Some approaches to filtering or labeling Internet content

Government might conduct "Peej" stings with spam

2012-01-09T19:36:00.001-08:00

I’ve gotten occasional emails that may be attempts to goad me (or any spam recipient) into conversations with minors. One repeated one is a daughter seeking piano lessons (when there are obviously legitimate ways to find real piano or music teachers in one’s own geographical area).

I don’t know if this could be government planting stings of the Dateline-PEEJ kind, but the appearance of such emails is disturbing, and I suppose stings based on spam are possible. I do not open them and mark them as spam, but AOL is not catching them as such automatically.

The growing sophistication of social networking facilities can complicate the "implicit content" issue

2012-01-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

There’s another wrinkle in the subtle undercurrent problem of “implicit content”: the role played by social networking sites, especially recently since Facebook and Google+ are offering various modes of “layered” friends’ circles who can receive different whitelists of posts. The concept (of concentric or maybe overlapping friends’ circles) is a bit of overkill for me, but it may beg a new legal or constitutional argument.

If someone publishes something for “everyone” that could be viewed as potentially self-incriminating, is the fact that it is in “public mode” mean merely that it is publication for its own sake? The speaker, if he or she wanted to “entice” people (illegally), he or she could have used these newer social networking features. (Of course, some of this functionality was available in the 90s with listservers, and other email-listing companies formed then over this idea.) So a new argument, that “everyone-oriented” publication means something in and of itself, with no other “purpose”, is created.

My own experience was that Internet self-publishing in the older Web 1.0 world (like late 90s) did attract people, and generally for upscale purposes – mostly other political (especially “libertarian”) activists. But in the past several years, especially after 9/11 and perhaps after social networking sites as we know them today were “born”, has been more that it tends to attract hucksters who would divert someone and try to get someone like me to sell “their” agenda. There's another good question: should someone be expected to accumulate a long list of willing "friends" before staring to publish?

Perhaps there remains a lingering question about just how valid a “motive” one’s “vanity” or “ego” in publishing something provocative really is.

Could Facebook "whitelist" philosophy have affected COPA?

2011-12-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve wondered if, in theory, the possibility of limiting the audience of a posting – usually on social networking sites like Facebook (and Google+) but possible in blogs – could have any effect on the logic used to strike down COPA. If a Facebook user can whitelist a posting to a known list of visitors (and has a reasonable basis for estimating age as >18), could this possibility be used to say that posters could try to screen visitors, since the social networking environment now places so much emphasis on the idea of separate “lists” of people. Really, the same questions could have been asked about listservers in the past.

"Anonynous" (Assange) goes vigilante against c.p, sites overseas

2011-12-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

Today, Webroot tweeted a story about a UN security breach, which led to another link about "hacktivists", possibly associated with Assange or with "Anonymous", targeting child pornography sites overseas, story in BBC news site here.

The group, acting in vigilante mode, also published the names of at least 1500 users of the sites.

Police and security experts say the hack attack could put an ongoing police or Interpol investigation at risk.

Reaction to Penn State: Don't gut due process in the name of "protecting children"

2011-11-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

I won’t belabor the lurid stories about what happened at Penn State.

Of course, police should have been called shortly after the problems became known to the University. But should it be the legal requirement of the first observing witness to call police without going through a chain of command when he witnesses at work? Is it his responsibility or his employer’s? Does the issue of “protecting children” change our respect for due process?

Certainly, it there is an emergency, an observing witness should call 911 if police could stop an incident by coming immediately. University police could have been called immediately, too. And in a world of “see something, say something”, I understand the idea that the witness has a responsibility to report an incident immediately.

The proper way to handle this in a university, school system, or any employer where children might be present on the premises some time, is to have a chain of command, and a legal officer (attorney) whose duties include calling authorities when circumstances warrant. A chain of command at Penn State should have existed then, with the result of a call to police by the university quickly, but not necessarily first from the observing witness or even by the head coach, Paterno. It should have come from the university legal department.

I think state legislatures should require universities and school systems have in place mechanisms to contact authorities when there is reasonable suspicion of child abuse on the premises. But there should not be a separate requirement of the immediate witness.

I think due process is necessary, because in some other situations there could be more ambiguity. Suppose someone finds a web or Facebook posting which he or she interprets as a possible “propensity” on the part of another employee to have inappropriate contact with minors, but no actual evidence of contact. What should his responsibility (to deal with “pre-crime”, as in “Minority Report”) when the fact pattern is ambiguous and open to interpretation? You need due process.

ABC News has an interesting story by Colleen Curry, to the effect that Paterno is was disgracefully fired, whereas two other university employees being investigated for perjury and legal failure to report remain on the payroll, link.

Sunday, Republican governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania said he supported a change in law, to pass this year; but that the head coach had followed all legal requirements at the time, according to his attorney general, Detroit Free Press story.

Picture: Penn State, personal visit, September, 2010.

Update: Nov. 18

Check the editorial and opposing view on "Reporting Requirements" in the USA Today, p. 12A, Nov. 18. USA Today supports reporting requirements on everyone and considers the practical risk of false reports or abuse low. There seems to exist an emerging viewpoint that institutions (since they circle the wagons) and professionals alone can't protect the vulnerable; only individual citizens can.

The debate reminds me that "failure to report" is usually a violation of school Honor Codes.

Nightline segment relates how risque photos in a private cloud account were hacked; another wrinkle for safety of minors online

2011-11-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

ABC Nightline tonight (Nov. 9) reported on a young woman affected by having provocative photos taken of herself (whether by a cell phone with sexting or for a conventional laptop or desktop computer). This time the complication came from storing the photos on photobucket, with the account then hacked. The photos went viral. But apparently the photos had been stored in an account that the teenager believed was private (she didn't even post them on Facebook).

The complete story of Angie Varona’s ordeal was told tonight on the late night show on ABC.

Earlier this week, I discussed the advantages of “two-step signin verification” to prevent hacking, as well as the dangers of using the same password on multiple sites, on my Internet Safety blog, embedded in a larger discussion of the safety of depending on the "cloud" for online storage of potentially compromising content.

Cell phone photography and Photobucket of course have many legitimate uses. The problem is that misuse, in combination now with security problems, can lead to enormous consequences.

Experts in online reputation defense will certain weigh in on this incident. It would be interesting to wonder where any legal liabilities lie.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Some more remarks on "implicit content"; is the idea of "null hypothesis" useful in the law?

2011-11-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

At times, on both this blog and my main blog, I’ve discussed the subtle issue of “implicit content”, which imputes a “purpose” or legal “intent” behind self-distribution of writings or content without obvious conventional commercial gain. It came up in 2006 during the COPA trial.

In my case, I was thought to have suggested that I was capable of committing a particular crime, with respect to a fictitious screenplay I had posted and that was later discovered by school system officials (in 2005) while I was substitute teaching.

But in the screenplay, there was an introductory circumstance (a heart cardiac arrest and subsequent defibrillation by a student) that was totally fictitious, and moreover, improbable on its face. (On the other hand, that could be one reason people write and publish fiction, to show what “could” happen.) However, the mere improbability of the chain of events in the screenplay would seem to mean it couldn’t have been my “purpose” in writing and self-publishing the work, to induce someone else to assist me to commit illegal behavior later occurring in the screenplay.

A “null hypothesis” in this sort of situation would be that promotion of illegal behavior in others was not likely to occur because of the publication of the screenplay. Analysis of the fact pattern would not lead to rejection of the null hypothesis. It seems to me that this sort of analysis could occur in cases where prosecution wants to prove “intent” or “purpose.”

The "null hypothesis" concept and its use in investigation appears in the recent indie film "The Double" (reviewed on the movies blog Nov. 5).

Mobile apps raise COPA-like questions on suitability for minors

2011-10-17T07:15:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, Cecilia Kang ran an story on the lack of ratings for mobile apps. It’s called “Mobile apps lack rating standards; parents frustrated by mature content marketed to children”, front page of the Washington Post Oct. 15. Online the article is called “inappropriate content making its way to mobile apps”, with link here.

Again, technology has end-arounded the ability of the law to regulate it; and once the law tries, as we found with COPA, all sorts of unintended consequences may follow. Financial and practical pressures may fall on developers, who are often young adults some of whom have plenty of debt. And risqué apps will make more money.

An earlier story by Kang last February noted that kids had run up parents’ mobile bills by excessive use of tempting and resource-consuming apps.

Married couple makes a living by streaming its own relationship

2011-10-14T09:18:00.001-07:00

Thursday night, Lisa Lane on ABC Nightline reported on a married couple that makes porn videos – of its own relationship – to make ends meet, link (17 minutes) here.

In fact, ABC News provided a “Sodahead” poll on the matter, did the couple go too far?, link.

Perhaps this episode comes from “The Song of Solomon”. But in 1999, a nurse who did this with her husband was fired from a Scottsdale AZ hospital, according to an old 20-20 report.

The couple only keeps 20% of the $8 a minute fee to watch the material. Yet, it’s enough to make a living.

It’s pretty easy to envision the COPA questions that would have come up, had the law been upheld.

Be careful about forwarding or even receiving (and opening with html) "illegal" emails

2011-10-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Today, on the books blog, I reviewed Helen Schulman’s “This Beautiful Life”. I was struck by the enormous problems, including legal ones, for forwarding one email with “illegal images” that a minor (in the fictitious setting) had made about herself.

The problem in the novel occurs with forwarding from a laptop rather than a cell phone, but the legal implications could be similar.

If one receives an illegal image by email, it could be illegal to “possess” it. One can reduce the risk by not viewing mail that seems to be spam, or by not viewing questionable emails with html enabled or links enabled, and certainly not opening suspicious attachments. If one believes he or she has an illegal image in the browser, the cache should be deleted. If one deletes a file known to be “illegal”, one must also empty a recycle bin. Still, forensics may find the image.

The problem comes up in the context of increasing debate over warrantless examination of Internet activity, which could cause police to get a warrant to actually search a particular computer. While generally the concerns over privacy and the 4^th Amendment are well founded, sometimes investigations of unusual crimes or terror threats could lead into this area, and sometimes unusual audit trails (involving spam blogs with illegal images) are found. This may be the case with a couple of (still unsolved) major crimes that occurred in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC in late 2008, for example.

Northwestern University has a history of CDA, COPA

2011-09-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

I found a white paper from Northwestern University dated 2005 (before the COPA trial in 2006) that surveyed the history of the problems of trying to regulate potentially HTM materials on the Internet, from the CDA through COPA, by Steven E. Merlis, linkb (website url) here.

The two broad areas of solutions he discusses are filtering, and zoning – the latter would mean setting up tld’s where adult content is encouraged (“.xxx”) or not allowed. But publishers would not have very good incentives to restrict their tld use according to these guidelines, because of stigma.

He doesn’t discuss the existential “implicit content” problem that has developed along with online reputation issues.

And he doesn’t cover the idea of voluntary content labeling, although the ICRA, probably the most comprehensive system, folded.

A retrospect: for the COPA litigation, I stayed "in" to the end, when I did face challenges

2011-08-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

As I look back over my experience with the COPA litigation, I realize it ran a long time, from 1998-2006 (when I attended the trial for one day in Philadelphia).

I do recall some people with whom I had corresponded by email or phone in 1999 who had dropped out as plaintiffs or sub-plaintiffs (under Electronic Frontier Foundation) by 2004 or 2005.

From a practical viewpoint, it was probably important that as many plaintiffs remain active as possible, in order to get the final "victory" as already documented here.

Had my life taken a different course around, say, 2003, I might have had to drop out. For example, in the days before social media were well established, I had advocated a principle by which those who have other people report to them in the workplace, or who make decisions about customers or students, generally should not self-publish their views or even literary works on the Web. Had I become a fully licensed math teacher with the intention of working several years with the authority to grade students, I would have had to remove everything from the Web for that period and withdraw from the litigation. (There is some discussion of this matter and “conflict of interest” on the “BillBoushka” blog Sept. 27, 2010.) That could tie into the idea of “implicit content” which was mentioned the day that I was there.

Some email subject headers mean you must not open the email (from a legal viewpoint)

2011-07-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight I marked as spam (without opening) an AOL email whose subject header boldly said it was c.p. I suppose it would be illegal to open it, since that would cause possession on your computer (even after deletion). (I'll say this: the word "hardcore" appeared in the subject, as did some other things.) My email does block automatic opening of embedded html images, so maybe it could have been “safely” opened from a legal viewpoint. It’s likely that the sender name was spoofed, and I would be concerned about what the potential legal consequences could be for anyone. I don’t think this has happened before, or maybe it did once about ten years ago when I was in MN. My email provider is AOL, since I’ve used it since 1994 with the same email address. But I guess there are risks in using a findable email address without changing it for years.

This incident makes me think of another issue: rapidly opening many emails to get through them, especially when the email server is slow and can't keep up. Legally dangerous, maybe?

Supreme Court says states can't easily ban violent video game sales to minors

2011-06-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court has ruled early Monday, June 27, that California cannot regulate the sale of violent video games to children or minors, saying that states may not, according to the First Amendment, “restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed”, even when there is gratuitous violence. The AP story by Jesse J. Holland is here.

Even socially conservative Scalia pointed out that the difference between common violence in popular video games and hidden violence in children's literature and in public school curricula is based on "ideas" which government cannot regulate.

The case is “Brown, Governor of California v. Entertainment Merchants Association”, with slip opinion link here.

Fed, state lawmakes press social networking companies harder on use by minos

2011-06-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

COPA-like thinking is definitely back. Ceclia King has a Washington Post story Friday, “Lawmakers, advocates push social networks for more protection of youngest users”, link here.

Even though Facebook’s policy says that minimum age for use is 13, there are about 7.5 million users under 13, and Facebook, as well as other companies, say there is little that can be done to screen them out reliably without severely affecting adults. And, as we saw with the COPA litigation, many parents are, in practice, unable to supervise what their kids do on the web, although many technologies have been presented on this blog that could help them do so. One place this debate could go is the existential one: how much “currency” should people have before “choosing” to have kids in the first place? That takes us back to “demographic winter” territory.

California now considers a state law that gives parents the right to demand that social networking sites delete kids’ personal information (sounds reasonable).

Markey (D-MA) and Barton (R-TX), in may, had proposed a variation of “do not track” for youth, which would sound hard to implement in a way separate from adults, where browser vendors (at least Microsoft IE and Firefox) are rushing to enrich anti-tracking options for everyone. In fact, Microsoft has been pushing complicated automatic updates to Windows Vista and 7 customers to get them on to IE9, partly to answer the political concerns over tracking.

Fibbies misidentify sites connected to one ISP as producing c.p.

2011-05-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

Torrent Freak reports that back in February the US Department of Justice had shut down over 84000 sites hosted by a “free IP” because of supposed connection to counterfeit goods and child pornography. This was a result of “Operation Save our Children” ICE Cyber Crimes Center belonging to DOJ and Homeland Security.

The story is here.

Site were redirected to an incriminating banner shown in the article. It seems as though 84000 web operators were shamed or libeled by the process. HS has not yet taken responsibility for this, according to the story.

Related post on "Bill Boushka" blog May 17.

Protection of older minors is more about privacy now than content -- and implicates whole family

2011-05-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

Cecilia Kang has an important front page story in The Washington Post on May 9, “With quick click, teens online part with privacy; some experts say adolescents’ information needs special protection”, link (website url) here.

The article reflects a shift in emphasis from protecting tweens and even older minors (sometimes) from inappropriate content, to protecting privacy. Teens often give away family information when signing up for mobile aps as well as well-known social networking sites. In some families’ circumstances, telling a family phone number or address or even personal whereabouts could put other family members in jeopardy. There is also a shift in emphasis from protecting the privacy of the youngest minors to that of teens, which has a bigger potential impact on a whole family.

The article also says that most people do not have fully developed reasoning abilities – to see around corners and anticipate long term consequences of actions – until their thirties, not even the mid twenties. Given the success of some people well before 30, that’s hard to see.

The other big concern of consequences is “online reputation” – that employers could look at Tweets, blog posts, Facebook profiles, or even Mobile behavior – of young adults as applicants and employees – in an era when the ethical aspects of doing so have not yet been worked out.

On the road: MD elementary school offers parents classes in internet safety for kids

2011-04-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Today, as I drove “accidentally” (after missing a turn, having visited the train exhibits in Ellicott City) through Catonsville, MD (south of Baltimore, which is not “missing”), I noticed a sign “Internet Safety Forum 4 Parents” (“4” = “for”), at an elementary school. Unfortunately, my camera didn’t snap until a van blocked it, but the sign was there.

My point is that school systems ought to be proactive in educating both parents and students on internet safety and online reputation issues.

Here is a video on the topic from the University of Michigan (Matthew Davis, Ford School of Public Policy).

New York Times has huge story on sexting problem: case history in Washington State

2011-03-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a feature front page story on an incident in Washington state on how a innocent instance of “sexting” suddenly went viral and resulted in a number of 14 and 15 year old kids threatened with big time prosecution, in what seems like a travesty. The story link is here.

The New York Times starts its “paywall” tomorrow so soon these articles cannot be read for free (more than a limited number a month) without subscription. The Times offers several links and discussions today on the Washington state incident.

The story does show how teens are unaware of the long term consequences of what adults seem to encourage them to do.

Social networking encryption, and legal technicalities make it easier for real criminals against children to hide; "members only" clubs encourage more crime

2011-03-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post ran a disturbing story on p. A3 Thursday, March 24, about the use of “members only” rings by purveyors of c.p., and their use of encryption of major social networking sites to hide from authorities. People have to send samples to join, encouraging family abuse. Authorities may not legally set up stings with illegal material, because that would break the law itself. (This is different from setting up stings as on NBC’s notorious series with Chris Hansen.)

The story is authored by Shankar Vedantam, with link here.

The details are difficult to describe in space like this, but the story is significant.

Parents know how to restrict kids' Internet access

2011-03-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

Someone emailed me a link to an “Internet Provider” article, “10 Reasons Parents Take the Internet Away from Kids”, link here. I thought that, beyond the “obvious” concerns about child safety , a few of them were interesting: financial hardship (the Internet and especially broadband viewed as a luxury), and learning about “sacrifice” (the last point). In any case, parents are more capable than what the government took them for when Congress passed COPA back in 1998. Enjoy the reading.

ICANN approves new "adult" top-level domain: significant to COPA-like laws?

2011-03-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has approved the “.xxx” top-level domain suffix, the Washington Times reports today with a story by Cheryl Wetzstein, link here.

The measure has some significance in the ongoing discussion here about filters and labeling. Conceivably, Congress could try to pass a law requiring some kinds of content to appear only in “
xxx” domains, which parents could block.

Oprah presents male abuse victims

2011-03-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

Oprah Winfrey today rebroadcast a Nov. 2010 show about a particularly sensitive matter, adult men, over 200, publicly “admitting” that they had been abused. Sometimes the perpetrators were Roman Catholic priests, but others gave stories of abuse from family members, even fathers. The basic link is here. Among those who spoke out was Tyler Perry.

The details were quite graphic and explicit, and the complete episode may be watched at the link above.

New service "True Care" also helps monitor kids online

2011-02-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

A spokesperson has informed me of another parental screening service, “True Care”, which may help parents shield their children especially from cyberbullying, basic link here.

The press release they sent out by email paid particular heed to harassment due to perceived sexual orientation.

It also cited GLSEN statistics of high percentages of LGBT teens who report bullying in various forms at school.

The site also offers the ability to parse language and lingo for common slang and abbreviations, as well as phrases associated with intention to do harm.

Man arrested for fake video based on elementary school performance

2011-02-18T06:21:00.000-08:00

CNN reports a case where a first grade class (in Pennsylvania?) teacher invited a singer to make a presentation. The singer recorded and then edited the presentation and posted a YouTube video to make it look like the kids had listened to porn. The singer was arrested, although it’s not clear that he broke the law in a technical sense.

On my main “Bill Boushka” blog I’ve covered a number of cases of teachers fired or suspended for blog content or Facebook (including my own back in 2005), but this is the first where there was obviously objectionable content involving children. In the other cases, the speakers had a reasonable moral foundation for their actions.

Despite end of ICRA, there are still some other voluntary content labeling systems (like RTA and Safesurf)

2011-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:00

The ending of support for the (UK originated) ICRA content rating system was a bit of a blow to the idea of voluntary content classification by webmasters. It was a very sophisticated system, with many categories, and made heavy use of the “semantic web”.

There are some other systems that may be simpler. There is RTA, “Restricted to Adults” here. It can label wordpress pages (although apparently not Blogger pages) with a plugin. Note their progress report link (dating to November 2010).

RTA apparently offers the ability to label selected pages within a site. But it helps to know PHP and Apache (Unix) or IIS (Windows) server programming, or, particularly Perl script language, if you really have multiple (dozens) of pages with but don’t want all of them. The trademark slogan is “Adult Entertainment, Adult Responsibility”.

The facility was launched in 2006 by the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP).

There was a Voluntary Content Rating system with Solid Oak Software, but Wikipedia pages for these facilities have been removed, so they seem to have become extinct as well.

There is also an older system called SafeSurf, link here. It appears that these tags can apply to individual pages. SafeSurf maintains that search engines can use the metatags for “safe mode” search results.

It’s interesting that Wikipedia entertained its own internal content rating system, but that was dropped.

Overview of parental concerns about child safety on the Internet

2011-01-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

I got an email from someone who runs a blog called “Internet Service”, called “10 Reasons why parents need to worry about the Internet”, with the link here.

Okay, it sums up a lot of the dangers we’ve been hearing about for well over a decade; COPA was only a little piece of it. There’s “Chat Roulette”, “digital drugs”, and most of all, the desire for “15 Minutes of Fame” through YouTube, and teens don’t always use good judgment on what they post or on the effect that it has. I think this could have been a good place to go into the problem of cyberbullying.

MouseMail may help parents filter on "family computers"

2011-01-05T04:30:00.000-08:00

USA Today, in a front page story (“MouseMail traps kids’ cyberbullies”) by Mark Snider on Jan. 5, reported on a new product called “MouseMail” which allows parents to intercept messages and emails sent to their kids. The kids’ accounts must be added to a family profile on the MouseMail application. The online link on USA Today is (website url) here.

Still, the concept seems to be predicated on the idea that parents will set up “family computers” to be used “as families”, which would discourage the independence older kids need for legitimate school-related computer use.

Arrest of Greaves stimulates comparison to COPA issues; CNN relentless in covering it

2010-12-22T06:25:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 20, the media started reporting on the arrest of Phillip Greaves II for his infamous Kindle book, rather a “tract”, on Amazon.

The Polk County, FL sherrif’s department apparently set up a “sting” to buy the book and then sent deputies to Colorado to arrest him for obscenity. I’m not sure how the legal extradition worked, but I thought this was harder and required US Marshalls. It’s disturbing that one could be arrested from another state by state authorities without being in the state. The same situation would occur with charges for alleged crimes committed through the Internet.

The Sheriff was clever in calling the tract a “Manifesto”, a word that has taken on a negative connotation, to be sure. (Some people call my first book “The Manifesto”). But it is more like a tract, according to Anderson Cooper.

Sanjay Gupta’s report Tuesday follows:

There would be a question as to whether the lack of images is relevant. But apparently text alone can be obscene (not the case with c.p. in the United States, although the case overseas generally).

I usually don’t put two videos from the same place in one posting, but I think visitors might want to hear reporter’s questions of Greaves. He denies acting on “fantasies” but says fantasy is important, and says that what he describes typically happens in many families. He says he is too poor to make bail.

CNN has really taken this issue as far as possible, with Sanjay Gupta joining Anderson Cooper in the “professional outrage” (as opposed to “recreational outrage”).

Remember, COPA was about the concept of “obscene with respect to minors”. In the Greaves case, the charge is “simple” obscenity, however. The charge might not have been possible under earlier rulings that had been made against COPA (back in 2002).

As a purely legal matter, it sounds as if the State of Florida will have to overcome tremendous First Amendment hurdles to obtain and sustain a conviction.

FOSI discontinues offering ICRA content labeling engine

2010-12-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

The Fanily Online Safety Institute (FOSI) is telling visitors to its old ICRA (website url) site that the FOSI Board of Directors has discontinued offering the content labeling engine, which has been discussed on this blog several times. It says "Thank you for inquiring about ICRA".

The site says “While all current labels will continue to work with Internet content filters, the ICRA label generator, ICRA tools and Webmaster support will no longer be available.”

It’s not clear why this action was taken, as it would appear that a voluntary labeling system could be useful in addressing many troubling areas of potential Internet regulation, including protection of minors from accidental exposure to inappropriate content (all the COPA strikedowns notwithstanding), and possibly now in regulating tracking by advertisers.

I am not sure when this took place; until recently, ICRA redirected visitors to FOSI. The ICRA product had been developed in the UK around 2003-2004, while COPA was in litigation in the US.

"Do Not Track" controversy on web reminds one of the debates over filters and labels to protect minors

2010-12-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

There is a controversy over “do not track” proposals, both as legislation and as a facility that users should invoke from browsers (they already can to some extent, especially with IE8).

Critics of the idea say that it would destroy the business model of the Internet, the ability of advertisers to show visitors ads that might actually lead to sales of products or services, pay people’s salaries, and help the economy. Makes sense.

More specifically, they say it would lead to “two Webs”: one with little free content and little advertising and little privacy risk (no need to log on or give personal information), the other where visitors accept some “risk”.

All of this reminds me of the debate on Internet filters for minors as was stimulated by COPA. The use of content labels, as already described here (and advocated by the ICRA, etc) generally promotes the idea of bifurcation of websites, with some intended to be seen by all visitors, and some only by adults or older minors. That’s the way it’s been with movies (and the rating systems) for years.

But to work, the whole web service industry along with advertising sponsors would have to have confidence in a world of relatively well educated or mature adults who can surf safely (and live safely) while accepting more “risk” on the web because they “know what they’re doing.” In practice, that ought to work. But it sounds like a tough sell.

It does sound as though the ICRA techniques for labeling content with metatags and using semantic web tools could be used to distinguish websites that allow advertisers to track, and that visitors could be told when loading a website whether tracking is permitted by their browser according to tags (but see Friday's post).

Supreme Court hears arguments on CA ban on "HTM" violent video games

2010-11-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (ironically, midterm Election Day) heard the arguments in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, over a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors, following the notion of the “harmful to minors” construct well known from COPA. The plaintiff is also known by several acronyms, such as EMA, ECA, ESA.

A site called “Joystiq” has a report on the arguments by Christopher Grant, with a Scribd PDF of the oral arguments, here. AOL published this to its subscribers this morning.

Reportedly Alito ribbed Scalia on what James Madison would have thought of video games.

The Washington Post has an article today by Robert Barnes, “High Court weighs California effort to ban sale of violent video games to minors”, (website url) here.

Many observers fear the effect of this case on other areas of entertainment, especially movies; the R-rating could become stricter as to violence. I recall being prohibited from seeing violent movies as a kid in the 50s; around 1952 or so there was a Saturday morning show “Movies for kids” that showed segments of “The Clutching Hand” that was disturbing enough then!

Some sites with teen-OK text or forums may display questionable images in ads; would this have been a COPA issue?

2010-11-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve discovered at least one website, “Just us boys” which, while offering valuable content about LGBT issues (including discussion forums) which certainly could have social and political value for older minors, displays some pornographic ads. I’m not sure what would have happened in COPA with sites whose own content did not fall within the HTM definitions but whose ads did. But the site says you can suppress the ads by supporting the site. That certainly is objectionable, at least in a practical sense.

The particular file was a forum about the Tyler Clementi tragedy, which I discussed on my GLBT blog on Oct. 27, 2010 (the link is there).

The site has an “excellent” reputation with Mozilla’s Web of Trust, which is more concerned perhaps with malware than content. Likewise, McCafee site advisor gave it a green light. Neither McAfee, Webroot/Sophos/Spysweeper, nor Kaspersky gave me any warnings.

Visitors to websites that discuss sexual issues may, however, feel concerned about finding unwanted images or ads. Parents who would not object to the content might object to their teen kids finding the images. In some cases with some sites, a computer user could not know if a subject in such an image was under 18 and possibly exposing the user to potential legal risks if the cached image were later found on the hard drive.

Massachusetts passes a COPA-like law, and the law is immediately challenged in federal court

2010-10-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

From Some approaches to filtering or labeling Internet content

Well, COPA-like state laws are still in the news, particularly now in liberal Massachusetts, according to an AP story by legal affairs writer Denise Lavoie, link here.

The law was motivated by an incident where someone sent an explicit message to a 13 year old girl. But plaintiffs, in a federal suit, say that the law is worded way too broadly, much like COPA, to include posting of all “harmful to minors” materials on the Internet. Plaintiffs say that this could even apply to discussions of contraception, abortion or gay sex.

The Commonwealth disagrees, saying that the law applies only to messages sent to specific people known or reasonably believed to be minors.

I've never learend the final disposition of similar laws in Virginia and New Mexico, which, as far as I know, have never been enforced. (Virginia's was before te Virginia Supreme Court).

But it’s likely that the case will refer to the 2007 COPA decision in Philadelphia.

The story was run today on p A5 of the Washington Times.

Picture: no, not Boston; downtown Philly, from the train, where the COPA trial was held in 2006. Sorry about the tilt.

Florida girl bullied after one cell phone image sent; tragic ending

2010-10-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

Dr. Phil appeared on AC360 tonight (Oct 6), talking about the dangers of cyberbullying, partly because they don’t look the victim in the eye. This is a video everyone should see. The basic link is here.

Dr. Phil’s appearance came after Anderson described a case in Florida where a 13 year old girl sent an inappropriate image of herself after prodding from a boyfriend, and it was sent to six schools. Eventually, after the bullying, which the school system dropped the ball on, she took her own life. Later people even wrote bad things on her family’s memorial Myspace page.

Craigslist "self-censors"

2010-09-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

Craigslist has “self-censored” and removed its “adult services” link from its “Services” section, replacing it with a graphic of white letters on black, reading “censored”. The ABC News story by Kevin Dolak is here and was a lead story for Google account members to see when signing on Saturday afternoon.

Pressure and jawboning from officials of 17 states contributed to Craigslist’s decision. Connecticut was the leading state.

The states’ attorneys general had written that women and children might be victimized by the ads.

Yet Jim Buckmaster had written in Craiglist’s blog Aug 18 that “Manual Screening Matters”, link here. But CNN says it tried to "test" the manual screening and Craigslist accepted the add that common sense said was HTM and that violated Craigslist's guidelines.

Coincidentally, in the early briefings in the whole COPA process, I recall that EFF and the ACLU made much of the prospect that plaintiffs would have to self-censor while trying to guess what content was would be legally acceptable.

David A. Fahrenthold has an article in the Washington Post, front page Sunday morning Sept. 5, "Craigslist stops offering links to 'adult services' ads", link here, and the article says "Legal experts say it is difficult for state prosecutors to charge Craigslist for sexual ads, because of a federal law that limits the liability of Web sites for content posted there by others." That refers to Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, an essential protection against downstream liability that makes it possible for ISP's to let people publish on the Internet without third party review (including this blog).

OpenDNS may enhance parents' ability to filter websites for kids

2010-08-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

The following video from PC Magazine shows how parents could use OpenDNS on their router, and enter blacklisted and whitelisted sites that minors are allowed to see. This is explained at about 4:30 into the video (not embeddable). The flm demonstrrates the settings with Netgear.

There are ways to provide protection from other minors’ hazards as well, such as phishing. Typo errors, which can lead to porn, are also prevented.

Check David Burt's "Review: OpenDNS Adult Site Blocking" at Get Parental Controls here. He reports a healthful underblocking rate of 96% on a test apparently performed in 2007.

"Mousemail" and "Collyou" will help parents monitor emails, texts, cell phone use

2010-08-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

A product called Mousemail has been presented on CNN as “family safety for email and texting”, with the main link here. The service prevents inappropriate messages from reaching a child and is said to help stop cyberbullying.

There is a similar service for tweens and teens called “coolyou”, link .

These products come from a company called Fuzebox, link.

Christie Dedman has a story from the Birmingham News, “MouseMail.com & CoolYou.com Provide Parents Options on Monitoring Child's Text Messaging”, link here .

Ladies' Home Journal and Parry Aftab look for "lowest common denominator" for kids' safety on Internet

2010-08-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

Ladies’ Home Journal has an important article by Mika Brzezinski, on p 82 of the “September issue” (2010), titled “Internet Intervention”, where the author, cohost of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, must intervene to control her daughers’ online use. Internet security consultant Parry Aftab, of “WiredSafety” meets with the family.

The LHJ has the following video of the meeting; some versions of it require subscription:

Many of the recommendations sound trite: keep the “family computer” in a public area, no closed doors, etc. Note how Parry Aftab plays the outside professional, telling the family and kids what to do.

I generally think parents can adjust their rules according to the maturity of their kids. But remember the case of the New Jersey principal who wanted all parents in his middle school to ban Facebook and other social networking sites at home? The thinking is collective, even quasi-Maoist: if some kids are restricted, but see that their better-off friends aren’t, their own parents will have a harder time enforcing these kinds of “rules.”

Here’s a “TVNewser” account of the story, link.

I could not find a LHJ link to the text of the story yet. But here is a story from April 2005 that is provocative, by Stephanie Emily Pfeffer, “"Are Online Blogs a Good Idea for My Kids?": Online diaries -- aka blogs -- can be fun and innocent, or they can lead to trouble. Here's what parents need to know”, link here.

Michelle Obama says she doesn't let her daughters use electronic media "at home" at all during the week. What about homework?

Internet filtering explained in "baby language"

2010-08-02T05:34:00.000-07:00

Here is a little high-level page on a site called “Hub Pages” by “Jlcalzone”, “The Benefits of Internet Filtering”, link here. Most of the points made here are simple and sound like “common sense”. But one point that is particularly interesting is the giving the parent the ability to block social networking sites altogether. Another is monitoring web-based email sites. Still another is blocking certain games and newbie apps. And still another is that many families have several computers, including one for each teen kid, and one for each spouse; so different levels of access are appropriate on different machines (and mobile devices). The idea that you place a single “family computer” in one public area of the home seems passé.

Keep in mind that ISP’s generally allow multiple screenname logons with different levels of access for each screenname. A few years ago, I experimented with AOL’s, but the “young teen” setting did not block any of my websites, subject of the COPA litigation.

What about "R" movie trailers embedded in blog postings?

2010-07-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed that a few smaller motion picture distributors place on YouTube trailers that (even as trailers) have been rated “R” and presumably contain material that might have met the definition of HTM had COPA been upheld. In one case (with Screen Media Films) an entire R rated film was placed on YouTube, but could only be viewed by those having YouTube accounts and logging on, which was supposed to provide evidence of being over 18.

In these cases, embed code was offered. Therefore, the interesting question arises that, had COPA been upheld or should some other form of COPA be passed in the future and meet constitutional challenges, could a blogger be violating COPA when using the embed code on a “commercial” blog (one with any paid advertising)?

Generally, when embed code is used, the first image of the video appears, and generally, as a practical matter, the image is not likely itself to contain HTM (“harmful to minors”) aspects. It’s only if the video is played from the embed that such images would later appear on the visitor’s computer, embedded within the blog posting as still visible. I don’t know if opinions were ever offered as to whether this would have violated COPA or any TOS provisions.

As a precautionary matter, I don’t embed trailers that themselves are rated R (it’s OK to embed a trailer for an R movie, but the trailer should not contain R images). Larger motion picture companies usually provide trailers that themselves are approved for all audiences. All distributors ought to do the same.

It would be interesting to wonder if ICRA content labeling could be placed in embeddable trailers.

McAfee automatically updates (my computer, at least) with Parental Controls, addressing COPA-like issues

2010-07-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Last night, on an older laptop with McAfee, the automated update loaded an apparently new McAfee Parental Controls feature. Afterward, when I went to the Security Center, it told me that I had not activated the Controls.

As I am the only person using the computer I don’t need them, but I found it interesting that it loaded. It appeared to give the parent the ability to supply keywords that would cause a webpage to be rejected.

Here’s a write-up at “Internet Filter Review”.

McAfee’s own "Security Insights Blog has a detailed discussion of its product here ("“Parental Controls” – When Parents Don’t Want to Control Their Kids and Kids Don’t Want to Be Controlled") and a discussion of the evolution of filtering for HTM materials since 2000, particularly during the period of the COPA trials.

I remember AOL’s parental controls a few years ago, and I experimented with setting up a “young tween” screen name, and found it was not particularly effective.

I have to add that kids vary enormously in maturity. When I was substitute teaching, on one assignment I got a “blue screen” error and an eleven year old sixth grader knew how to get the machine back up with windows commands. (He’d be entering college by now, or be working for Facebook or Google.) Some kids catch on very quickly to how everything works.

Again, we see that private business can do more to protect minors than government -- the libertarain position.

FTC protects privacy of minor consumers in bankruptcy of "gay youth" magazine

2010-07-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Although the relevance to censorship and minors is perhaps tangential here, I wanted to pass on a news story about the FTC prohibiting the former publishers of a “gay youth” magazine called “XY” to sell or disseminate the personal information of subscribers, partly because it could compromise the lives of subscribers currently or because of past interests.

The magazine and website were quite glossy and impressive. The concept or subject matter might seem morally inappropriate to some people, but the publication did not actually contain material that met the usual legal standards for sexual explicitness or even HTM as under the now defunct COPA law.

The EFF story by Marcia Hoffman is “FTC: Don’t sell or use consumer information on gay youth”, link here.

Second Circuit rules against FCC broadcast indency rules, compare to CDA and COPA

2010-07-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the “indecency” rules at the FCC against commercial broadcasters, saying they are too vague, as reported today by Cecilia Kang in the Washington Post, link (web url) here. The rules had imposed considerable fines for certain words and acts appearin on broadcast television (Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" in the 2004 Super Bowl halftime provided controversy.)

The ruling pointed out the arbitrary nature of what is considered indecent language, and that English tends to invent new metaphors almost daily to deal with sensitive sexual issues.

Major network and UHF broadcasters are subject to rules that don’t apply to other cable channels or to Web TV or Internet streams, adding further to inconsistency.

The Broadcasting Law blog has an article here.

What’s interesting is that some of the points were argued for regular Internet speakers in both the Communications Decency Act (1997) and COPA litigation.

Here is the text of the Opinion Fox v. FCC
The earlier Petition for Review was here.

The Volokh Conpiracy site has this analysis.

Facebook, PTA form partnership to protect kids online when using site

2010-07-09T15:59:00.000-07:00

Doug Gross has an article today on CNN, “Are your kids safe online? Facebook, PTA want to make sure”, link here. Embedded in the article is a link to a story about how young is too young for social networking sites, which say you must be 13 but have no way to prove it (as we know from the COPA trial).

Facebook and the Parent-Teacher Association developed a partnership to develop standards for proper Facebook use by minors.

Australian group says filters don't work, in contradiction to US COPA trial

2010-07-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

A group in Australia called the “Safer Internet Group” (link) has been lobbying for more systematic control of potentially HTM materials on the web, with a five-pronged approach, and it claims (in opposition to findings in the US COPA trial) that Internet filters really don’t protect minors, in a story by Ari Sharp in an Australian site called “the Age” here.

One of the prongs called for "comprehensive policing of illegal materials on the Internet". But I'm not sure what's "illegal" in Australia compare to the U.S.

Do Blogger and Wordpress widgets for ICRA content rating exist yet?

2010-07-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

I have noticed recently that some corporate sites, such as television station WJLA in Washington DC, are stating that they adhere to the ICRA content rating system. (Reminder, the Internet Content Rating Association is now part of the Family Online Safety Institute).

Since I have used Blogger as a repository of most of my new content (especially media reviews) for the past four years, I have wondered whether Blogger and Wordpress have widgets for installing ICRA labels, properly coded and linked, into individual blog posts. ICRA requires that every individual file or posting be labeled before a site can be considered ICRA-certified.

So far, I can’t find any evidence that one can. Here is a discussion from Feb. 2007 on Wordpress about the issue (link).

Blogger seems to have widgets for rating things, but not related to ICRA (link), for example, this link.

Perhaps it would be more logical that a blog be required to have only one rating set in the headers; parents could reasonably expect that all postings in a particular blog remain within certain constraints as to suitability.

Both Wordpress and Blogger allows developers to submit widgets but widgets must work and pass quality assurance standards to remain available.

One can imagine the same question about Myspace blog posts or even Facebook entries and tweets.

The question of rating widgets for blog posts could become important in the future. Wordpress and Blogger are both very good at labeling and correlating huge volumes of archtypical posts (like movie or book reviews). Even though COPA was struck down in 2007 and the ruling has held, market pressures for rating systems for blogs could grow in the future.

If anyone has news on this matter, please comment.

ICANN will set up adult-only TLD

2010-06-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names, ICANN, has agreed to create a new TLD suffix, “xxx”, for “adult entertainment Web sites” (and that’s a euphemism), according to a story Saturday June 26 in the Business Day section of the New York Times, by Miguel Helft, “For X-rated, a domain of their own”, link here.

The religious right fears that the measure will make Internet pornography more acceptable, whereas legitimate web operators fear that it could lead to more censorship and push legitimate but adult-leading content into the XXX category.

Proponents of the measure believe that the measure will, in practice, make it easier to keep commercial pornography away from minors, an original aim of COPA.

Facebook's approach to protecting minors: limit the access of search engines

2010-06-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Facebook does have a stance on protecting minors, as it says on its Privacy Control page that it will not allow search engines to index the information of minors until their 18th birthday, even if they’ve deliberately chosen “everyone” options. However Facebook says that “name, profile picture, gender and networks” can be indexed (the no-search “does not apply” to these three items) so their existence (by name) is available search engines. It’s conceivable that such exceptions could present issues for some families.

It’s an interesting concept in the “protection” of minors on the Internet – trying to limit what people can find out about them, as opposed to limiting what minors can view. I don’t recall that this view of things came up during the COPA trial.

In the early days of the Web, people used meta tags with keywords to get their pages indexed, but quickly that became rather unnecessary.

Coordinated post: BillBoushka blog, June 5.

An argument against filters? Just that times change?

2010-06-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting blog entry by Ben Black of “Systems Xpert” on “Ben Eficium” from May 12, 2010, “Why I am against the Internet filter”, link here.

The piece is not organized exactly as a first college freshman English theme. But he does list some points, and argue them. Filters affect Internet performance, he says. True, but so do many things (like P2P). But his main point seems to be that proxies and tunneling services bypass filters so easily that they are ineffective. Governments will censor anyway, he says, and governments are behind the times. A libertarian position; not quite, because filters are supposed to put some controls in private hands.

There was a lot of testimony at the COPA trial in Philadelphia about filters in the fall of 2006 (I was there in person for one day of it). It’s probably becoming less relevant with time.

Supreme Court says that federal prison system can hold dangerous people after sentence is completed

2010-05-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve put some of the materials about “disturbing behavior” on this blog (sometimes to isolate it). Fred Barnes has a major story on p A6 of The Washington Post to the effect that the government can detail certain s.o.’s even after their prison terms have been completed, with link here.

“"The federal government is the custodian of its prisoners," Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the majority. "As federal custodian, it has the constitutional power to act in order to protect nearby (and other) communities from the danger federal prisoners may pose”.

Breyer found justification for the government’s powers with indirect arguments, and confounded libertarian notions that the federal government should stay within powers explicitly stated in the Constitution.

The case is “United States v. Comstock” and the text of the Opinion is on this PDF here.

Of course, many people see this as a "double jeopardy" issue, of punishing a person more than once for the same offense.

Note: The URL for the Supreme Court has changed, and the “us” at the end of the domain name was removed. Other links to opinions on these blogs may take you to the new home page for the Supreme Court. In time, I’ll try to find them and supply updated URL’s. But the new site is pretty easy to navigate.

Some companies "promote" safer cell phone service for minors

2010-05-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

I followed up on the visitor’s comment yesterday, and here is the link to the blog on cell phone safety for kids, here. Note the postings on April 30 and April 2. He mentions a cell phone service for kids here called Kajeet, link. It says you can decide when the phone can and can’t be used.

It seems as though you would want a phone without a camera.

It seems that my 8800 Blackberry has no camera (and I have some months yet until I can update for reasonable price). Reiters camera phone report writes “RIM says no camera in BlackBerry 8800 is a feature for corporations”. I suspect it would be a good feature for parents. Does President Obama’s Blackberry have a camera, or did the Secret Service opt out on the camera? (RIN stands for "Research in Motion").

MD county considers how to regulate teen cell phone, Internet behavior even off campus

2010-05-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

While politicians reconsider the appropriate penalties for “sexting” among teens, police and administrators keep investigating, as in a case in a Montgomery County, MD middle school where supposedly some students tried to “charge” to let others see “illegal” images.

There was a major story Friday April 16 in the Washington Post by Michael Birnbaum, link here .

Administrators ponder the fact that most activity took place off campus but certain has an effect on school grounds. They are starting to hear suggestions, as by a New Jersey principal Kenneth Orsini (my “BillBoushka” blog, April 29) that middle school kids are too young to be allowed to have social networking sites or own cell phones on their own at all.

Parents do have control of what happens physically in their homes; web publishers and game manufacturers, as we know from COPA, do not. But it seems as though parents don’t have time to take control.

California video game case mirrors COPA, to some extent (what about state HTM laws?)

2010-04-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court, in considering a ruling from the Ninth Circuit to overturn a California law that prohibits the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, is bringing back some of the concepts familiar from the COPA trial. That is, whether the content of the games has legitimate social or scientific value with respect to minors. It's the same formulation of the "harmful to minors" concept.

The case is enriched by the economic importance of video games, which has grown in relation to movies (which also have a partially successful rating system), with a typical story in the Norwalk Reflector here. The video game business has become an increasingly visible portion of movie studio business financially.

The case goes before the Supremes at a time when movie studios are facing criticism because it is so easy for minors to see R-rated movies online or see unrated versions of trailers, often embedded in blogs. That observation could recall some of the questions that came up with COPA.

But another component of the video game case is whether the First Amendment allows exceptions for extreme violence in a manner similar to obscenity. The case is Schwarzenegger vs. Video Software Dealers Association.

There has been little written in recent years about state clones of COPA (such as that in Virginia) which would probably become unconstitutional according to the same rationale as was used for COPA.

MPAA cogitates over movie trailers; should users be screened for age to view them?

2010-04-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

The Business Day section of the New York Times today Friday April 23 has an article about Marilyn Gordon, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) advertising standards guru. The story by Brooks Barnes is titled “Deciding what is suitable in movie ads”, link (web url) here.

While some of the material would apply to bricks and mortar issues like billboards, her biggest issues is regulation of the content of trailers for R-rated (and NC-17) movies.

Many trailers can be viewed on multiple websites, and are often embedded in blogs, including mine. Should trailers with “R” content require adult verification? (The Times article mentions the idea.) That would mean that blogs embedding them would require the verification unless they were blocked automatically within the blog by some kind of labeling or metatag process. That issue has already been visited with the COPA trial.

A related issue is the ease with which kids could play R-rated movies over the Internet, even when paying for them legally by subscription, at free sites, or by P2P.

Courts, legislators look at "cell phone" problems and teens, may moderate the law

2010-04-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

A federal appeals court has ruled that prosecutors in Pennsylvania cannot require minors who took “illegal pictures” of themselves on cell phones to write essays or engage in “compulsory speech” to avoid felony prosecution, according to a story March 17 in the Huffington Post, here here.

Kyra Phillips on CNN interviews a 20 year old, Phillip, in Florida, who has been labeled for life as a “sext offender” for, in a fit of anger, transferring an inappropriate picture of a 16 year old girl friend who had broken up with him.

Kyra also talks about efforts to change the laws, so that these will not be prosecuted as felonies and people will not be registered as s.o.’s. She talked to a Connecticut legislator.

Filtering, corruption of sites by hackers an issue in Australia

2010-03-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

In Australia, there is a fight going on now over a “blacklist” of websites that contain c.p. or certain other “objectionable” material. There was a case of a dentist in Queensland whose site was overlaid with c.p. by Russian hackers and who was blacklisted (in some countries he could have been prosecuted unless he showed that he was hacked, and then there remains a question, how much responsibility does a webmaster or its ISP have for the security of his own site?) The idea that something like this can happen can be a serious issue for all webmasters.

The story by Stephen Johnson appears on Newscom in Australia, (link url) here.

Apparently it’s against the law in Australia to leak the “black list” in advance.

Chatroulette raises concerns for parents -- if their kids have webcams!

2010-02-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday morning, ABC Good Morning America covered the new website “Chatroulette”, as written up by Brain Braiker here. The website allows someone with a webcam to be connected to random strangers for chat. The site is here.

It goes with saying that this sounds like “Russian Roulette” beyond speed dating (the kind in the movie “The Deer Hunter” maybe). But parents would be particularly concerned if minor kids did it, especially in the privacy of their rooms (if each kid has his or her own computer for homework). Just think about the recent Dateline series with Chris Hansen.

I suppose a parent could just block the site with a filter.

Kurt Eichenwald, a reporter with the New York Times, has argued that there is no legitimate reason for a kid to have a webcam at all, at least in his room (although many laptops come with them, as does mine – sorry, it’s not on right now, so you can’t see me!) His news story from Dec. 19, 2005 about Justin Berry is still worth studying, link here.

Can government control the way some employees self-publish? Where CIA and previous COPA trial make dots to connect!

2010-02-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

This posting may be a little strange: what could a CIA Publications Review Board possibly have to do with COPA? If anything, this argument folds on itself, showing how everything connects to everything else, and how difficult it is to make rules to protect public interests narrowly enough.

Remember that in 2004, the Supreme Court, in its most recent ruling on COPA (before the 2006 trial in Philadelphia) had written (Cornell law link here):
“When plaintiffs challenge a content-based speech restriction, the Government has the burden to prove that the proposed alternatives will not be as effective as the challenged statute.”

Judge Reed echoed that in paragraph 46 of his COPA ruling (see March 22, 2007 on this blog).

What seems less clear is whether government would run into constitutional issues if it restricted a class of people (for example employees of a particular agency) from using some specific form of self-publication at all, across the board, as an additional layer of security or protection of confidentiality or of classified materials. The “free entry” model for Internet self-publishing and blogging could be the most vulnerable, not for the content it publishes, but for the unsupervised and unbounded nature of the risk of the method of distribution. On its face, this does not sound like a “content-based” restriction because no particular content would be removed; instead no content at all could be self-published without supervision on the web. Perhaps a rule like this would have specific fine points: material could be published if it had pre-approval, if it was limited to a private friends’ list and not available to robots (as if government could count on Facebook or social media companies to help make confidentiality policy indirectly), or if the writer had been able to procure media perils insurance, or some combination of these. Or possibly the writer would pass a test showing understanding of confidentiality or have all of his writing debriefed in one session.

There is something like this in existence now, the CIA Publications Review Board. The CIA discusses how it works at this link. The piece is called “Reviewing the Work of CIA Authors: Secrets, Free Speech, and Fig Leaves”, by John Hollister Hedley. He opens in a naïve tone, “Business is brisk, as a growing number of former CIA employees seek to become published authors”.

The focus of the article is on books and articles published in a conventional manner through major publishers, not self-publishing. However, at first, the implication would be that a CIA employee or even former employee could not publish anything at all, not even on a personal blog, without preapproval of every posting, an impractical burden. However, in the middle of the article, Hedley writes:

“CIA regulations explain that the review requirement applies to "all writings and scripts or outlines of oral presentations intended for nonofficial publication, including works of fiction, which contain any mention of the CIA, intelligence data or intelligence activities, or material on any subject about which the author has had access to classified information in the course of his or her employment.”

The implication is that a blog posting that is totally unrelated to the CIA employee’s work would not require review. As a matter of epistemology, however, it would be hard for an employee to know for sure that there is no possible connection to his work, given the possibility of steganography, and the pervasive meaning of “connect the dots”. Presumably other security and defense related agencies (NSA, military service branches, etc) would have similar rules, and they could apply in civilian non-defense agencies where confidentiality is an unusually sensitive matter (as with Census).

If an agency told “individual contributor” employees that they could not post at all, that could cripple their speech opportunities during employment and later in life. Courts might find that this amounted to an eventual implicit content-based restriction on free speech, even though it starts out as a restriction on distribution (use of free entry). Agencies could try other means, such as debriefing employees or interviewing them to make sure they understand confidentiality requirements and oaths and possible penalties in depth.

When COPA was tried, social media were relatively new, and there has been little said as to whether it could have been applied to Myspace or Facebook. But social media place some emphasis on meeting people for networking purposes, and “publishing” within a somewhat private list, with privacy standards in flux and determined by the companies, not government. It’s possible to disclose confidential information within this environment, and it’s possible to pass on HTM material also, even though that environment was not a primary concern of COPA. Government employees haven’t, as far as I know, been asked to submit their personal emails or chats for review (what about tweets?), so there seems to be some level of common sense in prospective review of anything an employee in a sensitive position could “publish”.

Update: Feb. 17, 2010

The USDA (Department of Agriculture) has a similar page, called baldly "Pre-Publication Review" here. See the text in red on the first enclosed link (about indirect targeting). But again, logically, the pre-pub review requirement exists for "any material intended for public release that might be based in any way on information you learned through your access to classified information." Note that the USDA policy has much more discussion about the "dangers" of the Internet per-se from search and aggregation than does the CIA page. The sublink below says this about aggregation:

"DoD guidelines also require that judgments about the sensitivity of information take into account the potential consequences of "aggregation." The term "sensitive by aggregation" refers to the fact that information on one site may seem unimportant, but when combined with information from other web sites it may form a larger and more complete picture that was neither intended nor desired. In other words, the combination of information from multiple web sites may amount to more than the sum of its parts. Similarly, the compilation of a large amount of information together on one site may increase the sensitivity of that information and make it more likely that site will be accessed by those seeking information that can be used against us."

Many other federal government agencies, including NASA, refer to this DoD-related page or a similarly worded page.

The National Security Agency (NSA/CSS) has a similar page here. The policy includes Internet postings. But it also says "Publications about gardening, cooking, sports, crafts, etc. do not need to undergo pre-publication review if the only association with the NSA/CSS is the author's current or former affiliation with the Agency: Reminder: Pre-publication review is a lifetime responsibility. Your responsibility does not end when you end your association with NSA/CSS." The potential problem with the "gardening" clause is the "slippery slope": in the public policy world, things are more connected than we realize!

However, a government agency that designs a pre-pub policy carelessly could (unintentionally, perhaps) lock out employees or contractors, even former and departed, from ever having their own Facebook pages, even with privacy settings.

Can possessors of c.p. or other illegal materials be ordered to pay restitution (for mere possession)?

2010-02-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an intriguing story by John Schwartz today (Wednesday, Feb.3) about a new legal initiative: making those who “merely” possess, but did not produce, child pornography, help pay civil financial restitution to victims. The link for the story is (web URL) here.

A victim with surname Amy is suing to demand that everyone who possessed a copy of an illegal image of her pay restitution until a claim of $3.4 million is settled.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has a blog entry relating the story of a former Pfizer executive to pay $200000 for possessing an image of a woman taken when she was a minor. The blog entry is here.

(I have reviewed books on Internet law, reputation and privacy by another GWU professor, Daniel Solove, on my books blog.)

Turley writes “it stretches personal accountability to a breaking point. …, The extension of the definition of victim could lead to liability without limitation. Presumably, anyone watching porn movies with an underaged character or in possession of a magazine with such a picture could be similarly faced with restitution demands. Prosecutors could threaten targets with financial ruin under such theories — forcing guilty pleas to other offenses. Restitution is generally limited to the direct victims of the defendant’s actions.” He also makes analogies to how this could set a precedent in other areas, such as owners of pawn shops when they receive stolen property (although that was a major concern with a crime spree in Montgomery County MD which was solved in 2008 when an alert pawn shop operator called police).

Former UN weapons inspector caugth in Internet sting; arrests can happen based on ISP or cell phone records alone, without a trip

2010-01-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

According to a news story by Ian Urbina on p A17 of the New York Times on Friday, Jan. 15, 2009, former Iraq weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been charged in an Internet sex sting, of the type discussed here on this blog Nov 11, Dec 1 and Dec. 22. The link is here.

Mr. Ritter is was charged in Pennsylvania in November after, according to police, he had allegedly spoken inappropriately in chat rooms or by cell phone to undercover police officers there from his home in New York State in February. A similar incident had occurred in 2001 with charges dropped.

The story shows that people can be arrested and prosecuted just on the basis of chat room logs or cell phone records and transmissions without an actual visit to meet the supposed underage person. Typically investigations before arrests can take many months and require getting records from ISP’s and cell phone companies.

Scott Ritter made the controversial documentary “In Shifting Sands” about weapons inspection in Iraq, which I saw at the University of Minnesota in 2001, before 9/11. Ritter claims that the government conspired to keep his film from being aired.

Can social networking sites use content labeling?

2010-01-05T02:25:00.000-08:00

Here’s a speculative question. Can social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace especially) set up content labeling, especially for blogs or walls for each member? Can this be set up as an adjunct to privacy controls? Should a member be able to warn others (especially parents) that some content in his or her profile could be objectionable for minors? Could this be set up as part of the “semantic web”?

Remember, as I understand ICRA before, an entire domain has to be labeled, ever single file, for the site to be certified.

Wisconsin "teen" plea bargains after "sting" on Facebook

2009-12-22T19:29:00.000-08:00

The AP and MSNBC report that a Wisconsin teenager (19) has plea bargained after being caught in a bizarre Facebook scheme where he posed as a female to “entice” others to send him inappropriate pictures, after which he could “blackmail” them. Prosecutors were relieved at a plea bargain because they feared having to make the “victims” testify. The scam in some way resembles as law enforcement “sting”, as discussed in prior posts here, and also may invoke the legal notion of “implicit content”, a notion tangential to the 2006 COPA trial. That is, a posting seems to have no legitimate purpose other than to “tempt” others into probably illegal conduct themselves. The details are at this link. This may be the most serious “scam” that I have heard of regarding Facebook misuse to date.

Virginia ponders relieving teens from legal uncertainty over "sexting" bu then backs off.

2009-12-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Virginia Crime Commission has so far declined to proceed in refining the state’s child pornography laws with respect to teen “sexting” on cell phones.

This seems to more the result of disinclination to take a specific stand than anything else. Right now prosecutors have extreme discretion in deciding whether and how to prosecute, with the possibility on paper of mandatory registration for what a teenager may view as curiosity or a harmless prank.

However, some legislators want to exempt texting by minors from the state’s laws, or make them misdemeanors.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch story by Frank Green is here.

Nickelodeon said to link to non-kid-friendly sites

2009-12-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

Clarie Shipman and Jay Shaylor have a report on ABC “Good Morning America”, “Children's Web Sites Can Lead to Adult Content: Some Sites Directed at Kids May Open Doors to Other Content”, Monday Dec. 7, web URL link here. Internet laywer and child safety advocate Parry Aftab (wiredsafety.org) appeared..

The problem involved some links from Nickelodeon’s nick.com (link), although Nickelodeon advises people they are leaving the site. I recall that Nickelodeon actually has internships for screenwriters for its specialized content!

New York State removes thousands of SO's from social networking sites

2009-12-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

The New York Daily News, with its typical supermarket-like bombast, ran a story Dec. 1 on p 5 about the New York State’s attorney general’s action to have s.o.’s removed from Myspace and Facebook, according to the states e-STOP law signed in 2008 by Andrew Cuomo. The link is here.

However, when people are convicted of these crimes, usually they are prohibited from owning computers or having any Internet access at all; they have an online death sentence. It’s hard to see how so many got back on social networking sites. Are we sure that this operation was limited to convicted offenders?

Washington DC, other police deal with c.p. stings

2009-12-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

Del Quentin Wilber has a Metro page story in the Dec. 1, 2009 Washington Post about online undercover cops that follows on to the story about the Vanity Fair article last month. This concerns the Washington DC Metropolitan Police and FBI agents who pose as “consumers” of illegal content rather than as minors. The story is titled “Child porn cases take toll on investigators: Job exposes team to images of abuse few can comprehend”, link here.

The job requires specialized psychological tests and involves working with materials so graphic as not to be describable on a post like this (or in a conventional newspaper).

There seems to be almost no difference in the energy with which local police departments conduct undercover activity, as to whether they are in “liberal” of “conservative” areas, with respect to problems like this.

Vanity Fair: Internet stings and "pre-crime" (and "entrapment"): users: watch out

2009-11-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

This comment that I am about to make is a practical one, devoid or moralizing. And I add, these blog postings don’t purport to give legal advice (I’m not an attorney). But sometimes a pattern of law enforcement practice is so persistent that any journalist must take note and pass it along. I could put this on the Internet safety blog or even the main one, but it is closest to the problem of protecting minors, so I tucked it away here.

The “advice” is never to get into chats (or text message exchanges or anything similar) “of an explicit nature” with anyone purporting to be a minor, or (particularly now) claiming to have minor children who would welcome illegal behavior. As often as not, there is a police officer on the other end, posing as a minor or, as in a sensational story on p 244 of the December 2009 issue of (Conde Nast) Vanity Fair (it’s no “September Issue” this time) by veteran writer and editor Mark Bowden, link here. (By the way, I couldn't locate Bowden's Q&A online; if someone finds it, please post a comment.)

Online, the article has the column title “Minority Report” followed by a formal title “A Crime of Shadows”. (I played fair with this; I bought a hardcopy issue at 7-11 Monday.) What comes to mind immediately is Dateline’s notorious series with Chris Hansen and “Perverted Justice”; but here there are no amateurs on the other end; there was a suburban Philadelphia female police officer posing as a mother with two imaginary but “available” children.

Bowden mentions the Tom Cruise flick “Minority Report” (based on the Philip k. Dyck story), where the concept is to apprehend people during the phase of “pre-crime.” This is more a national security thing; ever since 9/11 we’ve had to deal with the idea that some acts are so catastrophic that the perpetrators must be apprehended before the fact; that sort of thinking certainly has come to apply to protecting our children (whatever you think of the morality; in Europe, after all, the “age of consent” is usually less than in most states in the U.S.; in California and many other states it is 18). Ironically, the Vanity Fair cover story, depicting the white-hot young manhood of British actor Robert Pattinson, visually underscores the arbitrary nature of our definition of adulthood (the brain, they say, isn't fully grown until 25).

Bowden also discusses that this is the ultimate gray area, of purpose, intentions, enticement, even “thoughtcrimes” (a term sometimes used in other contexts by gay journalist Randy Shilts). In the speech area as to web postings, the legal term is “implicit content”, mentioned in passing during the COPA trial. That is, postings that don’t seem to result in legitimate personal gain (such as monetary) for the speaker may evaluate legal assessment as to “purpose” in some cases. It’s a dangerous possibility. But here, Bowden is still focusing on the engaging with others in Internet chat, when those others might be police.

The story of what happened to “J” when he started conversing with police officer or employee Michele Deery, who drew him into the interest into the “imaginary” daughters, when “J” insists that it is her that he really “wanted.” Is this entrapment? The depiction of the parking lot arrest is brutal: but so far, most of these arrests happen only when the target goes to meet the imaginary child (in a few cases, the police have barged in while the presumed offender was online talking to decoys). The article goes on to reproduce a lot of the chat log. Toward the end of the article, Bowden writes “J was guilty of some things, serious things … He was guilty … of a lifelong inability to establish a healthy intimacy with a woman” (how many of us are “guilty” of that? – how about many gay men?) “He was guilty of lacking moral boundaries and good sense. There is a chance that without treatment of some kind J would have evolved into someone dangerous.” He will also be on a s.o. registry, possibly linked with other real offenders. He gave up his computer and joined a church, the article says.

At one time, I had no sympathy for men caught in these stings, but the overuse of these police tactics makes me wonder. The story of former weatherman Bill Kamal (known to the DC gay community in the 1990s) and what happened to him after his bust in Florida in 2004 is instructive; you can read about it in a 2005 Jacksonville newspaper article “Miami weatherman says he was framed by false claims”, link here. Read the article; he may have a point. But as far as we can tell, his life was ruined.

Filters could be important to home bases businesses as well as to parents

2009-11-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

I found, through Mixx, a website called hubpages that gives some simple arguments for parents to use Internet filters, on a page called “The Benefits of Internet Filtering”. The site has some babytalk and is less esoteric in nature than all the stuff we said three years ago at the COPA trial, but here’s the link.

People with home bases businesses who bring people into the home as contractors or employees who in turn use the Internet (nannies, for example) might want to consider using filters to block objectionable sites. It may in some cases be a good idea, on specific computers available to workers, to block access to personal sites authored by the employer. Various packages allow the parent or business owner to do this, as explained toward the end of this page from Netnanny.

Related to the use of filters and whitelists and blacklists are privacy policies. Webmasters who do not directly collect personal information but who accept advertising should still post privacy policies (and sometimes “business privacy policies” as I discussed May 30, 2009 on my main blog). Netnanny addresses the privacy policy issue, with respect to protecting the information of minors, here.

Best strategy for protecting kids is early parental guidance

2009-11-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

In today’s environment of social media use, there is a growing sentiment that parents need to get up to speed on social media, and join their children, probably in the “tween” years, gradually encouraging more independence. Learning socially responsible behavior online is a bit like learning to drive.

At least, that’s the tone of a New York Times blog entry by Jenna Wortham, “Tweens on Facebook, and , Emoticon Overload”, web URL link here.

The article suggests a much more progressive strategy for protecting minors on the Web, that is, joining their journey in due course. But that takes some degree of net literacy from all parents.

VA school assistant principal caught up in legal side effects of sexting

2009-10-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

A website called “Threat Level” documents how a 60 year old assistant principal at Freedom High School in South Riding, Va (in Loudoun County, about thirty miles from Washington DC) was “accidentally” caught up in the sexting controversy trying to do his job. He was investigating a photo (perhaps not really illegal) possessed by a student and was asked by the principal to preserve it on a school computer, so he asked the student to send it to his own cell phone (mistake, it turns out). When they boy got in trouble again, fingers were pointed at the assistant principal, who had to spend $150000 clearing himself when probably he hadn’t broken the law after all. The story, by Kim Zetter, April 2009, is on Wired, here.

HTM comingles with "Harmful to Adults", according to conservative columnist

2009-09-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times has a feature on Mondays, “Cultural Challenge of the Week: How to save your family” (as if you had to presume you’re a victim cowering in fear), with Rebecca Hagelin writing, on p A18, “The plague of pornography.”

She decries the voyeuristic fantasy-based interest of “otherwise respectable” businssmen between flights at airports, and then discusses her work at Salvo Magazine (link), and makes the point that young people exposed to porn “have a lack of interest in marriage and in having children of their own,” after talking about viewing people as “objects.” That sounds like she is following on the heels of Wetzstein’s recent column discussion the recent Allan Carlson book “The Natural Family: A Manifesto.”

The Washington Times link is here.
Hagelin also gives a “victims” link here.

She seems to be as concerned as adults as children (the old HTM issue), although its odd that she makes a comment (taken or read literally, as an “Aspie” like me would) that children don’t become interesting in marriage – literally, should they?

Law banning commercial sale of depictions of animal cruelty brings back some arguments from COPA, CDA

2009-09-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

There is a law, passed in 1999, regarding the sale of depictions of animal cruelty, which in some ways resembles laws against obscenity and child pornography, even COPA. The law is USC 18.3.48 with Cornell Law School link here.

Some of the argumentation dealt with “crush videos” and the idea that for some people they represent a sexual fetish. Other argumentation sounds familiar from COPA.

Back in April, the Supreme Court indicated that it will hear a case challenging the law on First Amendment grounds, partly because it could interfere with legitimate reporting. The sale becomes illegal when the act is illegal in the jurisdiction sold. So, theoretically, it’s illegal to sell a video of a bullfight in Spain. There was a comprehensive story in “Finding Dulcenia” by Rachel Balik in April here.

The 3rd Circuit had struck down the law in United States v Stevens, but the Justice Department is arguing for its reinstatement. The defendant had been prosecuted after Pennsylvania police were able to purchase some video that he regarded as educational.

The First Amendment Center has some legal analysis here.

NY Times reviews general problems of s.o. registries: do they really protect minors?

2009-09-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

On September 2, 2009 the New York Times featured a front page story by Monica Davey, “Plenty of Data … but Registries are Just Start”, link here.

She discusses the Garrido case in California, as something that slipped out of sight for 20 years because of its low tech nature. The article talks about the proliferation of state offender list websites, and many private subscription ones, some of which can be easily loaded onto mobile devices by nervous parents traveling in neighborhoods they believe to be bad.

Some of these sites are pretty explicit themselves and could frighten kids who find them. Furthermore, as John Stossel has pointed out, they mix the non-violent offenders together with the “worst”. In some communities, even non-violent offenders are so stigmatized that they concentrate in rural areas or become homeless.

Liliana Segura has an article on this problem on AlterNet, here.

In one of my own screenplays, not now displayed and something that got me in trouble when I was a substitute teacher over the “implicit content” issue (only tangential to COPA), an accused s.o. (who may, according to the logic of the fictional story, not be legally guilty) foregoes trial and then prefers jail to actually being on the registry and “free” on supervised probation; the character dies in prison while his music is performed publicly by one of his “contacts”, an irony that some people found too much to take. But it’s easy to imagine a story like this in independent film. None of the material came even close to the “HTN” definition of the 1998 COPA law.

Retrospect: How others see my involvement in the COPA trial

2009-08-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

I just noticed this today while researching other stuff: I’m identified on the right frame of the Nerve Blog on the COPA trial (from October 2006). The entry that comes up is here. I like Nerve’s characterization of me as “an outspoken critic of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and author of Do Ask, Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back". That's a fair characterization of me!

Lessig's "Code 2.0" seems to support simplified but mandatory content labeling

2009-08-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

Recently I purchased the 2006 version of Lawrence Lessig’s revised book “Code”: that is, “Code 2.0”, from Basic Books and Perseus Publishing.

I plan a complete review soon in my books blog, but I notice that he has quite a bit to say about COPA (and the earlier CDA) and is optimistic that a relatively simple content labeling system would effectively protect minors.

Early in the book, he notes that commercial interest, through cookies and behavioral tracking, have developed the potential capability for webmasters to determine much more about visitors than plaintiffs against COPA-like laws admit. Later (around p 252) he talks about the real world examples of what is expected of vendors not to sell certain things to minors, and indicates that there is a burden in cyberspace that is much harder than in physical space. He suggests that the "Identity Layer" related to TCP/IP could be engineered to identify whether a user is a legal adult, with little cost to speakers.

Access can be blocked, he says, when speech is “regulable” and the listener is a “minor”, but the burden on regulability is on the speaker, but on identifying the listener is on the visitor (that is, the parents or teachers, usually).

He suggests that self-publishers or speakers on the Web be required to place metatags like “” on their published objects, that browser vendors and various vendor applications be expected to recognize them (as a kind of software “V-chip”), which he says can be done for negligible cost in an open source environment (like the way he says Mozilla was developed).

On the other hand, he thinks that the “Platform for Internet Content Selection” or PICS standard of W2C, as essentially a protocol for rating and filtering web content, is overkill: it envisions a variety of communities setting separate but “peacefully coexisting” standard sets (that is, the religious right and New Age parenting communities can have separate standards for rating). He describes PICS as both “horizontally” and “vertically” neutral.

Lessig also equates pornography (legal for adults, meaning not "child porn" and not obscenity) to "harmful to minors". However, many of the plaintiffs at the COPA trial (myself included) had expressed concerns in briefs that the HTM definition could ensnare material not generally viewed as porn. "You know it when you see it."

Lessig's book and this analysis appear to have been written before the October 2006 COPA trial in Philadelphia (I attended one day of it). So they would have been written before Judge Lowell Reed's opinion was rendered in March 2007.

The W3C site for PICS is here.

ICRA (FOSI) says that it "has also provided a simplified PICS interpretation of the current vocabulary alongside the RDF labels" on its main page here.

It looks like this material is going to start developing again.

Harvard doctoral student argues against filters, for complete Internet ethics education

2009-07-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

Justin Reich, a doctoral student at Harvard University School of Education, has an interesting op-ed in the July 11 Washington Post, “In Schools, a Firewall that Works too Well.” Reich argues that Internet filters in schools keep out valuable material and that students and teachers alike become cynical in trying to get around them. He says that there is no substitute for a complete program of Internet and technology citizenship education in the schools, including all topics like copyright and reputation, as well the more “obvious” problems about pornography or supposed “adult” or “harmful to minors” content.

He does point out the downside of the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000, under which "any school or library that uses federal funds to buy computers is required to install Internet filters." This is old hat now.

The link for the op-ed is here. Reuch is co-director of Ed Tech Teacher, here.

Public schools should teach responsible Internet use at home; this would help protect minors

2009-07-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, Electronic Frontier Foundation put together a copyright education course for schools, which I discussed on my main blog on June 12, 2009.

However, it seems that public schools should gear up to teach responsible computer and technology use, and even ought to include the curricula as part of standards of learning, such as Virginia’s SOL’s.

Besides copyright, students should learn about defamation, privacy invasion, harassment and cyberbullying, and even some idea of what trademarks and patents mean.

While schools should teach the legal risks of “sexting” on cell phones and other devices, states should remove the practice from felony prosecutions and should not treat incidental occasions as “child pornography” or as a reason for sex offender registration. States need to change their criminal codes appropriately.

A broad inclusion of the legal responsibilities associated with technology use would help protect minors from inappropriate materials at home, including not just pornography, but other activities including bullying and responding to inappropriate contacts from chat or instant messages.

If (and more likely when) I return to formal employment, helping school systems deal with these issues could he high on the list of my own goals.

Billboard (by Calvin Klein) in NYC provokes "COPA-like" controversy

2009-06-15T06:26:00.001-07:00

A Calvin Klein billboard in Soho in Manhattan, at Lafayette and Houston Streets, is thought to go to far as it shows a threesome of young people whom some say are made to look underage. According to federal law, the producer of the ad would have had to document and register the ages of the models as at least 18.

The New York Daily News story is by Sara A. Armaghan and is here and it was featured Monday June 15 on ABC “Good Morning America”.

Neighborhood residents, in one of the nation’s most liberal areas (the West Village is nearby) say that the billboard sends the wrong message to minors and is harmful to them. Fashion companies say that they must promote their products in a competitive environment during economic downturn. There is no real oversight of the content of billboards. Is there a correspondence with the “harmful to minors” of COPA? Well, the pictures probably still wouldn’t have met the legal definition.

Digital movie or TV filtering runs into DMCA/DRM problems: analogy with COPA filtering arguments?

2009-06-09T20:43:00.000-07:00

Seth Schoen of Electronic Frontier Foundation has an interesting analysis of the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007, which it had commented (to the FCC) on with “Examination of Parental Control Technologies for Video or Audio Programming, here.

Movie studios had sued ClearPlay over a product that skipped particular scenes in movies, and Congress passed the Family Movie Act in 2004 to protect innovators who offer playback movie editing from copyright infringement claims.

Then there is a product called TVGuardian, a V-chip alternative from Principal Solutions, which apparently will become ineffective in a digital environment unless the product is allowed to circumvent Digital Rights Management in order to filter shows for minors.

In the COPA case, many of the plaintiff’s arguments were based on the effectiveness of filters. In digital TV, DMCA anti-circumvention provisions can prevent similar effectiveness of filtering technology of shows and movies.

The link for Schoen’s analysis (June 8) is here.

COPA, sexting, and "self promotion": we don't see around the corners

2009-06-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

A day after more media reports that a central Virginia county sheriff was investigating another teen for possession of porn in his cell phone after receiving “sexting” meesages, it seems to me that the whole question of protecting minors – and the families that raise them – has become convoluted indeed. We constantly find more legal and security-related corners that we just don’t see around.

COPA was focused on what now seems, in retrospect, a relatively narrow issue, of images and perhaps text that would be “harmful to minors” when placed by commercial sites on public areas of the Internet. What we found was that many of the concepts weren’t so narrow: what is “commercial”, what is “prurient”, how relevant is the maturity level of the individual minor (the “Smallville Problem”). The Judge that decided the case, as well as the Supreme Court when providing guidance, articulated the idea that many supposedly stable legal concepts can play “shape shifter.”

But, even getting beyond the sexting issue as well as laws like COPA, what we find is that the biggest underlying problem for parents protecting minors is the easy self-promotion. A lot of it has to do with search engines, and a lot of it has to deal with the incredible power of social networking sites. When one draws attention to oneself before one has “paid his dues” and competed appropriately, one can attract unwelcome and unexpected attention to oneself and even other family members (especially of teens). We’re finding this particularly in the behavior of employers, making sniff judgments on social networking profiles (it seems that this happens now even with profiles supposedly marked private), and it is a problem that seems to be growing. This isn’t really a teen’s problem. Teenagers learn that the world is a competitive place, and in the world that they can perceive, the web, as well as the high school stadium (or the classroom) is a place that everyone competes. No wonder they do what they do. They’re just copying what they learn from us, and they can’t see around all the corners. But neither do we.

The American "adult" industry could be on its way out?

2009-05-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

David Goldstein has an amusing, or perhaps sobering article in "The American Prospect", reprinted by Alternet. May 15, “Is the Porn Industry Doomed?” I couldn’t get the American Prospect site to come up, so the Alternet copy is here.

Larry Flynt reportedly asked Congress for a $5 billion bailout of the “adult” industry. Is he pulling our leg? Okay, conservatives say, its because of the porn business that men don’t want to get or stay married. Fantasy is more appealing than reality, but that goes beyond porn, doesn’t it. That was a key point in the COPA trial.

Diane Duke, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition, admits that piracy and free content could be driving the business down.

Goldstein goes on to discuss the politics of it on Capitol Hill, including Barney Frank, and pretty soon we get into “Outrage” territory.

Northern VA authorities take cautious approach on "sexting" by minors

2009-05-07T16:44:00.001-07:00

The Fairfax County (VA) Police Department has been handling the “sexting” issue carefully, according to a front page story in The Washington Post on Thursday May 7.
The story is “Sending of explicit photos can land teens in legal fix,” link here.

Typical the police department confers with a Commonwealth attorney, and may recommend counseling or juvenile court instead a full prosecution, as has happened in other states. The laws were never really designed to protect kids from each other this way and lump them in with “predators.”

Police say that many are “good kids” with no records, and have no concept that explicit photos could wind up on the Internet and be found by future employers or schools.

Update: May 13, 2009

Station WJLA-7 announced that Fairfax County police will have an information forum for the public on the sexting issue at West Springfield High School tonight, May 13.

WJLA provides a report of the meeting "Concerned Local Parents, Teens Gather for Sexting Meeting", link here. WJLA provides a video from the meeting there. The suggestion was made that parents take cell phones away at bedtime, and police said that over 20% of teens have texted. Technically, they are committing serious felonies. There is talk of changing the laws (with "Romeo and Juliet" age provisions) but police say it is difficult to do so without inviting real "predators" back in. Kids don't think what they are doing is wrong, and the problem it creates is indirect and existential.

Today, Ellen DeGeneres, on her show May 13, frivolously called "Sexting" "Texting with a booty call". I wonder if she realizes how serious the legal issue is.

Recent columnist: do "adult materials" discourage "real relationships?" If so, there's a "continuum"

2009-05-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

This column may sound like it is more about young adults than minors, but I thought I would put it here anyway. Cheryl Wetzstein of the Washington Times contributed a two-part series on pornography, starting Sunday April 26 in the “Sunday Read”. The first link leads to the second, so I’ll just give the first one. In the first part, she discusses the controversy at the University of Maryland over the showing of “Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge” on campus, at taxpayer expense. No, I haven’t seen it or rented it, and don’t expect to review it. She goes on to make a modern metaphor of the porn business to “big tobacco”. Only in these times; such a comparison would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

But it’s the second part (p 17 of the May 3 “Sunday Read”) that gets interesting. She characterizes pornography as encouraging people to “develop secret lives”, “feel bad about themselves”, and, most importantly, “lose any interest in making love with an actual person.”

The reader can imagine how this all might connect with past debates over COPA.

But it also connects to other areas of psychology, like discussions of “narcissistic personality disorder” and the “milder” (if that’s a good word choice) “schizoid personality” where people just prefer to stay in their own worlds rather than maintain emotional connections to specific others. It’s quite far from the libertarian notion of harmlessness; it’s more about karma. We have a meritocratic, competitive society, and living by its values has “logical consequences” – which could mean, following the example of zoo animals (following after Desmond Morris) that many people lose interest in continuing with their own progeny. Does that tie in to conservative concerns about “demographic winter”?

But if so, this takes us away from focusing just on pornography for its own sake, to going deeper into our value systems, and ponder what makes us important to other people.

That was one of the dichotomies that characterized the COPA trial in Philadelphia in 2006. The government focused so much on the technical definitions of “HTM” and of specific kinds of images. The ACLU, quite correctly, reasoned that expressions are connected and form a continuum. If you’re going to have open individual expression, you’re going to have to become bigger than the risk.

Wetzstein's second column reminds me of a comment about "self-dating" in a book by Katherine Kersten and Mitchell Pearlstein of the Center for the American Experiment in Minneapolis, the book called "Close to Home", reviewed here on March 28, 2006 on my books blog, link.

What if somebody sends "illegal" pics with a stolen cell phone -- and it's yours?

2009-04-28T06:23:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, there was a little incident that reminded me of just how precarious all these legal risks could be. Some time back, my cell phone clip broke, and yesterday I went out on some errands and just put the cell phone on the front seat of the car. I forgot to lock the car (it’s old). I came back, and yes, the cell phone was still on the seat, with a missed call. But I thought, what if someone had stolen it and not simply ran up charges, but also engaged in underage “sexting”. It could have been traceable to my phone. Could I have been prosecuted? I wonder.

A good reason never to leave a cell phone lying around these days.

Norton offers "Online Family" Internet safety package for parents

2009-04-27T05:51:00.001-07:00

Parents now have another tool for monitoring their kids’ online activity, called “OnlineFamily.Norton”. ABC Good Morning America presented the product on Monday, April 27. The product allows parents to monitor what their kids do online, not only what websites they visited (maybe even this one), but also what ads were served to them (which could become an increasingly sensitive issue). It allows parents to check their Myspace or Facebook profiles and activity, IM’s, tweats, and similar activity. Most of all, it allows parents to set time limits on computer use for each child. Norton offers a video (in Cinemascope, no less) where a kid has to call his father when he hasn’t finished his math homework in the allowed ten hours per week. The time limit could apply to schoolwork as well as recreation.

Dr. Phil, Lisa Bloom urge moderation in dealing with sexting problem.

2009-04-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

Lisa Bloom has an interesting column on "Betty Confidential", “Sexting: Should teens be prosecuted” here. Although she agrees that it is demeaning and should have consequences of an ordinary disciplinary effort in schools and with parents, it should not result in prosecution, which is “police powers” overreaction to say the least. Doing so will dilute scare police resources in going after real, adult abusers. And a long-term label is a punishment that goes way beyond the “crime” committed by a teen with a biologically immature brain in terms of ability to “see around corners” and calculate long term consequences of simple, impulsive actions enabled by technology. She also points out a dangerous trend: “power hungry” local prosecutors. Remember Nifong?

Dr. Phil covered the problem on his April 16 show, link here. He discussed the case of Brittany, who sent pictures of herself and nearly committed suicide later. He then covered the case of Brian, 14, whose activist father was able to protect him from prosecution for forwarding an image.

ABC GMA holds towm hall on teen sexting issue

2009-04-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

ABC News and Good Morning America have an article announcing a “town hall” about “The Truth About Teens Sexting: 'GMA' Holds a Town Hall Meeting to Discuss the Growing Teen Trend”, story by Cole Kasdin and Imayan Ibanga, link here. GMA has a video today about “Logan” who served only a few days in jail but was forced to register as a s.o. and could not go to college because he forwarded an image of a girl in “anger.”

The video seemed itself to come from a townhall style meeting, where parents say they are caught in the middle of something where technology has given kids the ability to do things that kids and parents can’t possibly anticipate the legal consequences of.

On April 16, ABC GMA followed up with an interview with Perry Aftab, who suggested that parents install Google Desktop on their kids' computers to monitor, and that they look up their kids' names and cell phone numbers in search engines.

Columnist pans prosecutions of teens for cell phone images

2009-04-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

On April Fools Day, 2009, Ruth Marcus has a column on p A21 of the Washington Post, “Keeping kids from one byte too many,” link here. Marcus makes light of the prosecutions in a number of states for teenage cell phone “sexting” and now notes that a federal judge has blocked a teen “topless” cell phone incident in Pennsylvania that could have marked three girls, presumably for life. (I’m not sure which incident). However, she writes, a Florida state appeals court has upheld c.p. charges against a 16 year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend, maintaining the state interest in “protecting minors.” I fail to see how this is protecting minors.

In fact, it seems that on a state level there are a lot of prosecutors who see political opportunism in going down paths that seem intellectually flaws. On my Internet safety blog, I’ve already covered the problem of prosecutions for c.p. placed on unprotected work computers by viruses, when the prosecutors failed to look at whether the employers (in one case, a school district) had even bothered to properly protect its work computers. That’s something to bear in mind especially today, as supposedly Conflicker activates.

Marcus also goes on to discuss the idea of friending one’s own kids on Facebook or Myspace. Does that “protect” them?

ABC Nightline has a video (2009/04/01) on the sexting issue here. A Pennsylvania DA agreed to drop charges if the kids would go to a five-week class on the dangers of sexting, but apparently the federal judge ruled that they could not be required to go.

The ACLU maintains that child pornography laws are designed to protect minors from other adults, but not to protect minors directly from their own actions. A girl's mother said that her daughter had done nothing wrong and should not have to go to the class, and a federal judge agreed.

ACLU says no to government mandated filters; ACLU helps teenagers in cell phone cases

2009-03-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

The ACLU has a blog post Jan 26, 2009 (on its “Blog of Rights because Freedom can’t blog itself”) named “Internet Filters: Voluntary OK, not government mandate” here. The blog post includes an embedded YouTube video by First Amendment Chris Hansen in which he explains the objection to proposals in some states to “require” filtering in many situations. He says that filtering overprotects (rather like a chess opening strategy) and excludes about 20% of material that is not conceivably harmful to minors.

The ACLU has also been active in the “sexting” cases in helping those teens charged with very serious “offenses” fight back. Wired, in a March 25, 2009 article by Kim Zetter, says that the ACLU is helping three teenage girls fight charges in Pennsylvania. The story is “ACLU sues prosecutor over ‘sexting’ child porn charges” here. The article contains a secondary link to the PDF complaint document. The case concerns Tunkhannock School District in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. This does not seem to be the same case discussed on this blog in Oct 2008 (updated in January) about Greensburg PA.

Could the Myspace case (reported yesterday here) be a suitable one for the ACLU to act on?

NJ teen arrested for inappropriate Myspace photo of herself

2009-03-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Beth DeFalco, of the Associated Press, reported today, here that a teenage girl in Trenton, NJ was arrested for posting about thirty nude photos of herself on Myspace, and charged with child pornography. Apparently her motive was to be found by her boyfriend. If convicted, she will be forced to register as a sex offender.

This is the first known case where such an arrest was made and prosecution contemplated for a social networking site or blog posting. But around the country there have been several prosecutions for sending nude cell phone photos of minors, a practice now known as “sexting”.

AOL reproduced the story, and the public was surprisingly concerned about this behavior, according to survey results.

Myspace certainly would have removed the inappropriate images when it learned of them. And it should not have been possible for her to have a public account, according to Myspace policies. But Myspace apparently has no way to reliably verify age, an issue well known from the COPA trial covered on this blog in 2006.

Using oneself as the subject of “existential” content does not necessarily protect oneself legally; it could make it worse, according to theories about implicit content.

According to this theory, Justin Berry, well known from New York Times coverage a few years ago, could have been prosecuted. Parents have been told that kids should not have webcams for use on home computers.

Media reports concerns that normally somber kids go wild on the Web under peer pressure

2009-03-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

NBC Washington tonight (March 26, 2008), with Colleen Williams reporting, discussed the continued troubling practice of teen exhibitionism, on YouTube as well as Myspace and sometimes Facebook. One YouTube video (I will not embed it here) showing a teen smoking weed had gotten 114000 views. Teens sometimes believe that they make themselves “popular” by exhibiting rebellious behavior publicly. (Remember the episode of Smallville where Clark is exposed to red kryptonite and goes into wildly rebellious behavior out of tension of “never telling”?)

Author and teacher Candice Kelsey (author of “Generation Myspace”, reviewed on my books blog May 25, 2008), discussed the problem, and said that in her classes she has seen teens who are very reserved in class go wild on YouTube or on Myspace.

64% of all teens self-publish on the Internet.

The report was intended to warn parents that they need to watch what their teens post, and get accounts and know their kids’ usernames and passwords.

Employers and colleges often look at profiles and videos, although the ethics of the practice has been questioned by many authorities, and that objection has been discussed on these blogs.

Authorities find the practice of “self-deprecation” on the Internet troubling, as many people view this as indicative of what someone really will do and do not regard the Internet as a separate “parallel universe”.

Also, on Tuesday March 25, Washington DC station WJLA reported that Maryland is considering a law requiring ISP's to meet certain standards in offering Internet filtering. I could not find the legislation on line. Stay tuned!

Columnist questions effectiveness of video game ratings

2009-03-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Cheryl Wetzstein has an interesting column in the family-centered “Sunday Read” of The Washington Times, Sunday March 22, 2009, “Game warnings need obfuscation”, link here.

The article makes the point that computer game labels tend to attract younger kids who want to see and play games rated for older kids – they want the “knowledge of good and evil” a bit early. She playfully suggests eliminating ratings and using the idea that “verbosity promulgates egregious epigrammitization” as a friend once said to me back in the early 1970s.

What would the same suggest mean for Internet content ratings? What about downloadable games? And, of course, what about movies (with the MPAA system), now with Instant Play from Netflix and other sites?

"You Diligence: Responsible Social Networking" helps parents track by site rather than by computer

2009-03-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

A service called “You Diligence: Responsible Social Networking” (link) is available to parents. It sends email alerts to parents when certain objectionable keywords appear on the child’s Myspace or Facebook page. The alerts also supply a context in which the words appear, since words by themselves are often “meaningless.” It’s important that the tracking is by site, and not by specific computer or even device (such as cell phone).

The Washington Times story on March 15, 2009 is by Gabriella Boston and is called “Internet service lets parents eye child’s circle of friends”, link here.

It would be interesting to see if the service extends to other areas, like blogging services, and can connect up with content labels.

Two teens in VA charged in cell phone "sexting" case; serious risks in use of technology

2009-03-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Two students (ages 15 and 18) in Spottsylvania County VA have been charged with asking underage girls to take pictures of themselves, and then of “sexting” the pictures to their friends. They have been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography.

As noted before, this is a case where the law can come down suddenly when technology is used in an asymmetric way.

Already, teens have been convicted of this events and forced to register for years, although usually they do not get jail time. But the registries do not separate them from violent offenders.

The county sheriff warned that parents must learn to become diligent in how their kids use technology.

Police are looking for other teens who participated and may make more arrests, according to local news sources. It is likely that many of those involved in possessing and sending messages are of minor age themselves. Advice: don't do it!

The news story by Ellen Blitz appears in the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, here.

W3C works on labeling standards for webmasters; how will blogs work?

2009-03-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), which incorporates the Internet Content Ration Association (ICRA) now links to Contentlabel.org, which says that its purpose is “to create, discuss, formalize and promote new codes of conduct.” It promotes the W3C Semantic Web technology called “Resource Descriptor Framework”.

It also says that it plans to develop standards for labeling blogs, including the “Gossip Girl” mobile kind, games, Creative Commons, and e-commerce.

One issue with ICRA is that, before displaying the ICRA seal, the webmaster is supposed to label every file in a domain (and in all related domains) This may prove burdensome for older sites that were developed manually with all links set up manually. It may be much easier for sites for which content is dynamically loaded from databases or is loaded by asp, or is generated in various ways from XML with style sheets.

I’m not sure how this all fits into Blogger and Wordpress, but here is a reference (“Using XSLT and Microsoft's MSXML to integrate an RDF / RSS news feed into a web site”) on how RDF’s work in Blogger (link).

“Perishable Press” has an article on Wordpress RDF codes, here.

And in Quebec, Frederick Giasson offers “Converting your WordPress and Mediawiki data into RDF on-the-fly” link here.

There will be a lot of work in putting these pieces of technology development together to make a useful voluntary labeling standard for bloggers.

Bill would require ISP's, Wi-Fi users to keep detailed records for possible use by cops later

2009-02-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

There is a proposal in Congress called the Internet Safety Act, by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Representative Lamar Smith (both Texas Republicans), which would require ISP’s to keep detailed records of each subscriber’s access for up to two years, on the theory that the subscriber could later be accused of a crime involving children (as on the recent Dateline sting). Telephone companies keep records for limited times (you can check your long distance and local usage for wireless online) but these are not normally used by police. Some legal observers say that the law would require home Wi-Fi networks to keep track of their own usage. The story, on NetworkWorld, by Stephen Lawson is “Proposed Law Might Make Wi-Fi Users Help Cops”, link here.

The Senate Bill is S. 436 (111th Congress), with the govtrack reference here.

CA: Ninth Circuit strikes down law restricting sale or rental of violent video games to minors

2009-02-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Ninth Circuit has struck down a California law that bans the sale or rental of violent video games to minors (under 18) and requires labeling. The AP story is by Samantha Young, here. A three judge panel unanimously upheld an earlier ruling by a District court. The law never took effect.

The text of the Opinion on the Ninth Circuit Website is here (PDF format). The Opinion was by Judge Callahan, and cites the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The case is called “Video Software Dealers Association and Entertainment Software Association v. California" (naming Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor, and Edmund G. Brown, Attorney General for the State of California.

Does old ruling Ginsberg v. New York matter to COPA?

2009-02-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

There is a twist in the recently revised “Bloggers’ Legal Guide” published this month by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In talking about students’ rights, EFF poses a question about a minor student’s posting “adult” materials on his or her own (off school) blog. EFF says that obscenity law is interpreted differently with respect to minors. It appears in context that the law may be taken differently when posted by a minor, as well as when sold to a minor or given away to a minor.

Of course, COPA (the Child Online Protection Act of 1998) was all about this issue on the Internet and the Web, and it has been overturned and the free speech victory has been upheld all the way to the Supreme Court, as covered already. EFF refers to a 1968 case in New York State, Ginsberg v. New York, about the sale of girlie magazines to a teenager. There is a slightly simpler definition of “harmful to minors” than in COPA, specifically: “(1) appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors, (2) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors, and (3) is utterly without redeeming social importance for minors.”

It’s still not clear to me what the relevance of Ginsberg is to the recent COPA litigation and opinions, because Ginsberg occurs in the physical world, but EFF here is still talking primarily about blogging on the Web. The EFF reference is here, and the Findlaw copy of the 1968 Supreme Court Opinion is here.

In fact, the Opinion (see the link from the March 22, 2007 entry on this blog) Judge Reed discusses Ginsberg on p 77, in paragraph 43. Here the judge distinguishes between the physical world and the paradigm of the Web.

My Feb. 14 longer posting on the EFF Legal Guide is on my main blog, here.

COPA: my own previous self-censorship

2009-02-01T07:30:00.000-08:00

Since the plaintiffs have won in the COPA case and prevailed against attempts to appeal by the government, I thought I would make a note about the minor amount of “self-censorship” that I did in the online version of my 1997 “Do Ask Do Tell” book. The Affidavit that I submitted in December 1998, point 19, explains some of the self-censorship. The link is here (follow the additional links at the end of the page to my book). I had been told by one of the EFF attorneys (back in December 1998) that I was the only plaintiff who had self-censored.

I see that I did restore some self-censored items (as the item in Chapter 3, the “fallen male” reference), but a few of the most explicit passages (in Chapters 1 and 2) remain “self-censored” more or less back to “PG-13” language. They can be found by searching for the “++” strings in the Chapter 1 and 2 text.

I have thought about restoring the original text here. For the time being, I’m leaving the censored items as they are. The concerns are practical. There could occur some restructuring of circumstances in my life and strategy, so I would prefer, if for reputational reasons if none other, to leave this in place for the time being. Furthermore, there is at least some incentive to actually buy the book, to see the full original text.