lambda bulletin 3.05

August 27, 1997

LA LOUPE : search the whole bulletin's archive


Contents

The ACLU backfires self-rating technology
Bribes for Nothing : corruption index
Cuba's high-tech curtain

 


CONTENT REGULATION

THE ACLU BACKFIRES SELF-RATING TECHNOLOGY

 

Last week a report by David Noack, associate editor of Editor & Publisher's MediaINFO bulletin, revealed that an important meeting (August 28) of content companies about the problem of "self-rating" cyberspace won't be "open to the press". Bad news for this particular hot issue : the CDA was declared unconstitutional in June, but major US family groups and politicians are pushing for a quick "technological response" : impose "parental control" filtering softwares and "rate" every Web-based information, to fit good morale.

The meeting Nowack was barred from is the Internet Content Coalition, composed of industry and media representatives, that was due to meet on August 28 to discuss rating schemes.

"This is an off-the-record meeting, where New Media editors can discuss openly and freely, and where we hope to reach a consensus on moving forward. It is not open to the press," James Kinsella, MSNBC's general manager was quoted as saying to Novack in an e-mail message. The ICC was due to meet "at NBC headquarters in New York City" said Nowack. "No Agenda Available" he added.

 

Earlier in the month, the main plaintiff of the CDA trial, the ACLU, published a very cautious approach (Is Cyberspace Burning?) to these "self-rating" systems, rewriting Ray Bradbury's novel, "Farenheit 451".

"In his chilling (and prescient) novel about censorship, Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury describes a futuristic society where books are outlawed. "Fahrenheit 451" is, of course, the temperature at which books burn.

"In Bradbury's novel ­ and in the physical world ­ people censor the printed word by burning books. But in the virtual world, one can just as easily censor controversial speech by banishing it to the farthest corners of cyberspace using rating and blocking programs. Today, will Fahrenheit, version 451.2 ­ a new kind of virtual censorship ­ be the temperature at which cyberspace goes up in smoke?"

The American Civil Liberties Union describes how blocking software and rating systems to control material obline can be dangerous for free speech.

Can self and approximative censorship be respectful of freedom of speech?

The ACLU adresses 6 different points of why self-rating online can be dangerous:

The ACLU also states that third-party rating couldn't work, because the amount of content to classify has nothing to do with the number of, say, movies produced in a year. And user-based blocking sofware aren't valuable since the software companies don't make public the content of their "black lists" of forbidden sites : "most products consider their lists of blocked speech to be proprietary information which they will not disclose."

Last words from the ACLU: "Civil libertarians, human rights organizations, librarians and Internet users, speakers and providers all joined together to defeat the CDA. We achieved a stunning victory, establishing a legal framework that affords the Internet the highest constitutional protection. We put a quick end to a fire that was all but visible and threatening. The fire next time may be more difficult to detect ­ and extinguish."


BRIBES FOR NOTHING

Former Nigeria's General Olusegun Obasanjo has been condemned last year to 15 years in jail. Listed in the 75 most prominent prisonners of conscience by Amnesty International, Obasanjo has been the country's president between 1976 and '79, when he retired from the army. After years of good governance, he spent his life in United Nations circles fighting against endemic corruption practices. Nigeria's military junta of Gal Abacha condemned him for the "sale of trade secrets".

Obasanjo was special advisor in Africa for Transparency International, a Berlin-based organisation founded 4 years ago by former World Bank official Peter Eiger. Transparency publishes its Perception Corruption Index every year, a compilation of international studies about business wrongdoing perception by civil servants, bankers, diplomats and businessmen. The CPI'97 came out on July, 31st. Nigeria is perceived as a whole as the most bribe-friendly state (last position in the 52 countries' index) before Columbia, Bolivia and Russia. countries seen as the most 'clean' are Denmark, Finland, Sweden and New Zeland. Transparency's partner Gottingen University in Germany has opened an online questionnaire to allow everyone for sharing views and experiences about bribes in today's business.

Along with the African Leadership Forum, Transparency International launched a letters' campaign for the release of Olusegun Obasanjo. You can also use Amnesty's electronic petition forms (email and fax).

 



CUBA'S HIGH-TECH CURTAIN

 

As expected, the Castro regime considers the electronic information age as a bourgeois' evil. As David Lipschultz reported in the July 9, 1997, edition of The Christian Science Monitor from Havana, "The Internet has arrived on the isolated island, but not many people in the country know it. Most Cubans have a hard time finding a decent telephone connection. For most, a computer isn't even a thought."

The independant press can broadcast some articles on the Net (through Cuba Net or Cuba Free Press web sites), but these balanced news reach only the outside world -- Miami based exiles or diasporas in Latin America or Europe -- but not the basic cuban. One of these free-minded news agency, APIC (Agencia de Prensa Independiente de Cuba), reported last October that the country's potitburo decided to block non-authorised use of the info highway. Said reporter Monica De Motta, on October 16, 1996:

In October, along with the new net policy, the Cuban government created the CENIAI, the country's own Internet service privider. According to Lipschultz's report in the Monitor, "An average Cuban makes about 110 pesos a month, about $ 5. An Internet connection with World Wide Web access costs about $ 260 a month here. E-mail costs about $ 67 per month."

Cuba Web, Castro's own electronic doorstep, publishes an email directory with around a thousand entries (government officials and businesses, students and academics).

For the Castro regime, the Web is more dangerous than email. Here's a modern Cuban tale. Abstracts from the Monitor's article:

  • "University of Havana computer science majors Raul Gutierez and Miguel Herrera are shining examples of the anarchy of cyberspace. They cleverly skirt the Cuban government's tight control of the Internet to surf the World Wide Web despite the Communist country's information blockade.
  • "Armed with only e-mail connections - e-mail access is permitted to select students by the government while Web connections are prohibited - Messrs. Herrera and Gutierez e-mail Web masters at selected sites around the world and ask for an attachment of their Web page. They then download the attachment from the return message onto their Web browser and can pull up anything, even anti-Castro propaganda. "It's a slow way to surf," Herrera says, "but at least we're in the loop of the cyberworld." "
  • ... This is no different than in many other developing countries. But in Cuba, more than 95 percent of the population is literate. This means it has a large number of readers who eventually may be able to take advantage of the benefits of the Internet."
  • The free information group Reporters Sans Frontières reports that around 40 reporters have been arrested or molested since January this year (four stays behind bars).


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