVESTIGATION
                  OF COMPUSERVE PROSECUTION

A coalition of civil liberties organizations from a dozen countries
has written to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to express concern
about the prosecution of an official from the Compuserve
company which is making makes available Internet access to
German subscribers. The official has been indicted by local
prosecutors.

The letter states the prosecution of the Compuserve manager Mr. Felix
Somm is "ill-advised for both technical and regulatory reasons"
and will "have a harmful impact on Internet users around the world."

The groups said that "the charges against CompuServe will establish a
harmful precedent, and may encourage other governments to censor speech,
limit political debate, control artistic expression, and otherwise deny the
opportunity for individuals to be fully informed."

The organizations signing the letter, which was organized by the
Global Internet Liberty Campaign, include the American Civil Liberties
Union, Arge Daten, Association des Utilisateurs d'Internet, Derechos
Human Rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch,
the Internet Society, and Privacy International.

Felipe Rodriquez, the administrator for XS4ALL, an internet provider
that was recently blocked by German authorities in a separate
matter said, "Is is not possible for a provider to censor the Internet
according to the local law, custom or tradition. The Internet is too
international and too dynamic for that to be possible. Censoring the
Internet has, in most cases, proved to be counterproductive."

Andy Oram, a member of the Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility in the United States, said that he thought the
attempts by German to limit use of the Internet in this manner
were impractical. "Even if an Internet provider is notified that
illegal material is coming from a certain site and cuts off all
access to that site, the publisher of the material can easily find
another site from which to send it."

The groups also noted their support for efforts now underway in
the German parliament to liberalize the use of the Internet.
"We believe that the measure now under consideration to reduce
liability for Internet services will do much to ensure the protection
of personal freedoms in the future," said the organizations.

The Global Internet Liberty Campaign was established at the annual
meeting of the Internet Society in June 1996 in Montreal. It maintains
a web site at www.gilc.org with links to all of the member
organizations.

Last September the group organized a conference in Paris to
educate members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development about the need to develop cryptography polices
that protected privacy and fundamental human rights. Aspects
of the GILC recommendations were incorporated in the OECD
Cryptography Guidelines released earlier this year.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

                 GLOBAL INTERNET LIBERTY CAMPAIGN

                            WWW.GILC.ORG




April 23, 1997

Chancellor Helmut Kohl
Adenauerallee 141
53113 Bonn
GERMANY

Dear Chancellor Kohl,

	The undersigned organizations, members of the Global Internet
Liberty Campaign, are writing to express concern about the prosecution of
Felix Somm, German representative of CompuServe, for the transmission of
allegedly illegal materials over the Internet. The news reports we have
received indicate that Mr. Somm is being prosecuted because Internet users
are able to obtain information on the Internet, by means of the  CompuServe
service, that may be considered illegal in Germany.

	We believe that the prosecution of the CompuServe manager is
ill-advised for both technical and regulatory reasons. We also believe that
this prosecution violates international norms for the protection of speech
and will have a harmful impact on Internet users around the world.

	There are two technical factors that prevent an service provider,
such as CompuServe, from blocking the free flow of information on the
Internet. First, an Internet service provider cannot easily stop the
incoming flow of material. No one can monitor the enormous quantity of
network traffic, which may consist of hundreds of thousands of emails,
newsgroup messages, files, and Web pages that pass through in dozens of
text and binary formats, some of them readable only by particular
proprietary tools. As the European Commission noted recently, "it is
as yet unclear how far it is technically possible to block access to
content once it is identified as illegal. This is a problem which
also affects the degree of liability of the access providers."

 	A second technical problem is that a provider cannot selectively
disable transmission to particular users. Electronic networks typically do
not allow for the identification of particular users or their national
region. Thus, we support CompuServe's claim that it cannot provide material
in one country while blocking it in another; such a distinction would
require an enormous new infrastructure on top of the current network.

	Some networking technologies, such as newsgroups, may allow
individual operators to select some groups or items and block others. But
many technologies, such as the widely used World Wide Web, currently do not
support such selectivity.

	We also oppose the prosecution of CompuServe because of the harmful
impact it will have on the development of new communication services around
the globe. The great appeal of the Internet is its openness. Efforts to
restrict the free flow of information on the Internet, like efforts to
restrict what may be said on a telephone, would place unreasonable burdens
on well established principles of privacy and free speech.

 	We believe that the charges against CompuServe will establish a
harmful precedent, and may encourage other governments to censor speech,
limit political debate, control artistic expression, and otherwise deny the
opportunity for individuals to be fully informed. The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December
10, 1948, states:

       ARTICLE 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
       expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
       interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
       ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

	At the same, we are very much encouraged by the recent developments
in the German parliament concerning new approaches to the regulation of
Internet services. In particular, we believe that the measure now under
consideration to reduce liability for Internet services will do much to
ensure the protection of personal freedoms in the future.

	On behalf of the undersigned organizations and many Internet users
around the world, we ask you to investigate the matter of Mr. Somm and to
lend your support to policies that would promote the development of this
new communications technology in a manner consistent with the aims and
aspirations of democratic countries.

cc:    Dr. Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig.
       Federal Minister of Justice


			Respectfully yours,

                        (Listing of organizations)


ALCEI - Electronic Frontiers Italy [www.nexus.it/alcei]

American Civil Liberties Union [www.aclu.org]

Arge Daten [www.ad.or.at]

Association des Utilisateurs d'Internet [www.aui.fr]

Bevcom Internet Technologies [www.bevcom.org]

C.I.T.A.D.E.L. Electronic Frontier France [www.citadeleff.org]

Committee to Protect Journalists [www.cpj.org]

Computer Professional for Social Responsibility [www.cpsr.org]

Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) [www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm]

Derechos Human Rights [www.derechos.org]

Electronic Frontiers Australia [www.efa.org.au]

Electronic Frontier Canada [www.efc.ca]

Electronic Frontier Foundation [www.eff.org]

EFF-Austin [www.eff-austin.org]

Electronic Privacy Information Center [www.epic.org]

FITUG [www.fitug.de]

Fronteras Electronicas España (FrEE) [www.las.es/free]

Human Rights Watch [www.hrw.org]

Internet Society [www.isoc.org]

NetAction [www.netaction.org]

Peacefire [www.peacefire.org]

Privacy International [www.privacy.org/pi/]

XS4ALL [www.xs4all.nl]


[end]


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