Munich, The Censors' Convention 284
A number of articles have appeared in the online press about Munich. Half of them are just rehashes of press releases - nothing very useful there. Some of them are fairly in-depth (we think CNET and the NY Times had the best coverage), but none of them really give you the big picture. We're going to try to. Let us know how we do.
The first thing that the press is missing is that there are (well, were) two meetings in Munich, not one. The first is the one you heard about: a meeting called by the Bertelsmann Foundation, part of the huge Bertelsmann publishing empire, which sponsored the Internet Content Summit. They're getting together to have a little feel-good session about "self-regulation" of internet content. By self-regulation they don't mean that end-users regulate their own behavior; they mean that ISPs regulate users instead of government doing so directly. Users will still be regulated, of course. And the regulation will be driven by what the national government wants. It's just that government will lay their heavy hands upon the ISPs, and the ISPs will act as the enforcers rather than law enforcement. Think of it as a distributed system - government assumes the role of a second-line rather than first-line manager. At a previous internet content summit, this type of regulation was described as "soft law" versus "hard law", and we think that's a good way to think about it. They are not talking about voluntary, individual actions of corporations - they are talking about imposing laws and restraints on the citizenry through another means. Self-regulation = soft law, but law nonetheless.
The first meeting is interesting for a number of reasons, but not terribly ominous - the people meeting were not previously working together, and all that will come out of it is thoughts and ideas. The second meeting is rather more dangerous.
The second meeting, scheduled in conjunction with the first, was of the principals of INCORE, Internet Content Rating for Europe. This group consists of a number of European corporations and protect-the-children groups and their sole goal is to establish a single rating system for use across Europe (they're also coordinating with Australia). Of course, the members of this group overlap significantly with the first - for example, Jens Waltermann, director of the Bertelsmann Foundation and sponsor of the first meeting, is also one of the prime movers in INCORE - which ought to tell you why the Bertelsmann conference is so slanted towards ratings systems as the sole means of protecting the children.
But why is this going forward? As at least one slashdot poster pointed out in the discussions of last week's article, rating systems have been discussed before, and haven't come to anything yet.
What happened is the government (the European Commission, in this case) decided to get serious. They buckled down, and at the end of 1998, allocated funds to be spent on the development of a global rating system. About $11 million is allocated to be spent on developing this system, so the corporate participants can be reasonably assured of being reimbursed for all their plane fares and hotel costs. (Question: if it's so voluntary, how come the government is paying people to develop it?)
The European Commission's plan runs from January 1999 to December 2002, four years. 1999 is scheduled for development and meetings. 2000 is scheduled for rollout and beta testing. 2001 and 2002 are allocated for the encouragement process and tweaking - making sure everyone is toeing the line. There's plenty of time allocated because it's important to make sure that the resulting rating system aligns with national laws - for instance, since Germany outlaws hate speech, one of the rating categories will involve hate speech, and Germany will outlaw the transmission of any content rated in this category into the country. Laws can be "hung" off the rating categories, if they're set up properly.
The rating system will be based off the American Recreational Software Advisory Council's system, that they originally developed for video games and then, when threatened by Congress with the CDA, transformed for internet content. (The funny thing is, for the first year that RSACi was being promoted for use on webpages, it still had all the original references to video games. Pretty sad.) RSAC was recently folded into the Internet Content Rating Association, basically so they can revamp the RSACi system and submit it to the European Commission for approval and funding. Who is the chairman of ICRA's board of directors? Jens Waltermann again. Are you beginning to see a pattern?
Civil liberties groups world-wide have finally recognized the threat that government-mandated rating systems pose to the internet. The ACLU was the first major group to speak out against them, in their 1997 paper Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?. But for this Munich conference, the chorus was loud and close to unanimous - the Global Internet Liberty Coalition condemned it, the ACLU condemned it, Electronic Frontiers Australia condemned it, Internet Freedom (UK civil liberties group) condemned it.
Several civil liberties groups managed to wrangle themselves invitations to the conference. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is attending and distributing a book free of charge to all participants (besides the attack on free speech, EPIC is irritated because the European Commission has also recommended that online anonymity be strictly prohibited for all European Union residents - after all, if they're anonymous, it's harder to make them obey the law). Nadine Strossen of the ACLU published the statement she's making to the Conference, harshly opposing the labeling requirements; even Esther Dyson, a tremendous supporter of rating systems, expressed her unease at the slant of the conference.
Strossen's comments above neatly summarize the civil liberties community's objections to so-called self-rating systems, and we urge all readers to take a look at that link above. She makes several points:
- Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored
- Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly
- Conversation Can't Be Rated
- Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation
- Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers
Strossen is far more eloquent than we are, and she makes the points extremely well. Take a look, it's worth your time.
But back to the conference. The main document to come out of the conference is their Memorandum on Self-Regulation (538K), released yesterday. A number of "internet experts" contributed to the report - mostly these same people we've been seeing, representatives of the companies that want the Net to be kid-friendly (increase profits!) and protect-the-children groups from throughout Europe, and representatives from various governmental agencies. They lay out their censorship proposal in some detail. The basics are laid out in a single phrase: "Content providers worldwide must be mobilized to label their content...".
Prepare to get mobilized.
"It is in the best interest of industry," they say, to take the steps necessary to "enhance consumer confidence" and meet "business objectives." The suits invited must all have nodded their heads to this one: if only they could get the obnoxious people off the net, then all the soccer moms and grandpas would feel safe enough to fire up a browser and finally type in their credit card numbers.
So, problem: naughty stuff on the net. Answer? Open source! <spit>
On p. 59 of the 60-page memo is a neat diagram that looks almost like an API to a multi-layer code library. Except in this case, the bottom slice is the underlying technology of censorship (PICS), and the top slice is the user's experience of censorship (at the browser).
Sitting on top of PICS is Layer 1, in which the content creators - that's you, me, and everyone else who makes anything public on the internet - label our data with a "basic vocabulary" of keywords. If we write porn, we call it porn. Simple enough so far?
Next comes Layer 2, which is where the fun stuff starts to happen. Here, third parties can invent "template profiles." These combine the keywords in interesting ways. The idea is that in one country, the ratings systems will typically rate porn as bad but violence as OK; in another, perhaps the opposite; someone else will invent a profile for use in schools that blocks everything noneducational; a profile for your company's router might block all sports but let profanity through; a national profile for Australia might block all sex but let stupid political grandstanding through; and so on.
These template profiles should be, according to Bertelsmann, "open source."
How are they going to do this? They can't rely on a NetNanny or SurfWatch to rate the net: censorware has been a dismal failure in practice, the software just doesn't work because there's too much of the net and too few censorware employees to evaluate it all.
What they need instead is for you, the author, to do their work for them. Remember that "basic vocabulary" of keywords? It turns out you're not just going to pick porn vs. non-porn. Oh no. After all, you have to provide enough information for the profiles to work with.
That means you're going to be rating everything you publish according to:
"e.g.: gratuitous violence,
frontal nudity,
explicit sexual acts,
crude language,
vulgar language,
sports,
extreme hate speech,
arts,
aggressive violence,
death to humans,
medicine,
non-explicit sexual acts,
strong language,
history, ..."
E.g.? E.g.!? There's more?
Well, there has to be more. In fact, Bertelsmann has only scratched the surface. In order for there to be enough "template profiles" to be worth mentioning, the variety of keywords has to be extreme.
Be ready to run down a checklist for everything you write and decide whether it contains gratuitous or non-gratuitous violence, explicit or non-explicit sex acts. Please rate from 1 to 10 how much art and history was in that last post of yours. Don't think you'll have a choice about doing it - your ISP will be enforcing it upon you, as a condition of service.
And the "template profiles" that are provided for the end user? These profiles are just simple sets that group the predefined keywords together. If I'm the CEO of NetSitterPatrol, I group keywords 1, 3, 5, and 12 together and call it "NetSitterPatrol Profile."
And if I'm a national government that's cracking down on porn, violence, hate speech, or vulgar language (your government wouldn't do anything like that, would it?), I'll just add the keywords for indecency, abortion information, hate speech, racism, or whatever else I want to censor, and give the list to the backbone providers in my country to filter out and protect the delicate citizens. Hey look, I'm an open source programmer!
by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy
It's pretty simple... (Score:1)
Fascism: the New World Order.
ps: Tipper Gore is very much in favor of this kind of labelling... I know who I'm not voting for in the year 2000 elections.
Re:very true and furthermore (Score:1)
Well, there's the octogenerian Lady Birdwood in the UK -- see 1/4 way down this [tau.ac.il] page: The British-Israel World Federation bookshop in Sydney increased stocks of Holocaust denial material and anti-Semitic literature and became more overtly concerned about "the Jews." It continued to sell The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Longest Hatred: An Examination of Anti-gentilism (produced by the racist dowager, Lady Birdwood of London) and Holocaust denial material from the Institute for Historical Review, as well as a number of other Identity, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel books and magazines.
idea: go at it from the other direction (Score:1)
xhornet@hotmail.com [mailto]
(I'm not the only one that thinks the concept of 'intellectual property' is completely bloody ridiculous, am I?)
Re:Some background information in a long screed (Score:1)
It's a link to a transcript from the german tv-magazine Monitor.
(Babel Fish is your friend)
Re:But the Brits don't like Brussels (Score:1)
Bertelsmann Nazi Link URLs (Score:1)
http://www.foxmarketwire.com/wires/1216/f_ap_1216
http://www.thenation.com/1998/issue/981228/1228fi
http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/books/b910.htm
The objective is self-censorship (Score:2)
Together, The People are far more powerful than their government. But we don't unite against the government, so we get dominated. It's exactly the same dynamic that allows a schoolyard bully to dominate a hundred kids each of whom is only slightly smaller than himself.
Soft Regulation Can be Dangerous (Score:3)
Methods of "soft-regulation" can be more dangerous than direct!
Re:OK guys, now if we just club together... (Score:1)
The one problem that I see with this is that they may not have to. Note that this is a "self-policing" system... or, more accurately, a system policed by the next layer up. So your ISP is required to police you, and, presumably, their ISP is required to police them, and so on up the chain until you get to the big backbone networks that don't have providers, just peers. These are few enough that the government can effectively put pressure on them, and in turn make them put pressure on their clients, and so on back down the chain, until your ISP tells you to rate your stuff correctly, or you'll get booted, because they'd rather lose you than lose their whole business, because their ISP has just told them the same thing...
The guys who own the wire have the real power here, so they're the ones that need to be brought into line for the government to enforce this. Unfortunately, it may just be practical for them to do so. You think Sprint is going to go head-to-head with the Feds over what J. Random Webmaster puts on his home page?
Re:Boycott Bertelsman (Score:1)
But that won't be of too much use since they only make up a small portion of the European Parliament.:-(
The big people's parties (conservatives and social-democrates) are very likely for censoring and together hold more then 2/3 of the seats.
Sebastian
Result unpredictable, but good approach anyway (Score:1)
Yes, what you propose is to me the natural way of dealing with the problem, and it should probably slow down the move towards the abyss enough to justify calling it an effective halt. However, don't assume that your opponents will behave as predicted at every turn. Just stay informed about their moves, and change your response accordingly.
I don't buy the argument that erring on the safe side of the line (i.e. rating a picture of a naked CPU board as hard-core pornography) would automatically be declared illegal, as you can come up with a number of plausible defenses for this. Since the effect would theoretically be to prevent minors from seeing your CPU board, the harm done to them is essentially nil. As a safety measure, put the extreme rating in your HTML editor document template, and add a note in the documentation that the user is supposed to adjust the rating according to their content after they have finished it, meaning that most users won't even care what the rating says unless they have filters enabled in their own browsers!
The only thing harmed will be the rating system itself. It will be fun watching the censors argue that your prudent act of self-censorship amounts to legal obstruction, and that kids may be harmed by not seeing your harmless CPU boards!
But if they insist that your content must match your rating, by all means, go ahead and add such content, just for the sake of the censors. If they complain about that too, ask them for specific guidance about how to rate each and everyone of your pages. Ultimately, they will have to do the rating themselves and place it with the recipient, an option they have had all the time. It's their job anyway; you shouldn't be forced to do it for them.
However, first we need to wait for the initial rating system becoming law (and you may as well fight it in other ways). No need to disclose your intented tactics to the opposite side in advance. Let them bear the full financial burden of introducing a useless law, to teach them a lesson.
Outlawing sheer creativity is doomed to fail.
Keywords? (Score:2)
Either that, or it will be unenforceable, like UNISYS and their vague and ever-changing patent claims.
A call to arms (Score:1)
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Re:Freedom through technology (Score:1)
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Re:Freedom through technology (Score:1)
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Freedom through technology (Score:3)
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Re:Concede the censorship & build parallel net... (Score:2)
So create your free network at the DNS level -- make a new top-level domain, *.free or *.foo or something. Get users to add your root nameserver to their resolver configuration, or better yet, get various distributors of nameservers (e.g. the Debian package maintainer for BIND) to add it to their default set of root nameservers. (Just don't be an idiot like Mr. AlterNIC did, trying to crack into the "official" DNS.) DNS is just a distributed database system, so nobody can force people to use a particular set of nameservers
Use Secure DNS for key exchange, thus enabling IPSec for opportunistic end-to-end encryption. (IPSec support is a mandatory part of the IPv6 standard...) Use DNS to direct people's connections to anonymizing proxies, so people's own computers don't ever see the IP addresses of the Web servers or other facilities they're accessing.
Most likely someone will come along and try to make it illegal to distribute BIND or a resolver with "unofficial" root nameservers in its config
Re:Some background information in a long screed (Score:1)
I have been in touch with Jens Waltermann of Bertelsmann and it is his assertion that "Bertelsmann was closed down by the Nazi's in WWII and anything but a supporter of the regime" and "Reinhard Mohn, once owner of Bertelsmann, was criticised in Germany for instituting one of the first systems to have workers participate in the company both financially and in management".
Can someone provide an authorative online reference to substantiate one or the other of these two different stories we are getting here?
Re:Tipper = Evil (Score:1)
Bush or Gore
(but we could talk about Bradley!)
Re:OK guys, now if we just club together... (Score:2)
Just dump this hidden in your web page...
gratuitous violence,
frontal nudity,
explicit sexual acts,
crude language,
vulgar language,
sports,
extreme hate speech,
arts,
aggressive violence,
death to humans,
medicine,
non-explicit sexual acts,
strong language,
history
Then put this in for funny
Exposed buttocks of zombies or Frankenstein's monster
Exposed buttocks of Bart Simpson or Elmer Fudd
Exposed buttocks of early cave men
Exposed buttocks of Klingon's or Romulins (Star Trek)
Exposed buttocks of Data (Star Trek)
Exposed buttocks of male or female Human Beings
Exposed breast or breasts of any of the above who are female
Exposed genitalia of any of the above. Examples of what Nudity is NOT:
Exposed buttocks of Chewbacca (Star Wars)
Exposed buttocks of C3P0 (Star Wars)
Exposed buttocks of ape-like, alien creatures when it is clear that their normal appearance is unclothed
Exposed buttocks of Rob Malda
How to fight back... (Score:1)
We could rate all of our content to be most extreme, even if it's a FAQ or HOWTO, so volunatry ratings would turn out to be useless. To make sure mandatory ratings wouldn't work, either, we could put extreme information into our FAQ's and HOWTO's. Add pornography, violence, hate-speech and explain why...
You don't have to support that additional content, basically the censorship efforts forced you to add it, so explain that to your audience to raise awareness. It's better to start early, before it's too late, while there still is an audience. Okay, I admit this seems a bit extreme, but it's appropriate to the extreme threat of censorship that's facing The Net As We Know It. The Internet is something special, we can't let any authorities ruin it, that loss of freedom would be far worse for our children than any unrated content could ever be...
Let's do it for freedom, the kids, and us too!!
Keyword ratings don't work (Score:5)
If you don't permit enough detail, then things which shouldn't get through do.
For a set of good examples of this, using RSAC to prove the point, see here [usyd.edu.au], but specifically this link [mrlizard.com], which rates both Alex's Haley's Roots and a pornographic, racist novel using RSACi, and finds that they both have to be given almost the same rating.
Bradley
Re:OK guys, now if we just club together... (Score:2)
I would say it may be impossible to rate politically correct or acceptible speech. What was considered offensive speech in the 60's in now considered politically correct. For example, my mom was kicked out of church in 1968 when she marched in the civil rights parades in Southern California. What she did back then was considered very inappropriate and now is considered very commendable. If people had not participated in that civil disobediance back then, there might be many of a darker skin color riding the back of the bus today.
It is dangerous for the government to rate speech, such as what we have on the internet. What may be acceptible now may be the same ten years from now. Limiting what we say can cause disorder and war, not protect our children.
These people who wish to rate our speech on a coercive basis are very dangerous if not greedy.
Re:What can we do? (Score:1)
Re:Damned if we do, damned if we don't. (Score:1)
What is needed is a technical solution to this, and the furor over "protect the children" will die down. If people quit getting porn shoved in their faces, they're happy. They don't care if it's a technical solution or an international treaty enforced by men in black helicopters, they just want it.
--Dan
Re:Important not to be too pessimistic (Score:1)
Of course, you realize that to many of the bible-thumping "won't someone think of the children!" proto-Mrs. Flanders types -- such a label would be a positive thing, not a negative thing. Most of these people are used to the church dictating what to think, what to read, what to say, what to believe, the whole nine yards. So if the minister gets up at the front and says that so-and-so is going to tame those lawless infidels out there on the internet, Mrs. Flanders will trip over herself to vote for them -- not against.
(Of course, I'll be the first to admit that this is a grossly unfair sweeping generalization.)
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Re:OK guys, now if we just club together... (Score:1)
In about 3 seconds flat you get into the same situation as present British 'indecency' laws, where learned people get to sit about for months on end debating what 'extreme hate speech' really means.
And under whose laws would it be illegal?
Is one country really going to care that much about the other country's 'evil' ratings? About as much as US porn sites currently desperately try to stop those in less, erm, enlightened communities from giving them money even though it is against the local laws, I suspect.
Re:Concede the censorship & build parallel net... (Score:1)
Re:Drop it on the software developers. (Score:1)
THe only reason no one has put these conservative freaks out of their misery is they're not
worth the bullet, and they do have a point from time to time.
They are worth the bullet.
Re:Freedom through technology (Score:1)
EjB
The sad thing... (Score:1)
Ratings and Search Engines (Score:1)
The system that is being proposed seems to be a way for people to rate their sites, so as to describe their content, but only in terms of subjects that people might find offensive.
This doesn't go far enough - a *really* useful system would have a standard set of classifications for a *vast range* of subjects. - it'd make web searching so much easier - a bit like Yahoo! but with a much larger search space, as it'd be robot-generated. Those who would wish to filter content could do so by cutting off various branches of the content description tree. Searching for things could also become a lot easier - with a standard description system you wouldn't get the vast number of incorrect matches due to homonyms.
The problem with this is deciding how to structure the content description tree - there's a lot of decisions to be made which might not go down well with some people.
thoughts?
Tim
Re:An idea whose time has come: eBounty (Score:1)
Of course eBounty(tm) would use SSL and Stronghold with some nice anon fullfillment system for the "participants".
50 qutaloos on the head of the New Riech Marshal.
Fuck the fucking fuckers, fucking party is fucked (Score:1)
We havent fucking learned dick about this shit in the last 1000 years? Tiem to stand up and lift one finger in the air and the other on pen and say "You want my fucking tax money, then fucking blow me and your censorshit crap you god damn over blown american euro ausy whatever mother fucking fucker"
Or words to that intent.
Long live eBounty
Re:Keyword ratings don't work (Score:1)
But certainly there's no way in the world Stormfront or kkk.com is going to accurately rate itself for hate speech. They will say that hate speech is a subjective classification, and I daresay they'll be right. Self-rating totally falls apart when you're desperate to get your message through.
The real weak link in the chain is ISPs as enforcers. How many ISPs do you know who'd relish that role? They're not going to do anything until forced, and in that case we're back to centralized government enforcement again. I don't think it will work - but it will be horribly politicised.
If this system actually does wind up working, I see a lot of people moving to Anguillia to express their opinions. The more the mainstream world cracks down on stuff like this, the more of a market there will be for a "free for all". Anguilla and other Carribean countries might be safe havens for free speech, in the same way they are safe havens for money today.
D
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anon.penet.fi (Score:1)
It was taken down - ironically enough, not by the government, but by the Church of Scientology. But the fact that it was taken down is disturbing to anyone who wants to form or count on a similar service.
D
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Misinformation (Score:1)
Here's an interesting experiment: Search for the same keywords with AltaVista's "Family Filter" on and see what happens. If the filter works like other filters, it will censor some of the "good" material you're trying to find, and let through much of the "bad" material, too. I don't think any form of ratings are going to change that.
D
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Re:Nadine Strossen makes bad arguments... (Score:1)
The problem with mandatory ratings is that it makes their jobs easier, and it also puts the censorship weapon in the hands of whatever governments want to use it. Ours, for example - consider the number of Internet censorship proposals that have appeared in Congress.
The European Community plans to allow each government to create a "template" for censorship - Germany's, for instance, will forbid "Hate Speech".
It's a bad proposal, and while I'm not sure if it would work (who the heck would call what they write "Hate Speech"?), I'm inclined to nip it in the bud.
D
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Re:Nadine Strossen makes good arguments... (Score:1)
Users will be able to see what they wish?
Tell that to Germans (who won't be able to view "hate speech") or Australians (who won't be able to view anything that the Australia Broadcasting Authority turns its nose up at).
Jay (=
Re:Why the government preferrs "Self Regulation" (Score:1)
I think there will be a division in the Internet of the future.
Which would be a bad thing; Jakob Neilsen's article on "Metcalfe's law in Reverse" [useit.com] suggests "the value of partitioning a network into N isolated components is 1/N'th the value of the original network."
You'll have the current structure, which will consist of homogenized "Appropriate for viewers of all ages" tripe and dominated by commercial entities. Then you'll have an underground Internet which will be built by people who have left all that behind in disgust.
Which, unfortunately, won't be as many people as we hope.
This Internet will either run on top of the current internet in the form of an invitation-only VPN (Quite feasible with the higher speed lines becoming available) or done with dial-up hardware of various sorts (Possibly even store-and-forward only.) Being effectively a private entity, it will be beyond regulation of the ISP's.
I see two problems with this:
Here's more of the "chilling effect on free speech" at work; since many people want to reach the widest possible audience, they will elect to rate their sites -- and therefore, want to strive for that PG rating to get past all of the filters.
Jay (=
History Repeating Itself (Score:1)
This whole thing reminds of the period when the printing press was invented and the Church was none too happy about it. Just look what happened once information was available that didn't have to be obtained from an elite group (the Church hierarchy and their scribes).
Modern day governments, like the medieval churchs, seem to be clinging to the notion that they, and only they, are the one true source of information and power. The Internet threatens their position of authority. You can attempt to cloak it in ``we're protecting children'' but, IMHO, what's happening is an attempt to diminish the utility of the Internet by assorted govts who fear what it brings.
Re:You gotta do something (Score:1)
It's been said before but I'll repeat it again... just for you.
If one is forced to rate their speech before posting it it will have a chilling effect (Gawd, I've always hated that term but it's so appropriate here) on any speech. Just try it yourself: How often would you post a comment on a website if you had rate it before clicking on ``Submit''? How often would you voice an opinion in public if you had to preceed it with a rating or a disclaimer? Gotten tired of doing that yet? I'll bet you have. Guess what! Your speech is now censored. That fact that you've done it yourself instead of some faceless bureaucrat or librarian is meaningless. You're now censored and your speech ain't so free anymore is it?
You cannot keep children from seeing anything that they decide they want to see. You cannot stop children from smoking cigarettes or drinking if they want to. And there are already U.S. laws that purport to stop that from happening. Just what makes you think that something that filters out ``inappropriate'' Internet content, a definition that differs from household to household, will stop them from seeing whatever it is that they want to see?
Get your head out of the sand, go to the library, and read a bit about what happened when Prohibition was foisted upon the U.S. Did that stop alcohol consumption? No. It flourished. It also had no small part in the rise of organized crime in the U.S. as well; something that, I'm sure, the creators of the Prohibition Amendment didn't foresee (or, perhaps, chose to ignore?).
I'm not normally prone to agree with ``slippery slope'' type of arguments. But, I think that this proposal is one of those that has me worried.
We all laughed when Jerry Falwell (or was it Pat Robertson, eh, who cares) complained that Teletubbies were somehow promoting a homosexual lifesyle. I personally find them nauseating and stupid (luckily my girls do too) but a lot of people think they're great for kids (that's teletubbies... not Falwell and Robertson :-) ). Unfortunately, guess who's going to have a bigger say in what my kids can or cannot see if page labelling gets adopted on a widespread basis? Little Old Me or some public figure like a Jerry Falwell or Tipper Gore who's trying to either A.) enhance their own ego and public image, B.) make a buck, or C.) get elected to public office and uses the old ``I'm for protecting children'' line?
I don't think we'll always be so lucky to have people like Falwell, whose reputation as a major crackpot pretty much invalidated his public statements about purple teletubbies, being the point person on censorship. Some oily sleaze will dress up censorship and sell it to the masses and before you know it you won't be able to complain ( ``Hey there's no Page Rating for 'Anti-Censorship Argument'!'').
And, finally, another thing:
What can a U.S. Citizen do? (Score:1)
Or, should we be trying to spread this word to U.S. media outlets?
-Dan
Other possible names (Score:1)
Undernet (a la the underground railroad)
civilrights net
resistence net
liberty net
freedom net
protection racket (OK, I had to have a little fun here)
safe net (emphesizing how little saftey we as individuals have using a protocol which allows big brother to know our every keystroke -- or at least our every mouse click on a URL)
Substitute "protocol" for "net" in any of the above, for even more choices.
I would like to see something at the network layer which would allow greater anonymity, encryption, and the like. Maybe a plugin for IP v 6. The problem is, at some level the packets have to actually reach their tartet. Perhaps a double blind routing system of some kind
Alas, many of the suggestions above are probably trademarked as well -- but you need to find a name you like which isn't and trademark it yourself, since what you are doing is very helpful and good for the public, and will therefor make you a big, fat target. (Just ask Phil Zimmerman.) No sense giving the bad guys any more ammunition to use against you (such as trademark law) than they probably already have.
Best of luck!
Re:Some background information in a long screed (Score:2)
1) You say that there is no anonymity against governmential organisations in e.g. Germany. IMHO you miss that there is some odd concept called "Datenschutz" (engl.: "protection of data") which is very strong here in Germany. It is mainly about governmential organisations not being allowed to do ANYTHING with the data gathered about citizens but use them for those very strictly defined purposes they were collected for. AFAIK there is nothing comparable in e.g. the United States of America.
2) Another point troubling me is the one about this "Nazi-Bertelsmann". If what you say is right, you damn sure know a lot more about the history of Bertelsmann than I do. But the point is that it is "history". Nowadays Bertelsmann is not out to help the "Arian Race" empower itself on top of the world, but like A LOT of other big multinational media companies Bertelsmann is trying to control and squeeze-money-out-of-it as much of the market as possible.
I do not like the idea of censorshop in any way. I do my part by advising people on security and data protection issues and by discussing censorship problems and promoting anti-censorship loudly. But bringing the nazis and/or microsoft into every discussion about such matters is really getting me.
Fare you well, Peter
And what about the Constitution? (Score:1)
While not all countries are bound by the equivalent of the First Amendment, I find it difficult to believe that this won't somehow undermine this protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has rendered some very significant decisions, voter approval notwithstanding. And that's what makes it so valuable - it was designed to factor out the "will of the majority." It will be most interesting to see first, how far this effort actually goes, and seocnd, what happens when it is contested on constitutional grounds.
The religious right ought to be having fits... (Score:1)
Seriously - if web sites are rated on content, and since the Bible contains all manner of violence, sexual misbehavior and the like, it will undoubtedly be filtered. Unless of course, these templates allow for exceptions, like "Filter out all gratuitous violence, all sex, and anything deemed immoral. EXCEPTION: anything associated with Christianity or the Bible."
If I were Pat Robertson, I'd be hopping mad.
An idea whose time has come (Score:1)
Bad Mojo
Re: A Messy Fight (Score:1)
But when the Australian government successfully passed legislation to make Australia have the 3rd most restrictive internet laws in the world, there wasn't a peep from the main stream media about it.
actually the government passed it in 2 weeks, whilst discussion the GST lasted for MONTHS! (and continues still). The main (read "only") reason it was passed so easily and quickly (full support in both houses by both major parties) was so that the Liberal government could pass the GST.
they want to use a filtering system. ok... but how does it work. well the system endorsed and passed by our Hon Minister for Telecommunications, Information Technology and (wait for it) the Arts (mmmm... i get it, the arts ppl get the pizza for us IT ppl.... frowns) lets porn though, but bans many free speech sites including the bible. (read the press release [efa.org.au] from the EFA)
don't you love the fact that the source code for linux may now be illegal on the internet in australia because of some of the comments in it (read this [slashdot.org] for the
just my little contribution
\\||//
----ooo00ooo----
Re:A call to arms (Score:1)
Remember the '80s? Let's just reinstate Fidonet and UUCP networks. They won't be able to beat *that*.
Re:The objective is self-censorship (Score:2)
By writing this post, you are now
officially a web publisher.
Re:very true and furthermore (Score:1)
I'm all for people rating their content, but once you start filtering based on that I dont know if I agree. In a self rating system there's nothing stopping a KKK site from using a rating of "Happy-Happy Joy-Joy", which would then cause all of the filters to drop "Happy-Happy Joy-Joy" to the floor since it's been connected to a hate group.
I guess I think self rating is good, but I think the government and the infrastructure people need to stay out of it.
-Rich
Re:It's pretty simple... (Score:1)
-Rich
Re:Tipper = Evil (Offtopic) (Score:1)
At least she was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. I cant hold too much against a lady who was at least paying attention to what her kids were doing and listening to. She didn't need to go national with it though. She could have just taken the tape away from her daughter and have been done with it.
You could always have first lady Clinton and her getting terrorists freed to try and win over votes in a senatorial race, or her numerous shady business deals...
-Rich
Re:Bertelsmann - yet another greedy media company (Score:1)
Big corporations love this
On one side the corporative culture has always had a very high self-censorship level. "It" expects it from all it's employees. So therefore the internet self censorship shift will not bother the corporate users.
As a good example, my school dearly wants kids to publish their work on the school's website. But it's quite clear: They will read each and every work and pick only the ones who best represent the interest of it's "marketing" department. They don't need this self-censorship thing.
On the other side, free speech and the right to think will suffer. Having people do their own self-censorship is just another way of imposing that all healthy "corporate way of life" on the world. Buy a car. Go on expensive trips, buy that expensive clothing and jewlery. Do your bit for the deficit. Your life ain't complete without it. Obay your boss. Come in on time. Increase your performance. Stay later. Make a "reasonable web page". Support your local government. Hate the baddies we target and enroll so we can ship you wherever we screw up. Hell if you shine our boots we'll even give you a doughnut.
Ok, this is a little extreme
Obi Wan Celeri
Re:Bertelsmann - yet another greedy media company (Score:1)
The Germans now have a political system that is censored--you can't form a party based on hate, you can't run certain types of hate groups, etc.
They (the German people) advocate censorship, and trust the stable, hate-free government to protect them from Neo-Nazis and religious nuts. Their entire national attitude toward the Internet would scare the shit out of a civil libertarian from America. Just a little global perspective for y'all.
Let's see... that's 3 references to genocide, I used the words "Neo-Nazi", "fuck", "Hitler", and "shit", and also made a broad generalization or three about Germans. I guess that means I get censored. Well, hey... fuck 'em.
-Jurph
Re:Why this is fiendish (Score:1)
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
Why this is crazy (Score:4)
Imagine how this will be on the national level. I'd be banned from half the useful information on the internet just because it was controversial or conflicting with the ideas of one of the people that decides what sites get what ratings.
If this does become a reality, I can tell you right now I'll be fighting it with every ounce of energy I've got. You can't tell me the script kiddies won't be cracking away everyday in protest. Since some countries would ban different things (ie Germany - no hate speech...which of course translates into any speech that is controversial ) I would definately set up a system of proxies in the US and send massive amounts of email to be forwarded to the germans showing them how to use the proxies. Get the idea now? Civil disobedience is also on the top of the list, I'm sure a lot of sysadmins would be glad to rate ALL of their content as "sexually violent racial slurs" or something like that. Then when kids can't get in to te useful information, they complain to teachers or parents, and in turn to congressmen and such. Another plan is the ever popular petition. Everyone on my block and everyone in my school and everyone in my email address book would be glad to send around petitions or take a few seconds to sign one. If the leaders of this beast receive 6 billion signatures, and a few billion emails, do you think theyd get the picture? Maybe not, but it would be worth it. If EVERYONE does EVERYTHING in their power to shoot this down, I think we can.
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
So what are we going to do? (Score:2)
Apart from saying how terrible this will be, we need to put together some kind of action plan to combat this. We need polite, well worded and intelligent arguments as to why this won't work. We need a central repository of MEP's email/snailmail/telephone addresses (MEP == member of the european parliament).
Being rather paranoid, I think that this is a case (as others have mentioned) of Big Business(tm) creating a law to make money. But simply saying that to our MEP won't make a blind bit of difference.
I think we need an open letter that we can all sign and forward on to our parliamentary representatives (Local/National, etc)
It looks like the proponents of this law are well ahead of us. We need to catch up.
Content-type: image/monkeyspankin (Score:1)
So artistic nude images might still be wankin' material, and someone's trying to censor people who are producing wank-inducing content... now they see some very erotic art that turns them on, well, they basically have to put it in the same category as pr0n.
and (Score:1)
so definitions of filter categories/"keywords" have to be written to say unambigous things like "displays frontal nudity" (which includes quite a bit of art, and is still not clear on the subject of partially transparent bikinis), and the like.
Sigh. (Score:1)
Banning porn wont keep teens from discovering their hormones and having unsafe sex.
Education, not blind ignorance, is the way to protect minors.
Re:I want Hak-nam (Score:1)
Re:You gotta do something (Score:1)
Without detracting from the horrors of Nazi Germany, that addage applies to what is going on today.
Re:Some background information in a long screed (Score:2)
The worst of it is Bertelsmann has a pretty nasty background, to say the least. We should start boycotting this publishing goup and write to our dear Euro MPs about our concerns.
Maybe they're trying to do today what they managed in the 1930s with the Nazis: control all information from the source to the distribution channels. Geee... smells like an ugly conspiracy. And we're quite tied up since we have to rely on ISPs who themselves have to comply with certain laws...themselves made by congressmen more or less controlled by the big, bad industry. Ouch.
Now, how many peeople are conscious of what's happening, and how many actually give a shit if the Net is censored or not? Sadly, Europeans have shown very little interrest in European elections for the last decade or so, and corruption scandals are pretty usual among European Commission members. There's a profound distrust in our representatives building up, mixed with a complete lack of interrest in what they're doing. Most people will just complain, but will never *do* anything. We're in deeeeep shit, my friends.
One more thing... Bertelsann being such a huge publishing group, I bet they also publish porn... How ironic.
My
Re:Damned if we do, damned if we don't. (Score:2)
Again, you are arguing against the search engine technology. In this particular case the search engine had no clue what you actually had in mind. What you asked it to do was to find you web pages which had the word 'Bleys' somewhere in them. The engine did exactly the right thing. It's a rare word, so you basically got all there was. I don't understand what you are complaining about, unless you are really arguing for banishing porn, etc. to a different space, separate from the "normal" net.
Thor et al were never MENTIONED on the page, but were still used as meta-tag keywords.
So? Meta-tag misuse is extremely common. I fail to see what it has to do with ratings. In both cases you are basically saying that the search engines are not intelligent enough and can be misdirected by meta-tag abuse. Agreed. Will ratings help? No.
I understand what free speach means, thankyouverymuch.
Who am I to judge?... but we may understand it differently. From the context of the discussion it seems that you advocate enforced site ratings (voluntary won't help you in the KKK case) so that by default you will not see content offensive to the general population. Well, I think that this will be VERY harmful to free speech and will lead to the disneyisation of the net. This is exactly what the Slashdot people are up in arms about.
Is there, in theory, a connection [between Norse gods and racism]? Sure. Is it a connection any sane adult would make? Probably not.Does it end up being lovely ammunition for the Christian Right? You betcha.
Do you really advocate that the 'net should censor itself because of what the Christian Right might think/do?
Kaa
Re:Damned if we do, damned if we don't. (Score:3)
And what's so horrible about it? You found out that there was porn on the net? The search engine did the right thing: you searched for keyword "Bleys", you got sites with it. Or you really want to play-pretend that there are no naughty things on the 'net? I can understand this case as a call for better search engines, but you seem to think that this shows the need for ratings. Not IMAO.
Incident #2, which I'm actually much more irritated by: I'm a pagan who follows the Norse gods. It's bad enough that some of the Norse pagan sites have a "racialist" slant, but it's even worse when the KKK has Meta-tags on its web-page that include Odin, Thor, and Freya. Can you imagine the impression that some kid doing a research project on Norse mythology would get if he did a web search for Thor and came up with the KKK home page??
Sigh. I don't think you understand what the expression "freedom of speech" means. You seem to think that your view of the Norse gods is the "correct" one and other views, especially ones which you find objectionable, are the "wrong" ones and so should be eradicated, or at least kept in the ratings' dark closet never to be shown to ordinary folk. I am no big fan of KKK, but why in the world do you think they have no right to their own view of Odin, Thor, etc.??
What would a kid doing research on Norse mythology think? Well, if he is a smart kid, he'll think that the world is a diverse place and there are sure some strange people around.
I've got no problems with voluntary standards as long as they remain truly voluntary rather than coercive
Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way. Obviously, no reasonable person would object to people describing their sites in keywords for the ease of finding these sites. The problem is that legislation or industry self-regulation quickly follows.
Once upon a time it was thought that ladies and gentlemen do not use words like 'fuck' and 'cunt'. All voluntary, right? So how come there are seven words that nobody can say on the radio?
Kaa
Re:Freedom through technology (Score:2)
or somethig like nether.net for an example of a freenet shell account.
Re:Freedom through technology (Score:2)
Re:Keyword ratings don't work (Score:3)
The sites could even make an argument that they are "educational" -- children would learn all sorts of things there. Not good things, but they'd still learn.
So now if we have porn sites calling themselves "educational", no only will they not be blocked, they'll be explicitly let into the schools! So much for protecting our children.
When will people realize that information is neither good nor bad -- it's what we do with it that counts. Instructions on how to build a nuculear bomb are morally netural; building one and exploding it in a city is morally wrong.
Living in ignorance is not a solution -- it's a problem.
Re:It's pretty simple... (Score:2)
Libraries have years of experience in cataloguing stuff and still make it difficult to find cross-subject categories. What chance do lawyers have to make an enforceable law ?
Or do I see another lawyer-enriching scheme coming up here ?
OK guys, now if we just club together... (Score:2)
Hmm. So, what happens if we all rate our sites as containing hard-core, incest, beastiality and vulgar language?
Easy. The entire system breaks down.
Sorted.
Nick.
Bertelsmann - yet another greedy media company (Score:5)
Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers"
Thats the goal of Bertelsmann. Bertelsmann is a multinational company which owns pay-TV and TV channels, advertising companies, newspapers, publishing companies, a share in AOL and much more. They have huge assets in non-physical 'media intellectual property', ie. sports rights, movie rights, sattelite frequencies, etc. Bertelsmann controls a fair chunk of Germany's TV-news feed to ordinary germans, and subsequently Bertelsmann has entrenched political connections to the establishment. Bertelsmann's main business plan is to _control and own information and information sources_, no matter what type of information. And the Internet as of now 'threatens' much of Bertelsmann's 'core business': proprietary information. This pretty much explains why Bertelsmann is in the center of Internet censorship.
Re:But the Brits don't like Brussels (Score:2)
His name is Alex Allan and I would think that if anyone can do anything about the whole mess it would be him. We just need to convince him that censoring the net would hurt business because, let's face it, he's not there to protect OUR freedom, he's there to protect the UK's economic interest in what all these suits seem to see as a new global trading system.
Oh, HA, I've just noticed that they call him a "Former High Commissioner to Australia". Lets hope he's not planning on following the Australian lead there then.
I've depressed myself with that now.
A Possible Ally? (Score:2)
Now, before you write me off as a crackpot and figure that they will side with the censors, think about this. Universal censorship like what is being described here has never been done before. Usually, censorship is relegated to certain types of media (television, radio, periodicals) that the church doesn't have to worry about. Universal censorship will attack them as well, and churches live or die on free speech. From the perspective of a preacher, free speech is not a God-given right. It is a God-given mandate to speak the truth no matter who wants to lock you up for it.
Well, then, what does this have to do with universal censorship of pornography and violence? Read a bible. There's some nasty stuff in there. You have hosts of sexual perversions, bloody wars, dashing babies against rocks--and a book of soft-core porn right in the middle (Song of Songs/Solomon). There is real danger of the bible itself becoming censored.
Beyond that, imagine all the restrictions on internet preaching. Face it, Christians rail against such things as homosexuality and abortion (gambling, line dancing, shock-rockers...) early and often. To a Christian, doing this is guiding people towards the light; to a censor, this could well be hate speech!
The last thing most religions want is a homogenized Internet, because few religions consider themselves mainstream.
Re:What can we do? (Score:2)
Ooh, that's a good one. Assuming the point of censoring violence is to keep violence from occuring in the real world, we should (if we're looking to censor at all) look at what causes people to do that.
Me, I get the urge to shove someone's face into concrete repeatedly every time my Windows machine crashes.
Solution: Censor the BSOD!
The Wild West gets tamed... (Score:4)
Someone once made the comparison of the Internet to the Wild West. I forget who it was--I believe it was Nicholas Negroponte of Wired and MIT--but with things like this, it seems ever more apt than ever.
The premise of the comparison was that the Wild West of the USA was once wild, untamed, mob rule--yet still on the whole tranquil, at least for the first Europeans who arrived (Davy Crockett types) who also got along with the local Indians. Then the later settlers came in, who promptly began trying to "civilize" everything--imposing rules, laws, institutions and so on, both on the earler settlers and on the Indians living with them. The previous occupants resented this and tried to fight back, but ultimately the settlers--and especially the corporations who followed them--won out through force of numbers and money (and, in the case of the Indians, through guns and disease). This is exactly what is happening here: a large, multinational company--hand in hand with other "interest groups" recently become interested in the Net--are trying to impose their value system on the wild, untamed Internet. I'm as angry as anyone here about it, but let's face it, there is little to be done: money (and power and influence) talks.
Furthermore, those suggesting a free Internet Jr. to run parallel to the current one ignore that, eventually, it too would be swamped by corporate interests--someone would begin using it for profit, and as soon as that day arrives, it's the beginning of the end for Internet Jr. as others begin elbowing their way in. Nevermind the logistics: who would set up the backbones? Where would the bandwidth come from?
The crazy part is that the Internet is already being Balkanized anyway, as China, Singapore, and others are in effect building parallel Internets that only have limited access to the greater Internet--precisely to screen content for political purposes. Censorship is already taking place on a massive scale, and self-censorship--i.e. by not seeking or clicking on subversive or unacceptable content for fear of prosecution or persecution--already takes place as well.
I wish I knew of a solution, and hate being such a pessimist, but my gut feeling tells me we just have to get used to it--or go out and vote for liberal/libertarian parties up the yin-yang, then pray.
Ethelred [surf.to]
Boycott Bertelsman (Score:2)
Maybe it's time that us Europeans learn from our US friends to fire off a letter at our representative/government when something like this happens. I have always found the typical US response of "write your congressperson about this" a good idea
We should not leave politicians in their ignorance toward anything that's related to the internet and computers.
Why this is fiendish (Score:2)
Of course, you would have to strip out the ratings on the content you proxy (else the keywords will be caught anyhow), but then your proxy would be serving unrated content, which is expressly forbidden by the protocol. At best data from your site would blocked because it lacks ratings; at worst your ISP would be pressured to shut you down.
You also suggest:
Actually, I'll bet the sysadmins at Bertelsmann and other large publishing houses wouldn't do anything of the kind. A boycott from independent information providers will do little more than cede the battlefield to corporate interests by default.
And that's what this proposal is really about, isn't it, turning control of the Internet over to moneyed interests? Previous censorship initiatives have been based on ideology; thus, they were doomed to failure because in the end the censors can't all agree on what, exactly, to censor. This proposal seems to be rooted in plain old greed, and it's a lot easier to get people to agree on that.
And if it goes through, it will probably work. The criminal genius in this plan is the byzantine system of keywords. Under this system, any sort of online publishing will require an army of specialists to work out the rating and keep it up to date. Who can afford to retain a staff just for working out keywords? I'll bet Bertelsmann can, and I'll bet they're not too busted up about the fact that many independent publishers can't.
This is a proposal that has to be nipped in the bud. Protests after the fact will be too little too late this time because the protest will fall on deaf ears, if, indeed, it manages to reach any ears at all through the filters. I know that if I were a censor the first thing I would block out would be criticism of censorship.
-r
Re:Damned if we do, damned if we don't. (Score:2)
And while I'm not saying that porn or the KKK site should be *banned* or anything of the kind, having this junk that I'm not trying to access show up because I did an "innocent" search doesn't exactly thrill me. And I can certainly understand why it would not thrill a parent.
I understand what free speach means, thankyouverymuch. Show me where I said that the pages should be taken down or made inaccessible? Anyone who is looking for the KKK (odious as I find it) can still type KKK or "white power" or whatever into the search engine, or just type www.kkk.com into the browser and see what happens. But having the KKK page meta-tag "Thor" so search engines will pick it up is about as annoying as XXX spam on a pagan newsgroup because someone happens to be discussing skyclad rituals. Is there, in theory, a connection? Sure. Is it a connection any sane adult would make? Probably not. Does it end up being lovely ammunition for the Christian Right? You betcha. Is it a waste of bandwith? Yep.
Re:Ugh.. Repeat after me.. (Score:2)
What I was trying to address is the overall unlikeliness of completely free porn being available on a widespread basis. As A. Lizard says on his excellent Child Safety page, free access to dirty pictures is EXTREMELY popular, and most sites can't afford that kind of bandwith unless they charge the free-porn folks extra money. And I don't think most free-porn folks will stay in "business" for long unless they have "better" things to offer to their paying customers. Or at least *more* pictures.
In other words, you wouldn't be likely to get much free porn even IF nobody objected to it. (At least, it's not the direct cause. I suppose you could and probably will argue that it is an indirect cause. *shrug*)
Re:In that case.. (Score:2)
The only ways I can see around this are either changing the law to permit porn distribution to minors (not bloody likely) or setting up a free Adult Check service of some sor that was considered valid. Otherwise, it's going to be pay-to-play, in the name of protecting the children, the Church, and the Holy Spirit, world without end, amen.
.xxx, .kid, and protecting children (Score:3)
First of all, porn sites don't charge money because of "restrictions" -- they charge money a) because they can and they know people will pay, and b) because porn is very popular, and eats lots of bandwith.
Secondly, a workable "first step"/compromise along the lines of what the original AC was proposing would be something like this:
1. Have the
2. Have a
3. Leave the rest of the net alone.
Folks who wanted ordinary net-access, which would include access to
Folks who wanted the
Thoughts? Could this work?
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. (Score:4)
On the one hand, censorship is a very bad thing. I think we can all (for the most part) agree on that. And even most "voluntary" systems have the potential to become de facto censorship (look at what's happened to movies thanks to the MPAA rating system, which BTW doesn't tell you anything about what's actually IN the movies
On the other hand, two recent incidents from my own web-surfing make me wish there was something that could be done so that, at the least, search engines don't spit out something that isn't what you're looking for (and that you definitely wouldn't want to BE looking for). And both of these give me some understanding as to why a parent would *want* to use blocking software (silly as I think the stuff is).
Incident #1: I had forgotten the URL to a particular Amber fan-fic page that I like, and I remember that I had found it in the first place using the keyword "Bleys." I somehow ended up with several porno sites in my search results because the url was "http://www.pornsite.xxx/hotpics/bleys/corwin/tee
Incident #2, which I'm actually much more irritated by: I'm a pagan who follows the Norse gods. It's bad enough that some of the Norse pagan sites have a "racialist" slant, but it's even worse when the KKK has Meta-tags on its web-page that include Odin, Thor, and Freya. Can you imagine the impression that some kid doing a research project on Norse mythology would get if he did a web search for Thor and came up with the KKK home page?? (My boyfriend and I discovered this via 2600's web page, which talked about the past hack of the KKK site.)
I have ratings tags on a few of my pages, and I'll put them on ALL of my pages when I finish my move to drak.net. I've got no problems with voluntary standards as long as they remain truly voluntary rather than coercive. And I'd much rather have to self-rate than have the government step and rate for me.
But as far as setting up a standard goes, it's damned if we do and damned if we don't, so to speak. The "chicken breast" problem has already been mentioned, but if you want something more sophisticated, you're going to have to deal with the more "complex" rating systems, and even those won't give you all the info you'd like to have. (Case in point: someone rating the KJV Bible using SafeSurf. *chuckles*)
On the surface, the VCR seems like a good idea, but it was come up with by Solid Oak, a company I wouldn't trust farther than I could throw my station wagon. (They make CyberSitter. Nuff said.) How would they actually like to see "suitable for 13 and up" vs. "suitable for 18 and up" defined? I don't think I want the answer. Again, godhatesfags.com would probably be 13+, while godlovesfags.com would probably be 18+. *sigh*
I wish I could think of some way to cover all the bases here, but there just isn't one. Any possible system (including no system) is open to abuse. Having no system makes it really easy to mis-inform the public or at least the search engines about your content (see above KKK example). OTOH, even a purely voluntary system is likely to cause problems for, say, the gay 15-year-old son of fundie parents, or the sexual abuse victim. (I've talked to plenty of these kids online, and it's not pretty.)
The problem I've always had with ratings meant to protect children is that the parents who have decent relationships with their kids don't need the standards -- they can just say that they'd rather their kids wait to see the movie, read the book, or check out certain kids of Web pages. It's generally the fundie, abusive, or otherwise scary parents who want to keep their kids from accessing certain content. And those tend to be the kids who need the alleged pornography or Satanic sites the most. (Gay teen support groups, Pagan info, sexual abuse survivor sites, you get the idea.)
*sigh* I wish I had a good answer. Unfortunately, I don't. But the questions are important to ask on *both* sides of the issue, rather than just making knee-jerk anti-censorship statements -- tempting as I know that is.
Re:Chose Your Fights (Score:2)
You have to go and read some of the proposals. They are aimed squarely at NOT allowing any individual the option of unfiltered data.
All the data flowing around the tier 1 and tier 2 data carriers will be filtered based on content rating. Unrated content, or content from a site on a blacklist for mis-rating, will be dropped before it gets to any ISP customer.
This will force all web site and other content sources to provide content tags in thier data flows, outside of any encryption or proprietary format. This proposal looks to the Internet Standards and Open Source models to provide an idea of how to implement censorship. Just like every web page has HTML tags in it, and IP packets have a destination and source address and packet type, they want every packet processed have a "content rating" tag. That tag will have to be present in order for a router to process it, just like every packet hitting a router today has a specific format.
The timescale proposed by the EC is a bit optimistic, but that is just a timescale to implement some laws. The technology will lag until they start arresting the CEOs of some large ISPs and throwing them in jail for "contributing to the distribution of child pr0n". Then all of a sudden they will all start to filter your internet for you (for your protection, of course).
the AC
Re:Some background information in a long screed (Score:3)
They are also punted about by the conspiracy theorists, who study any connection with Bavaria and powerful groups based there. Tends to generate a lot of material, most of which I discount.
I also know of them since they are a competitor in the internet world, especially picking up consulting jobs advising large scale communication projects, which is where I make all my money. So I tend to read what I can about them. They are considered "conservative" by my Bavarian friends, who I consider to be the most conservative people I know. Their views on "self-censorship" are widely known in Bavaria, and stir up old memories and a lot of discussion. They also employ more people there than BMW and the beer industry combined.
the AC
[As I read back over what I've posted, I'm beginning to get the idea I should go find my flame retardant undies, or perhaps not read
Some background information in a long screed (Score:5)
Anonymity. This is one of my regular problems working in Europe. France has codified into law outlawing all anonymity, and has even criminalized attempting to hide your identity from any governmental organisation. This is one of the remnants of the Vichy government, and was kept by the domestic surveillance DST and SCSSI services. Other countries with a history of terrorist acts on their soil have also outlawed anonymity (England and Germany), but Italy and Norway allow it.
Bertelsmann. The European Commission (DG13) created a budget of 10 Million Euros to study "the threat to national laws by the internet, and methods to enforce national laws within European borders" (paraphrased from memory). Bertelsmann picked up the entire E10million (no euro symbol in ISO8859, yet) through their contacts with an "old boys network" controlling DG XIII [*disclaimer*, this could be sour grapes, I helped a client bid on the project, and there were 12 shortlisted big companies all locked out]. They have created a draft proposal designed to protect all their interests as the largest publisher in Europe, as well as a major shareholder in dozens of ISPs including AOL. Bertelsmann also controls several of the largest publishing houses in the U.S., and is the largest single owner of copyright material in the U.S.
If other posters start using inflammatory terms like "Hitler", "Nazism", and "Censorship", it could be justified in this slashdot thread.
Bertelsmann made its fortune during the Nazi's rise to power in the 1930s, as the publisher of the Nazi manifests. They gained the favor of the Nazi party by being the first publisher to openly embrace "self-censorship" when the Nazi party wasn't yet powerful enough to create laws. They purged their entire publishing line of questionable materials (what we might call free-thinking), then taunted other publishing houses to do the same.
When the Nazis came to power, all the publishers defending "free press" or "freedom of speech" were put out of business, and their facilities were given to Bertelsmann. This gave Bertelsmann 90% of the publishing market during the war.
After WWII, the Bertelsmann empire came through mostly intact, and used Marshall plan reconstruction funds to rebuild its antiquated facilities into a modern (for the 1950s) business. There was only a few prosecutions of Bertelsmann upper management for war crimes (but only in conjunction for military activities), and Bertelsmann became a major haven for ex-Nazis looking for a new life after the war.
Back to the problem at hand.
There is a realisation that the internet can route around most problems related to network connectivity. But by crafting restrictive laws tied into the licensing of tier 1 & 2 internet carriers (all in europe are considered telcos, and licensed accordingly), then effective censorship can be imposed. There are a few technical work arounds, but for every hackish proposal of IPSec tunnels, there is an easier government response of pressure on the license holders.
So, all you slashdotters should be afraid, if you want to continue to have free (as in liberty) and unlimited access to the internet. Once the EU gets a handful of workable laws on the books, the U.S. and Australia will follow suit. I would also expect every militaristic/fascist/religious government to take notice as well.
Expect within 10-15 years you will look back on the '90s as the golden years before the big evil governments woke up and took back control. Not only do we have to fight this at the law making level, we also have to create bigger and better protocols and workarounds to make it impossible for tier 1 & 2 providers to filter content.
Ok, go back to sleep now.
the AC
Drop it on the software developers. (Score:2)
So the real quesiton here is this:
Why aren't they putting the blame where it belongs?
Re:Reaching Consensus: Is there a better way? (Score:2)
One misconception is that the problem is that people are accidentally falling into the wrong sites, and if this never happened everyone would be content. Religious zealots surf porn, and scientologists surf for conflicting views, then apply political and legal pressure to suppress the information. They argue that this material is *wrong* and that no one should be allowed to view it, even willingly. Their attempts to block material will not cease on implementation of ratings, but increase, due to the ease of finding sites to target.
Another mistake is to think that the filtering will be done at the end user level. It is much cheaper and more effective to implement it at the ISP level or higher. ISPs are often shoestring operations that don't have budgets for big legal fights. A threat of a suit or even a vociferous complaint or three is often sufficient to get a site removed with most ISPs already. For them, adopting a conservative filter is very attractive, removing an incredible amount of hassle and potential expense. And don't be sure they'll lose customers in droves. How many people fail to use TVs because of the limited content and censorship?
Finally, I don't believe in the concept of harmful information. Yes, people can analyze information poorly, engage in illegal acts to gather it, certainly be ill prepared to handle it, but these are the problems, not the information. I say to parents -- its a diverse and sometimes ugly world your children will have to live in. Best prepare your children to encounter it. Believe me, you'll have more influence over how they handle ugly information if they view such material at home first, aided by your input, rather than later from their college dorm room. They *will* see it eventually, curiousity is a universal human trait.
If you want to keep very small kids off the internet, I understand, you could be right. But we don't need filtering to accomplish that, just as we don't have police on every block to keep them from crossing streets at that age.
If you could change the world, and people didn't care what their neighbors watched on the net, or at least were helpless to do anything about it, I would possibly agree with you. I certainly agree that if ratings had to be implemented, bottom up is the way to go.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. (Score:5)
A couple of points to be noticed:
1. This entire thing has been organized by a private "foundation". That probably means we are safe from ultra-stupid and clueless laws and regulations, since the proceedings of this conference will not have the same weight as if it was, say, organized by the EU Parliament of Strasbourg. So far, this is one good point.
2. On the other hand... the foundation in question is the *Bertelsmann* Foundation. For those of you who are not in Europe, Bertelsmann is one of the largest publisher in Germany (and also in Europe, and in the world). Think Rupert Murdoch with a German accent, and you have a pretty good idea of what Bertelsmann is. Now, this a certified Very Bad Thing (tm), since German publishers are notoriously conservative and stuck-up. And, AFAIK,
Bertelsmann is no exception to the rule, unfortunately.
That does not mean German people (in general) are
conservative and stuck-up -- just that their press is. (If you are German, don't flame me, I have very good German friends that I respect and care about -- thank you very much).
3. Another Very, Very, Very BAD Thing (tm) is the roster of "experts" that are on board. We have a *huge* bunch of politicos, law "experts" (read: clueless lawyers) and, worse than this, "law-enforcement experts" -- with a huge contingent of German people. Again, I don't want to appear critical of Germany, but we have to remember it was Bavarian police officers who prosecuted CompuServe for "porn" and also tried to block German users from the XS4LL Dutch web site and access provider because of some leftist/anarchist web site there.
Oh, and we also have a representative from... Microsoft Corporation Europe (Shock! Horror! The Number of the Beast!!) =)
On the plus side, we also have one (count them, people, "one" !) representative from the ACLU. and Esther Dyson, which, I suspect, is more interested in pushing ICANN than really defending free speech. Ouch. Click here for a complete list of experts. [bertelsmann.de]
In summary, we have a probably conservative foundation, putting a panel of "experts", made up of "law-enforcement officers" (policemen, to remain polite). That panel of expert is going to convene in a city and a state of Germany known for its heavy-handed tactics against the 'net and its conservative Catholicism. Draw your own conclusions (DYOC).
That does not smell good people. Not by a long shot. I'll keep an eye on this.
Just my US$ 0.02...
unification (Score:3)
Something like this shouldn't be possible. A confrence like this shouldn't have been able to get past the random neuron connection in someone's mind stage. The problem here it seems is the eurpoean unification.
When you unify, you also promote a centralization of power. This is a Bad Thing(tm). I see it here in the US, and now in europe. The federal government is taking more and more power, a centralized power, where that power should be left most entirely to the individual states.
Now the world has taken it a step further: The EU. We now have a trend of entire countries themselves unifying under a common flag, of sorts. And whether the EU has a great amount of power or not is not the point. The point is that the power is centralized. It's taken father away from the individual. The more people you have to rule, the less the individual matters. This inevitably leads to assaults on civil liberties, because what do civil liberties matter but to the individual?
It seems rather unavoidable anymore, though. With greater internationalization, there's always going to be an inevitable push toward commonality between nations This can be achieved through unification.
Perhaps the age of empires is at hand once again.
French Law is against ISP-level censorship ! (Score:2)
Fortunately, this is exactly what has been deemed as impossible recently by French legislation.
There was quite a gossip in Frogland about this case : a free web-hoster (Valentin Lacambre, founder of the great altern.org [altern.org], an anti-commercial web-hosting service) had been sued by top model Estelle Halliday because a website on his server featured intimate photographs of her.
This trial was taken very seriously by french internauts, and made its way through media coverage and government intervention (as usual in France). Premier Lionel Jospin and Minister of Justice (=~ Attorney General) Elisabeth Guigou expressed concern over the case.
Finally, a new law was voted by the parliament, wich carries more or less the following statement:
"All in all, the one who is accountable for an on-line publication is the one who authored it. The ISP is only held responsible if he deliberately refused to shut down access to this document, even after being told to do so by justice."
Now all of you Anglo-saxon libertarians will frown upon this : "This still gives censorship power to government, after justice decision." It may be so, but tell me : if someone ever puts a very private (
Moreover, the necessity of justice intervention for closing down a web site/page is much better than the Munich conference project, where "censorship" is decided from what the ISP sees as "dangerous" for his audience (ie his profits), and where any ISP that does not filter sexual/violence contents by default is exposed to serious trouble.
Freedom of expression is well-established in the EU. Most european countries (Britain and southern countries put aside, maybe) have well-balanced laws on the subject. The French jurisprudence over this case provides a much better model for law enforcement over the web than Bertelsmann & Co.'s project.
Oh, BTW... maybe I didn't read well, but I did not see France Telecom anywhere in the paper... I think wee little froggies may be reasonably optimistic over the Munich draft.
Thomas Miconi
Karma Police - enforcing peace of mind by all possible means.
Self Ratings = increased hits... (Score:4)
6. Self-Rating Schemes will be used only at each extreme of the spectrum, by those who have something to gain by being at that end of the spectrum.
Run a XXX site? Damn right I'm going to rate my site an 11 out 10 - people search for the baddest of the bad. Or if click-through advertisers start limiting their ads to host pages with acceptable ratings, you can bet every page will suddenly be rated "suitable for a 2 year old". Like it or not, the inherent decency of mankind (or what little does exist) will by and large go straight out the window once the almighty dollar makes an appearance.Why the government preferrs "Self Regulation" (Score:2)
All they have to do is convince one or two of the major backbones (MCI Worldcom, Sprint...) to require in their contract that any ISP signing on with them must enforce the rating system or risk being cut off from the internet.
Then the ISP requires in their contract with you terms that would, if the government tried to foist them off on us, be found unconstitutional (Which is why the CDA and CDAII were unceremoniously shot down.)
Then they twist the arms of the major search engines, so that they will not index any page that does not conform to the rating system. Compromising the entire internet would be as simple as this.
Of course, the government thinks "The Internet" equals "The World Wide Web" at least at the moment. They haven't yet made transmitting encrypted content illegal (Check your local laws and regulations if you're outside the states, may differ for you, if so, please post and let us know.)
I think there will be a division in the Internet of the future. You'll have the current structure, which will consist of homogenized "Appropriate for viewers of all ages" tripe and dominated by commercial entities. Then you'll have an underground Internet which will be built by people who have left all that behind in disgust. This Internet will either run on top of the current internet in the form of an invitation-only VPN (Quite feasible with the higher speed lines becoming available) or done with dial-up hardware of various sorts (Possibly even store-and-forward only.) Being effectively a private entity, it will be beyond regulation of the ISP's.
Good chance for a pincer movement... (Score:2)
Re:What can we do? (Score:3)
What frustrates me even more is that it all wouldn't make the least bit of difference. If a child/young adolescent wants to lay their hands on porn (or whatever) they shall get it, one way or another. And according to me sex, nudity, etc. hasn't done anyone any harm...(most of us are born thanks to sex
I wonder when the governments are finally going to realise that even the lowly civilians can grow up and make up their own mind. If you find something on the web that would upset you, don't visit the site, if you read something that you don't want to read, don't read it.
For me it's all very simple... just do what you want to do, if you want to spend the entire day writing/reading hate texts, watch porn, experiment with drugs, etc. do it, as long as you don't bother anyone else with it, I don't care. and neither should anyone else.
The Commission and the Parliament (Score:2)
The strategy has to be to work on the national governments. As a rule of thumb, if two out of UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are opposed to a European measure, it's dead. The best way to achieve this is to generate negative publicity -- I doubt that there is any real enthusiasm among politicians to be seen as a) censoring the Net and b) bowing to Brussels. The MEPs are dead letters. So, if you have a local newspaper (and it isn't owned by the Bertelsmann group), get friendly with a journalist, and feed him this as a story. I know that's what I'm going to do.
Actually, what the
Remember, the only thing that politicians care about these days is bad media publicity. Sad, but that's the facts. Let's hold their feet to the fire. It's worked for the anti-GMO crowd, so it can work for us.
jsm
But the Brits don't like Brussels (Score:3)
AC above is right that Blair and his bunch are frightening, paternalistic weasels. But:
1. This particular measure isn't likely to even reach the government. It's being put together by the "foundation", under the aegis of the European Commission (The Commission != the European Parliament -- it's kind of like a Civil Service sort of thing, but more powerful).
2. Because of this, it will be sorted out by civil servants. If the relevant UK minister (not sure who that would be -- prob Jack Straw?) ever sees it, it will be just to tick up the civil servants' decision to keep stalling. Unless it becomes a cause celebre, in which case his mind will be on damage limitation.
3. Why am I so sure that the UK civil servants will want to stall it forever? Well:
First, because they don't want to transfer any power to Brussels. They hate Brussels.
Second, if they allow the Commission to have jurisdiction on this one, they will be in a weak position to resist when the EC says that it should have jurisdiction in the matter of taxing the Internet when that comes up for negotiation. For a UK civil servant, the very Worst Thing You Can Possibly Do is to allow any tax power to go to Brussels.
Third, they will look at it and fear bad publicity. Civil service departments are more and more coming to be ruled by their Press Offices.
That's the reasoning behind my attack strategy. We can't do anything about the first and second points, but the third depends on how much of a media sh*tstorm can be generated. The rule of thumb is always that if two out of UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are against something, it's dead. I think that this is achievable.
jsm
(who, in a past life, was one of these bloodsucking drones)
Important not to be too pessimistic (Score:4)
The European Commission's plan runs from January 1999 to December 2002, four years. 1999 is scheduled for development and meetings. 2000 is scheduled for rollout and beta testing. 2001 and 2002 are allocated for the encouragement process and tweaking - making sure everyone is toeing the line.
Well
US$11million doesn't really sound like that much of a budget, when you consider how fantastically overpaid and over-expensed EC personnel are. It's important not to see this as an inevitability.
So what can we do? Hassle them! Hassle them to death! Make sure that every Euro politician knows that he'll have to face election as "The guy who's trying to censor the Internet". Or even better "The guy who's trying to let Brussels censor the Internet for us". Politicians hate that stuff -- anything which appears to be "complicated" or "unpopular" tends to be avoided.
Start creating the impression that it is technically impossible to censor the Internet. If I were really Machiavellian, I would suggest "extending" the META tag formats into a million and one incompatible versions, so that the keyword approach wouldn't work. But just suggesting to non-techie bureaucrats that it's a technological nightmare will suffice to raise millions of "issues" which slow the whole thing down.
It seems like unsatisfactory, but to my certain knowledge the Takeover Directive has been held up in this fashion by vested interests for 20 years. Let's all be a vested interest.
jsm
very true and furthermore (Score:5)
Perhaps the European Union will come up with categories like "Aryan Self-defence" or "Christian Truth -- Homosexuality" that people would actually use, but I rather suspect that political correctness will interfere with effective lawmaking here.
Not that I actually want to see effective lawmaking
jsm
[1] in principle, "he or she", in practice, "he".