Magazine: PC NOVICE

Issue: July 1995

Title: Online Slime

Bright media spotlights on the seedier side of cyberspace are starting to raise public awareness about just what is out there and many parents, fearful of what their children might find in some electronic back alley, don't like it.

Prosecutors and legislators are jumping into the fray, promising to crack down on what they call a lawless realm where anything goes. Nebraska Sen.J.J. Exon, for one, is sponsoring a "Decency Act" in Congress that would ban the electronic transmission of lewd or obscene materials.

"I want to keep the Information Superhighway from resembling a red-light district," he says.

But many in the online community argue the Internet is taking a bad rap from recent publicity. After all, a trip to download some shareware or send E-mail to granny won't force dirty pictures upon innocent users. Laws designed to censor, they say, will only chill expression without solving the problem.

But no one familiar with the Net could deny that a lot of people some of them children,undoubtedly are downloading images that would probably be found illegal and obscene in almost any American court. Scenes of torture, mutilation, and rape are readily available to those who seek it out.

"It's not only hard-core porn, but the hardest forms of adult porn," says Deen Kaplan, vice president of public policy for the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families. "These people won't police themselves. Children can get access to the hardest of the hard, and that is not acceptable."

Lawyers will probably make a lot of money over the next few years sorting out exactly how electronic communications will fit into Constitutional law. Internet users and system operators shouldn't expect the dust to settle anytime soon as cyberspace fights to carve itself a niche in the First Amendment.

The Big Fuss

Computer obscenity is found in three basic places: dial-in bulletin board systems (BBSs), Internet sites, and Usenet newsgroups. Commercial online services, such as America Online, CompuServe, or Prodigy are relatively well-policed compared to the public Internet and private BBSs. Most of them also offer parental controls to help block out places such as chat areas where members might get out of hand. However, most of these services are now offering varying levels of access to the Internet at large, meaning even people without a direct link to the Net may still find objectionable material available.

Some of the most famous areas of decadence can be found in the thousands of newsgroups the electronic bulletin boards where users post articles or files for one another to read where both the best and the worst of the Internet are represented. Almost every conceivable topic is covered on some newsgroup or another. Some of the most famous newsgroups fall into what is called the "alt.sex" hierarchy. With names such as alt.sex.pedophila and alt.sex.bestiality, to name a couple, these areas have gained a lot of attention from curious newspaper reportersand Internet authors. Alt.sex.stories recently garnered headlines as the spot Jake Baker, a Michigan college student, choose to post a fictional tale detailing the torture and murder of one of his female classmates. Not all Internet sites carry the alt.sex groups, but it isn't hard for experienced users at such sites to connect to sites that do carry the newsgroups they want.

Computers offering up obscene material to the Internet itself the global "network of networks" are within the range of anyone with some type of Internet account. Many college students are given free or low-cost Internet accounts, along with employees of some large companies and government agencies. In addition, commercial online services now offer certain types of Internet access to their millions of users.

The reason Internet pornography thrives has to do with the nature of the Net. No one computer controls the Internet. The information available on it resides on thousands of computers in dozens of countries. Even if, for instance, a college system administrator tried to block out certain parts of the Internet, technologically savvy students can easily find "back doors" to any destination. Today's Internet grew out of a Department of Defense project designed to preserve communications even if parts of the system were destroyed. It works. The battle begins

While the Internet and its newsgroups get most of the attention, the opening skirmishes of the computer pornography battle were fought last year in Tennessee over a California adults-only bulletin board system (BBS) in Milpitas, Calif.

Some of the most notorious cases of computer obscenity hail from the hard drives of private BBSs. These systems have exploded across the American landscape in recent years. At least 60,000 are believed to be operational today. They range from commercially run news and information servers to amateur one-computer setups in basements and spare rooms.

BBSs are not the same as the Internet. While the Internet is a vast world-wide network of computers, the typical BBS is a single computer that users can dial into with a modem. In most BBSs, users trade messages or files with each other. In this way, BBSs become the forums of virtual communities made up of users who might live many miles away from each other geographically. It can be cheap and easy to distribute files via BBSs, which make them the new favorites for pornography suppliers.

Users post most of the files on some BBSs, but on the Milpitas, Calif., "Amateur Action" BBS, a message proudly greets new arrivals with the information that all 25,000 files including those picturing so-called child "nudists," scenes of bondage, and torture images were scanned in by the operators themselves: Robert and Carleen Thomas.

Tennessee postal inspectors working with the local U.S. District Attorney's office last summer logged on to the Thomas BBS and downloaded a batch of sexually explicit images. Based on those files and a mail-order videotape also received from the Thomases, the Tennessee officials filed 11 federal obscenity indictments. Tried and convicted by a Memphis jury who found the images to be obscene, the couple now face sentencing on all 11 counts, each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

While it is not illegal to possess obscene works, the Thomases were prosecuted under existing laws that ban the interstate distribution or sale of such materials. The Thomases' images were transmitted over phone lines across state lines. But obscenity law is full of gray areas, and the legal uncertainty over what exactly what is meant by the word "obscene" is fueling both the Thomases' appeal and their widespread support among onliners.

Good guys?

Many long-time Internet users rile at nearly any form of perceived censorship in cyberspace. They know that laws designed to restrict BBSs could also be used against the Internet itself, where the popular sentiment is people simply shouldn't look at things that offend them.

Kaplan says a lot of the uproar in newsgroup postings and other forums comes from people who don't realize what is available at sites like the Milpitas BBS. There is no such thing as a harmless consumer of some of the Thomas images, he says, such as one that depicts a woman being nailed to a piece of plywood. Kaplan says he finds support for people like Thomas surprising.

"It remains beyond me why people who care about computers want to make Thomas the posterboy for freedom in the information age," Kaplan says. "One would think he'd be the social pariah, but in many cases he's been embraced."

One of the groups giving Thomas' lawyers legal advice is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Washington, D.C., non-profit group dedicated to the protection of civil liberties in cyberspace. Eric Tachibana, online services coordinator for the EFF, sees things a little differently than Kaplan. He calls Mr. and Mrs. Thomas "the good guys" who shouldn't be held to the standards of a community hundreds of miles from their home.

"They were fine in California, in their state," Tachibana says. "The Tennessee postman was looking for this. If it offended him, he should not have been going to look."

Tachibana says the crux of the Thomas case is the issue of community standards, and who has the right to decide for all what is obscene.

Community standards

The issue of community standards is at the heart of the Thomas appeal because it is at the heart of obscenity case law. In the landmark 1973 case of Miller v. California, the Supreme Court set up a three-part test for juries in obscenity cases. If jurors decide that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find the material appeals to the "prurient interest"; that the material depicts or describes, in an offensive way, sexual conduct prohibited by law; and the material lacks serious artistic, scientific or literary value, it can be found obscene and thus not protected by the First Amendment.

The "community standards" clause was designed by the Court to let conservative areas such as Memphis set higher standards than might be followed in a more liberal area such as California. In the aftermath of the Thomas ruling, some argue that a test designed to keep Californians from dictating law to Memphis should also keep Memphis from dictating to California.

Courts have allowed exceptions to this idea in the cases of mail-order pornography distributors who knowingly send materials to more conservative districts. However, a BBS operator doesn't take an order, address a package and drop it in the mail. Because the computer systems are automatic and users can call from anywhere, system operators get no chance for case-by-case decision-making. Even if the BBS only offered accounts to local citizens, someone might acquire an account, move away to Memphis, and continue calling without making the system operator aware of the change.

The EFF and others warn rulings such as the Thomas case give the most conservative districts in the nation wherever they may be and whatever local standards they might follow the ability to restrict what can be found on computers from New York to Los Angeles.

It would not only set the kind of national standard the Supreme Court hoped to avoid, but would also make that standard more restrictive than has been allowed in many communities. System operators, not familiar with what might be considered obscene in an unknown town perhaps thousands of miles away, will be forced to censor from their computers material that may be perfectly legal in their own community.

But the alternative, Kaplan says laws based on the community of origin rather than the community of receipt would create "safe havens" where pornographers could ply their trade unhindered by the laws of the rest of the country. Courts have shown no willingness to move toward such a system, he says.

Courtroom chaos

In the short term, Kaplan says, courtrooms will be the battleground for the district of receipt vs. district of origin issue. Different jurisdictions will probably come up with different solutions to the problem, making it difficult for users and system operators to know what is and isn't legal.

"Community standards are going to be outstripped by the growth of the Information Superhighway," he says. "I don't think it will get simpler for BBS operators in the short term."

Eventually, Kaplan says, the various sides will probably end up in a fight over a true national standard for obscenity. A national standard set down in law would simplify things, he says, but there is little consensus on what should be on such a list.

Tachibana says he thinks the country is too large and varied for a national obscenity standard.

"Unless there's a serious move to the right, I don't see how there can be a national standard for obscenity," Tachibana says. "The communities of the U.S. are far too diverse."

However, he says, the controversy will only gain force as more and more Americans hook up to the Internet. The issue probably won't be resolved for another 10 years at least, Tachibana says, and it is hard to predict what the future mood of the country will be.

"We'll see what the Congress looks like at the time when it goes down, and the Supreme Court," he says, but he cautions against any sort of censorship.

"We have allowed the government to be our mothers and fathers, and that's not right," Tachibana says. "That's not how a democracy is run."

In whatever manner the American democracy decides to run itself, it may not make much of a difference to computer pornography. BBSs are one thing, but no matter what regulations Congress and the courts might iron out, America does not control the Internet.

Global problem

In fact, no one controls the Internet. Wiping out obscenity on the Net isn't like cleaning up a town. If you chased out all the pornographers within a 100-mile radius of a certain city, it would be difficult to find pornography in that area. But if you chased all obscene material out of U.S. Internet sites, American citizens could still connect with computers in other countries that didn't abide by such strict standards. Cultural variances and divergent agendas lead to foreign nations where the U.S. porn seeker could still expect to find obscenity.

"It's out there, and even if you could get an international agreement, international enforcement is difficult," Tachibana says. "It just gets way too impossible."

Even Kaplan agrees that international regulation would not come easy.

"It will be very difficult," he says. "It's not the ideal situation."

Tachibana suggests a better solution to the problem would be special software parents could use to keep pornography away from their children. In the same way parents can ask their phone companies to block off 900-number access to prevent unauthorized use of pornographic phone services, parents could use "filter" programs to somehow block certain types of texts and image files from flooding into their kids' computers. A practical filter program would not be an easy thing to develop, but Tachibana says the only real obstacle is a lack of funding for such projects. Groups who feel strongly against pornography should use their energies toward this goal, he says.

"Rather than spend money lobbying for unworkable laws," Tachibana says, "they should pay programmers to write the things."

Kaplan isn't as optimistic about software gateways.

"Technical fixes seldom will do the job for someone determined to circumvent it," he says.

Old solutions

In the case of computer porn, however, legal fixes wouldn't fare much better. Never has it been harder for authorities to ban certain types of information than it is today. Anyone with an Internet account can distribute files to the whole world files users can then download in the privacy of their homes, away from the eyes of the law.

In an environment where all the arguing over obscenity right or wrong, harmful or not may be moot, parents hold the ultimate responsibility to protect their children. Americans can't count on the government to clean up the Internet, regardless of whatever consensus might be reached on the issue. The ability to control the global network is out of Congress' hands.

Tachibana says the only solution to the computer pornography problem is the same as the solution to many other problems of youth: Parents must pay attention to what their children are doing. If kids find pornography, parents should talk to them about it. Pornography is like hate speech, Tachibana says. More speech is the only cure.

"I think the focus should be on how to make children able to understand what's bad and what's good," he says. "An image is not going to hurt a child. It's how that image is interpreted that's going to hurt the child."

Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how a young child even one with a well-developed sense of right and wrong interprets the graphic image of a woman being tortured.

by Alan Phelps

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