1055 lines
46 KiB
Plaintext
1055 lines
46 KiB
Plaintext
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Computer underground Digest Mon Mar 25, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 24
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ISSN 1004-042X
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Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
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News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
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Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
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Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
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Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
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Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
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Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
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Ian Dickinson
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Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
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CONTENTS, #8.24 (Mon, Mar 25, 1996)
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File 1--CDA hearing--day 2
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File 2-- An Off the Record Interview with FTC'S Christine Varney
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File 3--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 24 Mar, 1996)
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CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
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THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------
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From: jblumen@INTERRAMP.COM
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Date: Sun, 24 Mar 96 10:52:02 PST
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Subject: File 1--CDA hearing--day 2
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((MODERATORS' NOTE: Donna Hoffman adds this to Day 2's commentary:
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In Jonathan Wallace's account of "CDA hearing--day 2" there
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is an error:
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The number of unique URLs indexed on altavista as of
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Thursday, March 21 was 22 million, not 12 million and the
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number of words is now 11 billion.
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Great accounting of the day's events!
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==================
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*ACLU V. RENO REPORT*
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Day Two
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Ceremonial Courtroom, U.S. Courthouse, Philadelphia, March 22,
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1996--
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The day began with Professor Donna Hoffman of Vanderbilt being
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sworn in as an expert witness for the ACLU. DOJ lawyer Jay Baron
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objected and asked for "voir dire"--the right to question
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the witness about her credentials.
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Baron wasn't really trying to prevent Hoffman from testifying;
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he just wanted the judges to know she is not a pornography
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expert. Hoffman doesn't pretend to be; she is the leading
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authority on commercialization of the Net, and is well-known
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for her lead role in debunking the Marty Rimm study last
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summer. Hoffman proved to be a fascinating witness, educating
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the judges on the way people use the World Wide Web, and
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on what the CDA will do to those usage patterns.
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The judges acknowledged that Hoffman was present as an expert
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on the Web, not on porn, and the cross-examination, also
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conducted by Baron, began.
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Q: "You've invented a few terms, haven't you?"
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A: "Yes."
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"Not acronyms, I hope," said Judge Dalzell. Whereupon Hoffman
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began describing "CME"--computer mediated environments.
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Key to Hoffman's testimony was the concept of "flow"--the
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pleasurable experience of wandering around the Web, jumping
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from link to link in a nonlinear fashion. Hoffman
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compared this to the high experienced by a runner or a rock
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climber immersed in the details and pleasures of the
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sport. Responding to a question from Judge Dalzell as
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to whether "user navigation" and "surfing" were synonymous,
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Hoffman defined a second type of navigation: goal directed,
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where the user is searching in an organized way for
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particular information and is much less likely to
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experience the pleasures of "flow."
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The judges seemed quite infatuated by "flow", joking with
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the witness and the attorneys about the idea of people
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getting high on the Web. The significance of "flow"
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to the case against the CDA: the point was hammered home
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that any scheme requiring Web page providers to register
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users before they can view pages would irrevocably
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destroy the experience of the Web. Much of the day's
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testimony was intended to establish to the judges that
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schemes allowing information providers to pre-screen
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users are completely impractical and destructive
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of the fragile beauty of the Web.
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Baron asked whether children under 18 surf.
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A: "Yes."
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Q: "But you know next to nothing about the behavior
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of children on the Net?"
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A: "Correct."
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Baron asked about the CMU "Homenet" study, a five
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year study of household Net use, which has shown that
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"teens lead the family". Professor Hoffman acknowledged
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that she uses the study as background to her work, but
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that you cannot generalize its conclusions, which
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are based on a sample of only 48 families in
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an urban area.
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This was an example of Donna Hoffman's strengths.
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In an arena--the CDA debate--that has been characterized
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by so much hype and rhetoric, she was a cool, collected
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scientist, presenting and critiquing data, always able
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to cite her sources. She really knew what she was
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talking about, and I think the judges saw that.
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Baron now honed in for the first attempted Perry Mason
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trick of the trial.
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Q: "The Net is unique, different than other media?
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Its a 24 hour, 7 day medium, right?"
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A: "Yes."
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Q: "Do children under 18 surf?"
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A: "Yes."
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Q: "Is Altavista a popular search engine?"
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A: "Yes."
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Q: [Reading from Hoffman's deposition transcript] "Individuals
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must seek out the information they wish. Information
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doesn't suddenly appear, surprising them."
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Baron then described a hypothetical situation: Your child
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has been assigned a report on the book "Little Women" and
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wants to surf the Web for a copy or for information on
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the book.
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Hoffman, refusing to take the bait, said that a
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child who was competent in using the Web would search
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on "Alcott" and "Little Women" as keywords. Baron
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handed her a government exhibit--the results of an
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Infoseek search--and asked her to read the fifth
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item. "You want me to read this?" Hoffman asked.
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Her professionalism and sarcasm were both evident
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at that moment.
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"See hot pictures of naked women," she read.
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(DOJ attorneys, like state prosecutors in
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speech related cases, delight in making the other
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side's witnesses read controversial material.
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A notorious example was the Amateur Action BBS
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case where Memphis federal prosecutor Dan Newsom
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made defendant Carleen Thomas read scores of descriptions
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her husband had written of pornographic GIF files.
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She had nothing to do with them, had never read
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seen some of them before, but the jury, which
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later convicted her, got to hear her using
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foul language.)
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Hoffman bounced right back, pointing out that it
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was evident from the print-out that the search
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criteria were Little *or* Women and that the search
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had produced all files with either word
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in the title. The implication was that
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an experienced user would not conduct a search
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for Louisa May Alcott this way.
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Baron now asked her to define "hits" and Hoffman
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explained that hits--HTML file accesses--are
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almost useless as a way of measuring the use of
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the World Wide Web, as there is no way to
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correlate hits to the number of people
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accessing a page. For example, ten hits
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result from the user loading one page with
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nine graphics inserted into it. She described
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"unique domains" as a better measure, but
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pointed out the "AOL problem"--thousands
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of AOL vistors to your page result in
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your Web server counting one unique domain.
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She concluded that unique domains are the
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"lower bound" of people measurement on the
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Web (there cannot be fewer users than domains)
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and hits are the upper bound (there cannot be
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more users than there are HTML file accesses).
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The judges wanted to come back to Louisa May
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Alcott. Chief Judge Sloviter asked, "You would
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have searched on Alcott?"
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A: "I would have known that 'Little Women' would
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produce more URL's than I was interested in."
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Q: "A child might not know."
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A: "I would have been there guiding her."
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Prompted by Baron, Hoffman now described bots
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and spiders, and the ways in which search
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engines automatically scan Web pages and
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index them. An interesting statistic:
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Altavista's database contains twelve
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million unique URL's--"our best guess
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as to the universe of information on the
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Web." Altavista's catalog of URL's has
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grown by one million in one month.
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Judge Sloviter: "Its been cold out, and people
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didn't have anything else to do..."
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Hoffman next testified as to the difference
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between search engines, which tend to compile
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their information indiscriminately via spiders
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and bots, and directories such as Yahoo where
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a human being evaluates each site before adding
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it. After a detour to explain to the judges
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what HTML forms are, Hoffman examined a government
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exhibit pertaining to a Web site called Open Market,
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an online directory where businesses fill out
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a form to register their own commercial Web sites.
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Open Market has 22,000 sites listed--and a search
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of its database found 23 items keyworded "porn".
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Q: "Do you agree its in the interest of the marketplace to
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adopt parental controls?"
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A: "Yes, I do."
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Baron showed her a screen shot from an adult Web site,
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Cybersex City, which requires credit card registration
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before indecent pictures can be viewed. The site contained
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a notice that the CDA had caused it to remove certain materials
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from the public part of its pages, but that the
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"inner sanctum" remained unchanged.
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Q: "Any idea what was there before?"
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A: "No."
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Q: "Could it have been porn?"
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ACLU attorney Chris Hansen called out, "Objection!" and
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the judges sustained him--the question was improper
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because Hoffman had already said she didn't know.
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In a trial remarkably free of the usual Perry
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Mason posturing and byplay, this was only the
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second or third objection, and the first one
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sustained.
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Baron next showed the professor a screen shot from
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Bianca's Smut Shack. Last summer, while writing
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Sex, Laws and Cyberspace, I went looking for
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the kind of material in cyberspace which would
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fall afoul of the CDA, and I found Bianca's pages.
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At the time, I thought that the Smut Shack was
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a prime example of the kind of controversial
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language that the First Amendment was intended to
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protect. Obviously, the Bill of Rights means nothing
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if it only protects the speech of which we approve.
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Bianca's pages are a volatile combination of
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politics, defiance and sexually explicit speech--
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clearly immune from government interference if printed
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on paper rather than in cyberspace.
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It was interesting to see Bianca turn up as a
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subject of inquiry in the courtroom. Baron was
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mainly interested in Bianca because of a
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warning she has posted on her top page.
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She lists a series of solutions that parents
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can use if they do not wish minors to access her site:
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use a program like Surfwatch to block her; email her
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your domain name, and she will block your account
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from her site.
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Q. "Do you concede that removal of photos from the
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'Cybersex City' site mentioned above doesn't have
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a profound adverse effect on the future growth of
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the Net?"
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A: "On that particular site, that's correct."
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Q. "And the posting of the warning on Bianca's
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Smut Shack, you concede that doesn't have a
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profound adverse effect on the future growth of
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the Net?"
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A: "Not on that particular site."
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ACLU attorneys privately commented at lunch that day that
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the government hasn't really been forced to commit to
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a particular argument or defense yet. Baron clearly
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seemed to be trying to show that the CDA is harmless
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because there are so many easy ways to comply
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with it. Of course, since the law doesn't contain any
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specific "safe harbor" (unlike the cable, broadcast
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and phone indecency laws which carefully describe
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measures like taking credit cards or
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broadcasting indecency after ten p.m.), this
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ought not to be a persuasive argument.
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Q: "Is it correct that the alt.binaries newsgroup contains
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pornographic images?"
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Hansen correctly objected that the word "pornographhic"
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has no legal meaning (the laws deal with "obscenity" and
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"indecency", not "pornography") but Hoffman resolved the
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problem by responding that alt.binaries contains "explicit
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sexual images."
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Q: "Do porno BBS's advertise on Usenet?"
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Hoffman conceded that some images on Usenet carry the phone
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numbers of pornographic BBS's like Amateur Action and
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are possibly placed there by the BBS sysops as advertisements.
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Baron asked Hoffman about a statement in her affidavit that
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pornography as a percentage of total information on the
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net is decreasing. She replied that she thinks the amount of
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porn on the Net is a constant, while the total universe
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of information there is increasing exponentially.
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Adopting the Altavista numbers, Baron did a quick calculation
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suggesting that if 1% of cyberspace is smut, there are 120,000
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smutty URL's on the Web. Hoffman replied that the number of
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web servers is doubling every month and a half, the
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total number of servers of all types on the Internet is
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doubling annually, and the amount of porn is staying the same.
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After a break, the ACLU's Hansen conducted some "redirect"
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examination, trying to relate the problem of monitoring Web
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users by age to the statistics--hits and unique domains--
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monitored by Web servers. Hoffman agreed that existing server
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software is almost useless for this purpose, as neither
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hits nor unique domains "map" to actual individual people
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whose age can be determined. The judges struggled to
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understand what some of the attorneys in the courtroom
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themselves did not: on a Web site like mine with 390 files,
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there is no set path through the material, nor any
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single "back door"--every file is a separate URL that can
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be accessed from anywhere else on the Web.
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Q: "The number of times you would have to check that
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someone is 18 or over would be roughly determined by
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the number of hits?"
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A: "Yes."
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Hansen brought Professor Hoffman back to the Bianca
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screen shot and asked her to read the third item
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in Bianca's warning. Baron had skipped over
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Bianca's statement that she "heartily supports"
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rating systems such as PICS.
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Q: "Does this imply any way a content provider can
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determine who is 18?"
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A: "No, there is no way to do that."
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Judge Buckwalter was intrigued by Hoffman's reference to
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the Net as a "democratic" form of communication.
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A: "the Internet....is truly a revolution in the sense
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that users can provide content to the medium. My site is
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just as likely to be visited as Time Warner...there are
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no barriers, no gateways."
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Q: "There is a Big Brother....if not the government,
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than the people who create the directories."
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A: "I don't agree."
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Q: "Don't discussion forums have someone who steers?"
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A: "Not in unmoderated lists such as Usenet."
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Q: "I was surfing magazines...."
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Judge Dalzell interjected: "Printed on something called
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'paper'...."
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Q: "...and I saw the James Fallows article in the Atlantic
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magazine which says most popular lists are mediated...
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gatekeepers are becoming more important."
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The comment at lunch was that the fallows article, which
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I have not read, was a typical journalistic "fantasy".
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A: "Gatekeepers are important, but are not Big Brother...
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the Net is very organic."
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Chief Judge Sloviter: "What does organic mean?"
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A: "The Net evolves naturally....it is open and democratic,
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with access for all."
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Dalzell: "Do you really believe that the Net is the most
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important communications innovation since the printing press?
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Isn't that an extravagant statement?"
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A: "The many to many nature of the Internet allows users to
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contribute information in a way never before possible."
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Q: "You said in your affidavit that there will be a
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negative effect on commercialization of the Net because many
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businesses will exit or may never enter. How do you
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know?"
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A: "Becuase they've told me....I've had conversations
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with providers who are exiting, who have removed materials,
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women who were considering online businesses from home
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who were very concerned by the legal issues which are
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now too complicatd."
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Dalzell brought Hoffman back to the issue of "flow" and
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elicited that "you can't move seamlessly through
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cyberspace if you have to register at every site."
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Judge Sloviter: "Its a high when you jump from link to
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link as we judges might get a high from going into the
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library?"
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Baron popped up and wanted to know if any of the
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women who were deterred from doing business on the
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Net were smut peddlers. No, said Hoffman, they
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were considering Tshirt or poster businesses,
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among others.
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Hansen pursued the library analogy one step further
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and Hoffman said, " We would have to register
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every book on every shelf of every library."
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And that was it. Professor Donna Hoffman watched
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the rest of the day's proceedings from the first
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row ("can I go back to my regular life now?"
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she asked the ACLU attorneys). Her testimony
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was professional, incisive, clear and always
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supported by scientific sources she could
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readily cite when asked. I think the judges
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found her impressive.
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Next up was a Mr. Croneberger from the Carnegie
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Library in Pittsburgh, called by plaintiff American
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Library Association. Carnegie has an online
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card catalog with 2 million entries, many containing
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references to sex or the seven dirty words.
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Croneberger had said in his affidavit that he
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would need 180 extra employees to cleanse the card
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catalog to comply with the CDA.
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Pat Rosado of DOJ asked if it would be possible to
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do a keyword search of the catalog for the dirty
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words, rather than reviewing all entries manually.
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Rosado seems to be reserved by DOJ for the "pit bull"
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role, as she had shown during her cross of sex education
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expert Staton on day 1.
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Q: "A keyword search on sex wouldn't turn up books on
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Abe Lincoln?"
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A: "It might. I have seen entries on works speculating
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about lincoln's sex life or lack thereof."
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Q: "What about books on geology?"
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A: "Only if you couple 'rock' with 'roll'."
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Q: "A search on sex or the seven dirty words would turn up
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less than all 2 million titles in your catalog?"
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A: "Yes."
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Rosado elicited that the library carries electronic text of
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Playboy articles but no images. Croneberger said he would
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carry the images if the provider included them--but acknowledged
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he does not carry the paper magazine itself in the library.
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Q: "You exercise some discretion as to what becomes part of
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the collection?"
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A: "Yes."
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Q: "The criteria include community standards....?"
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A: "Yes, but that isn't and cannot be the only criterion--
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I have an image of a public library as a place that has
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material that offends everyone--that's our job."
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Dalzell: "You said in your affidavit that one
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third of card holders are minors. Do you have
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any restrictions based on age?"
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A: "No. Some libraries have different
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cards for minors; we and many others do not. "
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Croneberger observed that segregating material on the
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shelves stigmatizes adults who may want simple material.
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He said it is the parent's role, not the library's,
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to determine what children may read.
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Q: "Do you have to worry about the standards of any
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communities other than Pittsburgh?"
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A: "Our electronic material is now available
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around the world."
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Buckwalter asked whether a system could be devised
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to shield minors from indecent material IF money
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were no object and IF the requirements of the
|
|
CDA were specific enough to be comprehensible.
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A: "It could be done, but would contradict the mission..."
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Q: "I agree with you, but..."
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Judge Sloviter: "Well, you don't necessarily mean you
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agree with him."
|
|
|
|
Judge Sloviter then asked Croneberger to contrast
|
|
two movies on alcoholism, The Lost Weekend and
|
|
Leaving Las Vegas--would a CDA-type regulation of content
|
|
pertaining to alcoholism make him remove both
|
|
from the library? Could he leave the first
|
|
movie and remove only the second, because it "crosses
|
|
the line"?
|
|
|
|
A: "The librarian in me doesn't want that line to exist.
|
|
If librarians must make those decisions for other people's
|
|
children, we will fail miserably."
|
|
|
|
Q: "If you had to use Surfwatch, would that exclude Shakespeare?"
|
|
|
|
A: "And the Bible, and on and on."
|
|
|
|
Q: "Do you approve of net blockers [like Surfwatch]?"
|
|
|
|
A: "Yes--I would like the library be able to give them
|
|
away to parents."
|
|
|
|
After lunch, Mr. Bradner, the Harvard systems guy and
|
|
Internet Engineering Task Force member who had testified
|
|
in the morning of Day 1, resumed the stand. During a
|
|
break, a reporter for a national paper commented that
|
|
she found Bradner a bit arrogant and feared the judges
|
|
might too. I liked him a lot and didn't find his
|
|
self-confidence or occasional sarcasm a negative--but
|
|
he definitely had that air of "I am a professional; do
|
|
not try this at home."
|
|
|
|
His role today, following in Professor Hoffman's footsteps,
|
|
was to explain to the court the impossibility of making
|
|
information providers responsible for knowing the age of
|
|
users, especially on the Web. "As an IP, I have no
|
|
ability to go and examine what browsers my users are using."
|
|
Nor can he ensure that users enter his site by way of a
|
|
particular page, as the tens of thousand of pages there
|
|
each has its own URL. "I would have to screen once for every
|
|
hit."
|
|
|
|
He was asked Judge Buckwalter's question about whether
|
|
screening all users is technically possible.
|
|
|
|
A: "Probably....but we'd have to have a method
|
|
whereby all [users] would have to provide some form of
|
|
identification [which couldn't be] easily forged....
|
|
I would have fun with it if it were a cost-plus contract."
|
|
|
|
Baron elicited from him that each page on his site could
|
|
have its own rating embedded as an HTML tag.
|
|
|
|
Judge Dalzell became interested in caching. Bradner
|
|
testified that because European companies pay from the
|
|
transatlantic Net link to the US (it is free to us)
|
|
powerful servers cache US Web pages accessed from Europe
|
|
so that other users do not have to go back across the
|
|
ocean to get them. Bradner said that, though the
|
|
link is free in our direction, some ISP's here cache
|
|
frequently accessed pages for their users
|
|
as well. Dalzell imagined a "Sexy European
|
|
Girls" page based in Luxemburg. "This is why this is important
|
|
to our consideration....whoever created the page in
|
|
Luxemburg may not be thinking about complying with the
|
|
CDA. But that caching server in the US domesticates the
|
|
material...Could Mr. Coppolino [the senior DOJ attorney]
|
|
and his troops find that caching server to prosecute it?"
|
|
|
|
A: "There's no way to tell if an HTML file was cached on
|
|
its way to you."
|
|
|
|
Dalzell: "You can't require a Luxemburg IP to tag files
|
|
according to US law."
|
|
|
|
Judge Buckwalter offered the analogy of a bar, not allowed
|
|
to serve people under 21. Bradner said that the problem as
|
|
he understands it is that the CDA requires the liquor distiller
|
|
to see that people under 21 don't buy liquor in the bar.
|
|
|
|
Baron asked whether the browser marketplace couldn't easily
|
|
adapt to a rating system adopted as a Net standard. Bradner
|
|
said it could even accomodate several.
|
|
|
|
The remarkable Judge Dalzell interjected, "But the Web came
|
|
out of CERN, not a standards body...doesn't a governing standards
|
|
body exclude new technology like the Web?"
|
|
|
|
Bradner readily agreed. "There are other holes in the
|
|
Net we don't know about. There are other needs we don't
|
|
know we have." Standards, he agreed, can strangle innovation.
|
|
|
|
Dalzell: "Exponential growth of the Net occurred because
|
|
government kept their hands out of it."
|
|
|
|
And there's the moral of the story. Day two ended on this
|
|
incredible high note. Day three, April 1, begins with
|
|
Net wizard-scribe Howard Rheingold testifying for
|
|
ACLU--hopefully not wearing his starry costume.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------
|
|
Jonathan Wallace
|
|
The Ethical Spectacle
|
|
http://www.spectacle.org
|
|
ACLU v. Reno plaintiff
|
|
http://www.spectacle.org/cda/cdamn.html
|
|
Co-author, Sex, Laws and Cyberspace
|
|
(Henry Holt, 1996)
|
|
http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 16:22:12 -0600
|
|
From: cudigest@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Computer underground Digest)
|
|
Subject: File 2-- An Off the Record Interview with FTC'S Christine Varney
|
|
|
|
((MODERATORS' NOTE: Brian McWilliams, editor of "Off the Record,"
|
|
placed the following interview on the OTR homepage at:
|
|
http://www.mediapool.com/offtherecord/varn_tra.html
|
|
We thought it would be of interest to CuD readers, so here it is).
|
|
|
|
REGULATING CYBERSPACE
|
|
|
|
Is it government's job to protect Netizens
|
|
from fraud and privacy violations?
|
|
|
|
AN OFF THE RECORD INTERVIEW WITH FTC COMMISSIONER CHRISTINE VARNEY, FEB. 22,
|
|
1996.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
________________________________________
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Christine, how safe is the Internet today for
|
|
consumers? How prevalent is Internet-based
|
|
fraud or deceptive advertising?
|
|
|
|
Well, I think there are a couple of different
|
|
issues. There is out-and-out fraud, there's
|
|
unsubstantiated advertising, misleading
|
|
advertising, misappropriation of personal
|
|
data including credit cards and those kinds
|
|
of data that could cause you some serious
|
|
harm. Fraud is out there. The Internet
|
|
community or the Netizens don't tolerate
|
|
fraud well and when they find it they tend to
|
|
spam it themselves which makes our job
|
|
somewhat easier. But, it's out there, when we
|
|
find it we prosecute it.
|
|
|
|
We've had a couple of successful prosecutions
|
|
for fraud on the Net: for fraudulent credit
|
|
repairs schemes, fraudulent dietary
|
|
supplements, fraudulent health products, and
|
|
we've gone after them. We have not yet
|
|
brought a case on any kind of bulk
|
|
advertising. One of the concerns that we have
|
|
is when you go into a chat room or into
|
|
various places on a web site, you don't
|
|
always know whether or not you're talking to
|
|
an advertiser or whether or not you're
|
|
talking to an individual who has a good
|
|
experience with a product. That is something
|
|
we are concerned about. But, the
|
|
advertisements that companies at verifiable
|
|
businesses put up are for the most part
|
|
meeting our current guidelines in
|
|
substantiation and truth in advertising. We
|
|
haven't had a lot of problem there. We've had
|
|
more of a problem with deception as I said
|
|
earlier. When you enter a chat room and
|
|
somebody is telling you that this wonderful
|
|
tree bark in Mexico will cure any kind of
|
|
fatal cancer, and the person that is making
|
|
these claims is in fact the owner of the tree
|
|
bark, and the owner of airplane that takes
|
|
you there, and the owner of the place you
|
|
have to stay while you are there, and you
|
|
don't know that. That's out-and-out
|
|
deception. That's something we're interested
|
|
in.
|
|
|
|
The Net is still in many regards the wild,
|
|
wild west. But, the culture of the Net is
|
|
something that is very supportive of the work
|
|
that we're trying to do. And, that is, to get
|
|
consumers accurate information upon which to
|
|
make decisions.
|
|
|
|
Do you think users of the Net can take care
|
|
of problems like fraud and deceptive
|
|
advertising without help from the
|
|
government?
|
|
|
|
Well, there's a difference between
|
|
legislation, regulation, and self-regulation.
|
|
And, I think what we sense is that much of
|
|
the Net -- both the people that are selling
|
|
products on-line, selling services on-line,
|
|
selling the on-line services themselves --
|
|
what that group of people seems to be
|
|
interested in is self-regulating and
|
|
developing their own standards.
|
|
|
|
Our long-term experience here are the Federal
|
|
Trade Commission (FTC) over the fifty years
|
|
we've been in existence, is that industry
|
|
self-regulation works very well so long as it
|
|
is backed up by pretty good government
|
|
enforcement. So, if industries set standards
|
|
on what is deceptive on the Net and they know
|
|
that occasionally when there's a serious
|
|
deception the government will come in and
|
|
prosecute it, they're generally fairly happy
|
|
with that so long as they're setting the
|
|
standard in the first place in a dialogue
|
|
with consumers and government and industry.
|
|
That's what I hope we're going to do here.
|
|
|
|
I think it's far too early to think about
|
|
regulating the Net. Its an emerging
|
|
technology in many ways. We don't know where
|
|
it's going to go, and I'm afraid that a
|
|
regulatory overlay will impede the innovation
|
|
and growth that've we seen there. And, until
|
|
we got a better sense of where the problems
|
|
are and what's appropriate, government
|
|
intervention ... the government ought to sit
|
|
real tight and see ... industry best
|
|
practices.
|
|
|
|
Do you worry at all that consumer fears that
|
|
companies are snooping on them might hurt
|
|
on-line commerce, in the same way that
|
|
consumer fears of hackers are holding back
|
|
on-line transactions to some extent?
|
|
|
|
Well, I kind of view it differently. I think
|
|
that consumers are not aware enough of the
|
|
potential to aggregate, disseminate data
|
|
about their preferences and their interests.
|
|
What they need to become more aware, and I
|
|
think that is part of the government's job,
|
|
is to educate citizens and consumers. That
|
|
when you go on-line, you're in an entirely
|
|
different realm concerning data aggregation
|
|
and data collection. And, I think that the
|
|
government has a big job in front of it, in
|
|
terms of educating consumers about what kinds
|
|
of information can be collected about them by
|
|
corporations.
|
|
|
|
You know, in the United States I think you're
|
|
going to see somewhat of a culture shift. In
|
|
our country, historically, we've always been
|
|
worried about the government collecting data
|
|
on us. The privacy issues have always run
|
|
sort of protecting the individual from
|
|
government intrusion, and people I don't
|
|
think have thought a lot about the ability of
|
|
corporations or businesses to now collect
|
|
data about them. And that ability is just
|
|
going to be exponentially expanded beyond
|
|
anybody's current imagination. And, I don't
|
|
think that American consumers are quite ready
|
|
for that, and haven't really figured out
|
|
where they want to go with that and where
|
|
they think the companies ought to be allowed
|
|
to go with that kind of information.
|
|
|
|
I can give an example. Suppose you're a
|
|
person that uses one credit card quite a bit,
|
|
and you use your credit card to send flowers
|
|
to your spouse on their birthday, and you use
|
|
your credit card to buy your airplane
|
|
tickets. One day you're sitting on a plane,
|
|
which now has all these GTE phones, and the
|
|
phone in front of you rings ... and, you're
|
|
sitting on a plane and the phone in front of
|
|
you rings. It's your local florist, who says,
|
|
"You know every year on this day you send
|
|
flowers to so and so and you use this card.
|
|
Would you like me to do it again?" Now, there
|
|
are two completely different reactions a
|
|
consumer can have. One, consumer can say,
|
|
"Oh, wonderful! My spouse would have killed
|
|
me if I'd forgotten today was our
|
|
anniversary." Another could be totally
|
|
outraged that somebody had that ability to
|
|
not only know what their preferences were but
|
|
then to track them down and find them.
|
|
|
|
So, the answer for me is consumer education
|
|
and consent. I think it's a marvelous
|
|
technology and it enhances the consumers
|
|
ability. It enhances consumer choice, it just
|
|
so enhances our ability to complete
|
|
transactions and to make the kinds of choices
|
|
like we all want to make. But, it involves a
|
|
certain level of consumer obligation to
|
|
educate themself to make affirmative choices.
|
|
|
|
What kinds of information is being gathered
|
|
on-line now? Do you have a sense of that and
|
|
what industry is doing with it?
|
|
|
|
Well, I think it's an interesting question.
|
|
For the most part, now, if you're not going
|
|
through an on-line service, if you're going
|
|
through a PSI or a UUNET ... certainly, the
|
|
technology exists for when you visit
|
|
somewhere, the web site that you visit can
|
|
capture whatever information you have about
|
|
you have up there. If you're using your real
|
|
name then get your real name. If you're using
|
|
a code name they've got the code name ...
|
|
they can capture that. What kind of uses are
|
|
they putting with it? I'm not, you know,
|
|
there have been some things we've looked at.
|
|
There have been some potential abuses where
|
|
we have talked to companies and they've
|
|
stopped a practice. But, its very, very
|
|
nominal. We're right on the cuff but it's not
|
|
there.
|
|
|
|
It appears that protecting consumer privacy
|
|
is only going to get more difficult given
|
|
that companies really haven't tapped some of
|
|
the potential technology for observing
|
|
consumers' habits such as tracking their
|
|
click screens and that sort of thing.
|
|
|
|
Yes. I think the technology is emerging that
|
|
can do that and I think that's incredibly
|
|
dangerous. You know, when Judge Bork was
|
|
nominated for the Supreme Court, somebody
|
|
walked in with a list of videos he had
|
|
rented. Well, I think the technology is
|
|
emerging that is going to allow you to bring
|
|
in the list of not only the videos that
|
|
somebody purchased, but the videos that they
|
|
looked at and thought about purchasing. When
|
|
you go into a bookstore right now, you buy a
|
|
book. If you buy it by credit card or use a
|
|
frequent shopper card, there's a record of
|
|
that transaction. What use they put that
|
|
record to is you know different by store,
|
|
different by card company, etc. There's is no
|
|
record of what you looked at and didn't
|
|
decide to buy.
|
|
|
|
On the web, there's the ability to do that
|
|
and should consumers be informed that can be
|
|
done. I think so. Should they have to consent
|
|
to that information being used and marketed?
|
|
Probably. Again, we're emerging, I'm not sure
|
|
that there needs to be a government solution.
|
|
I'm not sure that there isn't a technological
|
|
solution. Perhaps consumers can get software
|
|
that builds in the ability to block out
|
|
anything other than transactions ... To me
|
|
the most exciting thing about the Net is the
|
|
problem that confront us, I think are so
|
|
solvable on both the technology and the
|
|
instantaneous nature of the communication.
|
|
That you can spam fraudsters and you can
|
|
create technology that allows you to protect
|
|
your own privacy.
|
|
|
|
What do you think about efforts to make it
|
|
illegal to send out unsolicited commercial
|
|
e-mail? Basically, the idea there is that
|
|
spam is like postage due marketing.
|
|
|
|
The issues that confront law enforcement and
|
|
other mediums (telephone, faxing, newspapers,
|
|
broadcast), are obviously similar on the Net.
|
|
But because of the technological state of the
|
|
Net they're not identical. For example, you
|
|
mentioned the postage due idea. Well, we
|
|
haven't looked particularly at a postage due
|
|
analogy, but we've certainly looked at the
|
|
fact that consumers are incurring costs when
|
|
they get unsolicited e-mail. Whether its
|
|
general advertising, target marketing or
|
|
whatever it is. Is that unfair? We're
|
|
definitely looking at that.
|
|
|
|
We don't think that we have a rule on the
|
|
books that is necessarily directly
|
|
applicable, and what we tried to do in the
|
|
telemarketing world was say, "well, maybe we
|
|
should make telemarketing more applicable to
|
|
deceptive practices on the Net." And, we
|
|
found that we really couldn't do that because
|
|
what the telemarketing world requires is that
|
|
telemarketers get written authorization for
|
|
debiting accounts. Now, can you do that on
|
|
the Net? Do you want to do that on the Net?
|
|
Well, when we get to point where you can
|
|
safely and securely use your credit card over
|
|
the Net to order something, do you want to
|
|
have to wait until they send you a bank's
|
|
snail mail form that you can sign and mail
|
|
back? So, you know there is a lot of issues
|
|
working out there.
|
|
|
|
Sure, and complicating everything is the fact
|
|
that the Net is international. You have no
|
|
way of stopping spammers overseas, do you?
|
|
|
|
No, we don't. We spend a lot of time talking
|
|
to our European colleagues and listening to
|
|
businesses concerned about the European
|
|
directive on privacy. And you know, we work
|
|
bilaterally if we thought, we have not had
|
|
this occasion, that there was a fraud being
|
|
perpetrated by a citizen of another country,
|
|
domiciled in another country. We would go to
|
|
that other country -- assuming we had a
|
|
bilateral relationship with that country --
|
|
presumably, somewhere over in western Europe,
|
|
and see if they would prosecute it under
|
|
local law. The jurisdictional issues are just
|
|
enormous when you're on the Internet. I think
|
|
that they'll be solved in the long run by
|
|
harmonization of national laws, if we all
|
|
have more or less the same standards. And
|
|
then, I think what you'll see is more or less
|
|
after you get to a point where you've got a
|
|
harmonizational law. You'll get a lot of
|
|
positive comity which means that if its
|
|
illegal here--its probably illegal in
|
|
England. And, if we send the English
|
|
authorities evidence that there is an act
|
|
occurring on their soil that is being
|
|
broadcast here or on our Net here. Under
|
|
positive comity principles either they would
|
|
prosecute or they might allow us prosecute
|
|
there. I mean, there is a whole, you know
|
|
series of law that's developing ... it's not
|
|
only the Net ... as all commerce becomes
|
|
global.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Transcribed by The Printed Page at
|
|
http://www.nitco.com/users/schumm/schumm.html
|
|
From: Off The Record: http://www.mediapool.com/offtherecord/varn_tra.html
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST
|
|
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
|
|
Subject: File 3--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 24 Mar, 1996)
|
|
|
|
Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are
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available at no cost electronically.
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The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-0303), fax (815-753-6302)
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or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL
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|
|
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/
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aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/
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world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
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wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
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EUROPE: nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/CuD/CuD/ (Finland)
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ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom)
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The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the
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Cu Digest WWW site at:
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URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/
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COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing
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DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent
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the views of the moderators. Digest contributors assume all
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responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not
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violate copyright protections.
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------------------------------
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End of Computer Underground Digest #8.24
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************************************
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