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-
- Computer underground Digest Wed Nov 12, 1997 Volume 9 : Issue 83
- 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, #9.83 (Wed, Nov 12, 1997)
-
- File 1--The Mind of a Censor
- File 2--States Won't appeal ALA v. Pataki, et. al
- File 3--Response to Bell in #9.82
- File 4-- Does Technology Set Us Free?
- File 5--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: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 07:37:50 -0800
- From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@bway.net>
- Subject: File 1--The Mind of a Censor
-
- THE MIND OF A CENSOR
-
- by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
-
- On the Web there lives a genial fellow named David Burt. An
- Oregon librarian, Burt operates the Filtering Facts Web page, at
- http://www.filteringfacts.org. Burt's mission is to persuade the
- world that censorware belongs in public libraries.
-
- He describes Filtering Facts as a nonprofit corporation formed
- under Oregon law which has as its goals to "educate the public and
- media about Internet software filters; encourage libraries to
- adopt filters; persuade the American Library Association to
- rescind its Resolution on the use of filtering software in
- libraries, and adopt a more tolerant view of filtering."
-
- Burt says his sole concern is pornography on the Internet. His
- organization's FAQ reveals that he works closely with two
- fundamentalist organizations, Family Friendly Libraries and Donna
- Rice Hughes' group, Enough is Enough. In fact, a good deal of
- Burt's FAQ is cut and pasted from an Enough is Enough brochure,
- including the following:
-
- "[P]ornography is addictive and progressive in nature for many who
- consume it. It affects their thinking and behavior and often leads
- them to commit sexual crimes against innocent victims, usually
- children and women."
-
- Burt's Web page claims that he does not support state-mandated
- filtering in libraries, and he also claims to think that there
- are alternatives to filtering which will work to keep porn out of
- libraries. But when you debate Burt, he never seems to agree that
- there is an alternative--he just believes that librarians ought to
- want to install censorware.
-
- Members of Declan McCullagh's Fight-Censorship list, which Burt
- frequents, are constantly calling Burt's attention to the flaws of
- particular censorware products, particularly the socially
- valuable, First Amendment-protected sites which they block. Burt's
- usual response is to try to justify the blocking, though he will
- sometimes admit that a site has been blocked in error. However, he
- does not think the blocking of sites such as the EFF archive, the
- National Organization for Women, the AIDS Quilt site, the MIT
- Student Association for Free Expression and my own Ethical
- Spectacle constitute a fatal flaw preventing the use of censorware
- in libraries. Instead, Burt likes to point out that the products
- endorsed on his site, such as Cyberpatrol and Bess, allow the user
- to configure the products so as to allow access to blocked sites.
- In the event of an erroneously blocked site, he says, just ask the
- librarian to help you get access to it.
-
- In September, several members of the Fight-Censorship list
- collaborated in the preparation of an article which went out over
- my byline, about a product that Burt then endorsed, X-Stop from
- Log-On Data Corporation. The piece revealed that X-Stop, which was
- marketed to libraries as blocking only legally obscene material in
- its so-called "Felony Load" version, actually blocked the Quaker
- website, the National Journal of Sexual Orientation law, the
- Heritage Foundation, and The Ethical Spectacle. Burt and one of
- his backers, Family Friendly Libraries, immediately issued
- statements withdrawing their endorsement of the product.
-
- I sent mail congratulating Burt on his willingness to back away
- from a dishonestly marketed product. Burt and I had exchanged
- private email on and off for months, and though our disagreements
- were very deep, we had always maintained a cordial tone; Burt had
- even complimented me for not flaming him, and had described me on
- Fight-Censorship as being one of the people there with something
- interesting to say. In a debate that blew up on the list after the
- X-Stop article, I began to press Burt about the blocking of The
- Ethical Spectacle by six of the leading censorware products. Since
- my site contained nothing prurient, and was dedicated to the
- discussion of ideas on a fairly dry and intellectual level, didn't
- he see a systemic problem in the fact it was blocked by so many
- products?
-
- Perhaps Burt regretted backing off of his endorsement of X-Stop;
- maybe he now thought that if he kept abandoning software which
- blocked my site and others, he would have nothing left to endorse.
- At any rate, there promptly appeared the following missive to the
- list (really more of a missile than a missive):
-
- "[T]he filtering vendors I talk to think that you are playing
- games with them, putting
- lurid articles like this full of foul language and reference to
- sex and drugs, then claiming that
- 'your site is blocked when it is about the free discussion of
- ideas'."
-
- The "lurid article" Burt was referring to was a short story of
- mine in the October issue of the Spectacle, entitled The Fall-Out.
- Part of a series of stories and related fragments entitled Kazoo
- Concerto, this story describes how a salesman, Ken Copeland,
- decides to make the world manifest the perfect wife for him. He
- calls up every stock-brokerage in New York City, describing to the
- receptionist a woman stockbroker he claims to have met but whose
- name he cannot remember. On the eleventh phone call, a
- receptionist says, "Oh, you must mean Donna Ray." After eliciting
- information about her from the receptionist, Ken meets Donna,
- charms her, dates her and is prepared to propose when Donna
- announces that she has decided to leave the brokerage and go to
- social work school. She attributes her decision to a sister who is
- often sick, but doesn't reveal the nature of the illness to Ken.
- The real woman has now modified herself so that she no longer fits
- Ken's fantasy. Ken has an image of life with Donna that persuades
- him not to propose to her:
-
- "He had a vision in which she inhabited his apartment, his
- wonderful bachelor pad where so many women had passed, and her
- combs and bras and bobby pins were in every corner. Her cold cream
- and contact lens solution. Her little socks under the pillow.
- Every night when he came home she was already there. With thick
- books on 'Case Management' and 'The Introductory Lectures on
- Psychoanalysis.'.... And she would work with people who drooled
- and slobbered, who were fat, smelly and drugged, or who were
- smelly and elderly and festooned with dripping IV's and wires. And
- then every once in a while a phone call would come, and they would
- rush out at three in the morning to an emergency room to meet the
- mongoloid or drug-addicted or MS-stricken or AIDS-suffering or
- suicidal sister."
-
- I was so startled by Burt's accusation that the story was full of
- references to sex and drugs that I went back and re-read it
- closely. There are no descriptions of sex acts or people's bodies
- in the story; this is as explicit as it gets:
-
- "Their lovemaking the weekend before had been a shock to him; he
- had been so careful to stay away from women who might fall in love
- with him that he had long forgotten how exciting it was to make
- love to someone who was infatuated with you. He understood that
- love was a feedback system, because it was easy and tempting to be
- infatuated by someone else's infatuation. It was simple vanity,
- the vanity of the master salesperson, to be almost in love with
- someone because they loved you."
-
- Burt's claim that The Fall-Out referred to drug use was even more
- baffling. The only mentions of drugs in the story are in the first
- paragraph I quoted above. In Ken's vision of married life with
- Donna, he sees her working with people who are "fat, smelly and
- drugged". He imagines rushing to the hospital in the middle of
- the night on account of the "mongoloid or drug-addicted or
- MS-stricken or AIDS-suffering or suicidal sister."
-
- Burt is correct at least that the story contains a few four letter
- words, none used in a sexual context. In a series of
- conversations with his boss and friend, Lyle Doggett, who
- disapproves of his wooing of Donna, Ken and Lyle exchange a few
- "Fuck you's" and at one point Ken tells Lyle to "eat a bag of shit
- and bark at the moon." I was reproducing the familiar dialog of
- people I work with every day. In context, a few four letter words
- scattered through the text, don't seem to me to add up to a
- prurient, evil or dangerous work, spreading its tentacles across
- the Net to corrupt the minds of children.
-
- Ironically, as a result of Burt's attack a lot of Fight-Censorship
- list members read The Fall-Out; most had friendly things to say
- about it, but were unanimous that the story failed to appeal to
- any prurient interest, favored marriage and opposed libertinage,
- and was actually far blander in its content than the works of many
- noted authors of the last fifty years whose works are presumably
- collected in David Burt's library. People like Henry Miller,
- Anais Nin, and Norman Mailer, for example.
-
- Why is all of this significant? People flame each other on the Net
- every day, and its not news. Burt took a cheap shot at me, but why
- is it worth writing about?
-
- Burt's reaction to The Fall-Out is worth discussing because he
- behaved like a classic censor, and a close look at his behavior
- gives insight into the mind of a censor. He never read the work
- he was judging; he didn't even know it was a work of fiction,
- since he called it an article. He didn't know, or didn't care,
- that the only references to drugs were to medication and to Ken's
- vision that Donna had an addicted sister. At best, Burt searched
- the text of The Fall-Out looking for some keywords, and found
- them. He failed to do what any court in the world would do in a
- constitutional determination--he never looked at the work in
- context. But he felt entitled, based on the few moments he spent
- with the story, to classify it as "lurid" and to accuse the author
- of playing games. And then he backed up the latter accusation by
- referring to some unspecified filtering vendors, whom he never
- named.
-
- In fact, each of these vendors builds its blacklist of blocked
- sites by following the same approach David Burt followed with The
- Fall-Out. Underpaid human beings, some of them part-timers and
- none of them librarians, looks at a site for a few minutes, scan
- for occurrences of words like "fuck", "sex" or "gay", and make a
- hasty determination to add the site to a blocked list. But that's
- OK with Burt--if your site doesn't belong on the list, just
- contact the company. Never mind that The Ethical Spectacle site
- consists of hundreds of URL's, each of which I would have to check
- with the product installed just to learn that a particular page of
- mine was blocked. Never mind that not every censorware vendor will
- unblock a page. Burt also suggests you can get the librarian to
- bypass the software. But how many people will approach the
- librarian and say, "Please disable the blocking software, so I can
- look at 'Humans and Their Pornography'" (the issue of The Ethical
- Spectacle blocked by I-Gear for its extremely nonprurient
- discussion of the comparative thought of Nadine Strossen, Wendy
- McElroy and Catharine MacKinnon)?
-
- Another thing I learned from my run-in with David Burt. When
- someone launches The Big Lie at your work, its easy to get
- defensive. Within minutes I was playing on a field laid out by
- Burt--counting occurrences of "fuck", debating whether the story
- promoted good morals, was bland or sexy, etc.
-
- It shouldn't matter. Literature, as Proust said, is a mirror held
- up to life. It is not the quality of the life that makes great
- art, it is the quality of the mirror. Madame Bovary was a great
- mirror held up to a sad, dishonest life. The prosecutor who chased
- Flaubert, and that work, for indecency confused the subject of the
- work with the author's moral stand. He, and David Burt, stand
- with the silly scientists in 1950's monster movies who intone,
- "There are some things man was not meant to know." Will we really
- protect our children if we insulate them equally from art and
- life? Granted, some parents may answer this question with a loud
- "Yes". Since that parent can teach values and has the authority
- to decide what his child sees, must we really block art and life
- from the library? And, most interesting of all, since David Burt
- doesn't want The Fall-Out visible on the library computer, why
- would he make an exception for it printed on paper and on the
- shelves of his library? Or for Henry Miller? Burt won't say he
- wants books off the shelves--but if not, he's got a hell of a
- double standard.
-
- Two weeks ago in Loudoun County, Virginia, the library board of
- trustees voted the U.S.'s most restrictive Internet policy,
- ordering mandatory blocking even for adult users of the library's
- terminals. The director of libraries for the county offered a
- compromise solution, in which the entire Internet would be blocked
- except for sites reviewed and approved by a librarian. Dixie
- Sanner, of Burt's partner organization Enough is Enough, responded
- that putting library staff in charge of selecting Internet content
- is "like putting the wolf in charge of the henhouse."
-
- David Burt should be known by his deeds and by the company he
- keeps. He claims to be concerned only by porn, but attacks The
- Fall-Out. He says he only wants to filter the Net, but travels
- with the same people who turn up to protest when a library buys a
- copy of "Heather Has Two Mommies."
-
- David Burt is entitled to his opinions. But they don't deserve to
- be converted to practice in the First-Amendment enriched air of a
- public library.
-
- ----------------------------------
-
- The Fall-Out can be found at
- http://www.spectacle.org/kazoo/fallout.html.
- If you read the story, let me know what you
- think; you might also want to copy your comments
- to David Burt, who can be reached at
- David_Burt@filteringfacts.org.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 18:19:13 GMT
- From: owner-cyber-liberties@aclu.org
- Subject: File 2--States Won't Appeal ALA v. Pataki, et. al
-
- Cyber-liberties Update
- October 17, 1997
-
-
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- ACLU Victories Final, States Will Not Appeal ALA v. Pataki, ACLU v. Miller
-
-
- Decisions in the two federal cases in New York and Georgia, that struck
- down Internet censorship laws in those states, will not be appealed by the
- states, said Ann Beeson, an ACLU national staff attorney and member of the
- legal teams in the New York, Georgia and federal cases.
-
- The two decisions were handed down by the courts this summer and gave
- states deadlines until which time they could appeal. The deadlines have
- now passed making the decisions final, Beeson stated.
-
- "These decisions are extremely important given the continuing effort by
- states to regulate speech on the Internet. The New York and Georgia
- decisions say that, whatever limits the Supreme Court sets on Congress's
- power to regulate the Internet, states are prohibited from acting to censor
- online expression," she said.
-
- "Taken together, these decisions send a very important and powerful message
- to
- legislators in the other 48 states that they should keep their hands off
- the Internet,"
- Beeson added.
-
- The New York case, American Library Association v. Pataki, dealt with a law
- virtually identical to the federal Communications Decency Act, which the
- Supreme Court held was unconstitutional earlier this summer. Judge Loretta
- A. Preska ruled that the law violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S.
- Constitution because it attempted to regulate activity beyond the state's
- borders.
-
- In the Georgia case, ACLU v. Miller, Judge Marvin Shoob found a law banning
- anonymous speech on the Internet to be an unconstitutional restriction on
- free speech that "affords prosecutors and police officers with substantial
- room for selective prosecution of persons who express minority viewpoints."
-
-
- The court agreed with the ACLU, Electronic Frontiers Georgia and others
- that the
- statute was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because it barred online
- users from using pseudonyms or communicating anonymously over the Internet.
- The Act also unconstitutionally restricted the use of links on the World
- Wide Web which allows users to connect to other sites.
-
- The N.Y. decision can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/court/nycdadec.html>
- The Georgia decision can be found at
- <http://www.aclu.org/court/aclugavmiller.html> .
-
- +++++++++++++++++
-
- About Cyber-Liberties Update:
-
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-
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 15:01:24 -0600 (CST)
- From: Wade Riddick <riddick@MAIL.LA.UTEXAS.EDU>
- Subject: File 3--Response to Bell in #9.82
-
- Please allow me to respond to Bruce J. Bell's post in CuD #9.82
- regarding my article in #9.77. Some of the items are silly, but since
- these remarks were made in a public forum I feel the need to reply
- publicly.
- First, I must address a general misinterpretation of the goal I
- have in mind. According to Mr. Bell, my plan for world domination is to
- "design all computers to refuse to duplicate data with a copyright
- notice." I don't know whose fault this misinterpretation is.
- I apologize to those readers who may have gotten that impression
- from my BYTE commentary. I did not, in fact, ever say "the ease with
- which digital information can be duplicated runs against the best
- interests of society as a protector of intellectual property." The editor
- said that when he struck "some people say" from the start of that
- sentence. (Frankly I'm sure everyone would have rather had an extra two
- hundred words on the page than my ugly mug to look at, but Mr. Bell might
- disagree).
- I do not think I made this mistake in the letter I sent to CuD. I
- hope it's clear I believe just the opposite - that the ease with which
- digital materials can be manipulated has the potential to vastly reduce
- distribution costs and open up the market. One gets the impression from
- Mr. Bell's response that I'm advocating the opposite - a rosy world where
- copyright holders are at the mercy of large media publishers with the
- might and power to enforce their rights.
- Aren't we already there?
- If you've looked at the DVD spec lately, you know computers are
- already being hobbled by encryption 'protections' by forces outside the
- industry. This article was merely my attempt to balance the forces
- involved in a reasonable manner that recognized the rights of consumers,
- authors and the needs of the free market in general. In fact the most
- enthusiastic response my ideas have received to date has been from
- associations of authors and composers who are often at odds with the large
- publishing houses.
- I direct those of you with an interest in my philosophy about the
- ownership of copyrighted material in the digital domain to my previous
- works in CuD and to the BYTE web site. Now as to the specifics of Mr.
- Bell's criticisms...
- He compares my proposal to the ill-fated Clipper Chip and then
- goes on to ask, "why would anybody buy crippled computers when un-crippled
- ones are available?" I have to ask if Mr. Bell has looked at the DVD
- drives being sold and if he's aware of what the media industry is trying
- to do to digital video. These devices already employ encryption. They are
- essentially crippled computers and people are already buying them.
- Furthermore, his analogy to the Clipper chip is flawed in that
- Clipper applied to two way phone conversations. Encryption has long been
- used as a distribution strategy for salable goods. Also, plenty of
- 'Clipper'-like open accounting procedures are provided for in many digital
- currency schemes. They have to be or the financial institutions involved
- would have criminal charges filed against them (something I'm sure we'd
- all support, depending on the particular bank...).
- Moving on...
-
- >Although I'm sure this kind of proposal is a wet-dream to people in the
- >recording industry, the movie industry, and the FBI, I doubt it will
- >receive any kind of welcome from the computer industry, or from ISP's, or
- >from the lowly consumer.
-
- I cannot pretend to know the sexual predilections of these groups
- and I can only refer Mr. Bell to my concluding analysis of the conflicting
- interests involved in settling this issue which he appears not to have
- read. I omit the FBI for reasons I make clear in the letter (and if it's
- Mr. Bell's assertion that the government shouldn't have the right to issue
- search warrants to assist the victims of crime, he ought to stop being coy
- and just say so). I also point out that this proposal will be anything
- but an orgiastic financial fantasy to the distribution arms of the
- entertainment industry. If he disputes these conclusions of mine, he
- ought to attack my premises and reasoning instead of just saying I said
- something else.
- As to the second half of the quotation, ISPs are *already* being
- beaten in the head with the "liability stick," as Mr. Bell puts it. I
- fail to see how by profiting from this beating they are any worse off.
- As to the issue of consumer liability, he's absolutely right.
- Consumers *ought* to be liable for their own private property. It's their
- responsibility. That's the way the economy works. When you leave your
- car door open and the keys in the ignition, you don't go blaming the owner
- of the asphalt parking lot when someone steals your car. Nor do you unzip
- a backup copy of your Chevy and drive off.
- I will merely note in passing that the issue of who bears the
- piracy cost has always been a problem for intellectual property since it
- borders on the realms of both public and private goods. The liability
- stick has long been out there. Although - hypothetically speaking, of
- course - it might be fun to whack AOL in the head, that's not me out there
- doing it. (And I'm not even certain I should be flattered by the
- accusation).
- About watermarks Mr. Bell states,
-
- >Consider that deliberate 'pirates' could take the simple expedient of
- >finding multiple copies of the original work. Any elements in the
- >plaintext that are identical between all instances could not be used to
- >identify the original purchaser; while elements that differ are those
- >that may contain purchaser information, and can be scrambled, deleted, or
- >even ignored...
-
- More technically adept readers should stop me if I'm wrong here,
- but watermarks are by their nature indelible. You can't strip them from a
- picture without ruining the value of the picture. The same applies
- sounds. (Of course text is another matter and is the weakest item to
- protect, but I don't see why I should feed Mr. Bell ammunition when his
- gun doesn't work). A pirate could, hypothetically, substitute one
- watermark for another and even mix them up into composites - assuming the
- overall structure of the work isn't protected - but in this case he's just
- managed to steal a bunch of different items at once.
-
- >Digital watermarking is an interesting concept, and it may be useful for
- >some things, but it is not useful as a copy-protection scheme.
-
- I hope this has been explained to the companies buying and selling
- watermark technology. If it's not a copy-protection scheme, then I don't
- know what it is.
-
- >No matter what auxiliary "tamper-resistant" hardware is installed on the
- >computer, once the data is in a form suitable for display and manipulation
- >by the software, there is no practical way this hardware can keep the
- >software from saving the plaintext data.
-
- I have never made the claim that this method is full-proof for
- preventing piracy. The goal here is two fold: 1) to raise the risks and
- hence the costs associated with digital piracy which will then 2) allow
- digital distribution to become widespread and vastly lower the transaction
- costs involved, increasing the likelihood that consumers will adhere to
- the system and purchase the relatively cheap product as opposed to going
- with a pirated good.
- For most users, it's assumed that breaking into the system will be
- difficult, risky or undesirable relative to sticking with the status quo.
- (This won't be true if large chains continue to monopolize distribution
- and charge a premium as they tend to do for music CDs, but there is an
- anti-trust remedy for this). On the pirate side, I count on a number of
- accounting methods to reduce the volume of material reentering the
- legitimate channels. I won't go into the specifics any more than I
- already have in my writings but if Mr. Bell has a particular hole in mind,
- he's welcome to bring it up.
- As to the implementation end of things.
- While I haven't wanted to restrict publishing, neither has it been
- my objective to prevent users from writing their own software (the ten
- gigabyte developers kits and interface libraries already do this quite
- effectively, but how the programming industry restricts entry into its
- ranks through needless complexity is another matter...) I'd rather see
- the world of publishing opened up to consumers in a way that they can
- collect a good profit and be more than hobbyists. When you consider how
- digital cash cards work and think about the other items in the digital
- economy that programmers won't have access to go mucking around in, this
- isn't overly burdensome.
-
- >all other OS's must necessarily be forbidden, and no modified, unapproved
- >versions can be tolerated."
-
- While it is true that in order for this standard to work, it must
- be adhered to, it is not true that it will only work on one operating
- system. The last I checked, PCI cards, for example, ran under a lot of
- different operating systems. Nor is it true that "copyright-enabled
- programs will be unable to store anything." They can store the encrypted
- data anywhere they want. That's the whole beauty of the system.
-
- >I submit that no software developer would accept the requirements and
- >limitations necessary for this proposal, even if they could sell it in a
- >market where software without these limitations is available. Perhaps
- >they, too, must be made liable for all users of their product..."
-
- I see no reason to advocate something that's already in the law.
- Anyone who builds and releases tools with the explicit purpose of stealing
- another's intellectual property is already liable. Indeed, I would hope
- software developers welcome proposals to reduce the rather large piracy
- rate robbing them of billions of dollars a year.
- Furthermore, I was intentionally vague about how such a system
- could be designed. There are several ways of doing it. One would hope it
- became implemented entirely through operating system calls, thus rendering
- the process transparent and relieving the programmer of mucking around in
- the details.
- Now, on the Mr. Bell's final point, "who will pay for developing
- this software?" He asserts that "there is no 'information superhighway'
- general expense account."
- Well, duh.
- He goes on to say that "the mere fact that Mr. Riddick would
- mention such a cockeyed concept as a putative source of funding is
- astounding." That's probably why I don't. The letter is addressed to a
- congressman and the phrase is meant to suggest that Congress doesn't
- necessarily need to expend any large sums of money to settle this issue.
- It's simply not feasible in the current political environment anyway.
- "The question of who would pay the costs for such a program is not
- trivial." Indeed, it's not. A great deal of time, money and effort is
- being spent to develop the digital highway but it's being done through the
- private sector. I merely meant to show that the costs of building such a
- copyright system are small relative to that of deploying high speed data
- pipes into every home, that industry - through various combinations - is
- already finding ways of sharing this burden and that new software will
- have to be written anyway to confirm to a variety of new standards, this
- present one excepted. In any event, one of the most serious cost issues
- so far hasn't been in copyright management software, it's been in
- micropayments - something far more fundamental. I have confidence these
- hurdles will be overcome.
- Also consider the costs involved in *not* solving this issue.
- It's perfectly feasible to deliver all operating systems through one
- vender (a place we're quickly heading). It's also possible to deliver all
- the country's oil through one company or its entertainment through
- cartels. Do you want to do that?
- This brings me to my final point about Mr. Bell's criticisms.
- It's pretty clear that, given the enormous pressures involved, something's
- going to change the status quo on copyright law. Mr. Bell fails to
- propose a more attractive alternative, explain why it's better or why it
- might be less expensive. In fact, he fails to take any account at all of
- the profits lost to piracy, the potential liability costs faced by ISPs if
- the law is changed/reinterpreted or the transaction costs that would be
- raised should our goods be delivered through a cartelized publishing
- industry.
- I hope this reply doesn't leave you with the impression that I
- reject criticism from any given venue out of hand; I try to welcome it.
- Some very thorny legal problems remain with respect particularly to fair
- use and privacy rights. Arriving at any solution to the digital copyright
- problem will require a lot of compromising, both political and technical.
- But opinions which do not offer feasible alternatives or fail to even
- recognize existing truths about the state of current affairs are
- non-starters for us all.
-
- Wade Riddick
- Department of Government
- University of Texas
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 22:28:22 -0600 (CST)
- From: Computer underground Digest <cudigest@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU>
- Subject: File 4-- Does Technology Set Us Free?
-
- Does Technology Set Us Free?
- ----------------------------
-
- In the *New York Times Magazine's* special issue on technology (September
- 28, 1997), staff writer John Tierney argues that, while technology cannot
- change human nature, it biases us toward becoming better people in a
- better world.
-
- One of his contentions is that computers, like all gadgets, will get
- simpler to use. Hypnotized by the evolution of particular features, he
- loses sight of the increasing complexity of context made possible by this
- evolution. So, in welcoming the automobile's conversion from an
- unreliable, high-maintenance machine to the relatively care-free device of
- today, he fails to ask whether the accordingly lengthened daily commute is
- in fact easier and less stressful now than in the bad old days.
-
- (The logic of this kind of oversight, which I have called the Great
- Technological Deceit, has proven irresistible to the cheerleaders of
- technology. See "Is Technological Improvement What We Want?" in NF #38.)
-
- As part of his argument for a blessed evolution of technology beyond its
- early limitations, Tierney remarks that
-
- the phone didn't become wholly civilized until people were freed to
- ignore it by the invention of the answering machine -- a contraption
- that was despised before coming to be regarded as a necessity.
-
- He should have added that the answering machine *remains* one of the most
- despised pieces of technology. And he might then have asked, How well are
-
- Source - NetFuture (#59)
- we mastering technology when the machines we despise become universal
- necessities?
-
- Tierney covers a lot of other ground in much the same, unreflective
- manner. For example, he assures us that technology is solving our
- environmental problems, decentralizing governments and defanging
- dictators, saving us from the couch potato syndrome (there's the
- obligatory quotation from George Gilder), shortening the work week,
- presenting us with an unprecedented agricultural abundance, and giving us
- more control over our lives, bodies, and genes.
-
- The problem running through it all is his unrelieved focus upon externals.
- Yet the decisive risk of technology has never been external. It has from
- the first been recognized as the risk of losing our souls.
-
- Tierney comes tantalizingly close to acknowledging the real issue, only to
- drive past it:
-
- Although new technology is often described as a Faustian bargain,
- historically it has involved a trade-off not between materialism and
- spirituality -- lugging water from the well was not a spiritually
- uplifting exercise for most people, no matter how much it might appeal
- to the Unabomber -- but between individual freedom and social virtue.
-
- Unfortunately, Tierney says nothing further about this trade-off between
- individual freedom and social virtue, except to deny that it applies in
- the Age of Information.
-
- The Internet may look like a dangerously anarchic world, but it's
- actually fairly similar to the ancient environment in which humans
- evolved to become the most cooperative, virtuous creatures on earth.
-
- All this has something to do with the way our Pleistocene brains are
- "naturally inclined" toward exchanging information on the Net, and leads
- Tierney to his deepest attempt to analyze online communication:
-
- A surprising number [of Net users] seem to be acting out of pure
- goodwill.
-
- We can be thankful for the goodwill, but is there nothing more to say
- about the complex social impacts of electronic, networked communication?
-
- As to Tierney's preference for freedom over "spirituality," two things
- need saying. The first is that, if lugging water from the well is not a
- spiritually uplifting exercise as such, neither is drawing water from the
- tap or, for that matter, doing the work that pays for the water system,
- appliances, sewage disposal, pollution control, and all the rest. Tierney
- has failed to see that *what* we do, conceived in outward terms, is never
- the critical thing, but rather *how* we do it and what it means to us.
-
- Helena Norberg-Hodge, who has spent many years in the Himalayan mountain
- state of Ladakh, writes,
-
- Tourists see people carrying loads on their backs and walking long
- distances over high mountain passes and say, "How terrible; what a life
- of drudgery." They forget that they have traveled thousands of miles
- and spent thousands of dollars for the pleasure of walking through the
- same mountains with heavy backpacks. They also forget how much their
- bodies suffer from the lack of use at home. During working hours they
- get no exercise, so they spend their free time trying to make up for
- it. Some will even drive to a health club -- across a polluted city in
- rush hour -- to sit in a basement, pedaling a bicycle that does not go
- anywhere. And they actually pay for the privilege. (*Ancient Futures:
- Learning from Ladakh*, Sierra Club, 1992, p. 96)
-
- The mountain tourists, like Tierney when he imagines lugging water, have
- unwittingly become alienated from their own activities -- an alienation in
- which the role of technology is surely suspect.
-
- The second thing is this: the freedom Tierney hails must itself be an
- inner, spiritual quality if it is to have any enduring virtue. Aleksandr
- Solzhenitsyn pointed to this quality when he wrote of the Gulag:
-
- From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly
- behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life
- is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done
- about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die --
- now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder,
- and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property
- whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died.
- From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and
- my conscience remain precious and important to me."
-
- Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble.
-
- It is not that freedom is impossible without terrible loss. But the loss
- does strip away everything incidental, enabling us to recognize freedom's
- essence and the interior source of its power. Despite external
- circumstances, Solzhenitsyn, not his interrogator, was the truly free
- individual. No other power than *this* freedom can defeat tyranny.
-
- I would agree with Tierney that freedom is the decisive gift of
- technology. However, it is not a ready-made gift; it is the reward for our
- resistance to the invitations of the machine. It is the consequence of
- our struggle to raise ourselves above the machine. And the more this gift
- comes within our grasp, the more impossible it becomes to say that
- technology makes us better. Why? Because to the extent we become free,
- we determine ourselves from within, and therefore cannot be determined by
- technology from without.
-
- The case for pessimism about technology is not the mirror image of
- Tierney's optimism. It is not a matter of saying that the material
- circumstances of our lives have really worsened. No, the case for
- pessimism lies in the degree to which technology has blinded us to what it
- would mean for things to get better. We cannot in freedom surmount the
- challenge of our machines so long as we fail to recognize it.
-
- SLT
-
- +++++++++++++++
-
- NETFUTURE is a newsletter concerning technology and human responsibility.
- Publication occurs roughly once per week or two. Editor of the newsletter
- is Steve Talbott, a senior editor at O'Reilly & Associates. Where rights
- are not explicitly reserved, you may redistribute this newsletter for
- noncommercial purposes. You may also redistribute individual articles in
- their entirety, provided the NETFUTURE url and basic subscription
- information are attached.
-
- Current and past issues of NETFUTURE are available on the Web:
-
- http://www.ora.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/
-
- To subscribe to NETFUTURE, send an email message like this:
-
- To: listproc@online.ora.com
-
- subscribe netfuture yourfirstname yourlastname
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Thu, 7 May 1997 22:51:01 CST
- From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
- Subject: File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 May, 1997)
-
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- ------------------------------
-
- End of Computer Underground Digest #9.83
- ************************************
-
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-