CYBERPORN

[User772103@AOL.COM]

Subject: CYBERPORN

This is my first post.  I saw the following in a freebie shopping sheet that
I get in my mail.  It is a regular column called The Business Computer by
Franklynn Peterson and Judy K-Turkel.  I got permission to post this from
Peterson who requests that no one print this without getting his permission
as the newspapers who buy his column would not be pleased.  BTW, he thinks
librarians are great!

"What would you think if the government of China passed a law that tried to
keep you from publishing the Declaration of Independence on the Internet?

Sure it's a trick question.  But not too tricky, because some members of
Congress are claiming to be making laws that tell the entire world how they
can and can't use the Internet.

It's as if nobody in Washington knows that the Internet doesn't belong to one
nation.  It's incapable of being ruled by any country's laws, even ours.

The folks who are crying the loudest about a need to police the Internet just
show how little time they've spent using it in *any* way.  Anyone who has
will agree with the midwest editor whose newspaper just connected to it.  He
says, "I can't find the dirty sections everyone's talking about.  It's
awfully hard to find *anything* there."

We spend many hours a week wired into computerized information exchanges from
the Internet to CompuServe to America Online and beyond.  We haven't yet
happened on any dirty pictures, child porn ads or other things a 10-year old
might find salacious.

We asked other Cyberniks for leads.  They didn't know, and suggested we look
in one of those encyclopedic "every address on the Internet" paperback books.

We do occasionally come across some shocking language passing over computer
lines.  But it's a lot less than in most PG-13 films.  And most of what we
read is pretty literate.  Even our sons had to learn how to spell (and after
we'd given up on them!) to get intelligible messages across.

We don't dispute the fact that a Congressman is running through the House's
once-hallowed halls with a file full of dirty pictures that were downloaded
from someplace on the Internet.  But let us tell you how much work went into
compiling his X-rated library.  Judge whether your 10-year-old could manage
to do it without your knowledge.

First, there's the mechanics.  Technically speaking, the Internet is a mighty
crude computer system.  It's especially clumsy at showing pictures.  It runs
slowly at best.  It takes us five minutes, on a new Pentium PC, before we can
view Microsoft's home page on the Internet with all its little pictures.

To keep everyone from getting bored at home while their screen gets painted
with what they're trying to see, nowadays most good Internet software tries
to find a way to substitute text for graphics.  That way, the user sees
something intelligible on screen while the lengthy graphics-copying procedure
takes place.

We're willing to bet that it took the Congressman, or an assistant paid to
kill time, 20 or 30 minutes before he could actually see each dirty picture
he hunted down.  If his software wasn't sophisticated, what he saw onscreen
didn't even match TV-screen quality.  Getting printouts for show and tell
required the patience to wait up to half an hour a picture.

If your 10-year-old has the patience to put 45 minutes into printing one
dirty picture, and you tend to leave him unattended for that long at a time,
we suspect that he'll get into more life-threatening trouble that just
looking at dirty pictures.

And we're not sure we want any chipping away at one of the four great
freedoms our Constitution gives us just to protect careless parents.

But mechanics aside, there's a much more basic reason for Congress not to try
to make laws about what can and can't be put on the Internet.  It's this:
 The US government doesn't own it.

Nobody owns it.

In fact, physically the Internet doesn't exist.

The Internet is made up of all the people, computers and wires that swap
communications on a voluntary basis.  On the Internet, there are no national
boundaries.  Nearly every university in the world uses it.  So do most
national government offices in most countries of the world.  So do half the
businesses in the world with 1,000 employees or more.

Trying to limit what's put on the Internet would be like trying to erect
fences to keep ash from Mount Pinatuba's volcanic eruption from blowing over
the US.

When we logged onto the Internet last week and sent a message and some files
to a CPA we know in New Orleans, we connected our computer via phone line to
an Ameritech office in southern Wisconsin.  Ameritech sent our data to a
CompuServe computer near Chicago.  From there, it went to a university in New
Zealand (perhaps passing first through a convenient computer in Australia or
a satellite hovering in space).

When the CPA checked his E-mail, our message and files got routed from New
Zealand to New Orleans.

The CPA firm in New Orleans uses a New Zealand router because of business
ties to a New Zealand firm.  It's multinational, like so many small firms are
today.  The Internet's ability to provide cheap, fast communication around
the globe fosters multinational growth.  In brief, Internet brings in foreign
business and foreign capital.  It helps America grow.

When the New Orleans CPA swaps files and E-mail with business partners in
Salt Lake City and Atlanta, they use the same New Zealand Internet connection
that they're paying for to contact the New Zealand associate.  So here's the
hypothetical question:  What if they swapped on off-color letter and it were
potentially unlawful?  Would the US government have to ask the New Zealand
government to extradite these three fellows from New Orleans, Atlanta and
Salt Lake City?

Of course its ludicrous.  It's even more ludicrous for Congress to still be
trying, after centuries of failure, to legislate morality.  And it gets even
harder as we invent more boundary-defying technologies.

Grow up, Congress.  Trying to clean up the Internet is nothing more noble
than tilting at windmills.  Instead, do what you promised last time we voted
you in.

Clean up your own house (and senate)."

Copyright 1995.  P/K Associates, Inc.  3006 Gregory St.  Madison, WI
 53711-1847.  73220.117@COMPUSERVE.COM