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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, fathers wrote:

> From: Alan Pugh 
> 
> The Strange Sounds of Silence
> 
> Has anyone else out there noticed the strange sounds of silence
> emmanating from the american print and broadcast media concerning the
> rider attached to the Telecommunications Act recently signed by
> President Clinton known as the CDA (Communications Decency Act)?

It isn't suprising at all.  The CDA gives advertizers a way to shut down 
the voices that advocate cheaper products and direct suppliers, by 
shutting down carefully targeted relay stations that *also* traffic in 
"Indecent Materials".  Newsgroup relays, e-mail robots, and "open 
websites" can be shut down by having an FBI agent send a pornographic 
letter to his 10 year old son via the newsgroup.  Of course, it doesn't 
have to be an FBI agent.  There are hundreds of right-wing fundamentalist 
christians and a few thousand employees of Microsoft, Compuserve, AOL, 
NBC, CBS, ABC, and Prodigy, not to mention all those laid-off AT&T 
staffers.

The Internet has become an unregulatable behemouth which threatens the 
very foundations of the Oligopolistic Media.  As AT&T discovered the hard 
way, people are willing to put up with a few "Pops and Clicks" to have 
"flat-rate" telephone conversations.  As Prodigy discovered the hard way, 
people are willing to go to other services when they can get free e-mail 
that they charged 25 cents/page to deliver.  As Capital Records has 
discovered, any band they DONT sign up can become a potential competitor 
for royalty revenues on media-web downloads.  With 10,000 bands each 
putting up 5-10 songs over the internet - and radio stations willing to 
"test-drive" the downloads, the competition is not so much for "air time" 
but for "people-time".

> Here we have a piece of legislation that has enormous ramifications
> to the free flow of information and ideas through various electronic
> media, and yet we hear hardly a peep from the "defenders of the 1st
> amendment".

Microsoft spends nearly $2 Billion in advertizing revenue to convince 
people that spending anything less than $1000 on Microsoft Software would 
result in getting an inferior product.  They even convince people to buy 
the "Annual Upgrades" at $100-$200/application.  Now they have embraced 
the internet as a vehicle for "snitch-ware" that reports bogus copies - 
even those restored from back-up tapes after a hard-drive replacement.

On the Internet, users are invited to download a complimentary copy of 
the Linux operating system and are given a list of 10-12 vendors who will 
provide CD-Roms with full source code, X-11 Windows in 5 flavors, and a 
suite of applications that can be run on a 4 meg 386/25 and look faster, 
sleeker and more reliable than Windows 95 running on a 32 Meg Pentium 120.
You can get monthly upgrades over the internet or quarterly updates on 
CD-ROM for $20/quarter.

Microsoft sold less than 10 million copies of Windows 95 after it's 
release.  This after a a $1 Billion Advertizing campaign.  Linux sold 5 
million copies last month and sales have been growing at a rate of 
10%/month.  People give their "Old" copies to friends who sync up (for $ 
Cash) at the next "Upgrade".

The LAST thing the media companies who depend on Microsoft Ad Money for 
want is to have Microsoft "Pull the Plug".  The LAST THING they want is 
free flow of information.  They sing the praises of Microsoft on every 
other page and bash the "renegade element" (those happy little Linux 
Hackers) as security risks, terrorists, and pornographers.

To be fair, Linux is used on over 2 million ISP sites world-wide, it is 
also the leading Intel Platform for News Servers, E-Mail servers, and IRC 
servers.  Windows NT clings to a sliver of the Web Server market because 
ISPs are hoping to get access to MSN "Billy Bucks".

The "Slacker Generation" (20-30 year olds) views Bill Gates as a wrinkled old
man.  Their heros are some kids named Linus Torvaldus, Patrick Volkerding,
and GNU Guru Richard Stallman (and his GPL Minions at MIT).  They've decided
to telecommute to Silicon Vally and Silicon Alley (New York City) while
enjoying the incredibly low cost of living in places like Colorado, Arizona,
and Wyoming.  Places where you can Ski all winter and go 4 Wheeling all
Summer.  Their office isn any coffee shop where they can plug in their 
lap-top (complete with wireless internet modem) and cellular phone (not 
everybody is on interphone yet).

Everything about this picture threatens the daylights out of the "Free
Press".  Those Realtors who make $2000 cash for placing someone in a
"luxurious studio in Manhattan" (a closet with a kitchenette) at $2000/month
wouldn't need to buy full-page ads in the New York Times.  The guys who book
broadway shows and book airline flights, and make hotel arrangements, and
sell cars, would all have to compete with "on-line brokers" who can make
connections between 10,000 customers and 20,000 products in a few hours.  You
can get the limo with the hot tub for what you will save over using the guy
who spends $10,000/day on quarter page ads in the Wall-Street-Journal. 

Even the "headhunters" have to compete with guys who can go through 
misc.jobs.offered on their local news server, and match up 20 people/day 
for $100/match.  All they have to do is put the CGI front-end, a perl 
script to parse the news, and a WAIS database to manage it.

Unfortunately, these guys and gals have one achille's heel.  They not 
only conduct business over the internet, they also manage their private 
affairs over the internet.  "Slacker/Hackers" are a strange breed.  They 
know they can find anything "on the net".  Many of them learned about sex 
on alt.sex.wizards (actually a forum to get honest answers to such basic 
questions as how come a woman takes longer to have an orgasm).

When teen-age boys talk about sex in a locker-room.  They can spread all 
kinds of misinformation - like "you only need a condom during her 
period", and no one sets the record streight.  On the internet, young 
men, often 12 to 14 years old but posing as college kids, find out that 
you CAN get AIDs by getting oral sex without a condom.

When these teens turn 15 or so, they start dating and are exposed to 
drugs and alcohol.  On the internet, they can experience dozens of sexual 
fantasies - stone cold sober, or at least without having to drive drunk.
They can come home and masterbate to the musings of "Vampira's Sister" 
instead of ejaculating into a teen-age girl's unprotected womb.

In the "real world" 17-18 year old boys and girls have gone beyond the 
"heavy petting" and are beginning to explore variations.  They see R 
rated movies where sexually arousing women are violently murdered.  Their 
dreams twist into fantasies of bondage and fantasy rape.  Unfortunately, 
they often find that when they try to enact the fantasy, it becomes a 
very ugly reality - the young man becomes brutal, the woman starts 
flashing on an incest experience or a previous rape.  The dominant 
becomes a revenge freak.  On the internet, one can learn the structures 
of how to safely enact a variety of fantasies.  They can even find 
support groups and discuss feelings of guilt around latent homosexuality 
(most men have occaisional homosexual fantasies without becoming gay...), 
fetishes, and special needs.  The internet is one place where a fat woman 
can find a man who thinks her weight is a major turn-on.

To the young man of the Slacker Generation, who learned to type before he 
could write in cursive, the internet is a natural place to "hang out", to 
"shoot the bull", and to "meet some nice ladies".  There was a party in 
NYC tonight where "Internet Shoppers" could meet face-to-face.

> Many readers here have probably noticed the screams of
> censorship and gnashing of teeth that accompany any attempt to pass
> legislation or regulations that have even tangental relationships to
> the 1st amendment. The first amendment has, during this century, been
> greatly expanded from the protections it was widely recognised to
> afford at the begining of this century. It has been "incorporated"
> through the courts to bar states from infringing on our freedoms as
> well as the federal government.

The American Revolutionaries used to wrap dispatches in "French 
PostCards" to irritate the British and the Tories.  Even then the 
"freedom of speech" was fundamentally tied to censorship of pornography.  
The government would try to use morality as justification for breaking 
into the mail.  Even as late as Vietnam, Codebooks used sexually 
explicit phrases to encode messages.

In the 1960s the state and federal governments were able to get MPAA
"ratings"  to stand up to Supreme Court Apeals.  The court could not stop the
ratings since they were merely advisory.  Once the ratings were adopted, 
local governments used the ratings under Zoning ordinances and under 
criminal penalties to enforce decency standards.  The Theater could show 
X rated movies, and even admit minors to the film, but they would lose 
the concession stand due to zoning violations if they did.  Bookstores 
and theaters across the country spend millions defending themselves 
against harassment based on the "Advisory Ratings".

The strategy worked so well, that Tippor Gore lobbied successfully to 
have it instituted for records, CD-Roms and books.  Eventually several
"Art Films" were X-Rated on grounds so rediculous that the MPAA 
instituted the NC-17 rating.

> The definition of "speech" has been
> stretched to the point that the act of burning a flag is considered
> to be an act of speech, and not destruction of property. (I agree
> with the court wholeheartedly on this point.) We've so expanded its
> scope, and rightly so, that it is difficult if not impossible to win
> in court on a charge of slander or libel. 

Under the Copyright Law of 1976, performances and a variety of electronic 
media can be copyrighted, including software.  This redefinition of 
intellectual property rights redefined "speech" and "press".  Even 
internet postings could be declared "speech".

It is very difficult to slander or libel someone on the internet because 
they have the opportunity to provide immediate response.  If someone 
callse me a "fascist moron" and explains why they make that accusation, I 
can respond with a rebuttal that can clarify my position as a Moderate 
Republican (yes there are 3 of us left - see 
"http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard/eileen" for a speaker with this ideology).

> The press in this country enjoys wide lattitude. They cannot be
> forced to divulge sources except under very specific and limited
> circumstances. They have recently been restricted more than in the
> past on military operations. These restrictions have garnered almost
> universal cries of "censorship!" from those news organizations
> affected. 

In the most recent military operations, such as Desert Storm, the 
reporters were herded around on what amounted to a "sales pitch for GTE 
and General Dynamics".  They were shown the latest "toys" and were 
allowed to send back clips of successful deployments.  They were not 
allowed to send back clips of misfires, malfunctions, or costs.  The most 
closely guarded secret of any military weapon is the price list for the 
parts.  There are lots of "$2000 diodes" you can buy at Radio Shack for 
10 cents/dozen.

> Why then, when almost all of cyberspace is up in arms over this
> provision is this story almost universally ignored or distorted to be
> merely an issue of "child pornography" or "protecting our children"?

The whole censorship thing has very little to do with "kiddie porn" and a 
great deal to do with protecting the "Madison Avenue Establishment".  Ad 
dollars are already being migrated to the 100,000 commercial web servers 
on the internet.  In 1994 the price of a one line URL with a 32x32 pixel 
logo on the Nescape Home Page went to $20,000/month.  Less important 
servers charge as little as $10/1000 "hits".

> I recall several prominent news organizations across the country
> coming to the aid of Larry Flint, the publisher of _Hustler_ magazine
> a few years ago through amicus briefs filed with the court when an
> overzealous prosecutor was attempting to nail him for the
> distribution of material that violated his puritanical
> interpretations of local "community standards".

Personally, I've never been a fan of "Hustler".  I read my first copy 
when I was about 18.  It was a bit "tame" :-).  For the most part, 
Hustler was already a "mainstream" publication, with advertizing accounts 
and good cross-plugs.  It was a rival to Playboy, whose ad prices had 
gotten steep even for the guys who peddle "Chevis Regal".  A little 
competition is good.

> Where are these papers now? Where is their outrage? I'd like to know
> what the difference is between a picture of Michelangelo's David
> displayed in an article by the _Smithstonian Institution_, and the
> same picture when displayed on someone's home page? Where is the
> outrage that someone who makes a copy of _Catcher in the Rye_
> available to people who visit their home page who may very well now
> be open to prosecution by that same puritanical prosecutor? Where is
> it? Has the "free" press in this country suddenly discovered the
> virtues of censorship? 

The bottom line is the "bottom line".  When the issue is only one or two 
rags being hit on by a local "self-appointed-inquisitioner", the 
newspapers and magazines saw this as a threat to their circulation.  It 
was only 10 years ago that we had Ed Meese and the "Meese Commision" 
trying to use "Sex and Violence" as justification for shutting down the 
pornography industry.  Almost every franchise (7-11, K-Mart, 
Bookstores...) pulled almost every "girlie mag" and "true detective" rag 
off the shelves.  Many of those stores are owned by independends with 
names like "Abdul" and "Ravi" who keep the upper shelves generously 
stocked with an ample supply of "girlie rags". 

The problem with the Internet is that any kid with a $500 PC, Linux 
operating system, and a telephone can become a publisher.  The 
"publishing costs" run about $100/month for a dial-up PPP connection on 
up to $1000/month for a T1 connection that can feed real-time video to 20 
users at the same time.  Anyone with a video camera can make a "home 
movie" and edit it on a Multimedia PC.  Any band can put together an 
electronic album.

The threat to the "Big Media" is that each individual user has only a 
limited amount of time and a limited amount of money.  The user now has a 
choice of 20 Million "Stations" to listen to, and can choose a "Porno 
Station in Jackson Hole Wyoming" just as easily as he can chose the "ABC 
Network News with Peter Jennings".  The guy in Jackson hole gets 30,000 
hits/hour and NBC gets 300,000 hits/hour.  But Peter Jennings costs 
$300,000/spot and Jackson Hole costs $300/month.

The ad agencies for the Web are very clever.  They can find servers that 
carry the pharmacutical databases and buy $25,000/month in tie-in 
advertizing and reach the doctors who will be writing prescriptions, at 
the time they are most likely to be influenced by the ad.  Compare this 
to the $2 billion "Rogane" ads.

> Do these organizations not realize that the precidents that will soon
> be laid down on this issue will soon be affecting them as well? Any
> major publisher who is not looking at electronic media as a method of
> distribution is a fool.

Their view of the universe is that it is much easier to compete with the 
"Playboy Channel" if Playboy is forced to encrypt their transmissions.  
Can you imagine what would happen to the ratings if the local cable 
stations included a 24 hour dating service, 5 "fantasy video" channels, 
and 6 "home shopping networks" - each willing to show any program or 
product you request within 30 minutes?

On the Internet, you have 2 million "stations" showing your choice of 10 
million "programs" withing 30 seconds.  The new "Video PCs", when 
equipped with MPEG encoder software available for free over the internet,
will give whole new dimensions to the term "funniest home videos".
Just look at the 20 million web "Pages".  Most of them are personal in 
nature.  Most people have a resume, a date-profile, and a social/hobby 
page.  If you are looking for a left-handed transvestite with a thing for 
tall women and an income of ofer $70,000, you can find it on the WEB (via 
Lycos).

> The _New York Times_ is now available on the
> World Wide Web. Perhaps they are living in a delusion that *they*
> will not be held to the same standards that will soon be enforced
> against the small publisher who sees the Web as means for cheap mass
> distribution. Perhaps for a time, they won't. Eventually, the bird
> will come home to roost. One would think that they would understand
> that the free flow of information is important enough that we will
> have to stand a little pornography and other distasteful material -
> the same way we allow magazines to be sold at the local convienience
> store. If you don't want to see it, don't look at it. If you don't
> want to read racist material, go somewhere else. Noone will *force*
> you to consume that which you cannot abide. 

The main difference between the local ISP web publisher and the NBC News 
publisher is that NBC is totally dependent on advertizers for it's 
survival.  The local ISP gets ad revenue as "gravy".  It gives him the 
money he needs to upgrade from a Linux box to a Sun.  It gives him the 
ability to get a 40 gig RAID array amd a T1 link.  He still might keep 
his day-job.  By the time he's pulling in $25,000/month for reformatting 
government databases and linking them with advertizing, he tells the 
advertizers what he will and won't do.

I am inundated with publishers and private businesses who want me to put 
up a web server for them.  I wish I had the time and a staff of 20.  As 
it is, I have a difficult time keeping up with my mailing lists.

> They also do not seem to recognise the international nature of the
> internet.

Yes they do!  Wait until the $120/hour computer contractor in New York 
City is up against a guy in Bombay India for a telecommuting position as 
a night "operator".  It could have in interesting effect on Real-Estate 
values in both countries.

> It is not something that operates entirely within the
> confines of the united States. It is an international community that
> reaches nearly every corner of the globe. What is proper to be
> displayed in New York City or Los Angeles, is probably not something
> that, say the government of Saudi Arabia would like to see available
> to its subjects.

Actually, the U.S.A. has some of the strangest values of any country in the
world.  In a popular movie such as "Basic Instinct" or Madonna's version, the
bare-breasted woman ties a man to the bed, kills him with an ice-pick, 
has a few drinks with the detective and is shot by the "good guy" at the 
end of the movie.

In America, they cannot show the man's gentialia, they cannot show her 
labia, and they cannot show her having actual sexual intercourse without 
resulting in an "X" rating.

Now in Asia, she can be stark naked and they can show everything except 
her breasts.  Reshoot the scene with a bra.  In Saudi Arabia drinking 
alchohol is a capital crime - cut the drink or reshoot it with coffee.
In England the Police are forbidden to carry guns and the films are not 
allowed to show them.  The cop nods to the 4 "bobbies" who quietly take 
her away.

On the internet, no one tries to regulate anything.  The assumption is 
that with 16,000 conversations going on at the same time and passing over 
50 gigabytes/day, the market will choose what it wants to see.  The odds 
of anyone accidently "stumbling" into alt.sex and being forced to view 
the articles is almost nil.

My son is 12 years old.  I found out in a recent converstion with my ex 
that he's trying to "sneak a peek" at the Playboy Channel.  He's also 
bringing home copies of "Photography Today".  No one has had the "Birds 
and Bees" conversation with him yet (she's embarrassed and her hubby is a 
funamentalist Christian who believed in Celebacy until your 75th wedding 
anniversery.  I couldn't e-mail him some info on how to avoid becoming a 
noncustodial parent without putting myself in jeopardy of being arrested.

I would rather he learn too much on the internet than learn too little in 
the boy's locker room after the shower.

> By the same token, what is deemed to satisfy the
> "community standards" of Amsterdam, may very well not fly in many
> places in the united States. In order for any government to restrict
> access to any country that flaunts its standards, it would have to
> disconnect itself from the internet. It is not possible to build
> walls around a country and still have all the good benifits of the
> internet still available. 

That's the whole point.  By forcing the independent ISP out of the 
market, the "good benefits" as you and I see them become the "riff-raff" 
as propaganda wizards and Madison Avenue Ad Execs see them.

There is a simple solution, which will probably be instituted in spite of 
bans by the BATF.  News machines will start using DES encryption to 
encrypt authentication and content information.  You can get your ID card 
at any place where "Adult Books" are sold.

> Is it a bad thing for a group of children to be able to become
> electronic pen-pals with another group of students in Malaysia, or
> Russia? Do we not think that personal relationships with people from
> another culture helps personalize our understanding of their
> cultures? I think many wars could have been avoided in the past if
> each side knew each other better. How can someone claim that "all
> russians are evil" when they have a personal relationship with Ivan
> in St. Petersburg? 

Shhh.  General Dynamics and GTE are listening.  To them peace is BAD NEWS.
They will try to pursuade Billy-Boy to hang every ISP for "Treason" :-).
Remember, there are many things you do because you don't have a choice.  
At the "News Hour" you had to watch the News.  Cable made that concept 
obsolete.  On all 30-90 cable channels, you get to watch ads that tell 
you that you have bad breath, body odor, and ugly hair and that no one 
will love you unless you buy their shampoo, their soap, their toothpaste, 
and their perfume (at $200/bottle).

There are many things you didn't do because you didn't have a choice up 
to now.  You didn't learn the real dynamics of interpersonal 
relationships, how to have a discussion that didn't degenerate into two 
people making each other wrong.  You didn't learn about the Uniform 
Dissolution of Marriage and standerd Child Support agreements before 
having intramarital sex for purposes of conception.  You didn't learn how 
women feel after the man have had an orgasm and they haven't.  You didn't 
learn how to write 3000 word replies at 3:00 in the morning and still 
appear articulate in the morning.

> For better or worse, the technology is now out there. The world will
> always be smaller than it once was.

The problem is someone forgot to put the toll booths at each of the 
access roads.  Now the street-pavers want to collect more tribute from 
the guys who put gas stations on the exit ramps and put billboards on the 
roadside.

> We are no longer limited in our
> circle of friends by distance or time. (Time could indeed be an issue
> if one were attempting to place a phone call to someone in Paris
> from Dallas. Many people don't want to talk at 4am their time.) We

Of course, you are also not limited to U.S. Citizens for such things as 
software development, investment advice, or even furniture shopping.  You 
are now in toe-to-toe competition with people who pay $20/month rent on 
a 3 bedroom house in "Yuppieville".  If you speak spanish, I can get you 
great deals on Jewelry from Mexico or Integrated Circuits from Nicaragua 
:-).  There are some really interesting telecommute jobs in Persia.  At 
least 4 countries are looking for a few Nuclear Physicists - Lybia, 
Syria, Iraq, and Iran come to mind :-),

> are also not limited by the delays and expense of postage. I've met
> good people around the world through electronic communications who
> have points of view that I would probably never have considered. 

Why stop at E-Mail, send them an audio or even a Video clip.

> Again I ask, "Where is the media?" Why is the censorship of
> individuals a good thing? Don't come crying to me when you find, a few
> years down the road that this camel's nose has snuck into the tent
> with its bad breath, prelediction to spit, and no potty training.

Most of the Media was caught completely by suprise from the very 
beginning.  I was working for Dow Jones back in 1993 and my former boss 
swore that Dow Jones would NEVER put it's content on the internet and 
would NEVER use a UNIX based SERVER (everything was VMS at that time).
By the time they actually got their first content on the web, they were 
frantically scrambling to hang on to what little market share they had 
left.  They had been side-tracked by Microsoft into devoting all of the 
resources with Internet Knowledge to a product which eventually had to be 
killed due to lack of support from Microsoft.

I frequently find that Microsoft has derailed Internet development 
efforts.  They place loyal customers at key management positions 
identified by Microsoft "Consultants".  Most of these are directed at 
preventing or delaying Internet development on UNIX based platforms.

> Since this message is being transmitted electronically, I feel that
> it is my moral duty to include the following so this message will
> fall under the purview of the act I so abhor.
>
> (the seven dirty words)
> 
> There they are. Come and get me Big Brother.

Unfortunately, "Big Brother" never received it.  His echo "kills" any 
article containing those nice words.  On the other hand, if you would 
like to describe in poetic detail the Joys of Bondage, without using the 
"bad words", it should get right through.
 
> =end of article=
> 
> This article was digitally signed with PGP so as to further aid
> prosecutors. A signed document is hard to deny.
> 
> amp
> <0003701548@mcimail.com>
> 
> PGP Key = 57957C9D
> February 10, 1996   15:23
> 
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> 
>  
> ... Defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and elected.
> 
> * Origin: Gun Control = Criminals & Police vs. the Unarmed. (1:231/110.0)
> 
> 
> 
> 


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Feb 16 14:56:08 1996