From: Tommy the Terrorist Newsgroups: alt.censorship,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.culture.www,alt.cyberspace Subject: Re: CyperPatrol censors animal rights web sites Date: 2 Jun 1996 23:38:50 GMT Organization: Dis Lines: 30 Message-ID: <4ot8ma$7is@piglet.cc.uic.edu> References: <4omdjv$1tc@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-XXMessage-ID: X-XXDate: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:34:14 GMT Although I am glad to see people criticize "Nanny" services [they are taken far too uncritically at the moment], there is an error here: In article <4omdjv$1tc@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> Ben Leamy, leamy@sunrae.uel.ac.uk writes: >sites on the grounds of perceived extremisim etc. If it is we should >protest vigorously. In extreme cases, issues of defamation etc could >arise (e.g. if a software package defined an AR site as containing >illegal or porn material or some such, it would be publicly branding >the site, its webmaster and possibly the organization as criminals) The Nanny services, however much I despise them, have a right to rate people HOWEVER they see fit --- fairly or arbitrarily, rightly or wrongly, casually or thoroughly. That is *their* freedom of speech, and should not be infringed in a courtroom. If you were successful in pressing such a "defamation" case, then the next case would be against you --- because they'd say that by criticizing them to their customers, and trying to make them look like political censors when they were just trying to protect the little kids from these guh-rue-some things, that you had "cost them business". In the war against censorship, the Courtroom is *not* your friend. The judge, if he does anything, will always side with the guy with the money. The proper way of pressing this battle is to widely publicize to parents (a reasonable proportion of whom doubtless are susceptible to your cause and already on your mailing lists) that this service blocks this material under color of tastelessness; they can choose Nanny services accordingly (if at all). From: rich@c2.org (Rich Graves) Newsgroups: alt.censorship,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.culture.www,alt.cyberspace Subject: Re: CyperPatrol censors animal rights web sites Date: 5 Jun 1996 00:01:19 -0700 Organization: Uncensored Internet, http://www.c2.org/uncensored/ Lines: 53 Sender: llurch@Networking.Stanford.EDU Message-ID: <4p3bbv$88e@Networking.Stanford.EDU> References: <4omdjv$1tc@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> <4p1dm0$nbj@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <4p22mh$kn3@panix2.panix.com> <4p36f2$2l52@piglet.cc.uic.edu> Tommy the Terrorist writes: > The result of this is simple: instead of FIXING Cyber Patrol's >problems, so that they "only" censor sex pictures and naked pictures and >dead bodies (except animal-rights sites and some approved science >courses...) we should try instead merely to TAKE ADVANTAGE of this error >of theirs, in order to make it clear how arbitrary any form of >censorship, whether purchased voluntarily or mandated by the government, >must be. Hear hear! But please focus on the impossibility of forging "decency standards" in any media, not just the technical impossibility of censoring the Internet. Otherwise, they're going to try to "fix" the Internet so that it can be censored. It could happen, you know... everyone knows that Olsen's -L18 fantasy is bullshit given the current configuration of the Internet (and also IPv6), but ATM is another kettle of fish entirely, and it is coming. Incredibly slowly in the US, but it's coming faster in Europe. > To force them to FIX their problems, and present a "consensus" view of >What Ought To Be Legal, is actually a form of collaboration with the >enemy, by which you reveal to them the best strategic positions for >attack, and beg them to take advantage. Agreed, without sarcasm (really!). But I disagree with your conclusion below... [And how about trying a baseball metaphor next time? I can just see the headline in the AFA rag: Tommy the Terrorist taking up strategic position in the war against family values. :-)] > It is not our job to beg them to be a better "Cyber Patrol" --- it is >our job to marginalize and eliminate them and all their ilk, so that even >children will have the right to roam cyberspace at will, and the notion >that a parent would raise a child to be unable to handle *any* form of >written content with his own mental capability will seem barbaric. We're not going to eliminate independent rating systems; I think it's pointless to try, because there is a market for them. What we can do is point out that, while useful to prudes (and I do think prudes have rights to censor themselves and their underage children, even though it's bad for the kids, because to force government/"community" standards between parent and child is even worse), these rating systems are not, will not, and can not be objective and accurate, because there is no such thing as an "objective and accurate" standard of "decency." Sorry, we don't do totalitarianism here. IMO, ambiguity is good. Arbitrariness is good. Let a thousand CyberPatrols bloom, but let none be "the consensus." I prefer blanket ratings like the MPAA G to NC-17 to more descriptive ratings like PICS; I prefer irrational proprietary solutions to standards like PICS. -rich http://www.c2.org/~rich/ From: churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Henry Churchyard) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship,alt.culture.www,alt.cyberspace Subject: Re: CyperPatrol censors animal rights web sites Date: 7 Jun 1996 11:16:17 -0500 Organization: The University of Texas at Austin Lines: 58 Message-ID: <4p9kkh$h7v@piglet.cc.utexas.edu> References: <4omdjv$1tc@epsilon.qmw.ac.uk> <4p22mh$kn3@panix2.panix.com> <4p36f2$2l52@piglet.cc.uic.edu> <4p3bbv$88e@Networking.Stanford.EDU> In article <4p3bbv$88e@Networking.Stanford.EDU>, Rich Graves wrote: > Tommy the Terrorist writes: >> It is not our job to beg them to be a better "Cyber Patrol" --- it is our >> job to marginalize and eliminate them and all their ilk, so that even >> children will have the right to roam cyberspace at will That's just stoopid -- you're saying that parents have no rights at all. Regardless of whether that's practical politics in this country (and it isn't), how are all these tots going to get access, if mommy and daddy don't choose to buy a computer? > What we can do is point out that, these rating systems are not, will not, > and can not be objective and accurate, because there is no such thing as an > "objective and accurate" standard of "decency." Is this news? Your point? > IMO, ambiguity is good. Arbitrariness is good. Let a thousand CyberPatrols > bloom, but let none be "the consensus." I prefer blanket ratings like the > MPAA G to NC-17 to more descriptive ratings like PICS; I prefer irrational > proprietary solutions to standards like PICS. Huh? PICS is just a syntactic framework for rating schemes, and doesn't impose any particular ratings system; it would be perfectly possible to implement the Valenti system in PICS. I'll fess up -- since there happens not to be anything very provocative in my HTTP directory, and since some of the stuff there might be interesting to teens (when doing certain kinds of homework, at least; I've received several letters from highschoolers), and since the questions on the Safesurf site weren't so stupid, I registered with Safesurf. I looked at the RSAC site also, but that one was really _too_ pathetic to bother with -- they make the site so user-hostile, that it makes you wonder whether they really want your registration: you can't do anything without turning image-loading on and downloading lots of annoying graphics; the site is so badly structured and poorly labeled you have to click on about five things before you can finally figure out where the registration section is; and then you can't preview the contents of the questionnaire (as you can at Safesurf), so that you can't look things over in advance to decide if you want to register; and you have to fill in a big form (including lots of real world contact info) before you can even start with the questionnaire. And the questionnaire is presented one question on each HTML page, and a lot of them are minutely explicit questions about each possible variation of sexual acts that may be depicted on your site -- so that you have to answer each and every little question (even if your site has nothing to do with sex!), and you have no idea what question is coming up next, or how long the damn questionnaire is. I bailed out of this losing proposition fairly quickly -- why am I not surprised that Microsoft is behind it? -- Henry Churchyard || "...equal to 2800 pounds, 19 shillings, and elevenpence three farthings, as nearly as can be expressed in English money, the Aphanian currency being a complex decimal coinage which would take too long to explain" - Tom Hood, _Petsetilla's Posy_ (1870) http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh