OPLIN Semi-Annual Report

New Zealand's Section 92A

2009-03-19T11:17:00.003-04:00

The last few months have seen interesting developments in New Zealand in regard to controlling copyright infringement on the Internet. New Zealand's 1994 Copyright Act was amended last year to accommodate new technologies, with the most controversial amendment being the new Section 92A, which states, "An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat [copyright] infringer."

Originally the new law was scheduled to take effect on February 28, but objections from Internet service providers (ISPs) and alliances of creative artists (but not from New Zealand's creative industries, which generally welcomed the law) forced a delay. ISPs noted that the law did not require proof of infringement, just an accusation of infringement, before an account is disconnected. Libraries pointed out that, as written, the law would require ISPs to disconnect them from the Internet if a number of rogue library users abused copyright restrictions. The Creative Freedom Foundation called for a nation-wide Internet blackout to protest Section 92A, which they referred to as the "Guilt Upon Accusation" law.

The law is now due to take effect on March 27 if two non-governmental groups—the Telecommunications Carriers Forum and selected copyright holders—agree on a policy. One of the largest ISPs, TelstraClear, has withdrawn from the negotiations protesting the law as unworkable.

UPDATE, March 24, 2009. Yesterday the New Zealand government decided to rewrite this legislation. Commerce Minister Simon Power said, "Allowing section 92A to come into force in its current format would not be appropriate given the level of uncertainty around its operation."

Children and the Internet: Not so bad?

2009-01-23T15:42:00.003-05:00

Two recent developments seem to indicate that children might not require as much protection from the Internet as public policy makers once thought.

On December 31, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force released its Final Report. This group was created in February 2008 by the "Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace" to consider technologies that industry and end users, including parents, could use to help keep minors safer on the Internet. The Final Report concluded, however, that the problem of bullying among children (online and offline) is a more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of children by adults, and that minors are actually unlikely to be propositioned by adults online.

Then on January 21, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was enacted by Congress in 1998 and immediately challenged in the courts, died a quiet death when the US Supreme Court rejected the Act without comment. COPA would have required US-based websites displaying anything that might violate "contemporary community standards" to block minors from accessing the material, but the court system repeated found that COPA was over-broad and violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

Australia's Internet filtering in the news

2009-01-05T14:32:00.002-05:00

Australia's plan to mandate nationwide Internet filtering is attracting a lot of attention and significant opposition.

The proposed system filters the Internet at two levels. First, all Australian Internet service providers (ISPs) must block access to around 10,000 Web sites on a list maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Second, ISPs are required to provide an optional filter that individuals could use to block other Internet material deemed unsuitable for children. The government has allocated 45 million Australian dollars ($30.7 million) for the filtering.

Now, however, some Australian ISPs have expressed reservations about participating in tests of the filter system. Two of the largest ISPs have refused altogether to join trials and others will only commit to testing less extensive filtering.

Additionally, a government report commissioned in 2007 and released just before Christmas points to many difficulties with implementing such a scheme. Children's safety organizations seem to be split in their opinions of the plan, with some supporting it while others question its effectiveness and cost.

Other nations have other approaches to controlling dangerous content on the Internet. In Egypt and Iran, bloggers have been imprisoned; in North Korea there is virtually no Internet access; China has a pervasive filtering system; and Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have filters, but they are voluntary. In the United States, Pennsylvania briefly imposed requirements for ISPs to block child-pornography sites, but a federal court struck down the law because the filters also blocked legitimate sites.

2008-10-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

It looks now like the Australian filtering plan, mentioned in this blog last February, will be mandatory for all Australians. In response to public outcry last February, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said that the filters would be enabled by default but consumers could request unfiltered connectivity if they wished to opt-out of the program. Now it appears there is a core blacklist of "illegal" sites that will always be blocked for everyone.

Ars Technica points out that, "'Illegal' is a broad definition, leaving users wondering exactly what kinds of content will end up falling prey to the government's apparently mandatory filtering restrictions."

Britain creates new web watchdog

2008-09-29T14:39:00.000-04:00

In the United Kingdom, the Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has been created to teach children about web dangers, target harmful net content, and establish a code of conduct for sites featuring material uploaded by users.

The council, which will report to the prime minister, will have a membership of more than 100 organizations, including technology companies such as Microsoft and Google, websites such as Facebook, and mobile phone companies. Their goal is to create a child internet safety strategy that will establish a public awareness safety campaign, establish measures to protect children and young people, promote responsible advertising to children online, and establish voluntary codes of practice for web sites.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that it will be a "...challenge for us is to make sure young people can use the internet safely and do so with the minimum of restrictions but the maximum of opportunities."

Comcast dumps Usenet

2008-09-29T14:24:00.000-04:00

The trend toward banning Usenet news groups, begun early in the summer as a result of actions by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, continues with the announcement by Comcast that they have become the latest Internet Service Provider to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups as part of a voluntary agreement to try and fight child porn online. The voluntary measures were part of an agreement among the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG).

Seventeen other cable providers across the US have now taken similar action. Critics worry that these actions are overzealous and could turn into a trend that enables governments to regulate content that is arbitrarily deemed harmful to the public good.

Circuit Court Strikes Down Children's Online Protection Act

2008-07-23T08:11:00.000-04:00

On July 22 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion in ACLU v. Mukasey affirming the District Court and holding that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is unconstitutional. The court held that COPA is vague and overbroad, and that it does not constitute the least restrictive means of protecting children. In reaching these conclusions, the court also confirmed that COPA does not apply to websites outside the U.S.

New York Attorney General gets agreement to limit child pornography

2008-06-12T14:57:00.000-04:00

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced this week that Time Warner Cable, Sprint, and Verizon will take aggressive steps to limit access to child pornography over their networks.

Mr. Cuomo's office began an investigation of online child pornography over six months ago. Undercover agents from his office would pose as subscribers and complain to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography even though they had customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. When the providers' responses did not satisfy the AG's office, they threatened legal action.

Cuomo's office uncovered 88 internet Usenet newsgroups used by child pornographers, as well as more than 11,000 "sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children." The agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers' access to Usenet -- which began nearly 30 years ago and was one of the earliest ways to swap information online -- even though only a handful of the 100,000 Usenet discussion groups contain illegal material.

Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas." The agreements will affect customers not just in New York but throughout the country.

The three service providers will also pay $1.125 million to the Attorney General's office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to fund further efforts.

While government watchdog groups in other countries have succeeded in getting Internet service providers to limit the kind of traffic available on their networks, this seems to be the first significant agreement in the United States, where protected speech is an important civil liberty. Britain's Internet Watch Foundation estimates that nearly 80 per cent of the world's commercial child pornography is hosted on web servers located in the United States, but only a handful of service providers have signed on with NCMEC. (Federal law requires service providers to report child pornography to the National Center, but it often takes customer complaints to trigger a report.)

Senate Moves Ahead with Bill to Fight Online Child Porn

2008-05-19T15:07:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee reported out the Combating Child Exploitation Act (S.1738) to the full Senate for a possible vote.

The bill would:

establish a Special Counsel for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General;
improve the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force;
increase resources for regional computer forensic labs; and
make other improvements to increase the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute predators.

The cost of these measures would be more than $1 billion over the next eight years. Among the "other improvements" would be the hiring of 250 new federal agents dedicated to child exploitation cases, mostly at the FBI, the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement Agency, and the U.S. Postal Service.

Washington state Supreme Court to hear library filtering case

2008-05-05T14:18:00.002-04:00

A case first filed in federal court in Spokane WA in November 2006 has been referred to the Washington Supreme Court.

The North Central Regional Library District was sued by three individuals and the Second Amendment Foundation for refusing to turn off their Internet filter when asked to do so by the three adults. NCRL uses a filter at all times throughout the library, "because filtering is consistent with NCRL's mission and traditional role as a public library." The filter blocked the plaintiffs' access to Women & Guns, an online publication of the Second Amendment Foundation.

The case is moving to the Washington Supreme Court because the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington Foundation, representing the plaintiffs, contends that NCRL's filtering violates the free-speech provisions of the state constitution as well as the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The case files can be accessed here.

Additional information (4/6/08)
A representative from NCRL informs me that they don't think Women & Guns was ever actually blocked; they checked the site the day they found out about the case and it was not blocked at that time. Also, the motion to move the case to the Washington Supreme Court was made by the North Central Regional Library, not the ACLU.

More Funds Requested for FBI to Find P2P Child Porn

2008-04-21T11:58:00.000-04:00

Last week the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs heard a request to increase the FBI's budget for stopping child pornography, through a bill funding the creation of a next-generation network monitoring and database system to watch P2P networks, web sites, and chat rooms. The system would actually amount to expanded access to an existing system based in Wyoming that is already being used to find online child porn traffickers.

The Department of Justice actually had the opportunity to have the Wyoming system several years ago. In 2003, Microsoft provided $7 million to develop the Canadian Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), but the DoJ turned down Microsoft's offer to deploy the system in the U.S. because it was then involved in an anti-trust dispute with Microsoft. The Wyoming system ("Operation FairPlay") was developed as an alternative.

Opponents worry that the high number of false positives usually associated with computer-automated surveillance and tracking systems could be a problem, especially since it is often difficult to explain technical system bugs to juries.

Council of Europe sets filtering "best practices"

2008-04-07T15:43:00.000-04:00

The Council of Europe (separate from the European Union) has released a document that proposes filtering standards that balance concerns over pornography, violence, and racism online with freedom of expression and an open Internet. The Council contends that filters could legitimately be deployed in public places such as schools or libraries, but that strict limits should be placed on such filtering to prevent it from becoming overbroad.

The Council makes several recommendations:
* users must be told when content is being filtered;
* they must have a simple way to challenge the accuracy of the filter; and
* manual overrides should be put in place when practical so that users can quickly get access to blocked material.

The Council assumes that some sort of Internet filtering will take place, whether at home or school or even statewide, and one of its concerns is to push for filtering standards and interoperability. See this article for more information.

Australia to test ISP-level Internet filtering

2008-02-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

The Australian government is moving ahead with public testing of Internet filtering systems designed to block pornographic content at the ISP level. The tests will be started soon in Tasmania, using filtering systems from various vendors, despite the fact that previous government studies indicated that ISP filtering is not likely to be effective.

The government last year announced its intention of implementing an Internet filtering system. Three separate government-funded studies have indicated, however, that ISP-level filters would be less effective and more costly than individual PC filters.

Pornography on Dallas library computers

2008-02-06T08:39:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Morning News published a report on January 15, 2008 claiming that 7.5 percent of the web pages viewed on the computers in the Dallas central library were pornographic. This statement was based on the review of a 45-minute period on Dec. 19, during which "...central library computer users accessed more than 5,200 Web pages containing identifiably pornographic material, such as photographs depicting full nudity, intercourse and other sex acts." City officials responded that installing pornography-filtering software on library computers "...is probably warranted."

Older, more thorough studies suggest that the 7.5 percent figure may be a little high. In 2000, David Burt, a filtering advocate, estimated that between 0.5 and 2.5 percent of web pages viewed in libraries were pornographic. In 1999, a study by the Chicago Public Library claimed that less than 5% of the Internet sites viewed on their computers were pornographic.

Australia to apply "ratings system" to Internet sites

2007-12-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is poised to enforce new rules that are meant to protect children from online content. The "Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act of 2007" is scheduled to take effect on January 20, 2008. Under this law, anyone in Australia who publishes commercial content online or for mobile phones will be required to make sure that adult-oriented content is not seen by minors. To do this, the Internet publications must be classified in categories: X18+ for sexually explicit content (must be 18 or older to access); R18+ for content that is not sexually-explicit, but still restricted; MA15+ for "mature audiences" ages 15 and up; and unrestricted content.

At least two problems are expected with this system: 1) Adults will have to give up privacy to be in compliance, since Internet users will prove their age by supplying their full names and either a credit card or digital signature approved for online use; and 2) Australia cannot enforce the rules in other countries, of course.

Age Record Requirement for Pornography Sites Judged Unconstitutional

2007-10-24T16:33:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court yesterday ruled that the record keeping requirements federal law places on producers of images of "actual sexually explicit conduct" to verify the ages of those depicted in the images is unconstitutional. Under the law, pornography websites hosted in the United States had to keep records confirming that all performers shown on their sites were of a legal age. In their opinion, the judges considered the law to be overly broad, explaining, "The plain text, the purpose, and the legislative history of the statute make clear that Congress was concerned with all child pornography and considered recordkeeping important in battling all of it, without respect to the creator's motivation."

Protecting Australian Internet users

2007-08-20T14:53:00.000-04:00

Last week the Australian government announced a package of measures designed to protect Australians from Internet pornography. (See the articles in Australian IT and ABC News Australia.) The entire package of legislation is estimated to cost about $189 million (Australian) and will include funds for Internet blocking software for Australian families, closing down terror sites, and reducing the variety of pornography viewable by Australian Internet users. The element that seems to hold the most promise for being effective, however, is $40 million to support efforts to track and identify online predators on social networking sites and in chat rooms. Most of that money would go to the Australian Federal Police for various online investigative measures.

Senators call for universal Internet filtering

2007-07-30T15:50:00.000-04:00

At the end of a U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing last Wednesday, Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) called for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet. They argue that reliance on the use of filtering technology by parents is not sufficient to protect children. While filtering and monitoring technologies can help parents screen out offensive content and monitor their child’s online activities, "the use of these technologies is far from universal and may not be fool-proof in keeping kids away from adult material." They want the Federal Communications Commission to identify industry practices "that can limit the transmission of child pornography."

Civil liberties groups were not invited to the hearing and have expressed concerns about the First Amendment rights of Internet users.

Google Fighting Global Internet Censorship

2007-06-25T12:12:00.000-04:00

The spread of web censorship around the globe has become so bad that Google has decided to try to fight it. (See http://oplinreport.blogspot.com/2007/03/web-censorship-spreading-globally.html)

Google's new approach is to ask U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers. Google argues that the censorship harms their advertiser-based business model, and wants to convince the U.S. government that web censorship is an economic problem as well as a political problem. Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs, has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office several times this year to discuss the issue.

COPA dealt another legal setback

2007-04-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

On March 22, a federal judge in Philadelphia permanently barred prosecutors from enforcing the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, saying it was overly broad and would undoubtedly "chill a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech for adults." The federal law would make it a crime for commercial Web sites to make "harmful to minors" material publicly available. Congress enacted COPA nearly a decade ago as part of an early wave of Internet censorship efforts, but the courts have repeatedly blocked its enforcement.
The law already had been reviewed in 2004 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed with a temporary ban on enforcement, but the justices said they wanted more information about the current state of filtering technology and stopped short of a definitive ruling on its constitutionality. In this newest decision, U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed implied that filtering technology has improved to the point where it is now more effective than the COPA legislation would be.

Web censorship spreading globally

2007-03-16T14:58:00.000-04:00

OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, reports that Internet censorship is spreading rapidly, being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a wider range of online information and applications. OpenNet researchers repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites. Ten countries in particular were found to be “pervasive blockers”, regularly preventing their citizens from seeing a range of online material. These included China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan.

States attempt to control social networking

2007-03-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

Several State legislatures are contemplating laws governing access to social networking sites. Illinois seems to be the first to actually introduce legislation, on February 9, 2007, in the form of S.B. 1682, the Social Networking Website Prohibition Act. This legislation would require public libraries to prohibit access to social networking sites (like MySpace) on all publicly accessible machines, including those used by adults. Connecticut followed closely, introducing legislation on March 7. Reportedly as many as 20 other states are considering similar legislation in an effort of achieve what Federal legislators were unable to do through the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) last year.

Senator McCain proposes surveillance of illegal images

2007-02-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Sen. John McCain is planning to introduce a bill that would require Internet service providers and perhaps some Web sites to alert the government of any illegal images of real or "cartoon" minors. The bill would establish a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police. Failure to do so would be punished by criminal penalties including fines of up to $300,000.

Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act

2007-02-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska has introduced a bill called "Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act" (#S49.IS). This is a new version of the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) of 2006, including all the original DOPA propositions with two additional Titles added: restricting the sale of personal information of children for marketing; and raising fines for child pornography violations.

DOPA sought to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms. It was passed by the House of Representatives, but not by the Senate. The Act's definition of "commercial social networking websites" is broad enough to include Amazon, Flickr, Yahoo Groups, MySpace, and YouTube. Libraries accepting E-Rate funds would have to block all of these from minor users if Senator Steven's bill should pass.

Privacy International Releases Global Privacy Rankings

2006-11-02T16:34:00.000-05:00

Privacy International's annual Privacy and Human Rights global study (1,200 pages) this year ranks the United States at Number 30, just slightly ahead of Great Britain (33). Germany and Canada ranked best, Malaysia and China ranked worst. The report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of technology, surveillance and privacy protection.

Senate thinks ICANN should have approved .xxx domain

2006-09-22T11:50:00.000-04:00

In a September 20 hearing convened by a Senate Commerce subcommittee on an agreement between the federal government and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), members suggested that ICANN should have approved an adult domain called .xxx instead of rejecting it. That domain could be used to segregate pornographers, they said.
But an acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce told the Senators that the Bush administration last year asked ICANN to halt the process (see earlier blog post), citing "e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children."
ICANN President Paul Twomey said his group had received more than 100,000 complaints about .xxx from groups such as the American Family Association. ICANN's rejection of .xxx, Twomey said, had "a lot to do with the...timing of the request" rather than an objection in principle.
More information is available in the second half of this article from ZDNet News.

Public Libraries and the Internet 2006

2006-09-22T11:30:00.000-04:00

The Information Use Management & Policy Institute at Florida State University just released (August 2006) its latest biannual survey of Internet use in public libraries. One of the most significant findings in this report is the increasing dependence of government on public libraries to deliver "e-government" services to citizens without computers at home. As librarians spend more and more time assisting people with e-government services, they are beginning to resent the fact that they get no funding or training from government for this job.

Attorney General wants data retention

2006-09-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales considers child pornography and "obscene" content to be among the highest priorities of law enforcement, and has been meeting with the major Internet Service Providers in an attempt to convince them to increase record retention time to two years to help provide law enforcement agents with information for combatting terrorism and child pornography. View the report from Ars Technica here.

Kids see more online porn than in 2000

2006-08-15T16:56:00.000-04:00

The Register reported on a US survey showing that children are less likely to encounter sexual predators online than in 2000, but are increasingly being exposed to sexual material while surfing the net.
According to the survey, conducted by University of New Hampshire researchers for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the number of kids exposed to pornographic content online rose from 25 percent in 1999 and 2000 to 30 percent in 2005.
The NCMEC attributed the rise in part to aggressive tactics by porn marketers. It also said that the ability to transmit images has become easier because of the increased speed and capacity of PCs and internet connections.

Congress makes it illegal to mislead children to pornographic websites

2006-07-26T14:23:00.000-04:00

President Bush will sign a bill tomorrow that will make it a federal felony for webmasters to use innocent words like "Barbie" or "Furby" but actually feature sexual content on their sites. Anyone who includes such misleading "words" or "images" intended to confuse a minor into viewing a possibly harmful Web site could be imprisoned for up to 20 years and fined.
The 163-page Child Protection and Safety Act ("Walsh" Act) represents the most extensive rewriting of federal laws relating to child pornography, sex offender registration and child exploitation in a decade, and includes several provisions other than the one related to misleading children to inappropriate websites. The obvious problem with enforcement, of course, is that the law has no effect on websites hosted outside the United States.

The problem of verifying someone's age online

2006-07-19T09:19:00.000-04:00

MySpace and other sites that have experienced problems with people pretending to be older or younger than they really are have been looking for some kind of solution. So far nothing seems to be working, though there are a couple of technological solutions based on searching things like voter registration records that may hold promise. This article describes the problems and some of the possible solutions.

U.S. attorney general calls for 'reasonable' data retention

2006-06-27T16:27:00.000-04:00

The failure of some Internet service providers to retain user logs for a "reasonable amount of time" is hampering investigations into gruesome online sex crimes, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said. The Justice Department quietly shopped around the idea of legally required data retention. In a move that may have led to broader interest inside the United States, the European Parliament last December approved such a requirement for Internet, telephone and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers. Congress is now considering similar policy changes.

Australia: free porn filters for everyone!

2006-06-23T16:13:00.000-04:00

6/21/2006

The Australian government is announcing a plan to provide free Internet filtering software to every Australian family that wants to use it. The move comes as some in the government were pushing for filters at the server level; that is, forcing ISPs to filter certain kinds of pornography before it could reach end users.

No Space for MySpace?

2006-05-12T15:16:00.000-04:00

Business Week reports that U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers proposed a bill on May 9 that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries. Proponents say the legislation is aimed at "protecting children from terrible individuals who would aim to use Facebook and MySpace to harm young children." Opponents say it's too general and could rule out content from any number of Internet companies, including Yahoo! and Google.

ICANN rejects .xxx domain

2006-05-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that sets domain name regulation, has voted down a proposal to create a domain for adult Web sites.

The plan has drawn considerable controversy over recent months, with conservative groups campaigning against the domain due to concerns that it would legitimize pornography. Advocates of the plan have denied this, claiming that it would make it easier for Web users to avoid porn.

Net censorship spreads worldwide

2006-05-05T08:46:00.000-04:00

The BBC News service is reporting on a 153-page study by Reporters Without Borders that highlights the ways repressive regimes are taking full advantage of the net's ability to censor and stifle reform and debate. While blogs, chat forums and social networking sites can turn passive citizens into active critics, some of the world's dictators are also taking advantage of the Internet's technological power to spy on citizens and censor debate.

Iowa senators considering filtering legislation

2006-02-06T07:04:00.000-05:00

A measure similar to Ohio SB 144 from the 126th General Assembly has been introduced in Iowa. The proposed legislation, Senate File 2108, would require Iowa's public libraries to restrict minors 16 and under from borrowing R-rated movies, and would deny state funding to any library that failed to install Internet filtering software. More information can be found at these Iowa News Sites:

Student Admits Making Up Book-Watch Story

2005-12-30T09:34:00.000-05:00

From American Libraries Online:

A University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth student had claimed that two agents of the Department of Homeland Security visited him at his parents' home because he had used interlibrary loan to request Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The student has since admitted that his story was a hoax.

Child Pornography Sites Face New Obstacles - New York Times

2005-12-30T08:30:00.000-05:00

Shortly after a New York Times exposé of how minors, with the encouragement and assistance of their online fans, were operating their own pornographic sites, many of the portals that marketed these sites have been shut down. The removal of these portals is a significant disruption to the illegal business, but it is unclear whether the shutdowns are permanent or a result of temporary attention to the problem.

Ten Stories that Shaped 2005

2005-12-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

LISNews.org, a clearinghouse for library-related news, has the Ten Stories that Shaped 2005. Number 4, "Social Software Rising," and number 2, "Year of the Wiki," have the greatest potential impact on library Internet access: not only because of the people who depend on public Internet in the library to access these tools, but also because libraries are beginning to explore how these online social tools can supplement, extend, and transform modern library services.

Akron selects vendor for Metro-Wide Wireless Network

2005-12-09T08:01:00.000-05:00

The city of Akron has selected MobilePro Corp's NeoReach Wireless Division to provide city-wide wireless networking, with free and fee-based access to data, voice, and video. Some websites, including city services, will be free. Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic said, "To be progressive and keep up with the demands of technology, we need to 'unwire' the city."

Virginia releases technology report

2005-11-30T06:56:00.000-05:00

Reported by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency:

November 18, 2005 — The Secretary of Technology released 'Building a Digital Foundation: Reporting Back to the Commonwealth of Virginia' Monday. The report highlights accomplishments since 2002 to improve technology in the Commonwealth, increase technology-based economic development, and revolutionize service delivery to citizens.
Read the report. (PDF, 6.7mb)

Conference in Tunisia regarding administration of Internet

2005-11-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

The United Nations World Summit on the Information Society was held November 16-18 in Tunisia. The objective was to discuss how to bring the Internet to developing nations, but that was overshadowed by a controversy over Internet governance.

Before the conference began, Information Week characterized this issue like this:

In the struggle over who owns the Internet, the United States currently holds all the supervision cards through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Washington doesn’t plan on relinquishing its authority, despite objections from the United Nations, the European Union and such countries as Brazil, China, Cuba and Iran, who have all said recently that they would like a bigger say.

Many editorial pages, like the New York Times, called for the US to retain control, explaining the importance of a single Internet, not "a balkanized Internet, where countries or regions set up their own Webs, leading to duplicate sites, confusion and a breakdown in the effectiveness of the global network." (Other Times story.)

Members of an academic group called the Internet Governance Project suggested a denationalization of ICANN, arguing that US oversight contributes nothing to the security and stability of the Domain Name System. Rather, it is the distributed nature of DNS that produces the real security. The policy paper, "Political Oversight of ICANN," can be downloaded from the group's website.

A last minute compromise allows ICANN to continue its work. But the Summit did acknowledge the need for more cooperation, and created the Internet Governance Forum to provide a platform for discussion. The issue is not settled, however; only delayed.

[Press release and more information]

Illinois Communities Allowed to Secede from Library Districts

2005-11-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

Concerned that the measure would expand taxing authority in local districts, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed legislation in August which would allow communities to secede from library districts. But the Illinois Senate and House both voted to override the veto during their Fall Veto Sessions last week, and SB 847 now becomes law.

Google Makes Its First Public Domain Books Available Online

2005-11-07T07:35:00.000-05:00

Last December, search giant Google reached an agreement with five libraries -- University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, The New York Public Library, and Oxford University -- to digitize their collections and make them available on the web. It seemed a natural fit, as Google's mission statement reads like a library mission statement: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The Google Print project has been attacked by publishers and authors, who argue that the digitizing of these materials without express permission is a violation of copyright. Google maintains that the project is consistent with fair use and the other principles underlying copyright law. Publishers maintain that the law is clear: the burden is on Google to seek permission, not on publishers to deny permission.

Editorials in the library sphere have been ambivalent. While recognizing the tremendous advantages gained by full text searching and relevance ranking of text previously locked away within print, scholars and librarians are concerned about the "atomization" of text -- of information without context. Many are critical of the secrecy surrounding Google's agreements with the libraries, and they are suspicious of Google's profit motives.

The project marches on. Google is expected to resume scanning this month (they voluntarily put a moratorium on scanning for three months while negotiating with publishers), and it was announced that the full text of some public domain books is now online through Google Print. Microsoft has taken notice, and next year will launch the MSN Book Search service.

Bibliography

Kentucky "No Child Left Offline" Program

2005-11-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

With the goal of closing the digital divide in his state, Kentucky Governer Ernie Fletcher announced the "No Child Left Offline" program. The state currently ranks 45th in residential computer use, and this project will help address that by providing 500 refurbished state surplus computers to 8th graders.

[From GovTech.]

Libraries Introducing Public to New Technology

2005-11-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

A market research firm released a study on best practices in IT decision-making at major U.S. public libraries, including the Columbus Metropolitan Library. The key findings are outlined in this report from GovTech.net. They include:

Libraries believe they can negotiate for subscription vendors individually as well as (or better than) a consortium. Public libraries lag academic libraries in consortium participation. The study recommends that more research is required to determine whether these perceptions are true.
Public libraries are more advanced than small and medium-sized academic libraries in digitization projects.
Electronic books are starting to make an impact on public library services.

With the public's appetite for Internet and database access appearing to be insatiable, libraries increasingly view themselves as places to introduce new technology. This is driven by an unusual combination of factors: free public Internet access combined with knowledgable tutors.

Two-thirds of American adults go online

2005-10-24T09:50:00.000-04:00

... and one-third do not, says a press release from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. 68%, or about 137 million people, use the Internet, up from 63% a year ago.

Age plays a significant factor. Pew reports "26% of Americans age 65 and older go online, compared with 67% of those age 50-64, 80% of those age 30-49, and 84% of those age 18-29." And while 53% of users now have broadband Internet access at home (up from 21% in 2002), seniors and people with lower household incomes or less education are less likely to have broadband.

Susannah Fox, associate director of the Pew Internet Project, characterizes it this way: "There are three degrees of internet access – cold, tepid, and hot." There are the people who are not online at all, the people with dial-up who use the Internet intermittently, and the "broadband elite" who work online everyday and are "devoted to their online pursuits."

FCC extends wiretap law to universities and libraries

2005-10-23T09:10:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports that the Federal Communications Commission in August extended the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law to universities, libraries, commercial Internet service providers, and airports and municipalities (like San Francisco or Philadelphia) that provide Internet access to the public. All Internet providers must comply with the law by spring 2007.

The law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, would require re-engineering networks so that all communications would be passed to a network operations center where data packets could be copied to law enforcement before traveling onto the Internet.

The universities are the most vocal objectors, arguing that the requirements will cost them billions of dollars while doing little to catch criminals. But the Justice Department is concerned that, as communication channels move from switched phone systems into digital communications moving in packets across the Internet, criminal suspects can easily evade surveillance. The FCC is considering exempting educational institutions from some of the law's provisions.

One third of Internet activity is through educational reference websites

2005-10-20T15:59:00.000-04:00

A Neilsen/NetRatings report shows that "educational reference Web sites attracted nearly 46.4 million Web users to reach 31 percent of the active Internet universe in September 2005." Growth is largely led by the exploding popularity of Wikipedia and Yahoo!Education.

Los Angeles County supervisors direct librarian to filter computers

2005-10-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

Reported in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, "The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday to direct the county librarian to block access to pornography on computers in the county's public libraries." At the Board's request, the library had written a report detailing methods to prevent children from reaching harmful materials, and recommendations included privacy screens on all monitors and content filters on children's computers.

Software Makers Supply Tools to Censor Web

2005-10-12T07:10:00.000-04:00

A report from the OpenNet Initiative reveals that filtering technologies developed by Western countries (including Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo) are used by autocratic foreign governments to control their citizens' Internet access. John Palfrey, the director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a researcher with the OpenNet Initiative, is concerned that American companies are profitting directly from the censoring regimes, including Myanmar, which is under U.S. sanctions.

Reported in the New York Times.

FBI demands library records under Patriot Act

2005-10-11T07:01:00.000-04:00

Using powers granted to them under the Patriot Act, the FBI demanded circulation records from a Connecticut library.

On Friday, September 9, federal judge ruled the Patriot Act's gag order unconstitutional, but stayed the ruling until September 20 for the government to appeal. The gag order was reinstated by the US Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court denied the appeal, saying the U.S. District Court of Appeals should be given time to consider the consitutionality of the case.

Background, links, and on-going coverage are available from the Connecticut Library Association site.

Games, chat barred in Hawaii libraries

2005-09-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

The Hawaii State Public Library System barred access to online games and chat rooms beginning August 23. The decision was mostly a technical one, involving the amount of bandwidth taken up by such recreational uses. Florence Yee, director of the Hawaii State Library, said that the possible presence of sexual predators in chat rooms was not the main reason for blocking access, but was a factor in the decision.

US ranked 16th in wireless broadband connectivity.

2005-08-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

In Calling All Luddites, New York Times Thomas Friedman says, "I've been thinking of running for high office on a one-issue platform: I promise, if elected, that within four years America will have cellphone service as good as Ghana's." His issue seems to be 911 service in subways, mainly, but he also argues that as the world moves to an Internet-based platform for all its aspects (business, education, entertainment), wealth will go to the countries that can connect its people. But the telecommunication companies are fighting it.

Nevertheless, several municipalities recently have released plans to offer civic Wi-Fi services. The first city to announce such a project was Philadelphia, followed soon by San Francisco, Madison, and Seattle.

IM in State Government

2005-08-02T08:30:00.000-04:00

NASCIO, which I assume stands for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, published TLK2UL8R: The Privacy Implications of Instant and Text Messaging Technologies in State Government. The research brief discusses the threats to network security posed by worms and spim, possible circumvention of network protection, and policy implications.

The report recommends that existing email policies should be reviewed and expanded to cover chat technologies. Enterprise-grade IM services are favored over commercial solutions because they offer more tools for security and enable the archiving of conversations (in keeping with records retention laws). The report comes close to endorsing policies that forbid the use of commercial IM clients on government computers.

Certainly an important discussion. But libraries are only just beginning to see the advantages of IM as a way to reach non-traditional users, and I wouldn't want to be in the position of telling them they can't use the state's network to offer chat reference services.

OPLIN work rules encourage/require us to be logged into an instant messenger client. We've found it to be a very useful tool: keeping our mobile staff in close communication, allowing easy communication and collaboration with partners across the statewide network.

Illinois governor pledges support for filters

2005-07-28T15:38:00.000-04:00

Speaking before a women's group in July, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois pledged support to filter children's Internet access in public libraries. Previous legislative attempts in Illinois have failed to get out of committee. Reported in the Illinois Leader.

King and King and fallout

2005-07-07T16:10:00.000-04:00

On May 9, the Oklahoma House passed (81-3) HR 1039, a nonbinding resolution asking libraries to restrict children's access to materials with homosexual themes. Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City), who introduced the resolution, insists that legislators are not trying to ban books, but believes "there are some issues little children aren't emotionally equipped to tackle, and many parents believe the issue of sexual preference is one of them." (Quoted in American Libraries.)

The Louisiana House defeated a similar resolution on May 24. It too was inspired by a Representative's constituent being disturbed that their child had checked out King and King, a picture book fairy tale in which a prince marries another prince. The Louisiana resolution had removed language which specified gay-themed materials.

On the national level, H.R. 2295, the "Parental Empowerment Act of 2005" introduced by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) would block federal Education Department funding to states unless each local education agency establishes a "parent review and empowerment council" to vet the acquisition of all library and classroom materials except textbooks. (Rep. Jones had read in the Wilmington (N.C.) Star-News that a 7-year-old had checked King and King out of the school library.

The Upper Arlington (OH) Public Library doesn't own King and King, but they do have free community newspapers available in their buildings -- including Outlook Weekly and Gay People’s Chronicle. Mark Bloom, with the assistance of his children, have been throwing the papers in the trash. Bloom is joined by city council member Tim Rankin, calling for the removal of all "sexually provocative materials" from the library. Coverage in American Libraries, the Columbus Dispatch, and (of course) the targeted newspapers.

[Update September 23: the Upper Arlington library board voted September 20 not to ban the gay papers, and to create new shelving to accomodate all free publications]

ACLU Reports on Use of Filters in R.I. Libraries

2005-07-07T14:46:00.000-04:00

American Libraries covers a report by the ACLU that claims public libraries in Rhode Island were inconsistent with their CIPA compliance. Libraries are over-blocking, the report claims, and the statewide consortium has issued confusing information about the law and how filters should be used. Adult patrons are not aware of (or do not take advantage of) the ability to have the filter turned off.

[Update October 10: In response, the Rhodes Island Cooperating Libraries Automated Network (CLAN) revised its minimum requirements for libraries, changed the standardized blocking message screen to inform patrons of their rights, and emailed instructions for removing filters to library directors. More at boston.com.]

File sharing programs and filters

2005-07-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

The Government Accountability Office released a report studying peer-to-peer networks and pornography: what P2P clients are available; how easy it is to retrieve (deliberately or accidentally) pornographic files; whether filtering measures are available; and how effective filters are. The study also compared filters on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and found that MSN's was the most effective in blocking porn, while Yahoo's was largely ineffective. The full report is available in PDF.

Residents want an e-library

2005-07-01T15:46:00.000-04:00

An intriguing idea that might possibly gain momentum. The Houston Chronicle reports that the residents of Gulfton, TX, want an e-library, equipped with computer equipment. City Councilman M. J. Khan said, "E-libraries are excellent alternatives when resources are not available for construction and maintenance of library branches." (But wouldn't it cost money to build and maintain the computer lab?)

I heard Susan Kent speak a few years ago about a community scan the Los Angeles Public Library did. They found that users wanted the library to be open more hours, and to have more computers that they could spend more time on (and get more help with).

Cable Wins Internet-Access Ruling

2005-06-28T07:34:00.000-04:00

From the NY Times: The Supreme Court ruled that cable companies providing broadband Internet services are not bound, as phone companies are, to let competing providers offer services over their lines.

This decision affirms a difference between telecommunications providers, "common carriers" under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and "information services," which are untaxed, generally unregulated, and (important for public library purposes) not part of the eRate program.

The Court also unanimously held that copyright-infringement suits against file-sharing services Grokster and StreamCast may continue. The Court felt that, unlike VCR's and copy machines, peer-to-peer file sharing networks exist primarily to trade in copyrighted materials. Critics are afraid this will stifle innovation.

Biometrics used to control Internet access

2005-06-27T16:45:00.000-04:00

The Naperville Public Library's decision to begin using biometrics to control patron access to the Internet has been a local issue in Chicago (and a controversy in library blogs). It went national with this NPR story: Chicago Libraries to Require ID Check for Internet Use. Naperville says that people were using other people's library cards to get Internet access, particularly minors using cards that gave them unfiltered access.

The library (and the biometrics firm) insists that images of the fingerprints are not stored, and that privacy is assured. But these arguments aren't working. Fingerprinting is tied too strongly to identification for law enforcement.

The story was also discussed in the May 20 edition of the Chicago Tribune.

Ohio not the top state for public use computers

2005-06-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

The US National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) released preliminary data in their Normative Data Project for Libraries, 2003. I find it notable that Ohio ranked fifth in 2003 for average number of public-use terminals per stationary outlet (12.88), and 11th for average number of public-use terminals per 5,000 population (4.09).

Also noteworthy is that while Ohio libraries are well known to be at the top concerning state income per capita (39.87), the state ranked 48th in local income per capita (12.31).

Internet "red light district" created

2005-06-24T10:05:00.000-04:00

Wired News: Too SeXXXy for Dot-Com

ICANN approves .xxx domains, available later this fall or winter. John Morris at the Center for Democracy and Technology predicts that some adult sites will voluntarily enter this new virtual red-light district while others will stay in the general dot-com. Commentators wonder if mandatory zoning of cyberspace is legal or practical, and some foresee the creation of policies (perhaps even laws) forbidding the routing of users to .xxx domains.

98.9% of US, but 100% of Ohio

2005-06-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

ALA | U.S. Public Libraries Providing Unprecedented Access to Computers, the Internet, and Technology Training

"New data shows that 98.9 percent of all public libraries offer free public access to computers and the Internet—a growth of more than 400 percent since 1996, when just one in four libraries did."

The report also says that for about half the systems studied (50.6%), technology budgets have stayed level with no increases for inflation. More than one in 10 systems reported a decrease. It compares differences between urban and rural districts and between different states, and discusses training programs.

Also reported in the New York Times.

Playing Catch-Up

2005-06-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

I clipped a lot of stories in Bloglines before I finally got around to creating this blog. Here is a month's backlog of important and/or interesting items.

Massachusetts Reconsiders Filter Mandate Bill
American Libraries reported in late May that Massachusetts H.R. 3530 requires libraries to install filters. The resolution had earlier failed as an amendment to the state budget.

H.R. 3530 mandates that libraries with 2–9 workstations filter the internet on one machine; those with 10 or more public-access computers would have to place blocking software on 30% of the workstations. The bill also calls for prominent signage that informs patrons which machines are filtered....

Bill Ties School Funding to Parental Watchdog Councils
H.R. 2295 proposes that states may receive no federal education fund unless every local education agency creates a "parent review and empowerment council" to screen every library/curriculum acquisition except textbooks. I think it's all about King and King.

Oklahoma Library to Allow Gaming After All
Chat rooms still banned, but "the Public Library of Enid and Garfield County, Oklahoma, reversed itself May 9 and decided that e-mail and online gaming would continue to be allowed on public internet workstations." They'll also keep a year's logs of who uses the computers.

Consumer Reports weighs in on filtering
Jessamyn at librarian.net points to a Consumer Reports article reviewing Internet content filters. I think the full text will be available in EBSCO once the embargo period has passed.

Librarian.net also alerted me to the story that the Allegheny [PA] Council is considering a bill to require libraries to report incidents of patron viewing pornography. This will be tied to funding of the Allegheny County Library Association. The aim, say supporters, is to improve the performance of commercial content filters.