Peter S. Magnusson
(Quick-and-dirty translation from Swedish.)
"The Internet, of course, is more than a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." Thus writes Time Magazine in their cover article on Cyberporn (the article is available on the web). Aftonbladet [1] recently decorated their pages with the heading "Government funds child pornography". Nudity sells, and journalists are quick to take advantage of the public's ignorance of the Internet and general technofobia.
The Time article has been widely critizised on the net for legitimizing the so-called "Rimm report", written by Martin Rimm while a student at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). In it, Rimm tries to give the impression that the amount of hardcore pornography is increasing rapidly, an argument for which he has no foundation. Furthermore, he claims that the report was written by a team of researchers at CMU, which is wrong - Rimm was the only author.
Aftonbladet based their story on a news bulletin from the magazine z.mag@zine's Internet service Z-central. What had actually happened was that Z-central and Aftonbladet had downloaded some Usenet newsgroups from SICS, whose newsserver was incorrectly installed and failed to restrict access. But nowhere in the article is Usenet even mentioned, nor that the access was inadvertent from the side of SICS. Though it did give a suitable excuse for publishing a (probably illegal) picture.
When the media writes "filth on the Internet", they are usually talking about Unix Users Network News, more commonly known as Usenet News, Usenet or simply News. Usenet consists of thousands of discussion groups that are distributed over the Internet and other networks, with tens of thousands of postings per day. The popularity of the Internet has worked in tandem with Usenet, so they are often confused in the media. But there is much activity on the Internet besides Usenet - a study in february counted 1090 different services. (Though Usenet is relatively big, approximately one tenth of the bandwidth.)
And certainly there is porn on the Usenet, like on any media. But it is considerably less conspicuos there than in an ordinary newsstand [2]. Lacking good statistics, I performed my own sampling of the traffic, and concluded that approximately 98% of the postings were harmless text. The remaining 2% were images, where pornography did dominate (approximately 80%) but only approx. 14% were by any reasonable definition hardcore, and none of it worse than you can buy in a swedish newsstand [3]. Let me reiterate this: less than 10% of Internet bandwidth is Usenet, approx. 2% of Usenet postings are images, and approx. 14% of images are hardcore.
Usenet has two key advantages that causes it to be popular for distributing this type of information: somebody else pays for the distribution, and you can make contributions anonymously.
It's the anonymous part which is a hot potato. Anonymity allows for the spreading of terrorist handbooks, cracker tips, credit card numbers, crypto software, etc. This has triggered suggestions for general censorship of the net, such as the proposals from Senators Exon and Coat. And the the phrase "child pornography" is a suitable political message since it has the best shock value.
But to suggest censorship is completely absurd. Technically it is unimplementable without destroying the Internet. The Internet traffic itself, and several services, are dynamic. IP pakets are routed differently depending on load and availability. New Usenet groups are created daily, as are new mailing lists, Web servers, and FTP sites. New services and products are continuously being added. The traffic is gigantic, as is the size: over 7 million computers connected in over 60000 different (and mostly private) networks.
Who's laws should apply? The Internet exists in over 100 countries. Attempts at international standardization of content control, such as UNESCOs New World Information Order, have failed due to too large differences in what different countries and cultures find acceptable.
Something equally worrying as cybercensure are threats against the right to be anonymous on the net. Cyberanonymity is important. It allows victims of rape, incest, or cults to openly discuss their problems. It allows political activists to communicate with the outside world. Computer communications played a significant role in the revolution in the Soviet Union, and the Internet has great potential in affecting the situation in, for example, China. Already organizations like the Scientologists have managed to trick police into using force to reveal an identity. It is only a matter of time before oppressive regimes use diplomatic pressure or their security organizations to reveal who has released documentation on breaches of human rights.
Furthermore, the Internet is far from anarchistic. On the contrary, there is a well-developed tradition of rules and regulations, often called "netiquette". These rules have grown out of decades of discussions, and in the formation of organizations such as the Internet Society and the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Netiquette's message on censorship is simple: if you don't like it, then don't read it. And if you don't want your kids to read it, then buy a program that limits their freedom to surf (SurfWatch, Net Nanny, or CYBERsitter). Or even better, raise your kids to have your good judgement. And if you want to entrap sickos, do it on Internet grounds. There have already been cases of FBI agents who, pretending to be sexually confused teenagers, have caught pedophiles - an act difficult to replicate in the real world.
It is counterproductive to work agains netiquette when formulating laws. Internet was, after all, designed to withstand a nuclear assault: as the legendary John Gilmore has put it: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
Computers as a communication medium is growing faster than any other medium in history, and the Internet is playing a significant role. Its success has to a large extent been due to government non-interference. Let us not forget its contributions to mankind - such as the fact that 70% of all scientists who have ever lived are accessible via the Internet - and hope that politicians and journalists will realize that the Internet does best when left in peace. Internet is a basis for a new civilization. Pandoras box has been opened.
Peter S. Magnusson
Notes on the english translation: