FYI: Internet censors (fwd)

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Edward P. Richards III" <0002766610 () MCIMAIL COM>
Subject:      Internet censors
X-To:         The Law and Policy of Computer Networks
              <CYBERLAW%WMVM1.BITNET () vtvm2 cc vt edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list CYBERLAW <CYBERLAW@WMVM1.BITNET>

From: Ed Richards

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning (Monday)
about Internet censors.  Seems PC is already on the net.
(This is not download, it is only a pitiful scan from my handscanner,
so please forgive me for any errors.)
________________________
Copyright Dow Jones, used only for academic criticism.

  Has political correctness gone on-line
in academia?
  Battles are raging over freedom of
speech in university-oriented computer
bulletin boards, one of the few places in
academia that hasn't been racked for
years by this kind of strife.
  A mild-mannered microbiologist from
Rootstown, Ohio, has stirred up a. storm
among on-line computer users by devising
a computer program that automatically
wipes out anonymous messages on Inter-
net, the nation's largest on-line network,
which is widely used by scholars. He was
offended by an anonymous user who
posted a joke about the last words of the
Challenger space shuttle crew in a scien-
tific discussion group.
  In other cases, Canadian colleges have
blocked electronic discussions of sex. A
California community college recently
suspended a journalism professor for run-
ning a computer bulletin board on which
male students wrote messages that alleg-
edly harassed a female.
  Many on-line veterans complain that
such actions threaten freedom of expres-
sion. "This shows how the censors are all
among us," says Larry Detweiler, a re-
cent graduate of Colorado State Univer-
sity, who studies free speech and "hangs
around the Internet," which is often seen
as a prototype for the information high-
way that the Clinton campaign described
in last year's presidential election.
  Such issues are likely to increase as
the highway connects more and more
computers - especially if the federal gov-
ernment funds it. In fact, Congress has or-
dered a study of whether electronic bulle-
tin boards, on-line services and public-ac-
cess cable television are being used to
encourage "crimes of hate."
  For some time now, commercial on-
line services such as Prodigy have used
computer programs that automatically
delete messages that contain certain
words. Group moderators who often guide
discussions on services such as H&R
Block Inc.'s CompuServe also have the
power to remove hateful or irrelevant
messages as soon as they see them.
  But  many  volunteer-run  bulletin
boards decline to control what people
write. Legally, they aren't required to
play the censor: Board operators aren't
responsible for things other people write
in the wake of a court ruling that Compu-
Serve wasn't liable for what people wrote
any more than a bookseller is responsl-
ble for the contents of books it sells.
  These cozy volunteer communities, the
electronic equivalent of Boswell and John-
son's 18th century London coffeehouses,
police themselves informally. People who
are offensive or irrelevant are shouted
down by "flame mail," a barrage of mes-
sages by angry users that sometimes can
even overwhelm an offender's computer.
 Other times, the indignant wage "cancel
wars" in which they send commands to
cancel the foe's message from the bulletin
board. On Internet, people order their
computers not to accept any messages
from particular senders.
   But a few years ago, users developed
 "anonymous servers" - computers con-
nected to the network that stripped away
 the original sender's name before sending
 it on Internet. The capability was designed
 to encourage open discussions among vic-
tims of child abuse or AIDS and originally
was used only in such groups. However, a
computer in Helsinki, Finland, was de-
signed to send anonymous messages wher-
ever the sender wanted.
   Some of these messages on the "sci."
section of Internet's Usenet subsystem
ticked off Richard DePew, the professor of
microbiology! and immunology at North-
eastern Ohio Universities College of Medi-
cine. "The anonymous servers were break-
ing down some of the barriers and tradi-
tions that keep the Internet useful," says
Dr. DePew, whose battle was reported in
the Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade
weekly.
  After numerous on-line discussions of
the anonymous-server problem, Dr. De-
Pew wrote a program he called ARMM for
"automated retroactive minimal modera-
tor." Although the program ran on the
computer he operates in Rootstown as a
local node of the Internet, it canceled
messages from the Helsinki computer to
any sci. discussion group.
  As soon as he activated it in April, Dr.
DePew was flamed by other users, illus-
trating the passion with which people
  defend computer speech. He was called a
  "maddog [sic] on the loose who needs to
  be sedated." He was called a "rhino-
  cerous [sic]." He was compared to "a
  child-molestor [sic] who goes out and
  reoffends immediately upon release." He
  was called an "ignorant petty tyrant."
  Within 12 hours, he shamefacedly recalled
  the program, admitting he made a mis-
  take. He says he will never do it again.
    In another controversy, bitter debates
  raged at many Canadian universities last
  year over three Internet discussions:
  "sex: bestiality,"  "sex:  torture" and
  "sex: bondage." Some weeks, those dis-
  cussions  were  dominated  by  legal
  scholars, but other weeks, they included
  brutal stories and pictures of screaming
  women. Several colleges, including Simon
  Fraser University in Vancouver, British
  Columbia, cut those discussions off their
  computers.
    In the U.S., California's Santa Rosa
  Junior College recently suspended tenured
 journalism teacher Roger Karraker while
  it tries to determine whether he's respon-
 sible for student messages on a school
 bulletin board that he operated. The board
 has some 200 discussion groups that are
 used by faculty and students.
    Earlier this year, at student request,
 Mr.  Karraker  started  men-only  and
 women-only conferences in which users
 had to promise not to reveal the contents.
 When one woman learned about allegedly
 obscene messages that an  ex-boyfriend
 had written about her on the all-male
 board, she complained to Mr. Karraker. He
 immediately shut down the conference and
 banned the students  who had broken the
 confidentiality pact. She then complained
 to the college of sexual harassment based
 on the messages, and Mr. Karraker was
 put on paid leave.
   James Mitchell, the college's personnel
 director, said the leave was  "for his
 own protection" and isn't a punishment.
He says that under California harassment
laws, "we had a situation that appeared to
be serious."
  Mr. Mitchell says that if the item had
been in a student newspaper, it probably
would have been protected under the First
Amendment. But outside of student news-
papers, speech can be challenged as ha-
rassment, he says. Even if it was written
on a bathroom wall and a janitor didn't
wash it off, "we'd warn him" of the
risk of harassment charges.
  Mr. Karraker says that as a bulletin
board operator, he's protected just as
booksellers are. "This isn't publishing in
the sense that there's an editor who knows
everything that goes in," he says.

end of document
    Internet censors


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