"'Scuse me sir, would you mind blowing into this serial port?"
Joe McNally looks at policing the infobahn...
The Internet is a very big place. Nobody actually knows how many people are connected to it. It has connections in almost every county in the world. This makes it a very strange place, especially from a law-enforcement point of view.
But why should anyone want to police the net? Good question. Last time round, I mentioned a prosecution for 'virtual rape' - an American student was arrested after posting a violent rape fantasy about one of his fellow students on one of the sub-groups of the alt.sex Usenet newsgroup (he has, I understand, since been acquitted of the various charges of making threats which were made against him). Many women report that on-line harassment is a major problem.
Plus, there are a number of Usenet newsgroups which many people might find offensive. For example, the gay, lesbian and bisexual groups tend to attract a lot of flak from Christian weirdoes, while the groups like alt.politics.nationalism.white take a lot of shit from leftists of various flavours.
Now, I would have to say that there's a very simple solution to problems such as this: I call it the DFRI method. If you think from the sound of a newsgroup that the stuff you will find there might offend you, don't fucking read it. If you think there might be something in alt.sex.cthulhu or alt.evil or alt.christnet.prophecy or alt.sex.fetish.cost.benefit.analysis or anywhere that is going to put your nose out, don't go there.
Simple, really.
However, that hasn't stopped some people from deciding that they need to clean up the net.
A telecommunications bill is currently going through the US senate which incorporates an amendment, proposed by one Senator Jim Exon, which would make it illegal to publish "any obscene communication in any form including any comment or image" via the net. Penalties include up to two years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
Senator Exon, whoever he may be, is one of many hoping to make a name for themselves by "cleaning up" the internet. And, in common with the general herd of "net cops", he fairly blatantly doesn't know his packet-switching arse from his Super-JANET elbow where the net is concerned.
His amendment is, for a start, a staggering breach of civil liberties. Imagine if it were made illegal to say "fuck" over the telephone; that's essentially what Exon is proposing. There's been plenty of response, of course - the on-line newspaper American Reporter has threatened that it will start distributing deeply offensive material if and when the entire bill goes through, in order to provoke a test case.
There's also the question of enforceability. The sheer volume of traffic on even one smallish part of the net like Usenet is astronomical. Thousands of postings are made on a daily basis. Who's going to read them all?
This connects with another censorship issue currently 'live' on the net. You remember the Guardian Angels? People in spiffy t-shirts and berets who did a lot of pretty good work in sorting out the crime problems on the NY subways? It seems that they're moving on-line, and they're intending to be, shall we say, a little more pro-active.
Now, while dealing with on-line harassment and the like would be fair enough, it seems that the Angels want to go a little further. Mail has been appearing on the Cybercafé BBS, purporting to come from the Guardian Angels, making a variety of claims for themselves - "To illuminate the smut which hackers and users have willingly uploaded and downloaded, far too often without a thought of how they are infecting other peoples decent minds. We are going to patrol, seek out these sick perpetrators, and regain the Christian decency of which is lacking in Cyberspace."
Posts from this person - "Blue Angel" - have continued to demand access to private e-mail - "just in case there are things going on which are unlawful". There has also been censure of individual users - "Hello [name deleted], We have read some of your files of which you have uploaded on this board and are keen to ask if you would kindly: either re-edit the content or abort it. [...] I am refering especially to the poem you have written ... I'm not sure if the subject of masturbation is of good taste, especially with young children now becoming aware of BBS's and are [sic] likely to be corrupted by such material."
It has also been reported that they might spend time pretending to be kids in order to snare paedophiles. Can you spell "entrapment", boys and girls?
This raises another problem with censoring the net. It's a big place, and all human life is indeed there, along with a fair amount of subhuman life. Whose standards of decency do we use?
There are probably plenty of people on alt.politics.nationalism.white who would happily eliminate all newsgroups that deal with any other political points of view, any religion other then Protestant Christianity (and possibly even some of the more liberal Protestant denominations), any non-hetero versions of human sexuality and indeed any countries other than America. On the other hand, there are presumably quite a few people who make their homes in alt.sex.motss or alt.satanism who would quite happily see the entire alt.christnet hierarchy sent to the Information SuperIncinerator. Me, I'd be fairly happy if almost every single person who posts on alt.fan.piers-anthony and alt.politics.white-power vanished tomorrow. Who would decide what goes? Not only that, but who decides who decides? And so on, ad infinitum.
Ultimately, however, most of the current attempts to police the net are doomed to failure. Part of the reason for this is the nature of the net itself; things can be shifted from country to country almost instantly, pretty much preventing anything from being completely closed down by law enforcement agencies.
The thing I find most worrying is that we're seeing all the old excuses coming out of the woodwork. We have to protect our children from the "evils" of pornography, so everything must be suitable for a five-year-old. And you can say goodbye to all those on-line depositories of great literature. Plus, I can't help but wonder whether an elderly born-again christian such as Sen. Exon is the sort of person who should be allowed to define what is and isn't pornographic.
Yes, there is porn out there. Yes, there are dodgy people out there. Yes, there are people with unpleasant political views (hello again, Senator Exon). But the same goes for the "real" world. Anyone fancy censoring that?
HyperStuff
Usenet: all the Usenet newsgroups mentioned here are real; sadly, alt.sex.fetish.cost.benefit.analysis is usually empty.
Harassment: for an excellent discussion on the nature of on-line harassment, along with several other articles on women on-line, and some truly marvellous material on cyberculture generally, check out geekgirl on-line magazine at http://www.next.com.au/spyfood/geekgirl/
Guardian Angels: can be contacted at ganetwatch@aol.com. I e-mailed them for more details; see elsewhere for samples. Blue Angel seemed to have a radically different agenda from that outlined in the CyberAngels' manifesto; however, given the loose nature of the organisation, this does not preclude him or her from being a member. I doubt he/she is, but it's worrying that he/she could be, simply by sending e-mail to them.
Missing In Action: Since the June column on Bulletin Boards, both Weird Alien and Black Dog Towers have gone off-line. Weird Alien simply disappeared; Black Dog Towers has been up and down with a frightening regularity. Ken assures me that it will definitely be back.
You can e-mail Joe McNally, if the need takes you, at: joe@tlon.thegap.com
Back to the dv8 Home Page
Onwards to Charlie Don't Surf