Computer underground Digest Sun Apr 5, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 21 ISSN 1004-042X Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu) News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest CONTENTS, #10.21 (Sun, Apr 5, 1998) File 1--CYBERsitter File 2-- Announcement: PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI) File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Voyagers. April 4, 1998. File 4--"Feds Dishing up Spam" (press release) File 5--"Computers, Ethics and Society", Ermann & Williams File 6--SLAC Bulletin - Apr 1 '98 File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 23:26:37 -0600 From: Bennett Haselton Subject: File 1--CYBERsitter In the last issue someone pointed out that they had found the decoded list of sites that CYBERsitter blocks, at: http://atropos.c2.net/~sameer/cybersitter.txt This list is indeed accurate. About a year ago, Peacefire put a program on the Web that made it possible for people to unscramble the list of sites blocked by CYBERsitter from the encrypted list that came with the program. The encryption scheme they were using was very simple -- they XOR'ed every character in the file with 0x94 -- and the CSDECODE program simply reversed that process. I didn't want to put the list of blocked sites itself on Peacefire.org because I was worried that they might be able to get us for Copyright infringement if I did that, so I posted the program itself and told people where they could download CYBERsitter if they wanted to unscramble the list. Naturally, CYBERsitter was furious and threatened legal action anyway: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9964,00.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/story/3355.html So much I expected. What I didn't expect is that most of the media started reporting that this "bunch of hackers had posted a program to break the code on CYBERsitter", deliberately worded in such an ambiguous way as to make people think that we were posting a program for kids to hack around the software, which csdecode specifically does not do. C-Net, for example, originally titled their story "Teen Disables Filtering Software" and said that we were helping kids hack around CYBERsitter; their original version of the story is at: http://peacefire.org/archives/cnet.on.cybersitter.1st-version.txt We called them up and threatened all kinds of action that were completely out of our range, unless they corrected it, so the next morning they changed the story and posted the amended version which is now at: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9964,00.html which was titled "Teen Exposes Filtering Software" instead of "Teen Disables Filtering Software" as well as some other minor changes. The list of blocked sites may be out of date, but you can still download CYBERsitter and run csdecode to find out what it blocks. Csdecode can be downloaded from: http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/CYBERsitter/csdecode.shtml Please note that it will not work with CYBERsitter 97, only with CYBERsitter 2.12. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 16:19:16 +0100 From: "Richard K. Moore" Subject: File 2-- Announcement: PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI) Dear cyberjournal community, writers & publishers (via Bcc:), Announcement> PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI) - a new incarnation of - In collaboration with "CADRE Productions Unlimited" (CPU), and with the hosting support of "Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility" (CPSR), I am pleased to announce a revamp of the cyberjournal list -- a dedication to an expanded mission in support of _Social Responsibility_ on a GLOBAL scale: the PEOPLES PRESS INTERNATIONAL (PPI). PPI aims to connect people to people, worldwide, bringing you the _real_ news of the world -- the news Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, the UPI, Reuters, the API, and the New York Times don't think you need to see. WHERE WILL PPI GET ITS NEWS?... ...from stringer reporters, amateur and professional, all over the world -- on the ground where the news is happening, uncensored and up-to-the-minute... ...from the culls of dozens of Internet lists -- the exceptional/pivotal postings that are deserving of worldwide exposure... ...from you, our writer/publisher subscribers, who are encouraged to send in those items of your own which would be of interest beyond your shores... ...from our network of independent journalists and analysts who have chosen PPI as a venue for their best and most topical essays and investigations... ...and from you our readers, who welcome a chance to have _your_ voice heard on the issues of the day. HOW WILL THE NEWS FEED BE FORMATTED?... From now on each cyberjournal/PPI posting Subject will be prefixed by a tag denoting what type of news item it is, and will identify the source of the material along with the topic/subject: - PPI-ALERT> source: subject - a posting which urges action on the part of the reader -- to join a letter-writing campaign, to provide information or contacts in support of an action, etc. - PPI-BULLETIN> " " - a news bulletin: an item of worldwide interest, though not to every audience - PPI-ANALYSIS> - an essay or investigative report by a distinguished observer - PPI-EDITORIAL> - an opinion/analysis piece by CADRE editorial staff or by a guest contributor - PPI-BACKGROUND> - a background study -- bringing in historic, economic, political, or philosophical observations that shed light on today's events - PPI-FIRST-PERSON> - a report by an "ordinary person", perhaps poorly expressed or with grammatical errors, but which "tells it like it is" from the front lines - PPI-READERS-VOICE> - a comment, again by an "ordinary person", on recent news or on any other topic of widespread interest - PPI-RENAISSANCE> - a report on the progress of the Democratic Renaissance and of the global coalition movement striving to bring it about HOW CAN YOU ACCESS THE NEWS FEED? You can subscribe to cyberjournal@cpsr.org, getting the real-time feed directly into your mailbox, or you can access the always-current PPI Archives, and pull down what you need... http://cyberjournal.org/cadre/PPI-archives To join cyberjournal, simply send: To: listserv@cpsr.org Subject-- (ignored) --- sub cyberjournal Jane Q. Doe <-- your name there HOW CAN THE PPI NEWS FEED BE USED? All material published by PPI is available for free and unrestricted use in non-commmercial venues or in in small-press (ie, "struggling for existence") venues, such as small-town newspapers. Commercial (profitable) media venues may inquire regarding republication rights. All material is copyrighted by the original source and by PPI. NOTICE TO LIST-OWNERS AND WEBSITE-OWNERS: You are invited to link your websites to and to request a cross-link; list-owners are invited to use the PPI news feed as a regular source of material supplementary to your other sources. HOW MUCH TRAFFIC WILL THERE BE ON PPI? Traffic will be limited to two or three postings per day. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 11:35:46 -0500 From: Richard Thieme Subject: File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Voyagers. April 4, 1998. Islands in the Clickstream: Voyagers When we come to a new place or enter a new environment, the landscape looks all of a piece, and we have to learn how to see it in depth and detail. Our interaction with new cultures teach us over time how to understand them When I moved to Maui in the eighties, I lived about thirty feet from the ocean. From the sea wall, when I looked out at the channel that defined the "pond" among our islands, all I could see was water. Nothing but water Of course I could see the other islands and waves breaking over the reef, but the ocean itself looked like nothing but undifferentiated water. Last week I returned to Hawaii to speak about spirituality and technology. During the week, two canoe builders from the Marshall Islands made a public presentation and shared some of their lore, long believed to be lost. "Some of our navigators are trained to detect six different swells by the feel of the canoe," one said. Others specialized in navigating by the stars or weather. Despite the repression of their culture (and the explosion of dozens of nuclear bombs on their islands), they had somehow kept alive the knowledge of their ancestors. They used tangled knots to map the night skies and learned to discern the subtle interacting patterns of the swells by crouching in canoes on what looked to a "mainland haole" like a perfectly calm sea. When they looked out at the ocean, they saw a lot more than just water. After a few years on the island, I could see at a glance the direction of the wind and the complex pattern of the currents. That told me what I was likely to encounter when I went diving or spear fishing. I knew where the fish would be feeding, how to co-exist with morays and reef sharks, how to use the surge of the sea to slide without effort toward prey. The angle of the sun under the water, the length of the seaweed, the Kona wind, all correlated with the feeding habits of the fish on the reef. The sea resolved itself into a complex, richly detailed environment. What I learned was child's play compared to the intimacy with which islanders know the ocean. Someone who lives on the mainland might look at the water and see only a barrier, whereas islanders see an open invitation, a whole world waiting to be explored, both highway and home. The journey into ourselves and the journey into the symbolic landscape that defines our culture - of which the Internet is an emblem - are the same journey. When we first turn inward, the landscape may seem opaque, but as we explore through meditation, prayer, and other disciplines, we too discover both a highway and a home. It's as if someone who spent his or her entire life on land hears for the first time about the ocean. The word calls forth an image and a desire, and that is the beginning of the journey. We make our way to the water's edge and look out at the singular immensity of it. Some plunge in; others take scuba lessons, letting others coach them. When we first snorkel or dive on a tropical reef, we are amazed at the beauty and variety of living forms. That beauty can be a trap. If we're not careful, we stay at that depth instead of learning to go deeper. If we do go deeper, new worlds are disclosed, new possibilities for communion with ourselves, others, and the universe of which we could not have dreamed. Over time, we become as comfortable under water as on land, and our framework expands to include the sea and what is under the sea as well as the narrower life lived in the air. We move back and forth between them easily. Air and water become dimensions of a single reality. The first explosive photos taken by the Hubble telescope showed the richness and complexity of space, a technology disclosing new possibilities for action. As those possibilities percolate into our consciousness, what it means to be a human being is transformed. That's how it felt too when I downloaded my first browser and tumbled like Alice into cyberspace, emerging from underground eight hours later, oblivious to the passage of time. The Internet is a vast sea of possibilities, a symbolic representation of our collective consciousness and our collective unconscious. When we explore the Net, we are exploring ourselves. The Net is a swirl of invisible currents. We learn to surf swells of meaning that surge back and forth like the sea. We learn to follow currents of information, feeling the swells interact in subtle and complex ways. We become voyagers in the sea of information in which we are immersed, plunging through high seas in outrigger canoes. We make our own tangled starmaps that represent and remember for us how to find our way home. There is ultimately only ourselves to know. When we try to understand everything, we do not understand anything at all, observed Shunryu Suzuki. But when we understand ourselves, we understand everything. The Internet is not so much a set of skills as it is a culture. Guided by mentors, learning like wolves to hunt together, we learn how to hang in the medium. The images on our monitors are icons, windows disclosing possibilities far beyond our home planet. Inner and outer space alike are explored by tele-robotic sensory extensions, revealing the medium in which we have always been swimming. Consciousness is the sea, and the sea is all around us. The secrets that we think are lost are simply waiting to be found: Supra-rational modes of knowing. Connection and community of such depth and complexity that we grow giddy with delight. A network in which we are both nurtured and fulfilled, each node of the web a reflecting facet like one of Indra's jewels, reflecting each of the others and the totality of the whole. ********************************************************************** Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions of computer technology. Comments are welcome. Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or (3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network, email for details. To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the words "subscribe islands" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe islands" in the body of the message. Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and organizations. Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1998. All rights reserved. ThiemeWorks on the Web: http://www.thiemeworks.com ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 23:47:49 -0600 From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas) Subject: File 4--"Feds Dishing up Spam" (press release) SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9803/31/beat/ HEARD ON THE BEAT: FEDS DISHING UP SPAM March 31, 1998 Web posted at: 11:43 AM EST (1143 GMT) The FBI uses many methods in its crusade against crime and, according to a few angry residents of cyberspace, one of those methods looks suspiciously like "spam." In February, the FBI sent bulk e-mail, titled "Militants Call for Anti-U.S. Attacks Worldwide," to thousands of online addresses. The missive warned that Islamic militants had issued "a religious decree calling on Muslims everywhere to attack U.S. citizens, facilities and allies of the U.S. around the world." While it may have been considerate of the FBI to issue the warning, it left people like John Bolding, owner of a tiny software company in Tucson, wondering why he was one of its recipients. A fanatical foe of spam, unwanted bulk e-mail, Bolding conducted an investigation of his own. He said he learned that the message had been sent to thousands of high-tech companies, even though they weren't terrorism targets. Bolding said he was perplexed, then outraged. "They're using tax dollars to send out spam," said Bolding, who posted the FBI message on his company's Web site, at http://www.firstbase.com/spam.htm FBI officials said the e-mail messages were simply a new wrinkle in a long-standing effort to raise awareness of terrorism by sending advisories to companies that want occasional updates. The FBI assembled the e-mail list partly from various published directories, said Ron VanVranken, an FBI spokesman. He added that the agency received only two complaints and removed those addresses. "We just want to protect Americans," said VanVranken. Bolding said he had his name taken off the list, although the agent he contacted asked him if his attempts to block the e-mail were part of "some kind of new un-American subversive activity." So while Bolding still gets hundreds of spam messages each week, none of them is from the FBI, restoring normalcy to his relationship with the spy agency. "Except there is a sedan parked out front with guys wearing trench coats," he said. "Just joking." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:03:27 -0800 From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Subject: File 5--"Computers, Ethics and Society", Ermann & Williams BKETHICS.RVW 980131 "Computers, Ethics and Society", M. David Ermann/Mary B. Williams/Michele S. Shauf, 1997, 0-19-510756-X, C$29.95 %A M. David Ermann %A Michele S. Shauf %C 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario M3C 1J9 %D 1997 %G 0-19-510756-X %I Oxford University Press %O C$29.95 800-451-7556 fax: 919-677-1303 cjp@oup-usa.org %P 340 p. %T "Computers, Ethics and Society, Second Edition" Ethics. Don't talk to me about ethics. Computer industry the size of a planet, security specialists sleeping under every bush, a zillion philosophy students and what do we do? We write a textbook. It's so depressing. It has been seven years since the first edition of this book was published, and five years since I reviewed that first edition. I was rather looking forward to it at the time, it being the only title I had found to address this all important issue. I was a bit chagrined to find that it was, a) a series of articles, rather than a book; and, b) a textbook. Well, courses on computer ethics are important, and in the interim there have been both other textbooks and serious examinations of the topic for the working professional. I've gotten over my disappointment that the book was a textbook, but still find it to be flawed *as* a textbook. As with other, similar, works, some of the disappointment arises from the fact that, so far, this is close to the best we can do. The apparent organization of the material is good. The first section of papers deals with general ethical theory. Unfortunately, the background is somewhat limited, dealing only with utilitarianism, generally simplified to "the greatest good for the greatest number", and some minor variations. (Kant's "Categorical Imperative" is covered, but it can easily be seen as a special case of utilitarianism where "badness" is exponential.) The first paper, "Ethical Issues in Computing," stands as an overview of topics to be covered in the book. As such, the piece can't be faulted for a lack of depth. However, what analysis there is in the essay betrays a reliance on facile reasoning and presumptions based on strictly anecdotal evidence, or no evidence at all. In this regard, it foreshadows too much of the material in the book overall. The second and third papers, "Information Technologies Could Threaten Privacy, Freedom, and Democracy," and "Technology is a Tool of the Powerful," demonstrates another shortcoming of the book: an emphasis on theoretical societal, rather than practical personal, responsibilities and issues. As the material begins to examine generic ethical principles in light of specific problems, the treatment becomes uneven, although by and large it offers little except further problems in defining moral action. (I was sad to see that a first rate treatise on privacy as it relates to monitoring of criminal offenders; lucid, readable and almost poetic while casting an insightful new light on the subject; has been removed.) In light of my comments about a social bias to the book, it may seem strange that part two is entitled "Computers and Personal Life." However, personal action and responsibility is in the minority. Four papers deal with privacy, commerce, and employment, again pitting the individual against the mass, if not the state. The excerpt from Gates' "The Road Ahead" (an unremarkedly ironic inclusion given the current debate and legal battles over "ownership" of the desktop) is nothing more than a bit of blue sky pronouncing. The articles by Postman, Gergen, and Broadhurst are better informed, but no closer to ethics. Eugene Spafford seems to be the only contender in the personal activity arena. "Computers and the Just Society" is definitely back with the person against the principality, paying particular attention to employment (in the aggregate) and privacy (as being eroded by legislation against encryption). There is a nod to cyberspace and the law on the way through, but it isn't much improvement over the first edition. (Aristotle and Augustine didn't even make the cut this time out.) Part four, on "Computing Professionals and Their Ethical Responsibilities" shows titular promise, but is back on the individual against society once more. Indeed, there is little that is specific to the computing professional. A paper on "whistle-blowing' is clear as to the issues, but finally ambiguous as to any answers. Steven Levy's piece on Lotus Marketplace is a bit depressing when you realize the final outcome: Lotus never did release marketplace, but a number of recent "products" are much greater invasions of privacy. Given the almost absolute emphasis on society, I was rather surprised to see only one paper, and that tangentially, related to the rise of the Internet. The net has become a major force in society, both in spreading hate literature and other disinformation, and in promoting democracy and discourse. The second edition does not appear to have taken the opportunity to come up to date in this regard. Much of the material collated here is interesting, and worthwhile background for a course in computer ethics, but it doesn't go anywhere. The quality is very uneven and, ultimately, much of the writing is disappointing. The section and subsection headings often bear only the most tenuous connection to the contents, although related articles to tend to have some commonality. As course reading material, this book could be very useful in the hands of a good instructor. As a resource for those working in the lines...well, I suppose we keep looking and hoping. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993, 1998 BKETHICS.RVW 980131 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 07:33:41 -0500 From: Jonathan Wallace Subject: File 6--SLAC Bulletin - Apr 1 '98 SLAC Bulletin, April 1, 1998 ----------------------------- The SLAC Bulletin is a low-volume mailer (1-5 messages per month) on Internet freedom of speech issues from Jonathan Wallace, co-author of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt 1996) and publisher of The Ethical Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org). To add or delete yourself: http://www.greenspun.com/spam/home.tcl?domain=SLAC The following is my testimony submitted to the U.S. Senate in oppositio to the McCain bill which would require installation of censorware in federally-supported libraries and schools. What Censorware Means to Me by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net In the past year I have become an activist against the use of censorware in government institutions. Of the wide variety of issues pertaining to free speech which I might have chosen, how did I select this one? The answer is that I didn't go looking to pick a fight with censorware; it picked a fight with me. I practiced law for ten years specializing in computer-related matters, then became an executive in a software business. For years I had day-dreamed about starting a newsletter on ethical issues as an avocation, but the cost seemed prohibitive; the newsletter I sent my law clients cost more than a dollar a copy, so it seemed impossible for me to reach a significant audience. I wasn't rich, and I couldn't afford it. In 1994, the World Wide Web came along, and I learned HTML, the "mark-up" language in which Web pages are created. That happened to be the year I turned 40, and I made up a list of things I wanted to accomplish; finally starting my ethics newsletter was one of them. On January 1, 1995, issue number 1 of The Ethical Spectacle went on-line at http://www.spectacle.org. It included articles on campaign finance, Schindler's List, and making the net accessible for minorities. Thirty-seven more monthly issues have followed since then. The expense of publishing the Spectacle is under $100 a month, exclusive of my time. A goal listed in the Spectacle mission statement: "Promoting freedom of speech, compassion, fairness and humility as the fundamental building blocks of private and public life." Within a few days, people had found the Spectacle and were beginning to send me letters about it. I received a monthly status report from the company on whose server the Spectacle lives: more than 1,000 people had read it, more than 3,000, 8,000, 12,000....Today upwards of twenty to thirty thousand people read it every month. I have received email from readers in Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil and many other countries. Publishers have requested and gotten permission to reprint my work in textbooks, law journals, and library science publications. Hundreds or thousands of other Web sites around the world link to mine, and many of them have republished my essays. Pieces I wrote have been passed around on Usenet and private mailing lists, leading more readers to the Spectacle. During 1995, I had signed a contract with the publishing firm of Henry Holt, for a book on Internet censorship. Ironically, in that book, Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, published in early 1996, Mark Mangan and I recommended censorware as a private approach to avoiding pornography. Between the time that we delivered the manuscript and its appearance in bookstores, censorware products began blocking the Spectacle. The first Web page of mine blocked by any product was the one dedicated to our book (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch). It was promptly barred by Cyberpatrol and later by I-Gear as well. Cyberpatrol has also blocked Nizkor, the leading Holocaust site, and Deja News, a Usenet archive used by programmers, attorneys, public relations consultants and others to obtain technical and business information. Through the winter and spring of 1995, I prepared a special issue of the Spectacle for June of that year: a compilation of material about the Auschwitz death camp. Entitled "An Auschwitz Alphabet", it contains excerpts from works by Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel and Tadeusz Borowski, among other Auschwitz inmates. The "Alphabet" is located at http://www.spectacle.org/695/ausch.html. I had no idea of the impact this simple work would have: it accounts for more than 40% of Spectacle readers. Teachers all over the world have assigned it to their classes, and students from many countries have thanked me for creating it. Here are a few of the responses I have had. >From teachers: "I just discovered your work online and am impressed! I am teaching a second level composition course thematically based on the Holocaust..." "I just wanted to let you know that I found your site as I was gathering resources to teach a unit on the Holocaust to my middle school students....your site is going to be a fabulous resource." "I am teaching summer school--U.S. history, 20th century--and found the Alphabet a powerful tool..." >From students: "I am a tenth grade student in Australia, and I would like to congratulate you on this homepage." "I am an Abilene Christian University student. Your information is wonderful and greatly appreciated." "I'm in eighth grade and your page helped me the most..." And here is the single most moving message I have ever received on the Internet, from a young Italian girl: "I read all the books of Primo Levi, I hope for one best world. I'm only 14...I'm not a Jew but I will don't forget..." If these students or teachers had been accessing the Net from computers with the Cybersitter or X-Stop products installed, they would never have been able to see An Auschwitz Alphabet. Cybersitter blocked the whole Spectacle site from about February 1997 until its most recent release. Cybersitter also blocked the National Organization for Women and Peacefire, a student free speech group. X-Stop blocked a portion of my site until recently, when (the ACLU informs me) it began blocking the entire Spectacle domain. The July 1995 issue of the Spectacle, appearing the month after "An Auschwitz Alphabet", was entitled "Threats to the Net" and covered several of the cases we would describe in more detail in the book. (Its address is http://www.spectacle.org/795/). It contained discussions of the Jake Baker and Amateur Action cases, and the Communications Decency Act. The concluding essay was entitled, "We Don't Need New Laws." This issue of the Spectacle was quickly blocked by X-Stop's "felony load" version. This is the release which the publisher touts as blocking only obscene material, hence "felony". It is the same release which blocks the Quaker pages, the Aids Quilt and the American Association of University Women. Late in the year, I added a new section to the Spectacle site called "The Free Speech Dictionary" (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/musm/). It was a series of brief definitions of free speech terms: "hate speech," "pervasiveness", "fighting words", "libel", "obscenity". The Dictionary was blocked by the Bess product. Another product that will not allow access to much of the Spectacle is Web Chaperone, which is the only one of these products to block by keyword alone. I am told Web Chaperone cannot distinguish between an essay about Catharine MacKinnon's views on pornography and the "Hot Nude Women" page. So that makes six, count 'em, six censorware products which block all or part of the Spectacle--a sober, intellectual, rather dry publication, without prurient photographs or stories, which aspires to be an electronic equivalent of print magazines like The Nation, The National Review or The Atlantic. And those are only the ones I know about. If only one or two of these products had blocked my pages, I might have concluded it didn't mean anything. Being on the blacklists of six censorware products proves to me that this kind of software will inevitably block speech like mine on topics like freedom of speech and the Holocaust. Being blocked by all this software has led me to make an investigation of censorware and to become a founding member of The Censorware Project (http://www.spectacle.org/cwp). Each time I look into what one of these products blacklists, I found out about more Websites completely lacking any pornography--on topics like censorship, scuba diving, pet care, political activism. Many of them are run by people who don't have my legal skills or visibility, or the willingness to make a fuss to get their pages unblocked. Most have no way of even finding out which censorware products block their sites. At least four of the products which blacklist the Spectacle are currently installed in public libraries or schools: Cybersitter, Cyberpatrol, Bess, and X-Stop. This bothers me intensely, because I always thought these institutions were in the business of providing access to pages like An Auschwitz Alphabet and the Free Speech Dictionary, not blocking them. One of the letters I got about the Alphabet was from Cenie Ho, a young student at the Djakarta International School. That school later installed CyberSitter, so Cenie and her classmates can't read An Auschwitz Alphabet any more. When libraries install censorware, it is usually because of community pressure, and fundamentalist groups are involved. At the library board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia which resulted in a decision to install X-Stop, Dixie Sanner of Enough is Enough commented that putting library staff in charge of selecting Internet content is like "putting the wolf in charge of the henhouse." Why are we allowing people who hate and fear librarians and have no conception of the diversity of speech to dictate national library policy? I'd like to close with three quotes which, read together, state more eloquently than I can the guiding philosophy of the American doctrine of free speech: John Milton: "Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter....Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." John Stuart Mill: "[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." And finally, Justice Holmes, who stated the operative metaphor for the First Amendment in his dissent in Abrams v. U.S.: "[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out." I believe that the strands uniting the thoughts of these three men are humility, tolerance and optimism-the humility to know that we do not know all the answers; the tolerance of other people's ideas; the optimism that everything will come out all right if we permit free speech. Dixie Sanner and her organization Enough is Enough do not manifest humility, tolerance or optimism when th ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line: SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS. The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. 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