FREE ESSAY ON CENSORING THE INTERNET

CENSORING THE INTERNET

Censoring the Internet
The internet offers a huge wealth of information both good and bad, unfortunately the
vary nature of the internet makes policing this new domain practically impossible. The
internet began as a small university network in the United States and has blossomed into
a vast telecommunications network spanning the globe. Today the internet is ruled by no
governing body and it is an open society for ideas to be developed and shared in.
Unfortunately every society has its seedy underside and the internet is no exception. To
fully understand the many layers to this problem, an understanding of net history is
required.
Some thirty years ago the RAND corporation, Americas first and foremost Cold War
think-tank faced a strange strategic problem. The cold war had spawned technologies that
allowed countries with nuclear capability to target multiple cities with one missile
fired from the other side of the world. Post-nuclear America would need a command and
control network, linked from city to city, state to state and base to base. No matter how
thoroughly that network was armored or protected, its switches and wiring would always be
vulnerable to the impact of atomic bombs. A nuclear bombardment would reduce any network
to tatters.
Any central authority would be an obvious and immediate target for enemy missiles. The
center of a network would be the first place to go. So RAND mulled over this puzzle in
deep military secrecy and arrived at their solution. In 1964 their proposed ideas became
public. Their network would have no central authority, and it would be designed from the
beginning to operate while in tatters. All the nodes in the network would be equal in
status to all other nodes, each node having its own authority to originate, pass and
receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets, each packet
separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source node and end at
some other specified destination node. 
The particular route that the packet took would be unimportant, only the final results
counted. Each packet would be tossed around like a hot potato from node to node, more or
less in the direction of its destination, until it ended up in the proper place. If big
chunks of the network were blown away, which wouldn't matter, the packets would still
stay airborne, moving across the field by whatever nodes happened to survive. This system
was efficient in any means (especially when compared to the phone system), but it was
extremely tough.
In the 1960's this concept was thrown around by RAND, MIT and UCLA. In 1969 the first
such node was installed in UCLA. By December of 69, there were four nodes on the network,
which was called ARPANET, after its Pentagon sponsor. The nodes of the network were
high-speed supercomputers. (supercomputers at the time, desktop machines now) Thanks to
APRANET scientists and researchers could share one another's computer facilities over
long-distances. By the second year of its operation however, 
APRANET's users had warped the high cost, computer sharing network into a dedicated,
high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post office. The main bulk of traffic on
ARPANET was not long-distance computing, it was news and personal messages. The
incredibly expensive network using the fastest computers on the planet was a message base
for gossip and schmooze.
Throughout the 70s this very fact made the network grow, its software allowed many
different types of computers to become part of the network. Since the network was
decentralized it was difficult to stop people from barging in and linking up. In fact
nobody wanted to stop them from joining up and this branching complex of networks came to
be known as the internet.
In 1984 the National Science Foundation got into the act, and the new NSFNET set a
blistering pace for technical advancement, linking newer, faster, shinier supercomputers
through thicker, faster links. ARPANET formally expired in 1989, a victim of its own
success, but its users scarcely noticed as ARPANET's functions not only continued but
improved. In 1971 only four nodes existed, today tens of thousands of nodes make up the
network and 35 million of users make up the internet community.
The internet is and institution that resists institutionalization. The internet
community, belonging to everyone yet no-one, resembles our own community in many ways,
and is susceptible to many of the same pressures. Business people want the internet put
on sounder financial footing. Government people want the Internet more fully regulated.
Academics want it dedicated exclusively to scholarly research. Military people want it
spyproof and secure. All these sources of conflict remain in a stumbling balance and so
far the internet remains in a thrivingly anarchial condition. This however is a mixed
blessing.
Today people pay ISP's or Internet Service Providers for internet access. ISP's usually
have fast computers with dedicated connections to the internet. ISP's now more than ever
are becoming the backbone of the internet. The average netcitizen uses their computer to
call and ISP, and the netcitizens computer temporarily becomes a part of the internet.
The user is free to browse or transfer information with others. Most ISP's even allow
their users to set up permanent homepages on the ISP's computer for the whole internet
community to view. This is where many ethical and moral questions arise regarding the
internet. Not every user wants his homepage to deal with the spin rates of atoms or the
airspeed of South African swallows. Some users wish to display objectionable material on
their homepages.
This may have started out as a prank to some, but now net- porn is an offshoot industry
on the information superhighway. Companies like Playboy and Hustler run their own servers
that are permanent parts of the internet, and on their pages they charge user to view
Playboy and Hustler type material. What makes matters worse is evolution of the internet
newsgroup system. USENET in its infancy was ARPANET's news and message component. Today
USENET is a huge database with thousands of newsgroups that all internet users have
access to. Millions use groups like alt.comp.disscussion.games to share ideas, and
millions use groups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.teen to share ideas and pictures
that are less family oriented.
Average users can also set up homepages on ISP's. In fact, most packages ISP's offer
usually include space for your own homepage. They are easy to create and the ISP's
maintain them for free so the entire online community can see what you have to say.
Unfortunately not everyone wants to set up homepages dealing with the spin rates of atoms
or the airspeeds of South American swallows. Most ISP's are more than willing to set up
homepages dealing with the most gratuitous of acts aimed at very specialized audiences.
This is where the problem of net censorship arises. It is true that there is a wealth of
pornography and other indecent material online for all to see. All that a person has to
do is to type in an indecent word and modern search engines will point to sites where the
word crops up. Typing in a popular for letter expletive into two of the most popular
search engines yielded 17224 hits for Lycos and 40000 for AltaVista, the worlds biggest
search engine. However both of these engines have over 60 million cataloged web pages.
Although this material makes up less that 1% of all messages on USENET or pages on the
world-wide-web, that is still a staggering number as there are millions of messages and
web-pages on the internet.
Most of this material is extremely hard to access as advanced knowledge of computers is
required, however it is the youth in most families that know how to use the computer
best. Problems arise when minors left alone on the computer are free to browse some of
the most graphic pictures ever taken, or to learn the easy way to make a pipe bomb from
house-hold ingredients.
The media has a tendency to magnify certain aspects of reality while completely
forgetting about others. The mass media so far has not been too kind to the internet.
Mainly because television and print magazines view it as a long-term threat encroaching
in on their market. 
The July 3 1995 article of Time magazine featured a cover story labeled CYBERPORN.
Spanning eight pages the article tries to expose the red light district of the
information superhighway. It was the publishing of this article in a high- profile
magazine that sparked the whole cyberporn debate.
When Time published a cover story on Internet pornography 
a certain amount of controversy was to be expected. Computer porn, after all, is a
subject that stirs strong passions. So does
the question of whether free speech on the Internet should be sharply curtailed, as some
Senators and Member of Congress have proposed. But the flame war that ensued on the
computer networks when the story was published soon gave way to a full-blown and highly
political conflagration.
The main focus of discontent was a new study, Marketing Pornography on the Information
Superhighway, purportedly by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, which
was a centerpiece of Time's story. In the course of the debate, serious questions have
been raised regarding the study's methodology, the ethics by which its data were gathered
and even its true authorship. 
Marty Rimm, who wrote it while an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, grossly exaggerated
the extent of pornography on the Internet by conflating findings from private
adult-bulletin-board systems that require credit cards for payments (and are off limits
to minors) with those from the public networks (which are not). Many of Rimm's
statistics, are either misleading or meaningless; for example, the study's now frequently
cited claim that 83.5 percent of the images stored on the USENET newsgroups are
pornographic.
A more telling statistic is that pornographic files represent less than one- half of 1
percent of all messages posted on the Internet. Other critics point out that it is
impossible to count the number of times those files are downloaded; the network measures
only how many people are presented with the opportunity to download, not how many
actually do. 
Rimm has developed his own credibility problems. When interviewed by Time for the cover
story, he refused to answer questions about his life on the grounds that it would shift
attention away from his findings. But quite a bit of detail has emerged, much of it
gathered by computer users on the Internet. 
It turns out that Rimm is no stranger to controversy. In 1981, as a 16-year-old junior at
Atlantic City High School, he conducted a survey that purported to show that 64 percent
of his school's students had illicitly gambled at the city's casinos. Widely publicized
(and strongly criticized by the casinos as inaccurate), the survey inspired the New
Jersey legislature to raise the gambling age in casinos from 18 to 21. According
to the Press of Atlantic City, his classmates in 1982 voted Rimm most likely to be
elected President of the U.S. The next year, perhaps presciently, they voted him most
likely to overthrow the government. 
More damaging to Rimm are two books that he wrote, excerpts of which have begun to
circulate on the Internet. One is a salacious privately published novel, An American
Playground, based on his experience with casinos. The other, also privately published, is
titled The Pornographer's Handbook: How to Exploit Women, Dupe Men & Make Lots of Money.
Rimm says it's a satire; others saw it offering practical advice to adult-bulletin-board
operators about how to market pornographic images
effectively. 
Neither Carnegie Mellon nor the Georgetown Law Journal has officially backed away from
the study (although the university is forming a committee to look into it). Rimm's
faculty adviser, Marvin Sirbu, a professor of engineering and public policy, continues to
support him, saying the research has been deliberately mischaracterized by people with a
political agenda. But Sirbu himself has been attacked by Carnegie Mellon colleagues for
not properly supervising his student and for helping him secretly gather data about the
pornography-viewing habits of the university's students. Meanwhile, some of the
researchers listed as part of Rimm's team now say their involvement was minimal; at least
one of them had asked Rimm to remove his name. 
Brian Reid Ph.D who is the director of the Network System Laboratory at Digital Equipment
Corporation is the author of the network measurement software tools that Rimm used to
compile his statistics. He had this to say about the Rimm study:
I have read a preprint of the Rimm study of pornography and I am so distressed by its
lack scientific credibility that I don't even know where to begin critiquing it.
As a rule, computer-wise citizens of cyberspace tend to be strong civil libertarians and
First Amendment absolutists. Some clearly believe that Time, by publicizing the Rimm
study, was contributing to a mood of popular hysteria, sparked by the Christian Coalition
and other radical-right groups, that might lead to a crackdown. It would be a shame,
however, if the damaging flaws in Rimm's study obscured the larger and more important
debate about hard-core porn on the Internet. 
So as a response to the hysteria wide-sweeping legislational machinery was put into
motion and Senators Exon and Coats drafted up the infamous Communications Decency Act. 
Section 502: Whoever ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner
available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal,
image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently
offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities
or organs... shall be fined under Title 1, United States Code, or imprisoned not more
than two years.... 
This act outlaws any material deemed obscene and imposes fines up to $100 000 and prison
terms up to two years on anyone who knowingly makes indecent material available to
children under 18, as directly quoted from section 502. The measure had problems from the
start. The key issue to senators like Exon is whether to classify the internet as a print
medium like newspapers, or a broadcast medium like television. Unfortunately it is a
communications medium and should be treated as such. If such legislation was passed to
control telephone conversations, many teenagers would get the electric chair at age
fifteen.
The Communications Decency Act never passed, but a line in the telecommunications bill
that did pass denounces anything indecent being transmitted. The legal ramifications are
still being fought over in government as the vague nature of the clause leaves it open to
multiple interpretations.
As the issue stands now, there are only two real solutions. One would be the adoption of
government controls that would infringe on peoples rights to free speech, but also make
the net a safe place to be. The other would for parents to use filtering software to
control what their computer is receiving.
Government controls may seem attractive as it limits informat