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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 226
Netizens-Digest Monday, December 14 1998 Volume 01 : Number 226
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re:THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Re: [netz] Re:THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Re: [netz] Benton: Agreement on Spam
[netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
Re: [netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
[none]
Re: [netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 19:18:43 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re:THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Interesting that they thought to reprint a 1995 speech...
>The 19th century Spanish philosopher Francisco Goya, better known as the
>great painter, once wrote "The sleep of reason breeds monsters". In our
>own time, with the explosion of new communications technologies, are
>these technologies perhaps breeding new monsters right before our eyes?
I've just started reading John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" which makes
the argument that *reason has to be kept in balance with intuition and 'common
sense' and good will and such; that it is no longer reason's sleeping that we
risk, but its living on No-Doz.
Monsters can come from all directions.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 21:17:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re:THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
>Interesting that they thought to reprint a 1995 speech...
I hadn't noticed that. Good you pointed that out. It is
interesting.
>>The 19th century Spanish philosopher Francisco Goya, better known as the
>>great painter, once wrote "The sleep of reason breeds monsters". In our
>>own time, with the explosion of new communications technologies, are
>>these technologies perhaps breeding new monsters right before our eyes?
>I've just started reading John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards" which
>makes the argument that *reason has to be kept in balance with intuition
>and 'common sense' and good will and such; that it is no longer reason's
>sleeping that we risk, but its living on No-Doz.
But reason in action, debating and being exercised through discussion,
and examination and challenge of opposing viewpoints, that would
seem to be an antedote :-)
>Monsters can come from all directions.
Yupe, for sure.
But also sometime it helps to look at the arrow they point at what
the monsters are out to attack.
That is the sign that it is more than a contest, that we have
made some progress.
Though it is often otherwise very difficult to recognize the advance,
the monsters are good for something :-)
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 00:22:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Netizens mailing list <netizens@menno.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Benton: Agreement on Spam
> | e-mail messages. And both sides have agreed to work toward creation of a
> | nonprofit global opt-out list, supported by marketers and free to
> | consumers, which would allow both business entities and individuals to
> | perform a one-time global choice to reject receiving unsolicited
> | commercial bulk e-mail.
opt-out lists currently are only used in sender-pays methods.
The Direct Marketing Association's opt-out lists for bulk
business mail (postal "junk mail"), and for telephone
solicitation (Mail Preference Service and Telephone
Preference Service, respectively) are both examples of
sender-pays.
opt-in lists should be the requirement for receiver-pays
methods such as e-mail. As of this moment, menno.com
has received 500K of spam over the past two weeks.
Name one reason why I should have to take the time and
energy to opt-out of every list that sends me spam since
I'M PAYING TO RECEIVE IT?
- -tom
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 13:21:33 +0100
From: christian mock <cm@tahina.priv.at>
Subject: [netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
hello netizens,
I don't know if you already heard about the EU's plans to get ISPs to
censor the 'net; it's called "Action Plan on promoting safer use of
the Internet" and evolves around industry "self-control".
http://www2.echo.lu/iap/proposal/en.html
The scary thing about it is in the wording:
"The aim of the Commission proposal is to ensure implementation of
the various European Union initiatives on how to deal with
undesirable content on the Internet."
Who defines "harmful"?
"If the consumers and industry of Europe are to take full advantage
of the opportunities offered by the Information society, these issues
must be addressed."
It's "consumers", as in one-way media.
OK, so the brave austrian ISPs, led by their association, the ISPA
(http://www.ispa.at/) came up with a hotline (http://hotline.ispa.at/)
which you can notify about allegedly illegal content, and their
legal experts looks at the stuff and decides if it's "clearly
illegal" and if it is, they act: if it's WWW or ftp content on an
austrian server, they try to persuade the server owner to remove the
material, if it's in a newsgroup they issue a NoCeM notice that all
their members can execute to remove the material from the news
servers.
They announced their plans to usenet approx. 1 week before the
hotline went in action, and got a lot of negative reactions from the
usenet community; also, they did want to use cancel messages to get
rid of "bad" usenet content, but could be convinced that this was a
Very Bad Idea, so they switched to NoCeMs (cancels are basically
opt-out and would have deleted the postings from many international
servers, NoCeMs (http://www.cm.org/) are opt-in, so the server admin
has to switch on NoCeM processing for every single source).
The ISPA hotline is explicitly only dealing with kiddy porn and nazi
material (as we've got a law here that forbids nazi and neo-nazi
stuff).
Some points that were brought up in discussion:
- -- the ISPA does this to prevent the govt. to introduce new laws that
would (supposedly) be worse.
- -- Big problems could arise for ISPs who don't follow the ISPA
hotline's advisories
- -- It's a slippery slope -- there's more illegal content to be found
than kiddy porn and nazi junk, and as they've started to care about
content (up till now the mantra was "it's only bits, we don't care
about the content") they (and everybody running an internet server,
ISP or not) could be held liable for other illegal content, as
they're clearly acting on content.
And, as many people said, this is only the start. Yesterday AON (an
ISP owned by the ex-monopolist austrian PTT and the still-monopolist
austrian TV- and radio company ORF, http://www.aon.at/) announced
that they're going one step further:
http://derstandard.at/aktuell/article_web.asp?14108
(this may be a temporary URL; the translation is mine)
<QUOTE>
Code of conduct against extremism and pornography
Vienna -- As one of the first ISPs in Austria, A-Online sets
activities against illegal content of the Internet. At the moment all
A-Online customer's Internet pages are examined. Pages which spread
illegal pornography, right- or left extremist thoughts ["Gedankengut"]
or other unlawful content will be closed and have to be removed. [...]
The action [...] addresses illegal pornography (child pornography
etc.), right and left extremist thoughts, racism, drugs and
degradation of religious doctrines ["Herabwuerdigung religioeser
Lehren"]. Every A-Online customer will sign a corresponding code of
conduct with his contract, that is targetted against this kind of
content. "The aim of A-Online is by no means censorship. We want to
protect the feeblest members of society, especially children. Our
offensive therefore is not targeted at all erotic content of the
Internet, but against content which is illegal", says managing
director Dieter Haacker.
A-Online's news server is also being examined. Newsgroup which don't
comply with law or the A-Online code of conduct are to be blocked or
closed. [...]
</QUOTE>
So, now we've gone from clearly illegal content (i.e. kiddy porn and
nazi junk) to just about anything that the ISP doesn't like -- while
there are some illegal forms of pornography (e.g. involving homosexual
activities, violence and animals), and "Herabwuerdigung religioeser
Lehren" is also illegal (two comedy makers lost in court about this
this year), "right and left extremism" leaves a lot of room for legal
free speech, and IIRC information about drugs is also not illegal.
Also note the "not targeted at all erotic content", which probably is
to say "hey, wankers, you can stay with us and still get your pr0n --
after all, it sells".
quod erat demonstrandum.
cm.
- --
christian mock @ home in vienna, austria
sind fremdcancels strafbar? -> http://www.tahina.priv.at/bincancel/
Those silly RFCs are all that separate us from the animals!
-- Kevin Rodgers in a.r.e
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 11:12:27 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: Re: [netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
Amended proposal for a
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND
COUNCIL DECISION
[The original draft is given first; amendments in square brackets.]
The aim of the Commission proposal is to ensure implementation of the various
European Union initiatives on how to deal with undesirable content on the
Internet. The proposal is a financial plan designed to support non-regulatory
initiatives for content control.
[The proposal provides a'mandate' for site registration, ID checking, referral-
path checking, etc; that is, *user control*.]
It is important to emphasise that the vast majority of content poses
absolutely no problem.
[The vast majority of content is commercial.]
However the Internet can be used for illegal activities and distribution of
illegal content.
[The net can be used for citizen action and gift economy]
Parents and teachers are concerned at the availability of content, which could
be harmful for children.
[Industry is concerned at the availability of content which could discourage
use of the Net for retail trade.]
If the consumers and industry of Europe are to take full advantage of the
opportunities offered by the Information society, these issues must be
addressed.
[Indeed.]
[For instance, what once read:
"(2) Whereas however, the amount of harmful and illegal content carried over
the Internet, while limited, can seriously hamper the development of the
emerging Internet industry and thus, adversely affect the set-up of the
necessary favourable environment for initiatives and undertakings to flourish;"
is now:
" (2) Whereas however, the amount of harmful and illegal content carried over
the Internet, while limited, can damage the mental health, safety and economic
interests of consumers and thus, adversely affect the set-up of the necessary
favourable environment for promoting and respecting ethical standards;
"(2a) Whereas illegal and harmful content on the Internet can relate to a very
wide range of issues: national security, the protection of minors, protection
of human dignity, financial security, data protection and the protection of
privacy, reputation, public health and intellectual property;"
- -- that is, the purpose is still to promote net industry, only rephrased to
appeal to exaggerated public concerns for 'mental health.'
Again, the draft
" (3) Whereas it is essential, in order to ensure the full potential of the
Internet industry, that a safe environment for its use be created by combating
illegal use of the technical possibilities of the Internet in particular for
offences against children;"
has been changed:
" (3) Whereas it is essential, in order to ensure the full potential of the
Internet industry, that a safer environment for its use be created by combating
illegal use of the technical possibilities of the Internet in particular, for
offences against children and **trafficking in human beings;**"
- -- this, in a 'financial instrument,' not legislation! Is it to distract
attention from *commercially profitable* offences against children such as invasion of privacy?]
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 11:36:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Hauben <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [none]
From: "Dr Louis Arnoux." <lara@indranet.co.nz>
Subject: IndraNet
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:37:47 +1300
Hi,
An email message to this list was rejected because it was from a non subscriber.
The message appeared to be an unsollicited advertisement so I sent the following
message to the sender:
> Hi,
> I received the attached email message on a mailing list to which I subscribe.
> It is an obvious spam and is in any case inappropriate for this list.
>
> The Net is too important a communications advance to allow such unsolicited
> and unwanted abuse of the wonderful email system. Please take action to
> educate your user to his or her abusive practice and to insure that it
> not happen again.
> Thanks.
I got the following response. I am posting it to the list for your comments or
attention.
Thanks.
Jay
Dear Correspondent,
=20
You complained about "abusive mail" re our sending a copy of our press =
release about our technology. This was not intended as "abusive mail". =
We sent it because we thought it would be of interest to the Netizen =
Association. Our work is aimed at facilitating the development of an =
alternative mode of telecommunication and networking using computerised =
wireless high bandwidth mesh networks. Whe fully developed our system =
will be extremely low cost relative to present telecom costs. One of our =
objectives is to give people a means of developing independent telecom =
networks, and to contribute to the development of communities in =
"cyberspace". Our ethos appear to us as fairly allied to some of the =
material we have found in the Netizen Association web material.
You might want to visit our web site to understand better what I mean: =
http://indranet.co.nz=20
=20
I hope this clarify the matter :-),
Yours sincerely
Dr Louis Arnoux.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 11:40:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] censorship in austria (and the EU)
christian mock <cm@tahina.priv.at> wrote:
>hello netizens,
>I don't know if you already heard about the EU's plans to get ISPs to
>censor the 'net; it's called "Action Plan on promoting safer use of
>the Internet" and evolves around industry "self-control".
>http://www2.echo.lu/iap/proposal/en.html
Hi Christian
Good you are on the Netizens list. Christian and I met when I visited
Vienna in November and it was fun talking for hours even though
we had lots of differences, we could talk about them and learn
from them and then figure out what the bigger issues were behind
them.
How interesting that not only are we faced with
"self-control" for industry in the battle over the essential
functions of the Internet, but you are pointing out where this
is also the plan with regard to other aspects of EU policy
regarding the Internet.
So the way we take on and find a way to make an impact on the
battle over the controlling funcitons, will also give us
a handle on how to fight these more local (hard to see the
EU as local, but compared with the reach of the Internet
around the world, guess it is) policy decisions.
The problem I see with this self-control for industry is
that it leaves the public of the EU and the diverse
set of users on diverse set of networks that make up the
Internet out of the considerations.
It really seems to mean that the decisions will all be made
in the unregulated self-interest of industry.
>The scary thing about it is in the wording:
>"The aim of the Commission proposal is to ensure implementation of
>the various European Union initiatives on how to deal with
>undesirable content on the Internet."
>Who defines "harmful"?
>"If the consumers and industry of Europe are to take full advantage
>of the opportunities offered by the Information society, these issues
>must be addressed."
>It's "consumers", as in one-way media.
And isn't that its purpose perhaps, to change the Internet into
a single Net. No more diverse networks and diverse activity
on the networks, but one central network controlled at the
center.
I feel that understanding the nature of the Internet and
how it makes it possible to communicate across differences
will be what will help us to challenge such efforts to change
the basic nature of the Internet.
My testimony to Congress on Oct. 7 1998 took up some of this.
But I have been trying to figure out how the Internet faciliates
the communication across the differences and feel there will
be clues to how to fight against these efforts to change the
fundamental nature of the Internet.
Even more importantly, things I have read point out that there
there is a need to deal with who and how are decisions made
regarding the Internet. Such policy decisions from the EU
or from the U.S. government, in the recent battles over
who will control the essential functions of the Internet,
are not the way to deal with decision making. We need a way
to impact on these policy processes.
My sense is that the more we understand about the nature
of the Internet and how it facilitates communication,
the more we will be able to figure out the problem of how
to influence such policy decisions of governments,
multinational entities like the EU, etc.
So I have been working on trying to understand the period
of developing tcp/ip 1972-1983. By the way tcp/ip, originally
known as tcp was first described in 1973 - so 1998
is its 25th anniversary :-)
Interesting that we are having such battles on its 25th
anniversary.
And interesting paper about the development of the Internet
is up at the ISOC site. The paper is a brief history and
is by Barry Leinert.
The ISOC (Internet Society) site is http://www.isoc.org/
Let me know if you need a better URL and I'll find it.
>OK, so the brave austrian ISPs, led by their association, the ISPA
>(http://www.ispa.at/) came up with a hotline (http://hotline.ispa.at/)
> which you can notify about allegedly illegal content, and their
>legal experts looks at the stuff and decides if it's "clearly
>illegal" and if it is, they act: if it's WWW or ftp content on an
>austrian server, they try to persuade the server owner to remove the
>material, if it's in a newsgroup they issue a NoCeM notice that all
>their members can execute to remove the material from the news
>servers.
So they made the decision, without any consultation of users?
>They announced their plans to usenet approx. 1 week before the
>hotline went in action, and got a lot of negative reactions from the
>usenet community; also, they did want to use cancel messages to get
>rid of "bad" usenet content, but could be convinced that this was a
>Very Bad Idea, so they switched to NoCeMs (cancels are basically
>opt-out and would have deleted the postings from many international
>servers, NoCeMs (http://www.cm.org/) are opt-in, so the server admin
>has to switch on NoCeM processing for every single source).
What is the significance of having to switch on NoCeM processing
for every single source?
>The ISPA hotline is explicitly only dealing with kiddy porn and nazi
>material (as we've got a law here that forbids nazi and neo-nazi
>stuff).
>Some points that were brought up in discussion:
>-- the ISPA does this to prevent the govt. to introduce new laws that
>would (supposedly) be worse.
But they are doing it without any discussion of the population
or users, so the implications of it aren't considered.
>-- Big problems could arise for ISPs who don't follow the ISPA
>hotline's advisories
Interesting, so that ISPs are being essentially forced to follow
this?
>-- It's a slippery slope -- there's more illegal content to be found
>than kiddy porn and nazi junk, and as they've started to care about
>content (up till now the mantra was "it's only bits, we don't care
>about the content") they (and everybody running an internet server,
>ISP or not) could be held liable for other illegal content, as
>they're clearly acting on content.
But the AUP's let folks act on content, but in a way that supported
constructive content, and helped to populate the Internet with
good contributions. Are there any lessons from those developments?
>And, as many people said, this is only the start. Yesterday AON (an
>>ISP owned by the ex-monopolist austrian PTT and the still-monopolist
>austrian TV- and radio company ORF, http://www.aon.at/) announced
>that they're going one step further:
I realize you feel that government entities are monopolists, but in
the U.S. at least the telephone company was regulated before the
breakup, and thus it made service available to all.
And it also had to put in the most advanced technology and so
we had a good telephone system. The problem that I see is the
regulation, i.e. the need for good regulation.
I was surprised to learn that the Austrian telephone company
was being presented as the problem was monopoly, rather than
the problem was that the regulation disn't require the most
advanced technoloyg.
>http://derstandard.at/aktuell/article_web.asp?14108
>(this may be a temporary URL; the translation is mine)
><QUOTE>
>Code of conduct against extremism and pornography
>Vienna -- As one of the first ISPs in Austria, A-Online sets
>activities against illegal content of the Internet. At the moment all
>A-Online customer's Internet pages are examined. Pages which spread
>illegal pornography, right- or left extremist thoughts ["Gedankengut"]
>or other unlawful content will be closed and have to be removed. [...]
How will they determine extremist thoughts?
You might want to look at the decision in the case against
the Communications Decency Act in the U.S. - the federal court
decision as it establshed a set of principles to fight against
what you describe is happening.
Judge Dalzell's opinion is particularly important.
In effect it clarified that adults have to have the right to discuss,
and shouldn't be treated in a way that what they say is limited
because of what children might be encouraged to see.
That this is using standards of what is appropriate for children
to limit the rights of adults.
>The action [...] addresses illegal pornography (child pornography
>>etc.), right and left extremist thoughts, racism, drugs and
>degradation of religious doctrines ["Herabwuerdigung religioeser
>Lehren"]. Every A-Online customer will sign a corresponding code of
>conduct with his contract, that is targetted against this kind of
>content. "The aim of A-Online is by no means censorship. We want to
>protect the feeblest members of society, especially children. Our
>offensive therefore is not targeted at all erotic content of the
>Internet, but against content which is illegal", says managing
>director Dieter Haacker.
>A-Online's news server is also being examined. Newsgroup which don't
>comply with law or the A-Online code of conduct are to be blocked or
>closed. [...]
></QUOTE>
Who makes the decision? On what basis?
>So, now we've gone from clearly illegal content (i.e. kiddy porn and
>nazi junk) to just about anything that the ISP doesn't like -- while
>there are some illegal forms of pornography (e.g. involving homosexual
>activities, violence and animals), and "Herabwuerdigung religioeser
>Lehren" is also illegal (two comedy makers lost in court about this
>this year), "right and left extremism" leaves a lot of room for legal
>free speech, and IIRC information about drugs is also not illegal.
The later is what the U.S. Federal District Court and also Supreme
court spoke to as not being consitutional in the U.S.
That the government had to protect the autonomy of the average
people on the Internet, not take away their autonomy.
Has there been much discussion among people on Usenet in Austrial
about this?
>cm.
Any chance the U.S. court decisions in the CDA case will be helpful
to you in this?
What is the respnose of people to it all?
- --
>christian mock @ home in vienna, austria
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #226
******************************
