![[to Homepage]](../img/button/2xemu.gif)
From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine {dave@xemu.demon.co.uk}
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,uk.politics.censorship,uk.politics.misc,uk.net
Subject: Re: Policing the Internet
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 18:47:54 +0000
Message-ID: <BWlzSYCalfCzEw0o@xemu.demon.co.uk>
Lines: 81
In article {32D44BE5.5444@aol.com}, Mike <mike777@aol.com> writes:
%A.L.G. wrote:
%|
%| Combating pornography and violence on the internet - a European approach.
%| A two day European conference in London 12-14 Febuary 1997#
%|
%
What a complete load of shite !!!!! ---->
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
''Europe considers Net police''
By Reuters
February 14, 1997, 12:15 p.m. PT
LONDON--In a rare show of cooperation, human rights activists and the
computer industry have joined to urge more effective policing of
pornography and violence in the anarchic ''virtual Wild West'' of the
Internet.
Tales proliferate about pornography, sexual violence against women and
children, bomb-making recipes, incitement to racial hatred, and do-it-
yourself fraud schemes available at various computer Web sites.
''We acknowledge the problems; we're not abdicating responsibility,'' said
Janet Henderson, lawyer and rights strategy manager for Internet
services at British Telecommunications. ''We do have the well-being of
customers and ultimately their fundamental freedoms at heart,'' she told
the first European conference on combatting violence and pornography in
cyberspace.
Lawyers have been studying how to police what appears to be a regulatory
vacuum without national boundaries while trying to distinguish between
what is illegal and, more subjectively, what is harmful.
British Telecom, which launched its Internet access service last March,
has adopted what it calls a ''taste and decency'' policy. Any illegal
material found through its access to the computer network is reported to
the Internet Watch Foundation, which was created last October.
The foundation, which will pass on information about potentially illegal
material to the police, also wants to encourage legal material to be
classified, allowing users to block access to certain subjects with
filtering software.
Henderson said the Internet allowed anonymous worldwide distribution of
vast amounts of extremely violent material and child pornography. But
access providers could not be the ''moral guardians of the nation.''
''Slow but sure is the approach we are taking,'' she said.
Speakers agreed that, without knowing the names of ''obscene'' Web sites,
even hours wandering through cyberspace was unlikely to reveal anything
more perturbing than a corner bookstore might yield. Only with ''a great
level of intent and technical expertise'' was it possible to find obscene
material, they said.
But German human rights campaigner Monika Gerstendorfer noted that the
Internet made it easier for political extremists and other groups to
communicate and gather forces worldwide.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's cabinet last year approved a bill that
will ban Web sites spreading Nazi propaganda, distributing hard-core
pornography to minors, and conducting fraudulent business.
The German division of the world's second-largest online service,
CompuServe GmbH, has said it would consider moving its operations to a
neighboring country if German laws forced Internet companies to control
porn on their networks.
####_ @@@@@@@ (!)
-- /__/ \ DON'T GET SCREWED by R-S-A-Ci @@/__/ _ \ /
|__| ((((((((() @@@ |__|{_}|
\__\__/ \__\___/
/ \ Dave@xemu.demon.co.uk / \
+--+ : .---' :
' L :.
www.xemu.demon.co.uk / censor / index.html # StrawPoll
Have *Y*O*U* voted yet on whether we want ratings ???
Message-ID: {enekuKAueuEzEw1x@xemu.demon.co.uk}
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:22:54 +0000
From: Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine {dave@xemu.demon.co.uk}
Newsgroups: alt.censorship,uk.politics.censorship,uk.politics.misc,uk.net
Subject: "Policing the Internet" conference, reported.
Lines: 157
=================================================================
=================================================================
The following is reproduced without permission
from Computer Underground Digest (of #9.11, Sun 23 Feb 1997),
which is the only content of newsgroup comp.society.cu-digest
and can therefore be obtained by subscibing back to Saturday
or using the online newsreader in your web broswer. Only this
this item in that edition referes specifically to the conference.
===================================================================
===================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 19:56:08 +0000
From: David Smith <bladex@bga.com>
Subject: File 4--(Fwd) conference - policing the internet, report
Felipe Rodriguez, managing director of an Internet provider in the
Netherlands, wrote the following report concerning a conference
entitled "Policing the Internet"
- - - - Forwarded Message Follows - - - -
From--<felipe@xs4all.nl>
Date--17 Feb 1997 10:26:23 GMT
Conference Report -- POLICING THE INTERNET
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
introduction | the conference | policing | political | their conclusions.
INTRODUCTION
The conference was organized by the Association of London Government.
The aim of the conference was to define a European approach to
combating pornography and violence on the Internet. I was invited by a
friend, Prof. A. Dirkzwager, who was attending the conference for the
Dutch digital citizens movement, and thought I would also be interested
in attending.
The speakers of the conference included five radical feminist
activists, three police officers, representatives from the European
parliament, British Telecom and the British Internet Watch foundation;
an organization that is supposed to start regulating providers.
Here is a short report of some of the content at the conference, the
report is by no means complete but gives an indication of the
color and tone of this conference.
THE CONFERENCE
The agenda of the radical feminist speakers at the conference was a
protest against pornography in general. These respected women activists
argued for a complete ban on pornography inside and outside the
Internet, referring to the damage that pornography causes to women. An
endless amount of examples of pornography, child-pornography and other
adult content was made, usually making no distinction between them.
Most called for tough controls on the Internet, to prevent the
distribution of adult material, even if this material would be legal in
the non-digital society. It was said that Internet technology will lead
to an escalation of violations of womens rights, and that free-speech
absolutism is setting the standard on the Net. The argument of
censorship on the Net was countered by speaker Nel van Dijk, member of
the European parliament. She gave a pro-speech and anti-censorship
lecture, defending democratic values and civil liberties and noting
that England lacked a constitution and legal guarantees that protect
freedom of speech and other civil liberties.
POLICE INPUT
Martin Jauch, superintendent of the metropolitan police, clubs and
vice, gave the most revealing lecture of the conference. He explained
how British providers where threatened by his unit, in order to censor
their newsfeed. The providers where assembled and where told that if
they would not comply with the demands of Jauchs unit, their offices
would be raided, and essential equipment would be confiscated as
evidence. This is the British interpretation of industry
self-regulation, if the providers do not comply with the demands of the
police, theyll be prosecuted.These methods resulted in a removal of a
number of adult newsgroups, like alt.sex.anal, on the servers of
British providers. It did not matter that most of the articles in these
groups would not be considered a violation of British law, the groups
had to be completely removed.
Martin Jauch went on to stress the importance of rating and labeling
systems, and the need for filtering information that would be
considered offensive to some. An important justification against all
forms of pornography in Martins speech seemed to be that this material
is being used to desensitize children before theyre being abused by
child-abusers. And that women where often used against their will to
produce pornography. An argument that was repeatedly stressed at the
conference was that kids use the Internet, and that they may be
confronted with al this harmful content. Martin made it very clear
that any information on the Internet that was illegal under British
Law would not be allowed by him on the Net and must be banned by
self-regulation of providers. Martin did not say what would be done
about information thats illegal in Britain, but not in other countries,
like Holland and Sweden. If providers do not comply with the demands of
Martins unit, they may be liable for prosecution, and his unit will
bust their offices and take away their equipment. Under these threats
providers have not much choice, other than comply with everything that
theyre told. This is what is supposedly called selfregulation in
England and Germany. At the start of his speech Martin said he was no
expert about the Internet, and that in his opinion this did not matter;
hed force the internet providers to comply with his demands and British
law.
Karlhein Moewes of the Munich police designed his speech to have a high
impact. Without speaking much he showed slide after slide of
child-pornography. His speech was obviously designed to arouse a
feeling of disgust. After about 20 minutes of pictures of abused
children and other violence he was requested by the conference chair to
refrain from showing any further slides. Anyone that does not know
anything about the Internet would believe it was full of these kind of
pictures, and would not hesitate to immediately call for tough
repression on the Net.
POLITICAL INPUT
Glyn Ford, member of the european parliament, gave a lecture about
the current developments in the european parliament. Currently a
draft report is being made about policing the Net, this report will
be finished in a few months and then most certainly implemented
as european law. Policy will mostly be based
upon a previously published paper, Illegal and harmful content on the Internet
[and see the more comprehensive Green Paper, and my reply to it --XEMU]
Glyn Ford can be emailed for information about how to receive the
latest draft-policy report, his email address is
glynford.euromp@zen.co.uk.
Overall the conference seemed to stress the importance of policing the
Internet, although most speakers where not very experienced Net users.
It seems clear that the British want to implement a policy of industry
selfregulation and content labelling and filtering. To ensure the
effectiveness of this policy the British want to implement these
policies in a European context. It seems that this goal is being
heavily promoted in the european parliament, and a substantial
British lobby is going on to pursue the british agenda regarding
the Internet.
Some of the attendees courageously tried to defend the argument of
free-speech, but where agressively countered by the chair of the
conference with the words; but you cannot mean that you want to allow
child pornography and smut on the Net ?!
THEIR CONCLUSIONS
The chair of the conference, Sue Cameron, optimistically concluded that
there was an obvious consensus that something had to be done about the
smut on the Internet. I may have missed this process of consensus;
three of the speakers were absolutely not prepared to endorse
censorship of the Net, and none of the attendees I spoke to was
prepared to endorse this so called consensus. In a private conversation
with Ms. Cameron after the conference she admitted to hardly ever
having used the Net.
~~
Felipe Rodriquez - XS4ALL Internet - finger:felipe@xs4all.nl for
- Managing Director - pub pgp-key 1024/A07C02F9
####_ @@@@@@@ (!)
-- /__/ \ DON'T GET SCREWED by R-S-A-Ci @@/__/ _ \ /
|__| ((((((((() @@@ |__|{_}|
\__\__/ \__\___/
/ \ Dave@xemu.demon.co.uk / \
+--+ : .---' :
' L :.
http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk/censor/index.html
now listed on BAD THING=>http://www.teleport.com/~room101/badthing/bad.htm