Wired Magazine Top 10 Lists of the Year!

Wired Magazine has published several top ten lists, including best tech moments of 2005, worst tech moments of 2005, and the ever-entertaining top 50 robots and 10 sexiest geeks.

It was evidently a HUGE year for content control, and control in general. The best list included the defeat of the hugely unpopular broadcast flag, the integration of ABC's Lost into a video iPod friendly form, and the revamping of the Swedish PirateBay. The worst included the Sony rootkit scourge, Apple's crackdown on bloggers revealing insider secrets, TiVo's restrictions, and the recent NSA spying allegations. It was also a year marred by tragedy, with technology coming up strong with the Katrina blogs and Negroponte's 100$ laptop that was showcased at the WSIS convention in Tunis... and coming up short with Yahoo's compliance in helping track a Chinese dissident (they don't mention anything about Yahoo's attention to the ongoing struggle with how to deal with China), and PayPal blocking Katrina aid to the Red Cross. Finally, like every year before it since the dawn of civilization, sex was a headliner- with the best going to the furor over Grand Theft Auto's "Hot Coffee" adult sequence, and the worst given to the commerce department's delay of the .xxx domain.

Over the 2 month period I've been blogging, I think that somewhere in my 30 odd posts, about half of Wired's big issues were covered.... I'd say that's decent coverage given the timeframe. Since I envision blogging more (although not as consistently) over the next year, I'll make a few predictions about the big issues of next year:

1) The analog hole legislation recently introduced to the House of Representatives will face increasing discomfort. Although corporate America (the ones that earn money off content) will push for the legislation, other corporate America (the ones that earn money off services or supplementary goods) will push back.
2) Attempts to make ISPs more responsible over pretty much every facet of the content on their servers will be pushed- some reasonable (if an ISP received complains of child pornography and does not do anything about it, it can be held responsible), some in the gray area (responsible for taking allegedly copyright songs or clips down), and many unreasonable ones.
3) The Digitial Commons license will increase in popularity, but will remain outside the mainstream- it will not be until Google Library shapes up a bit more that a real debate can take place- where the pros and cons, and more importantly the confusion, of current copyright laws are on display.
4) Podcasting will have a lot more bark than bite.
5) Apple will remain victorious in its fight against insider information, despite challenges.
6) Volunteer Collective Licensing will become a reality- for a while, it'll be ugly and fraught with disagreements and legal red tape- it will also be embraced by consumers.
7) A new form of advertising will seriously challenge Google's dominance.
8) Ebay v. MercExchange will be decided in Ebay's favor.
9) The issue of whether a company can use its own laws to sue an action that took place in another country will be decided (example: lance armstrong's published comments in France denouncing an Italian biker used as grounds for the Italian courts to sue armstrong- as the act of reading the online paper justified libel). A new standard will develop limiting lawsuits from one country to another- however, it will not stop corporations from bullying the hell out of each other when it comes to copyright concerns.
10) Municipal Wi-Fi will continue to be haunted by political and economic difficulties. Broadband over power lines will continue to be haunted by technical difficulties. Both will progress, neither will reach the masses.

Article/Issue: NYTimes, Justin Berry, and Child Pornography on the Web

The result of a 6 month investigation into the world of child pornography on the internet, the New York Times today published a gripping article that tells the chilling story of Justin Berry, who became a child porn webcam "star." A snippet:

Justin's dark coming-of-age story is a collateral effect of recent technological advances. Minors, often under the online tutelage of adults, are opening for-pay pornography sites featuring their own images sent onto the Internet by inexpensive Webcams. And they perform from the privacy of home, while parents are nearby, beyond their children's closed bedroom doors.

The business has created youthful Internet pornography stars - with nicknames like Riotboyy, Miss Honey and Gigglez - whose images are traded online long after their sites have vanished. In this world, adolescents announce schedules of their next masturbation for customers who pay fees for the performance or monthly subscription charges. Eager customers can even buy "private shows," in which teenagers sexually perform while following real-time instructions.

Unfortunately, this is nothing we haven't heard before. Although an extremely well-written article, the case of Justin Berry is not a new phenomenon as the article suggests- these sorts of acts have been going on since the creation of the internet. It's been over four years now that Philip Jenkins' Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography and The Internet was published, a scathing account of the state of child porn on the internet based on Jenkins' research in the area (Jenkins is actually quoted in "A Shadowy Trade Migrates to the Web", a supplemental article about child pornography and the web). The New York Times article reinforces that while there has been much media coverage since Jenkin's book, little has changed.

Despite this, media coverage has led to increased law enforcement attention- namely Operation Innocent Images and crackdowns on groups like the Orchid Club in San Jose and the international Wonderland Club. Conservative and liberal groups have also added pressure, and supported legislation like the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. Finally ISPs, often through media or consumer pressure, have offered free or discounted filtering software and have removed child pornography havens (like newsgroups like alt.binary.pictures.erotica.lolita, discussed at length in Beyond Tolerance).

The demand side of the equation, however, is astounding. Psychologically, the profile of Justin's 'fans' is in line with pedophiles in general. As the NYTimes article "Where the Credit Card Trail Leads" points out:

Of the 300 subscribers to Justin's site whose identities were checked, a large percentage were in professions that placed them in the proximity of children on almost a daily basis. There were pediatricians and elementary school teachers, as well as lawyers who represent children in court. But there were also subscribers whose careers seemed unrelated to children, including a public official in the West and the president of a privately held construction company who used his corporate credit card to sign up for the site.

Experts in the field of child sexual exploitation said such findings - particularly the prominence of adults having careers that placed them near children - were consistent with anecdotal evidence from law enforcement.

These are people that have gravitated towards children as a result of their sickness, both online and off. They are also people, however, who are 'well off' members of society that probably have a life- family, friends, reputation, career- that would be devastated if they acted on their desires. The internet offers them an outlet, with much less risk. The case with Justin is somewhat unique... he kept detailed records of transactions and online discussions between him and his admirers. Most transactions aren't that well documented... and even so, one would assume precautions would be taken on the part of the pedophiles. Using your personal credit card to send online payments to a 13-16 year old in exchange for video/pictures?

And this is what really gets me, what disturbs me at the deepest level. These are actions taken by people who are extremely disturbed, but that also feels a deep level of comfort on the internet... likely because it is part of a pattern of behavior that has been going on for quite a while. I just don't see any pedophile, given the level of paranoia associated with most (read Jenkins for more on that), jumping into a situation where personal and credit card information is tied to child pornography.

So what can the law do about it? Its extremely complex. For one, the makeup of users that trade child pornography can be divided into a small set of super-users, that spend an exceptional amount of time trading, disseminating, and in some cases manufacturing child pornography. There's a much larger set of what one might call 'amateur' pedophiles- they have an interest in the material, but are not active 'community members.' In the Justin Berry case, the super-users might be comprised of the members that gave him credit card information, bought him gifts, solicited him for pornography and sex, and took Justin's images and disseminated them across the internet to the extent that there was, as the Times writes, a "mythology" surrounding him. The amateurs are the users that discuss and repost Justin's images in newsgroups, bulletin boards, websites, and the like.

I would argue that a different strategy needs to be taken for each, with respect to the law. First, child pornography will not be totally eradicated... it will not happen, and the net, even if authoritatively regulated, will be used as a medium for illicit material. Second, amatuers may be effectively deterred by more reliable enforcement of existing laws- these individuals can be assumed to have a more rational cost-benefit motive in looking at child pornography- not driven by the sort of pathology that super-users have. Symbolic acts- like increased media reporting- also helps to deter such users.

The hardcore users, however, will not be deterred by this, and they tend to be fairly computer-savy (for example most of the material that the Wonderland Club collected has not yet been analyzed due to encryption based on the USSR's KGB code). These users are also obviously the most important targets in ridding the net of child pornography. There is no golden bullet, but here are some places that would help:

1. Pressure the major chat companies to regulate user rooms: In 2003, Microsoft closed down its free chat rooms amid concerns over child molestors. In the early 1990's AOL started paying some employees to monitor chat rooms, and initiated a kid-only area (which has been effective save for rare incidents). What does Yahoo do? They didn't do anything for a while (Yahoo! chat rooms and user groups had become a haven for child pornography- in fact, one such user group, "Candyman" was the name given to part of the F.B.I. Operation Innocent Images, "Operation Candyman"). Now, Yahoo! has closed down its user-created chat rooms and requires that users be over 18. These standards need to be applied across the board, and complaints need to be answered swiftly. The same goes for chat that allows webcam use. In both cases, companies have in the past earned much of their revenue off of sexually charged communication, some of which comes from underaged users. Some net libertarians may feel that ISPs are not responsible, and that such content not only impedes on the freedom of the internet, but also endangers free speech. I don't agree- the same sort of chat can and will go on I'm sure- but now its more encouraged to go on in adult chat rooms. By removing adult-child sex chat from the mainstream providers, companies have eroded some of the sense of community that pedophiles hold onto. While it may impede on freedom (for example I can no longer make my own chat room about say, internet law), it does not jeopardize speech (I can talk about internet law all I want in a pre-designated law chatroom, or any other room for that matter- and it will probably be about as boring as this blog).

2. Tap into net community: Groups like the Anti Porn Militia and Condemned.org have, since 2000, joined law enforcement in an effort to eradicate child pornography on the web. This is in sharp contrast to other vigilante groups such as Perverted Justice, that rely on harassment campaigns and knee-jerk media coverage, techniques that have earned them the apprehension and in some cases contempt of law enforcement (another group, Corrupted Justice, which claims to be comprised of past PJ members and participants, has been created to criticize PJ's practices). I can understand the desire, when faced with stories like Justin, to strike up the "the government isn't doing enough!!!" choir, and to support vigilante acts. But I don't think it should be about pressing sex chat room users into an ambush- that doesn't really do anything in the long term. It should be about STRUCTURAL changes. If Perverted Justice wants to actually have an impact, it should work closely with law enforcement, allow transparency into their orginization, and finally, mobilize users against SPECIFIC internet suppliers. Ask the big questions- what ISPs are the most pedophile-friendly? what newgroups need to be banned? where are pedophile communities on the net?

3. Increase international cooperation: Countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have traditionally been the starting point for a lot of child pornography that gets created and sent over to the States and other places. Removing child pornography on the internet, in the case of hardcore users that may route their connection through different channels, requires the cooperation of the international community. It also would help if the United States applied extraterritorial law to at least ONE of the pedophiles that go from the States to countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Phillipines to molest children and then return (the argument is that its too expensive and time consuming to prosecute such cases, which often involve foreign, hard to find witnesses). It would also be nice if servers in other countries didn't routinely give access to child pornography sites. ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) released a report last month calling for more international cooperation, noting the global nature of an industry that the F.B.I. claims is around 20 billion dollars.

The content control of the internet needs to be re-thought, in terms of who has responsibility for what. As BlueBerry, a hacker for condemned.org suggests, if the internet community does not regulate itself, than external forces will. I'm fine with ad-hoc coalitions and companies regulating child pornography- but its taken how long for MSN, Yahoo!, and AOL to take steps towards this end?

News: Couple of Quick Updates

Honestly, its been a pretty slow week for internet tech news... maybe if I was into the ongoing Blackberry patent war... but the only interest that particular issue holds for me is as an example of an increasingly confusing area of software patent legislation.

However, amidst a sea of mediocrity, there were a couple of interesting takes on tech law. First, professor Tim Wu's commentary in ZDNet News on the value of neutrality and the misguided actions of recent companies is definitely worth reading. In it, he argues the well known Sony DRM fiasco and BellSouth's attempts at regulating bandwidth are short-sighted, and fail due to the demands of the market.

I wish he would have pressed the issue further and explored possible compromises between the demands of the market and the protectionist tendencies of such companies, because as it stands its unclear how a company like Sony can reconcile the copy-related attributes of a CD that consumers want with piracy concerns. Basically, service companies like Google, Yahoo, or iTunes are more than happy to keep everything neutral and free: they just want people to come in the door. But in doing this, they're leveraging the goods offered by BellSouth (bandwith) and Sony (protected content). Wu's right that the ability to copy a CD has now become accepted as part of the value of that CD- but to what extent? There's no way to test how much of a tradeoff consumers are willing to take, so Sony strives in both directions- towards protectionism with DRM, and towards neutrality with the Sony/Playlouder agreement. They need to find a compromise for CD's that gives consumers what they want and offers protection from piracy, and Wu gives no guidance on how that's done, instead, he wrongfully compares companies that play different roles in the market. I want to know what he has to say about the next stab at copy protection, the 'walled garden' approach.

Given the next wave of RIAA lawsuits that's a'comin, I hope the companies start to embrace neutrality a bit more, and the analysts understand that what works for Google doesn't necessarily work for everyone.

Second, the cease-and-desist letter sent out to PearlLyrics offers up another entertaining attempt of a big company threatening a small company with a lot of smoke and noise. Fred von Lohmann of the EFF responds with some legal jargon of his own. It's an issue that harks back to the ongoing problems with cease-and-desist letters that I wrote about last week based on the Brennan Law Report. In the end, Warner/Chapell, the company that sent the letter, backed off, and somewhat apologized. Woo-hoo.

Report: SOFTWARE PIRATES!!!! New Report from BSA as Bad as Old Reports from BSA

Business Software Alliance, an organization that presses for the interests of software companies, released a study yesterday claiming widespread economic benefits for countries that cut their piracy rates, particularly countries like China and Russia, which have high piracy rates and large IT potential. A piece in the Mercury News by Robert Hollyman, CEO of BSA, highlights the key claims of the report. For example a 10-point drop in the Asia-Pacific area, according to BSA, would yield 2 million new jobs and an additional $135 billion in economic growth. Worldwide, if the rate of piracy dropped from the current 35% down to 25%, by 2009 there would be an increase of 2.4 million new jobs. $400 million in economic growth, and $67 million in tax revenue.

Seem like a stretch? That's because it is. In the past, similar reports by the BSA have been blasted as 'scaremongering' and criticized for sketchy methodology. For example a 2003 report was attacked by noting that if BSA's analysis held true, than countries like South Korea and the Phillipines, which have substantially strenghtened their anti-piracy laws, would have seen MUCH higher growth rates. In the latest round over the 2005 report, the Economist has taken a swing in an article simply titled "Dodgy Software Piracy Data." For those of us without a subscription, Coronte excerpts part of the article and gives commentary. I took a look at the report itself, and found this point of methodology somewhat startling:

"Piracy Effects--the method by which the study calculates the impact of piracy on an industry measure. The study calculated different effects from piracy on software, services, and channel spending and employment, and tax revenues. In the case of software, IDC used a linear relationship between a falling piracy rate and growing software spending. (E.g. If a country has a 50% piracy rate and $100 million software spending, lowering the rate to 0% would create a theoretical $200 million in software spending).) While not every piece of formerly pirated software will be purchased if piracy rates go down-some will be substituted, some not used-at the same time lower piracy rates yield more economic activity that stimulates more software production and purchase. The two countervailing forces seem to cancel each other out. This is the conventional assumption for most previously published piracy studies."

So for every dollar lost from software piracy, the report assumes an additional dollar in software spending. WHAT??!! In less developed countries like China and Russia, I think this assumption can hardly be held up. It would be nice if they, say, footnoted or cited such "previously published piracy studies." I'd be suprised if much of the pirating population in developing countries were actually realistic prospects for selling software to... an example in the States is colleges: a lot of college students like to use programs like Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop for what amounts to basically playing around with image and web design. If you cracked down on their illegal use, it would not equate in these students going out and purchasing $800 dollar software tools- they would simply not use the programs. The same is true for many businesses in Russia and China- they're piracy is motivated by a lack of purchasing power... as well as the availability of pirated software.

This availability is what I believe the BSA should focus on. Piracy is stealing, don't get me wrong, and organizations that exist to pirate software ought to be stopped. But to assume that tax revenue and jobs will skyrocket isn't just unrealistic, it can be harmful to developing countries to focus on restrictive anti-piracy laws. I remember a couple of years ago reading an article on Russia in Foreign Affairs on how seemingly high levels of corruption, cronyism, and authoritarianism were widely exaggerated when comparing Russian against other middle-income countries. The point is that piracy, like gaft and cronyism, might just be part of the growing pains of a developing country.

If that's the case, than JUST implementing stronger anti-piracy laws won't help, because the root of the problem goes much deeper. Laws are only helpful in an environment that can enforce them. Suggesting the narrow, corporate-minded solutions of the BSA does little to help guide countries in economic growth or overcoming piracy. A more workable legal structure, and a stable IT industry, needs to exist before nations can benefit from such solutions. Stronger anti-piracy laws isn't a predicator of stability, it is a reflection of it... and to argue otherwise is an uphill battle, especially when your methodology sucks.

Random: Online Pocket Aces get wasted when ISP experiences "Random Shooting"

Quick post- not too much is happening in the world of law and internet technology (barring the ongoing RIM patent war, which I have very little interest in covering)... except that a man playing online poker has his POCKET ACES wasted AFTER he goes ALL IN... when an ISP is disrupted by (no, seriously) "random gunfire" that takes down one of its aerial wires. A spokesman for the ISP noted during a press conference, "a way to prevent this? don't shoot guns randomly." I bet he got paid to say that.

Seriously. Random gunfire. The only time when internet service provider customer support gets to act even a little hardcore- "Oh your connection is lost? Yea, sorry, must of been RANDOM GUNFIRE. Happens from time to time. Yea, our life insurance policy is real good here."

Report: Fair Use Under Fire

A report entitled "Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control" by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice has just been released. There's been some buzz about this long awaited result of a fairly large research undertaking, in conjunction with the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. As a brief techdirt post suggests, the report and the surrounding debate are helping to define fair use.

At the beginning of the report, I started to feel uneasy about some of the underlying analogies that the group uses. In particular,

"ISPs are akin to telephone lines and highways: they provide a means of transport. Wrongs committed by users of telephones or drivers of highways are not attributed to those providing the conduits."

Hmmmm... not sure if I agree with that. In a previous post on SBC and content charging by telecommunications companies, I argue that such regulation was tantamount to a toll booth charging you once to use a bridge, and then again for every lane you'd like to use. I still believe in that- but this case is different. When telecommunications companies regulate, they are regulating the form of the content- video, audio, image, ect. -not the content itself. You should be able to have a set amount of bandwith and use it for what you want: VOIP, uploding pictures, watching video, whatever. But that doesn't mean ISPs should allow you to use your bandwith to perform illegal acts like steal copyrighted material.

Granted, I don't want most of the content of the internet to be regulated. In fact, the value of the internet is enshrined in its collaborative and free nature. But when content slides into illegal material, then it may need to be regulated, and ISPs play a part in all of this. First off, the analogy the report uses is false. The current system does not "attribute" the wrongs of internet users on ISPs, and there is no indication that such a system will be put into place. If an ISP has not been notified of a user's wrongdoing, it should not and does not have culpability in the matter. However, once an ISP has been notified, it has a responsibility, just as the providers of telephone lines and highways (the state) have an obligation to respond to wrongdoing. If I call the police or phone provider because someone is calling me every 3 minutes and leaving obscene, violent threats, they need to look into it. Likewise if I see someone driving visibly drunk in my neighborhood and call the cops, they need to respond. When it comes to ISPs, take the example of child pornography: although laws requiring that ISPs block or filter child porn have been struck down (for over-filtering purposes), ISPs still play a large part in blocking such material in response to complaints and can be punished by law for neglecting complaints.

I admit that there is a pattern of behavior among ISPs to take down material of questionable legality, but that doesn't equal a blanket immunity as to the responsibilities of the ISP.

The article was, fortunately, much better from there. The paper makes a well-backed analysis of how jumbled and confusing fair use laws are right now. The authors write:

"Michael Madison describes the [four pronged] doctrine [of fair use] as "so fragmanted as to make it useless as a predictive device" and abstract "to the point of incoherence." Kenneth Crew says: fair use "has been derided as among the most hopelessly vague of legal standards"; it causes "ample confusion among lawyers and laypersons alike, who often need to understand its nuances and live by its tenous and fragile principles."

This is a nightmare for creative minds on the internet. There is no clear standard of what can and cannot be used, and information about the legality of fair use is sparse. Furthermore, defending against the threat of a large company via a cease and desist letter is an intimidating prospect for an individual or small company, given the potential costs in legal fees alone. In one case the widely publicized Village Voice attempted bullying a periodical called the Cape Cod Voice into changing their name, given possible confusion over the term Voice in the two titles. The article reports,

"Dan Hamilton, managing editor of the Cape Cod Voice... noted "the new corporate tendency to fire off a scattershot of nasty letters to anyone who, in their opinion, poses even a vague threat to their trademarks." He told us he was "astonished at how easy it is for a large corporation to make an absurd claim about a common English term.""

...And in most of the cases where the recipient of a cease and desist letter fought back, the case was quickly dropped. Which makes sense, because while there aren't any punishments and minimal cost in sending out nasty cease and desist letters RIAA-style, there are in frivilous lawsuits. Still, there needs to be a lot more clarity and awareness about what exactly fair use is, so that creators CAN fight back - and that can't happen until a better fair use standard has been reached. So what are their recommendations, well,

"Our recommendations include creating a clearinghouse for information, including sample replies to cease and desist letters and take-down notices; a legal support network; outreach to Internet service providers to encourage help for those targeted by take-down letters; and changes in the law to reduce the cost of guessing wrong about fair use."

Definitely helpful, but truthfully, I'm not sure how much progress will be made on fair use through them. At the heart of the issue is a very vague legal standard that has no consistent legal precedent in its application. It's hard to tell ISPs or individuals what is and what is not appropriate to take down when there is no clear standard. More legal support, outreach, and defense resources will press the issue - but until it reaches the courts, the confusion and lawsuits will continue unabated.

News: Porn's Dominion

Internet=Porn. We all know the score, have heard the jokes, and probably run into (either deliberately or accidentally) our own fair share of pornographic websites. And ever since the internet has been in existence, there has been much debate over how obscenity can be appropriately regulated.

Last June, our good friends at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) agreed to go forward with a new top-level domain (TLD), .xxx. The agreement involved setting the price of the .xxx sites at $60 a pop, roughly ten times higher than comparable .com sites, with many hoping adult companies to voluntarily take on the .xxx suffix.

In response to this, the conservative Family Research Council issued a statement opposing the .xxx domain on the grounds that it would create more, not less, pornography. The assumption being that adult companies would have little incentive to lose the .com name. Instead, for example, Playboy would own both www.playboy.com and www.playboy.xxx. They Family Research Council also goes on to argue that the .xxx domain idea gives legitimacy to porn companies and may dissuade law enforcement from pursuing cases by making it seem like the problem of pornography on the internet is fixed.

Then in August, another swipe at the .xxx domain name took place as governments banded together, lead by the U.S. Department of Commerce, to delay the implementation of the .xxx domain while concerns were being mulled over. In his blog www.freedom-to-tinker.com, Prof. Ed Felton provided more academic concerns, writing about how the .xxx domain will not only be trivial, unnecessary, create more sites, and cause confusion, but also threatens the delicate relationship that ICANN has with the internet.

Today, reports note that ICANN is once again delaying the decision due to pressure from the U.S. government, reversing previous assumptions that the issue would be dealt with at the upcoming ICANN conference in Vancouver.

Personally, I think a new top-level domain name is a pretty good idea. First, to deal with the concerns of the Family Research Council- the question of whether more pornography or less pornography exists isn't really relevant, it's the question of how accessible and regulated this pornography is. As far as the community is concerned, a wide assortment of pornographic magazines held behind a store counter with only the titles showing is far less a concern than a store with only a few pornographic magazines that does not regulate who is able to look through them. That's the point of red-light districts and adult only sections of movie stores: it makes regulation of such material easier.

Their second argument, the idea that .xxx will give pornography companies legitimacy seems to have zero basis in law. Pornography is constitutionally protected free speech, it is legitimate, end of story. It can and should be regulated, but the same goes for commercial and other forms of free speech. Giving porn a separate domain name does give material an easy to find label, but that label clearly states ADULT ONLY.

Finally, with respect to law enforcement, I'm not sure whether or not an .xxx domain will dissuade persecution of porn companies. What I DO know is that we're not exactly pressing a whole lot of charges in the current political atmosphere, and a .xxx domain makes legislating regulations easier.

As for Felton's arguments... the first that it may become confusing having .xxx and .com, for example imagine all of the companies scooping up sites like www.yahoo.xxx and www.google.xxx. This confusion isn't new, and in fact the .xxx might mitigate a lot of the confusion that already goes on. I think the easiest example of a porn site that attracts huge amounts of traffic by strategy of confusion is www.whitehouse.com (but there's a ton out there, the last one I ran into was www.foreignaffairs.com, because I didn't realize that the Foreign Affairs periodical online was under a .org not .com name- other famous examples include ). The idea that I'm going to 'accidentally' type in a .xxx domain name takes a leap of faith that I'm unwilling to believe in.

The .xxx WILL create more sites. But perhaps the .com sites can now be better used as blocker sites. Most 'legitimate' pornography companies have introduction sites that ask users if they are above or below 18 (not that i'd know or anything). This, at the very least, provides a disclaimer for the material within the site-just as an ADULTS ONLY sign in a video store back section does (although since your community members probably aren't hanging around your computer, virtual disclaimers are less effective than physical ones). Perhaps the .com site can become the disclaimer, and when you acknowledge your legally eligible and click the 'I'm above 18' button, it takes you to the .xxx site. Another possibility would be the .com becoming the introductory pages to the site, using sexually suggestive but not hardcore images in the .com site. If either of these occurred and more pornography companies moved to the .xxx domain, filtering would become a lot easier for parents... another point I disagree with, Felton's unsupported assertion that current filtering technologies works effectively.

The last issue is internet governance. Despite the objections from some like Felton that feel that ICANN is moving into regulating content, and others that feel ICANN is bowing under U.S. pressure by NOT going forward with the .xxx site at the whim of a conservative administration, the right thing for ICANN to do is ignore both positions. As Joi Ito, an individual board member of ICANN points out, the proposed .xxx domain name is being done in a fair, democratic manner in which the nature of content will be decided by external organizations (including org's dedicated to freedom of speech, privacy, fairness in online content, credit card companies, and the adult entertainment industry). Take a look at the ICANN .xxx application, you might be surprised. In a statement by the Center for Democracy and Technology, John Morris concurs, arguing that in essence ICANN is only providing an appropriate structure for the internet given the role and scope of pornography on the internet, without making regulatory recommendations (in fact the choice of .xxx and not .porn or .sex represents this, being taken for its straightforward, unambiguous nature). While there might be valid concerns, they should not stop ICANN from going forward... it is a disappointment that such objections are once again bogging down the process of building a better internet.

Advocacy: China and Freedom of Speech on the Internet

Quick post- Today's CNET news has a perspective piece by Julien Pain, from the group Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog group known mainly for its indexing of how press-friendly countries are. An outgrowth of this advocacy has made the organization a leading voice in freedom of expression protection on the internet, particularly in China. In Pain's article, he details examples of government abuses:

Microsoft censors the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces, using a blacklist provided by authorities in Beijing. You cannot enter the terms "democracy" or even "capitalism" in the Chinese version of MSN Spaces as the system automatically rejects these words.

Cisco Systems built the entire infrastructure of the Chinese Internet and allegedly supplied the Chinese security services with equipment that
enables them to monitor Internet users.

Finally Google, which has always refused to censor its search engine, nonetheless agreed last year to eliminate all "subversive" news sources from Google News China.

He goes on to note that Reporters Without Borders has long-fought these sorts of abuses, a battle that has created a monthly newsletter on China's actions sent to the heads of 16 tech companies complicent in freedom of speech restrictions. He concludes that such efforts were in the end, ineffective, as were the scores of news articles about the subject. In concluding the piece, he argues,

what is the best way to get concrete results? We think it is time to involve U.S. congressmen. They could, for example, call on corporations such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to define a joint position on the requests they receive from repressive governments, a code of conduct that each of them would undertake and respect. These rules could include a ban on any censorship by them of such terms as "democracy" and "human rights."

If these companies refuse to regulate themselves within a reasonable deadline, it might then be necessary for the Senate or House of Representatives to draft legislation. The threat, at least, should be brandished right away.

I agree in part. I'm not convinced that the involvement of U.S. congressmen will amount to much. A while ago the Metro of Silicon Valley had an engaging account of the politics surrounding the U.S. (lack of) policy dealing with technology and China-namely Cisco CEO John Chambers and Operation Golden Shield, the filtering/censorship ability Pain mentioned. As DK Sweet writes in the Metro,

The House of Representatives Policy Committee stated the official position of the Republican majority in a report dramatically titled "Tear Down This Firewall." But in a sickening display of cowardice and hypocrisy, the report advocates massive government intervention to free the global Internet but stops short of calling for sanctions on the transfer of U.S. firewall and surveillance technologies to China.

The Metro also goes on to note that in the case of Cisco, despite their public stance that they are ammoral in regards to China and do not follow what is done with their technology, Cisco reps routinely tout the filtering abilities of their software to Chinese buyers.

Simply put, there's too much money involved for me to have much faith in Congressional Action. TRUCKLOADS AND TRUCKLOADS OF MONEY that is guaranteeing a strong American presence in the largest growing consumer market in the world.

In the end, I think it's a question of awareness. In the face of rampant child pornography, large ISPs did nothing for a while... until headlines started appearing with the words like "AOL" and "MSN" in the same sentence as "Child Pornography." The same thing with spam. Threatening congressional action of the sort Pain advocates is a questionable move: such legislation will have little to no chance of success, but it will likely bring more attention to the subject.

Congressional Attention is good... but if not backed by general consumer awareness, it won't amount to much. I think the key is to focus in on one large company (say Google or Yahoo) with a stated social justice policy and try to cause even a minor policy change. That might not cause an immediate ripple effect, but it would certainly create an explosion of news articles. Diversifying a newsletter to hit 16 CEOs of major companies is overly lofty- better to take on one company with a really bad record, or one that is likely to make changes, than to cover more companies with less focus.

(Photograph by Filipe Buitrago from Metroactive Online)