From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Wed May 1 02:11:15 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 13:11:15 +1100 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: Stewart Carter asked the ICA emailing list: >Firstly, on censorship, the Australian Broadcasting Authority's Peter Webb >appeared to indicate that he expected the next meeting of federal and state >Attorney-General's in July to confirm national legislation along the same >lines as Western Australia, Victoria, NT and NSW's new censorship laws. > >Is this a reasonable expectation, particularly given that the various state >laws are different in important respects? And later: >Finally, Peter Webb appeared to indicate that there will not be legislation >arising out of the ABA inquiry into on-line services regulation and that >self-regulation by the industry itself will suffice? > >Is this a correct interpretation or will be legislation be needed to back up >the proposed ABA regime of self-regulation ( e.g to specifically extend the >ABA's powers to cover on-line services.) (1) The regime described in the ABA's Issues Paper (which derived in turn from a lot of work done by the Clth Attorney-General's Dept, DOCA, a Senate Committee and quite a number of industry and electronic community advocates in voluntary capacities) was a code prepared by the industry, in consultation with relevant government agencies as advocacy groups, and backed up by legislation making non-conformance a criminal offence. For the history, and lots of analyses and position statements, see: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn (2) I'm awaiting a copy of Webb's paper, but the press reports suggest that: - he may be unaware of the content of his own Issues Paper; - the final report may be radically different from what we were led to believe would be recommended; or - the paper says two different things in two different places. (3) In general, yes, there are indeed significant differences between current State laws and the regime described in the ABA Issues Paper. It's entirely unclear what NSW's proposals are supposed to be - has anyone seen any of the documentation that was actually discussed and perhaps in some sense even agreed at SCAG in Darwin? The WA and Vic materials are available via: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn#State (4) There is an urgent need for the ABA to clarify whether: - the ABA has changed tack, and is now to propose simple-minded, knee-jerk, inevitably ineffectual, but highly disruptive legislation; - the ABA is now irrelevant, and the State and Commonwealth Attorneys- General are going to all legislate in the above-described manner, and the work of the last 18 months was a waste of everyone's time; or - the States have now thought about the problem, and are now going to follow the lead of the Clth A/G, DOCA, the Senate Committee and the ABA's Issues paper. (5) I reserve the right to climb off my high horse, apologise to Peter Webb, and breathe a sigh of relief, if, when I read his paper, it doesn't say what the media, including Stewart, think it said. >Secondly, on security for electronic commerce over the Net, Steve Orlowski >from A-G's said that legislation for digital signatures and a Public Key >Authentication Framework will soon be coming. And indeed in this morning's AFR >the time-frame is given as this year. > >Can anybody confirm or clarify this time-frame? The Task Force of Standards Australia (SA) completed its work late last year, but I haven't seen any evidence of the paper being publicly available yet. As I understand it, the next steps would be referral of the paper to an existing, or possibly new, Committee of SA, and the development and publication of a Draft Standard. Bob Lions at SA will know the answer to that one. I would have expected the aim to be for a Draft Standard to be published by late 1996 or early 1997. Anyone who wants to can take the risk of implementing a service on the basis of the Draft Standard; and I suspect a market leader (e.g. Australia Post, perhaps Telstra) might well do so, e.g. by early-mid 1997? The specs are likely to be fairly ambiguous, and fairly fluid, so anyone without deep pockets may prefer to await the emergence of a stable document before they make a move. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From michael.baczynski@alia.org.au Wed May 1 04:47:02 1996 From: michael.baczynski@alia.org.au (Michael Baczynski) Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 14:47:02 +1000 Subject: Peter Webb at the IBC Conference Message-ID: I think that the most worring thing to come from the report in the Australian concerning Peter Webb's speech is the report of his perspective regarding the relationship between the on-line industry and law makers. He quoted as stating that "the cultural approach each is applying to the issue seems certain to guarantee there is most unlikely to be a meeting of minds". Is there something in the context surrounding this statement which softens what appears to be a dismissal of the consultation process? Does anyone know if the spech is available on the Internet somewhere? Thanks Michael ______________________________________ Michael Baczynski e-mail michael.baczynski@alia.org.au The views expressed above are those of the author and are not to be interpereted as the views of his employer. From lois_jewell@dpa.act.gov.au Wed May 1 16:11:43 1996 From: lois_jewell@dpa.act.gov.au (lois_jewell@dpa.act.gov.au) Date: Wed, 01 May 96 11:11:43 EST Subject: ACT Government's Community Information Strategy Message-ID: <9604018309.AA830989418@SMTPLINK.DPA.ACT.GOV.AU> "Canberra Wired: A draft community information strategy for the ACT" was launched by the Minister for Urban Services for public consultation last month. The draft strategy has been developed in consultation with community, business and government representatives to address how the ACT Government might harness the potential of new technologies for improved service to the local community. The major initiatives raised in the strategy include the development of an Electronic Information Directory for the Canberra region accessible over the Internet, the use of touch-screen information kiosks and the Internet as major information delivery mechanisms, establishing places of public access to electronic information services and training. A series of focus groups will be held to provide opportunities for interested members of the Canberra community to provide feedback on the draft strategy: Saturday 4 May, 10.00am, Tuggeranong Library (Community organisations) Wed. 8 May, 9.00am, Room J29 CIT Reid (Business organisations) Thu. 9 May, 9.00am, Belconnen Library (Government organisations) Please contact Lois Jewell on (06) 207 5185 for further information. Canberra Wired will be open for consultation until 31 July 1996. The strategy can be accessed via the City Services homepage at: http://actg.canberra.edu.au/actg/dus/csg/org4/act12/cis.htm. Comments are welcome, and can be returned to Lois Jewell at: City Services 12 Wattle Street LYNEHAM ACT 2602 FAX: (06) 207 6330 PH: (06) 207 5185 E-MAIL: lois_jewell@dpa.act.gov.au From JHoughton@dist.gov.au Wed May 1 07:31:50 1996 From: JHoughton@dist.gov.au (John Houghton) Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 17:31:50 +1000 Subject: Internet pricing report (Acrobat) Message-ID: <18713c20@dist.gov.au> The OECD report on Internet pricing that has been doing the official rounds has now been derestricted and is available at: http://www.oecd.org/dsti/sti_ict.html Its good reading... ******************************************************************** Dr John Houghton Principal Economist Bureau of Industry Economics GPO Box 9839 Canberra ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA Ph +61 6 276 1858 Fax +61 6 276 1846 E-Mail JHoughton@dist.gov.au http://www.das.gov.au/~dist/bie/it-t.html ******************************************************************** The views expressed are those of the author not the institution ******************************************************************** From michael@link.apana.org.au Thu May 2 04:41:52 1996 From: michael@link.apana.org.au (Michael Moynihan) Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 18:41:52 -1000 Subject: APS Innovations Online Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960502044152.00699078@posgate.apana.org.au> I think there is some confusion running here. The site is *not*, by any stretch, innovative: it is plain paper copier HTML with a few graphics. It is supposed to be a gateway to ('showcase of' if you like that terminology) policy innovations. The content: the page which deals with the DIMA/QANTAS/ACS connection... I thought John Hilvert was extraordinarily charitable about it. It really doesn't tell you very much about the nature of the innovation (assuming it is one). It certainly isn't about 'whole of government' but just the adjustments with client agencies that departments do every day ( or once in a while, or when they think of it). Michael At 10:43 AM 01:05:96 +1000, you wrote: >Well, I was resisting the temptation to comment because I'd hate anyone to >throw stones at my glass house, but given that the publicity used the word >"showcase" and the expression "innovative WWW site", I think viewers are >entitled to be tough. From brd@netinfo.com.au Wed May 1 09:44:03 1996 From: brd@netinfo.com.au (Bernard Robertson-Dunn) Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 19:44:03 +1000 (EST) Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: <199605010944.TAA22799@wilma.netinfo.com.au> About four years ago I worked on a project for the Australian Federal Police. The National Firearm Information Interchange System (NFIIS) was a system proposed by the AFP to facilitate the exchange of information on gun ownership and on persons who have various domestic restraining orders on them. NFIIS was not designed to hold information itself, that would have been done by police systems in each of the states. The proposal seemed to meet resistance from the state police forces mainly because of "states rights", a lack of a will to co-operate in this area and cost. I do not know the status of the proposal (my guess is that it got buried). It may have been made part of the NEPI (National Exchange of Police Information) system but from the statements being made today about providing such a facility it would appear that it has not. If this system had been put in place it may not have prevented the Tasmanian incident, but it does indicate the mess that is gun control in Australia today. It is also indicative of the lack of co-operation among the police forces in Australia. It could be argued that states rights and other parochial agenda have come before people's lives. What I find most repulsive now is the reaction of politicians and the police (at least the ones I have heard on the radio and read about) saying that they should do something about sharing information on gun control and ownership and that maybe gun control laws should be tightened and made uniform across the country. All this was proposed four years ago but it never happened. I bet there are more than a few people hopping that no-one remembers NFIIS. I do, and it really makes me angry. The lack of it may have killed 35 innocent people. I also hope that those who propose IT cost cutting do not forget that applications do things that are often very useful. If the application is not available, or does not work properly, then the consequences can be very high indeed. Not all applications are "mission critical" but the consequences of poor applications, poor design, and a lack of critical thinking can lead to inefficiencies and a reduction in service delivery. If I sound angry, I am. brd From joy@erdc.com.au Wed May 1 21:00:48 1996 From: joy@erdc.com.au (Joy Sutton) Date: 2 May 1996 07:00:48 +1000 Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: Reply to: RE>Port Arthur Sometimes anger is a good thing. Such as when it is directed against mismanagement and is as well formulated as you have put it here. I hope you have been able also to place your message in other general forums because it deserves wide airing. Joy Sutton -------------------------------------- Date: 96-5-1 21:36 To: Joy Sutton From: Bernard Robertson-Dunn About four years ago I worked on a project for the Australian Federal Police. The National Firearm Information Interchange System (NFIIS) was a system proposed by the AFP to facilitate the exchange of information on gun ownership and on persons who have various domestic restraining orders on them. NFIIS was not designed to hold information itself, that would have been done by police systems in each of the states. The proposal seemed to meet resistance from the state police forces mainly because of "states rights", a lack of a will to co-operate in this area and cost. I do not know the status of the proposal (my guess is that it got buried). It may have been made part of the NEPI (National Exchange of Police Information) system but from the statements being made today about providing such a facility it would appear that it has not. If this system had been put in place it may not have prevented the Tasmanian incident, but it does indicate the mess that is gun control in Australia today. It is also indicative of the lack of co-operation among the police forces in Australia. It could be argued that states rights and other parochial agenda have come before people's lives. What I find most repulsive now is the reaction of politicians and the police (at least the ones I have heard on the radio and read about) saying that they should do something about sharing information on gun control and ownership and that maybe gun control laws should be tightened and made uniform across the country. All this was proposed four years ago but it never happened. I bet there are more than a few people hopping that no-one remembers NFIIS. I do, and it really makes me angry. The lack of it may have killed 35 innocent people. I also hope that those who propose IT cost cutting do not forget that applications do things that are often very useful. If the application is not available, or does not work properly, then the consequences can be very high indeed. Not all applications are "mission critical" but the consequences of poor applications, poor design, and a lack of critical thinking can lead to inefficiencies and a reduction in service delivery. If I sound angry, I am. brd From owner-link Thu May 2 01:00:44 1996 From: owner-link (owner-link) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 11:00:44 +1000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: <9605020100.AA19637@charlotte.anu.edu.au> > >At 18:13 01/05/95 +1100, Noel Jackling wrote: >>END USER BANDWIDTH CONSERVATION: SHOULD IT BE PROMOTED? >> >>(http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dtebbutt/rsrc/webnewssetup.html) who said: 'Do >>NOT subscribe to a news server unless it is on your local system > >Some ISPs do not actually offer a news server, and there are no free access >news servers in Australia AFAIK. (Please tell me if this info is out of >date.) A list of "free" news servers was circulated to local subscribers of >one ISP here, but all were overseas, some even in Europe. > >>1. Use caching on your personal computer >> >I suggest you add "Use the proxy server if offered by your ISP". > >Much of the explanation of local caching can be replicated when explaining >the actions of a proxy server. Users need to specify the address of the >proxy server, if one is made available by their service provider, in the >network options setup for their web browser. If they do not specify its >address, it may as well not exist. > >Andrew Davis--Information Technology Consultant---Canberra, Australia --VK1DA >http://www.csccs.com.au/~adavis >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~andrewd >http://actein.edu.au/AME >IFIP 96 conference, Sept 96: see http://www.acs.org.au/ifip96.html > Sender: owner-link Precedence: bulk __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 00:08:23 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 11:08:23 +1100 Subject: End user bandwidth conservation Message-ID: jackling@deakin.edu.au (Noel Jackling) wrote: >END USER BANDWIDTH CONSERVATION: SHOULD IT BE PROMOTED? I'm surprised that you haven't had some reactions to this on link (maybe everyone's being good and doing it off-link, and maybe our ex-Port Hedland mate is off the air at the moment, or he's forgotten about remote areas already!). A couple of comments: 1. I think you should couple 'people-bandwidth' issues with 'network- bandwidth' conservation. There's a lot of human-disturbing noise out there, including huge images, unnecessary images, replies to e-lists instead of originators, replies which fail to remove text from the original message that's irrelevant to the latest contribution, etc. 2. I suggest that you change the sequence of your points to reflect the practicality and impact of the measures (e.g. 1, 2, 4, 10, the missing one about checking who you reply-to, 7, 9, 11, 5, 6, 3, 8) 3. In 2, make the heading 'Stop unwanted downloads' (surely Netsearch isn't the only browser with a 'stop' button), and *then* explain the different ways in which you can do it. 4. Put the revised version up on a web-page, and let's all flash the URL around a few relevant e-lists from time to time. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 00:09:24 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 11:09:24 +1100 Subject: Digital Signatures and PKAF Message-ID: Stewart Carter asked: > >Secondly, on security for electronic commerce over the Net, Steve Orlowski > >from A-G's said that legislation for digital signatures and a Public Key > >Authentication Framework will soon be coming. And indeed in this morning's > >AFR the time-frame is given as this year. > > > >Can anybody confirm or clarify this time-frame? I gave a half-answer, but as a linker pointed out to me it was only half-right. I phoned Bob Lions at Standards Australia, and he advised that: (a) there *is already* a Draft Standard DR96078; (b) it was published in April (at least I assume so, because it's not on the list of Drafts released in March, and the page for April releases gives a 404 - Not Found); (c) public comment is invited until late May; (d) it should be in your local Standards Australia shop. For addresses, see: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sicsaa/ In a further development, I heard from a journalist on the phone this morning that Australia Post have now decided on the name of their service: Key Post. (Predictable really - cross-leveraging brands is all the rage). Has anyone seen any formal announcement of a start-date? I gather they may be prepared to take the risks that the draft standard may be ambiguous or unstable, in order to gain first-mover advantage. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From lhume@iliad.lib.mq.edu.au Thu May 2 16:28:40 1996 From: lhume@iliad.lib.mq.edu.au (Leigh R HUME) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 11:28:40 -0500 Subject: Digital Signatures and PKAF In-Reply-To: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) "Digital Signatures and PKAF" (May 2, 11:09am) References: Message-ID: <9605021128.ZM16097@iliad.lib.mq.edu.au> On May 2, 11:09am, Roger Clarke wrote: > Subject: Digital Signatures and PKAF > > In a further development, I heard from a journalist on the phone this > morning that Australia Post have now decided on the name of their service: > Key Post. (Predictable really - cross-leveraging brands is all the rage). > Has anyone seen any formal announcement of a start-date? I gather they may > be prepared to take the risks that the draft standard may be ambiguous or > unstable, in order to gain first-mover advantage. > >-- End of excerpt from Roger Clarke See also Wednesday's Oz Fin Review, on pages 1 and 11. Predictably not a lot of detail. There are some market flyers around as well. -- Leigh HUME (wearing a private hat unless otherwise stated) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phone: +61 2 850 7399 (messages) | Email: lhume@iliad.lib.mq.edu.au +61 41 924 3866 (mobile) | lhume@mpce.mq.edu.au Fax: +61 2 850 7590 | Leigh.HUME@mq.edu.au ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: Dr Leigh HUME, Library, Macquarie University 2109, AUSTRALIA ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 02:04:38 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 13:04:38 +1100 Subject: Digital Signatures and PKAF Message-ID: Stewart Carter asked: > >Secondly, on security for electronic commerce over the Net, Steve Orlowski > >from A-G's said that legislation for digital signatures and a Public Key > >Authentication Framework will soon be coming. And indeed in this morning's > >AFR the time-frame is given as this year. > > > >Can anybody confirm or clarify this time-frame? I gave a half-answer, but as a member of the link e-list pointed out to me, it was only half-right. I phoned Bob Lions at Standards Australia, and he advised that: (a) there *is already* a Draft Standard DR96078; (b) it was published in April (at least I assume so, because it's not on the list of Drafts released in March, and the page for April releases gives a 404 - Not Found); (c) public comment is invited until late May; (d) it should be in your local Standards Australia shop. For addresses, see: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sicsaa/ In a further development, I heard from a journalist on the phone this morning that Australia Post have now decided on the name of their service: Key Post. (Predictable really - cross-leveraging brands is all the rage). Has anyone seen any formal announcement of a start-date? I gather they may be prepared to take the risks that the draft standard may be ambiguous or unstable, in order to gain first-mover advantage. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From larocque@acslink.net.au Thu May 2 05:29:00 1996 From: larocque@acslink.net.au (John Larocque) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 15:29:00 +1000 Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: At 7:44 PM 1/5/96, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote: >About four years ago I worked on a project for the Australian Federal Police. > >The National Firearm Information Interchange System (NFIIS) was a system [...] > >I bet there are more than a few people hopping that no-one remembers NFIIS. >I do, and it really makes me angry. The lack of it may have killed 35 >innocent people. I remember the NFIIS study, June-September 1992, only too well. There were three of us - myself, Bernard and another consultant whom I've lost track of - engaged to on the study. Consultations were conducted with police jurisdictions all around the country including each state and the federal police. I did Tasmania, among others. As I recollect, we conducted the NFIIS study for the Australian Police Ministers' Council. The Federal Minister used the resources of the AFP and the federal A-Gs department within the Minister's portfolio to administer the study. I also recollect that the state jurisdictions were all in favour of NFIIS 'in principle'. They were positive and cooperative in their desire to work through it. They were also keen to point out the technical and political obstacles, not the least of which was the need to harmonise firearms legislation. In the end we were able to put forward a high level technical architecture (Bernard did the architecting for this - a client server model I think, was it not Bernard?) showing how firearms databases in each jurisdiction could contribute to information sharing without compromising jurisdictional claims and responsibilities regarding data ownership. I think the Police Ministers are meeting again on Friday with the PM (?) about all this. Surely NFIIS will be on the agenda. Won't it? jl ________________________________________________________________________ John Larocque voice/fax: +61 6 290 2526 33 Batchelor St email: larocque@acslink.net.au Torrens ACT 2601 Janeece Pty Ltd ACN 064 741 073 Canberra, Australia Information Systems Planning & Evaluation ________________________________________________________________________ From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Thu May 2 15:51:27 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 15:51:27 +0000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: <199605020553.PAA15228@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> PICS - Platform for Internet Content Selection ============================================== Overview -------- PICS is a proposed new Internet protocol for labelling Internet content and resources. It provides an excellent basis for: 1 - Giving adults sophisticated control over the material accessed by children. 2 - Helping all users avoid certain types of material they don't want to know about. This is not a form of censorship. PICS is a protocol for labelling documents either directly or remotely. Direct labelling is done by including the label in the document - as an HTML tag. Remote labels are those provided by rating services and are not part of the documents they refer to. PICS does not specify any one system of rating material - it enables services to define their own systems, for whatever purposes they like. For a description of PICS, see: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/iacwc.htm The full technical description of the protocol is at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/labels.html & http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/services.html Comments -------- There are excellent prospects for giving parents and educators good control over what children do with the WWW and other Internet resources, using classification systems based on the PICS labelling protocol. I will not describe this here, but the finesse and degree of protection with which children could be protected from undesirable material far exceeds the crude provisions for mass media such as TV, movies and printed publications. (The "V-chip" is an attempt to provide a crude PICS like adult controlled filter system to broadcast TV, but PICS, being network based is vastly more flexible.) This is *not* censorship of the net, it is the parent censoring or restricting what a child does with a WWW browser or similar software on their own computer, by using filtering software which *runs* on their own computer. This system does not depend at all on the ISP, and the ISP is technically incapable of providing the filtering function for the user. The filtering takes place at the HTTP protocol level, using complete URLs. This information is available to software running on the user's PC, but is not present at all in the packets which the user's computer sends and receives via the ISP's routers. These IP packets are identifiable by their IP address alone and it is impossible to implement meaningful filtering at the packet level. I can see little role for government regulations regarding a PICS based labelling and rating system. Neither governments nor ISPs can force users to use a particular piece of software on their home computers. However many users, with and without children, will want to use such software. Neither governments nor ISPs can force "content creators" to accurately label their material with ratings relevant to its suitability for children or for public display. (ISP's could refuse to carry unrated or - in their view - incorrectly rated material on their WWW server.) Nor can governments or ISPs force ratings services to accurately classify material or to use any particular criteria or dimensions for such rating. However, users will naturally use those ratings services whose ratings are most accurate and suitable to their needs. Users will often be happy to pay for such services, whether they relate to suitability for children or to other attributes. ISPs may be able to facilitate the use of PICS based rating services by operating a caching server program for the PICS protocol. This will often produce faster results for the ratings requests from user's filter software to the rating services, and reduce the load on the ISP's link to the outside Internet. PICS is the basis for new, distributed, value judgement and classification system which can be applied to many Internet resources. The significance of PICS goes well beyond protecting children - it will emerge as a mechanism for being selective about many Internet based resources according to "quality" and any number of other criteria. After reading the PICS material, I am confident that a good system of protecting children will emerge in the next year or two, simply because of demand and without reliance on legislation or codes of conduct. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 05:29:15 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 16:29:15 +1100 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: Further to Stewart Carter's enquiry on the ICA list, and my response to both ICA and link, both on 1 May: Robin Whittle and myself have now received from ABA staff copies of Peter Webb's keynote presentation to the On-Line Services Regulation conference on 24 April. Robin's working on getting it into html, to make it available on the web. Meanwhile, I've had a read of it, briefly summarised it, and written my reactions to it. Basically the paper's okay as far as it goes, but (sorry in advance for the cliche), it raises more questions than it answers, and the public concerns are justified. My comments are at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb960424.html Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From rbersten@ia.com.au Thu May 2 07:26:43 1996 From: rbersten@ia.com.au (Rosanne Bersten) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 17:26:43 +1000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: Robin wrote: >I can see little role for government regulations regarding a PICS >based labelling and rating system. Neither governments nor ISPs can >force users to use a particular piece of software on their home >computers. However many users, with and without children, will want >to use such software. No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include some form of PICS-based filtering control. >Neither governments nor ISPs can force "content creators" to >accurately label their material with ratings relevant to its >suitability for children or for public display. (ISP's could refuse >to carry unrated or - in their view - incorrectly rated material on >their WWW server.) Nor can governments or ISPs force ratings services >to accurately classify material or to use any particular criteria or >dimensions for such rating. You may be interested to know that both Netscape and Microsoft have already endorsed PICS and Microsoft at least has said it will incorporate a PICS-based filter into its Explorer browser. if Netscape does the same, much of the browser market is covered. A parent/Teacher can then choose to filter out R and X-rated stuff, or only look at G-rated stuff and MS has also promised an option to filter out any non-rated material. If most of the browser market could filter out non-rated pages, it would be an incentive for everyone to take part in the rating system -- but still not be mandatory. regards, rosanne bersten *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* + Rosanne Bersten (editor@ia.com.au) - Editor, internet.au magazine + + tel: +61 2 310 1433 * fax: +61 2 310 1315 * http://www.ia.com.au + *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* From rbersten@ia.com.au Thu May 2 07:26:43 1996 From: rbersten@ia.com.au (Rosanne Bersten) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 17:26:43 +1000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: Robin wrote: >I can see little role for government regulations regarding a PICS >based labelling and rating system. Neither governments nor ISPs can >force users to use a particular piece of software on their home >computers. However many users, with and without children, will want >to use such software. No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include some form of PICS-based filtering control. >Neither governments nor ISPs can force "content creators" to >accurately label their material with ratings relevant to its >suitability for children or for public display. (ISP's could refuse >to carry unrated or - in their view - incorrectly rated material on >their WWW server.) Nor can governments or ISPs force ratings services >to accurately classify material or to use any particular criteria or >dimensions for such rating. You may be interested to know that both Netscape and Microsoft have already endorsed PICS and Microsoft at least has said it will incorporate a PICS-based filter into its Explorer browser. if Netscape does the same, much of the browser market is covered. A parent/Teacher can then choose to filter out R and X-rated stuff, or only look at G-rated stuff and MS has also promised an option to filter out any non-rated material. If most of the browser market could filter out non-rated pages, it would be an incentive for everyone to take part in the rating system -- but still not be mandatory. regards, rosanne bersten *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* + Rosanne Bersten (editor@ia.com.au) - Editor, internet.au magazine + + tel: +61 2 310 1433 * fax: +61 2 310 1315 * http://www.ia.com.au + *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 07:10:56 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 18:10:56 +1100 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 02 May 1996 07:49:43 +0000 >From: edireport@attmail.com (Australasian EDI Report/Technosocial) >Phone: +6136021544 >Fax-Phone: +6136023216 >Subject: regulation of ISP's >To: ica@syd.dit.csiro.au >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Sender: (Do_not_reply_to_this_address)owner-ica@syd.dit.csiro.au >Precedence: bulk > > >---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- >From: EDIReport (Australasian EDI Report/Technosocial) >To: internet!nla.gov.au!cirg-l >Subject: regulation of ISP's >UA-Message-ID: >Content-Length: 659 > >I see that the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) is reported in the >AFR this morning (p.31) as saying that preliminary legal advice they have >taken suggests that the TIO will be able to cover Internet Service Providers >(ISP's) too. > >Wouldn't this be a duplication of the complaints handling process envisaged by >the codes of practice called for by the new censorship legislation enacted or >announced in WA, NT, Vic, NSW? > >Similarly, would this not overlap with the ABA's proposed self-regulatory >regime involving codes of practice for the on-line services industry? > >Stewart Carter >EDI Report/Messaging News >edireport@attmail.com >Ph 0411 477 149 > Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From ron@comu.net.au Thu May 2 08:28:58 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Thu, 02 May 1996 18:28:58 +1000 Subject: PICS Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960502082858.00718724@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> At 17:26 2/05/96 +1000, rosanne wrote: >Robin wrote: > >>I can see little role for government regulations regarding a PICS >>based labelling and rating system. Neither governments nor ISPs can >>force users to use a particular piece of software on their home >>computers. However many users, with and without children, will want >>to use such software. > >You may be interested to know that both Netscape and Microsoft have already >endorsed PICS and Microsoft at least has said it will incorporate a >PICS-based filter into its Explorer browser. if Netscape does the same, >much of the browser market is covered. A parent/Teacher can then choose to >filter out R and X-rated stuff, or only look at G-rated stuff and MS has >also promised an option to filter out any non-rated material. If most of >the browser market could filter out non-rated pages, it would be an >incentive for everyone to take part in the rating system -- but still not >be mandatory. > > Finally a shape begins to form, a workable model of reason. dare I remark on the folley of law, lest I be accused of treason...:-) Ron, have a good day linkers.... Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From brd@netinfo.com.au Thu May 2 08:33:10 1996 From: brd@netinfo.com.au (Bernard Robertson-Dunn) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 18:33:10 +1000 (EST) Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: <199605020833.SAA10779@wilma.netinfo.com.au> larocque@acslink.net.au (John Larocque) wrote: >I remember the NFIIS study, June-September 1992, only too well. There were >three of us - myself, Bernard and another consultant whom I've lost track >of - engaged to on the study. Consultations were conducted with police >jurisdictions all around the country including each state and the federal >police. I did Tasmania, among others. > Thanks for the info, I had forgotten a lot of the project details. >In the end we were able to put forward a high level technical architecture >(Bernard did the architecting for this - a client server model I think, was >it not Bernard?) That was before it was called client server, and it would have worked even then. >I think the Police Ministers are meeting again on Friday with the PM (?) >about all this. Surely NFIIS will be on the agenda. Won't it? Being on the agenda and someting substantive happening are not the same thing. This is not a technology issue, it is a political issue and like so many other projects, it is the external things that cause the system to either fail or not perform to expectations. Unfortunately, only too often it is the system builders who get the blame. regards brd From chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au Thu May 2 12:06:15 1996 From: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris and Sharon) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 22:36:15 +1030 Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: John Larocque wrote... >At 7:44 PM 1/5/96, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote: >>About four years ago I worked on a project for the Australian Federal Police. >> >>The National Firearm Information Interchange System (NFIIS) was a system >[...] >> >>I bet there are more than a few people hopping that no-one remembers NFIIS. >>I do, and it really makes me angry. The lack of it may have killed 35 >>innocent people. > >I remember the NFIIS study, June-September 1992, only too well. There were >three of us - myself, Bernard and another consultant whom I've lost track >of - engaged to on the study. Consultations were conducted with police >jurisdictions all around the country including each state and the federal >police. I did Tasmania, among others. > >As I recollect, we conducted the NFIIS study for the Australian Police >Ministers' Council. The Federal Minister used the resources of the AFP and >the federal A-Gs department within the Minister's portfolio to administer >the study. > Sounds to me like this is worthy of more detailed investigation Mr Hilvert... Regards Chris _______________________________________________________________________________ Chris Nicholls chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au PO Box 445 ph: +61-6-241 2112 Dickson ACT 2602 fax: +61-6-241 8926 Australia mob: 018 628 678 _______________________________________________________________________________ From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Thu May 2 12:15:09 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 22:15:09 +1000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: At 17:26 96/05/02, Rosanne Bersten wrote: >No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include >some form of PICS-based filtering control. How? I'll get my browser from anywhere on the planet thank you. Filters for what some people might regard as improper is the last thing I'd want. Filters for quality is something else again. For that I don't want self rating. I want to get them from a third part of my own choice. Some of the Seals- of-approval-servers (SOAPS) concepts from the interpedia group are interesting here. The problems of access by children to material that particular groups with particular moral stances may wish to limit are a first order political problem but in the long term are a third order problem for the future of the internet. There is already a mechanism to control access to information for children. They are called parents and teachers. They key problem will be finding quality information from the sea of noise that cheap and easy publishing will create. My paper (now dated) to the 1995 questnet conference addressed some of this see Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 11:30:59 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 22:30:59 +1100 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: If this thread isn't your scene, sorry about this - I promise this is the last on the topic for a while, at least from me!! ___________________________________________________________________________ The ABA today provided Robin Whittle with the text of the paper by its Chair, Peter Webb, to the On-Line Services Regulation Conference on 24 April. Robin's html'd it, and it's now available at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html My review of it is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb960424.html The general information page on 'Regulating the Net' in Australia is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From davaile@law.usyd.edu.au Thu May 2 13:29:32 1996 From: davaile@law.usyd.edu.au (David Vaile) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 23:29:32 +1000 Subject: Port Arthur Message-ID: > What I find most repulsive now is the reaction of politicians > and the police (at least the ones I have heard on the radio > and read about) saying that they should do something about > sharing information on gun control and ownership and that maybe > gun control laws should be tightened and made uniform across > the country. All this was proposed four years ago but it never > happened. I bet there are more than a few people hopping that > no-one remembers NFIIS. I do, and it really makes me angry. > The lack of it may have killed 35 innocent people. - Dear colleagues, Many of us are upset about the continued failure of policy makers to implement gun control measures, such as a system to register information on gun posession. Rebecca Peters, Secretary of the Coalition for Gun Control and a primary campaigner for this policy, has asked if we can urgently assist with distribution of the message below from Ass. Prof Simon Chapman. I wonder can I ask the help of LINKers for this? Your thoughts on ethical but efficient means for quick wide distribution of the following message would be welcome. - regards, David Vaile --------- From: Simon Chapman Org: Community Medicine, Westmead Hosp. To: davaile@law.usyd.edu.au Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 09:31:10 Subject: URGENT-- MASS RALLY FOR GUN CONTROL --PLEASE PASS ON --URGENT:PLEASE EMAIL FORWARD THIS MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE-- A mass rally of protest against political inaction on gun control is being organised for this Saturday 4th May. It will be held in Sydney at Hyde Park North (near the Archibald Fountain) commencing at 12.30pm. It is terribly important that 1000s of people attend to attest to the degree of anger and feeling in the community. Federal and state politicians are already showing many signs of doing very little about changing guns laws after Port Arthur. Queensland Police Minister Russell Cooper has already declared opposition to national uniformity, gun registration and a ban on semi-automatics. Please do your best to attend and bring as many people with you as possible. (Associate Professor) Simon Chapman Convenor, Coalition for Gun Control PO Box 167 Camperdown 2050 DONATIONS FOR LOBBYING VERY URGENTLY NEEDED --------- ___________________________________________________________ David Vaile, Information technology support coordinator Community Legal Centres NSW, Management Support Project Suite 1, 245 Chalmers St, Redfern NSW 2016 Australia Ph: +61 2 318 2877 Fax: +61 2 318 2863 DX 937 Sydney Mail: davaile@law.usyd.edu.au or David_Vaile@fcl.fl.asn.au ____ Web site: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/clc/ ____ From hartr@hedland.edu.au Thu May 2 21:40:26 1996 From: hartr@hedland.edu.au (Robert Hart) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 05:40:26 +0800 (WST) Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 2 May 1996, Tony Barry wrote: > The problems of access by children to material that particular groups with > particular moral stances may wish to limit are a first order political > problem but in the long term are a third order problem for the future of > the internet. There is already a mechanism to control access to > information for children. They are called parents and teachers. They key > problem will be finding quality information from the sea of noise that > cheap and easy publishing will create. I concur wholeheartedly. There is much programming on the free to air TV (even allowing for the fact that here in remote WA we only have two channels) that is unsuitable for children. For my 14 year old son, I act as the filter - with assistance from that marvellous piece of technology known as the "off switch". When using the Internet, my son does that under my supervision. Again, I act as filter. The issue of parental responsibility (both for the TV and the Internet) requires education not regulation. Robert Hart hartr@hedland.edu.au Voice: +61 (0)91 72 0429 Fax: +61 (0)91 72 3560 Hedland College, PMB 1, South Hedland WA 6722 Australia From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 22:06:46 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 09:06:46 +1100 Subject: Adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header Message-ID: Dear linkers ... Our communications are awfully boring. We allow ourselves occasional levity, but they're usually just little jokes and asides. What we need is more of what follows - full-blooded parody, but hitting the mark square-on. Is there a Pullitzer Prize for constructive fiction?? Hang in there for the first four paras. ... Roger >>X-Reposting-Policy: redistribute only with permission >>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 15:18:49 -0400 >>Sender: ietf-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US >>From: "Perry E. Metzger" >>Source-Info: From (or Sender) name not authenticated. >>Content-Length: 4534 >> >> >>"vivek (v.) kapil" writes: >>> hinden@Ipsilon.com writes: >>> >>Re: Government trying to put an adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header: >>> > >>> >This is, IMHO, a stupid idea. I would not support it. >>> >I would also argue that the government (in this case the US Government) >>> >does not have any jurisdiction here. >>> >>> Why do you think it is a stupid idea? IMHO, I personally think >>> there should be a way to identify who is on the Internet. The kind of >>> material that is floating on the Net is offcourse not for kids' >>> poor eyes. >>> >>> I also think there should be a way to mark the contents for its >>> level of obscenity so that those contents can be barred to appear >>> in front of those who do not wish to see them. >> >>Besides, having an Adult/Minor flag makes it much easier for >>technically astute pedophiles to find targets, and I think we should >>help them as much as we can, since there is so much discrimination >>against pedophiles that giving them a leg up now and then is probably >>required by some anti-discrimination law out there. >> >>Also, I think we should have a whole raft of new flags. I would >>propose the following tags: >> >>Subversive/Not Subversive according to >> The Government of Iran >> The Government of Saudi Arabia >> The Government of China >> The Government of Singapore >> The Government of Libya >> The Government of Kenya >> The Government of the U.S. >>Offensive/Not Offensive to >> All Christians >> Catholics >> Calvinists >> Lutherans >> Baptists >> All Muslims >> Shiite Muslims >> Sunni Muslims >> Hindus >> Sikhs >> Jews >> Nazis >> White Supremicists >> Black Supremicists >> Colorblind People >> People with one arm (left) >> People with one arm (right) >> Gays >> Homophobes >> Lesbian Separatists >> IETF members >>Contains/Does not contain data advocating potentially offensive ideas: >> Individualist ideas >> Ideas advocated by the Democratic Party >> Ideas advocated by the Republican Party >> Ideas advocated by the Communist Party >> Ideas advocated by cattle mutilators >> Ideas advocated by Hillary Clinton >> Ideas advocated by Ayn Rand >> Ideas advocating human rights >> Any ideas that require thinking (offensive to stupid people) >>Packet is being transmitted by >> Someone under the age of 18 >> Someone under the age of 12 >> A Jew >> A Hindu >> A person who is known to advocate ideas considered subversive by >> the government of Burkina Faso >>Etc. Etc. >> >>I suggest, before we deploy IPv6 too far and cannot make major >>technical changes, that we have to put in a mandatory end to end >>option, initially with space 256 bits (but extensible via a frequency >>coding mechanism), to be called the "naughty bits", to indicate the >>presence of any such offensive material in the packet. The IANA will >>assign these bits to any group or individual who can articulate a >>criterion by which he might be offended. All routers MUST drop any and >>all packets not containing the "naughty bits". >> >>> Folks have to agree first whether adult/minor flag should be >>> legalized or not. >> >>Legalized! Pshaw! I advocate the immediate establishment of an >>international convention requiring the death penalty for any person or >>piece of artificially intelligent software transmitting a packet >>without all (and I mean ALL!) defined "naughty bits" asserted. This >>will make it easy for people to be protected as you advocate: >> >>> I also think there should be a way to mark the contents for its >>> level of obscenity so that those contents can be barred to appear >>> in front of those who do not wish to see them. >> >>The advantage of my generalization of your scheme, however, is that it >>will permit the Government of Iran to permit data containing, say, >>suitably head-to-toe covered pictures of women to be transmitted to >>the country, but at the same time allow much less liberal governments >>to eliminate any such representational artwork, which, as you know, >>goes against the will of Allah, and also permit the >>pedonecrobestiophiles on the net to only allow packets containing >>pictures of young dead animals being buggered to pass through their >>firewall. >> >>The system in question is both necessary to permit the worldwide >>automated censorship regime we are all working hard to achieve and is >>technically feasible. I advocate the immediate formation of a working >>group to rapidly create a standard before its too late and more >>Iranian children are traumatized for life by seeing pictures of women >>without veils. >> >> >>Perry >> >>PS apologies to T.C. May for open theft of many of his ideas on this >>topic. >> Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From rdebrece@scu.edu.au Thu May 2 23:23:14 1996 From: rdebrece@scu.edu.au (Roger Debreceny) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 16:23:14 -0700 Subject: Netscape and PICS Re: PICS Message-ID: Hi Linkers Jim Miller from the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT and now at the W3 Consortium is the program manager for the PICS project. As many will know he is a keynote speaker at AusWeb96 in July. Jim was recently in the Bay Area for PICS meetings, including a meeting which was hosted by Netscape. He tells me that the PICS team is confident that N'scape will come on board. PICS will form part of M'soft's Internet Explorer 3.0. Cheers, Roger -- Roger Debreceny, | Email: rdebrece@scu.edu.au Director, ANet, Intl Acctg N'wrk| AusWeb96, 2nd Australian Web Conference Southern Cross University, Aust | 7-9 July '96, Gold Coast, Queensland On sabbatical at Haas School of | See => http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb96/ Business, UC Berkeley, CA 94720 | Phone: (510) 526 7218 AusWeb96 is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and Nornet, Internet Content Provider From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 2 22:32:20 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 09:32:20 +1100 Subject: Tax and the Internet Message-ID: In the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, Fri 3 May 1996, pp.21, 24: The Bottom Line Column - Max Walsh Cyberspace forcing changes to tax net "... there is a wild card which has not yet hit the political table which could well see tax reform catapulted to the top of the national agenda. "In a word, it is the Internet. "... I suggest you read a feature article in Wednesday's Financial Review by John Davidson, 'The Hidden Economy'. "... It is the borderless world of the internet combined with access to crytpology [sic - he meant 'cryptography'] which is virtually impenetrable by officialdom which holds out the promise of individual tax avoidance on a grand scale. "... The internet will offer ... middle-class professionals ... a way of protecting their income through offshore facilities equipped with electronic (as distinct from legal) walls which keep out prying official eyes. "... [The government's] preferred method of collection, through income and corporate taxes, will be increasingly compromised. "However, money does not remain in cyberspace. It is ultimately spent and that is where governments will become more dependent on indirect taxes." Okay, so that was mainstream net community thinking fully two years ago. The point is that Max has the status of at least an early adopter of ideas in the financial community, and even a bleeding-edge thinker; so presumably the GST is finally back on the agenda. Now I wonder whether middle-class shop-keepers can use the net to duck taxes levied at the point-of-purchase and/or point-of-sale; or better still collect and appropriate them ... Full-text of Max Walsh's article is at: http://www.smh.com.au/daily/business/business2.html The AFR's page is such a mess I can't work out whether the Davidson article is available or not. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au Fri May 3 10:28:06 1996 From: Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au (Tom Worthington/Defence Materiel/AU) Date: 3 May 96 10:28:06 Subject: Digital Signatures and PKAF Message-ID: <9605031424.AA1400@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au> Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) wrote Thu, 2 May 1996 11:09:24 +1100: >I phoned Bob Lions at Standards Australia, and he advised that: >(a) there *is already* a Draft Standard DR96078... Re-post from CIRG-l: >From: Tom Worthington >Date: 02/05/96 09:50:07 AM >Subject: Re: Directory Services/Certification > >I wrote 01/05/96 11:05:15 AM: > >>The work by the Department of Defence and other Australian government and >> non-government organizations in the Public Key Authentication Facility (PKAF) >> project may be of interest. >> >>See "At last a safe way to trade on the Net" on page one of the Financial Review today... >>Mrs. Cramer >There is a 69 page draft out for comment from Standards Australia: "DR96078 >Draft Australian Standard For Comment: Strategies for the Implementation >of a Public key Authentication Framework in Australia" dated 1 April, with >comments closing 31 May. Defence has an electronic copy of the draft >and has requested permission from Standards Australia to make it available >on the Internet. I will advise the URL when/if available. > > > >Tom Worthington >Deputy Director Information Management Plans >& Defence Web Administrator >Information Management Branch >Department of Defence >Room APW2-1-06, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia >Ph: +61 6 2666605 Fax: +61 6 2666758 From Brad.Cooper@jcu.edu.au Fri May 3 00:27:39 1996 From: Brad.Cooper@jcu.edu.au (Brad Cooper) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 10:27:39 +1000 (EST) Subject: Speakers for QUESTnet'96 Message-ID: Dear List Recipients, I am producing the programme for QUESTnet'96 which is to be held at James Cook University, Townsville 3-5 July. The technical stream is coming together, but the stream for the management and library side of the conference is still not well catered for. If you would like to present a paper or know of a potential presenter, please let me know. The registration cost for presenters is at the lower rate of $195. Please see http://www.jcu.edu.au/questnet-96/ Regards, Brad Cooper Internet:Brad.Cooper@jcu.edu.au Manager, Networking & Comms Phone:+61 77 814245 Computer Centre Fax:+61 77 815230 James Cook University Townsville, QLD Australia 4811 From rbersten@ia.com.au Fri May 3 00:30:12 1996 From: rbersten@ia.com.au (Rosanne Bersten) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 10:30:12 +1000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: Tony wrote: >At 17:26 96/05/02, Rosanne Bersten wrote: >>No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include >>some form of PICS-based filtering control. > >How? I'll get my browser from anywhere on the planet thank you. Filters >for what some people might regard as improper is the last thing I'd want. >Filters for quality is something else again. For that I don't want self >rating. I want to get them from a third part of my own choice. Some of the >Seals- of-approval-servers (SOAPS) concepts from the interpedia group are >interesting here. I think a number of people have misunderstood PICS. It *isn't* surfwatch (which I object to too). It doesn't automatically filter out sites. It *allows* you to filter out sites. It is precisely the parents and teachers you mention who will have the choice of exactly what setting to put the browser on, as it will be capable of multiple filtering settings. You can also use third party ratings systems through a PICS-enabled browser. You can also decide to turn off all filtering and just have open slather. As for "anywhere on the planet", most browsers are made in English-speaking countries which are very likely to follow US law in some way (copycat usually). If both Microsoft and Netscape argue for mandatory PICS filtering, to head off full-on CDA censorship, other US manufacturers will follow. Of course you can use a shoddy third-rate browser if you want, but since most browsers are made by rather public companies, it is likely they would follow a law requiring them to embed PICS *since it is not censorship*. The idea of mandatory PICS-embedded browsers is a lot easier to enforce than the currently proposed legislation (both US and NSW) because you have a relatively small number of browser manufacturers who are reasonably easy to police. PLease note I am not pro-censorship in any way -- certainly not pro-government censorship. I can just see that PICS is a good compromise that puts the power into the hands of the parent/teacher/individual while assuaging the fears of the knee-jerk anti-porn crowd. rosanne *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* + Rosanne Bersten (editor@ia.com.au) - Editor, internet.au magazine + + tel: +61 2 310 1433 * fax: +61 2 310 1315 * http://www.ia.com.au + *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-* From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Fri May 3 01:06:27 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 11:06:27 +1000 Subject: Adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header- thanks Roger Message-ID: <1895ca90@dist.gov.au> Re Roger Clarke's posting: As a new subscriber to Link, I was beginning to get a bit worried about the reallllly serious (albeit interesting) flavour of the postings. Thank you Roger for lightening things up a bit. David Nicholls Director International Science & Technology Programs DIST DNicholls@dist.gov.au [until the axe falls] also at: nicholls@netinfo.com.au nicholls@ah.net From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Fri May 3 01:43:38 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 11:43:38 +1000 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: At 10:30 AM 3/5/96, Rosanne Bersten wrote: > I can just see that PICS is a good compromise >that puts the power into the hands of the parent/teacher/individual while >assuaging the fears of the knee-jerk anti-porn crowd. Point taken and agreed. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From mledwidg@nla.gov.au Fri May 3 02:52:17 1996 From: mledwidg@nla.gov.au (Michael Ledwidge) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 12:52:17 +1000 (EET) Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 3 May 1996, Rosanne Bersten wrote: > Tony wrote: > >At 17:26 96/05/02, Rosanne Bersten wrote: > >>No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include > >>some form of PICS-based filtering control. > > > >How? I'll get my browser from anywhere on the planet thank you. > > filtering, to head off full-on CDA censorship, other US manufacturers will > follow. Of course you can use a shoddy third-rate browser if you want, but > since most browsers are made by rather public companies, it is likely they > would follow a law requiring them to embed PICS *since it is not > censorship*. I'd have to agree with Ron Ipsen's comment on the 'folly of law' in this area. Surely this whole issue is just another storm in the political teacup. Filtering schemes are undeniably useful in certain contexts but imposing the implementation of one filtering scheme just doesn't make sense. Let the users decide what's in the black box. What would any legislation cover anyway? Any software capable of making a request for remote information? As the Web becomes ubiquitous, the ability to retrieve remote information via URLs is not going to be limited to swollen 'browser' packages like Netscape. A basic HTTP request is not rocket science, keep them PICS outta my toaster! Cheers, .M. *********************************************************************** Michael Ledwidge http://www.nla.gov.au/hype/ National Library of Australia From davaile@law.usyd.edu.au Fri May 3 03:02:07 1996 From: davaile@law.usyd.edu.au (David Vaile) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 13:02:07 +1000 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: Roger Clarke wrote: >If this thread isn't your scene, sorry about this - I promise this is the >last on the topic for a while, at least from me!! Roger, I don't know about anyone else, but this is definitely on topic for me and a number of my colleagues. >The ABA today provided Robin Whittle with the text of the paper by its >Chair, Peter Webb, to the On-Line Services Regulation Conference on 24 >April. Robin's html'd it, and it's now available at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html >My review of it is at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb960424.html Thanks for your timely review. Some issues arising: 1. It seems clear the ABA report won't be released in time to have an impact on the next meeting of SCAG (Standing Conference of Attorneys-General?) which is expected to decide to approve the proposals, probably in the form suggested by Mr Shaw in NSW. Q: Should any lobbying probably now also bypass the ABA and go urgently to the AGs, Mr Shaw in particular? Is there any other avenue? 2. I share most of your concerns about the Webb paper. However, conspicuous by its absence is any scope for the community (existing user community, or potential users, or other interested parties) to be involved or consulted on the specific proposal. Again, to pick up one of your threads, this seems to be due to the assumption that the Net is a one-to-many mass medium. As frequently noted, it has the potential to be a many-to-many, narrowcast medium for communities of interest, for individuals and small groups to produce content comparable to that made by mass media corporations. It changes things. This would eventually make "The Industry" of "content providers" extend to just about anyone with a phone line, a computer and the interest. It does not appear that this, the most significantly affected group, has a seat at the table. Q: Should there be such representation in this new, "self-regulatory" domain, given the empahsis on "content provider responsibility"? 3. Mr Webb's concern that there is gulf between the two cultures rings true. The question is what to do about it. If the net-dwelling community do not bridge the gulf, it is unlikely to be bridged in the reverse direction: pragmatism and speed usually win over technical correctness or informed criticism in the political domain. Q: Is the solution for some other group to try to help bridge the cultural gulf? The arts community, the traditional civil liberties groups, or perhaps people from other parts of the legal or regulatory system? regards, David ___________________________________________________________ David Vaile, IT support coordinator NSW community legal centres, Redfern NSW Australia (views expressed herein are personal) Ph: +61 2 318 2877 Fax: +61 2 318 2863 DX 937 Sydney davaile@law.usyd.edu.au or David_Vaile@fcl.fl.asn.au ____ Web site: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/clc/ ____ From dunc@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri May 3 03:13:47 1996 From: dunc@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Duncan Sargeant) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 11:13:47 +0800 (WST) Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship In-Reply-To: from "Rosanne Bersten" at May 3, 96 10:30:12 am Message-ID: <199605030313.LAA16255@starfish.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 2440 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/attachments/b88c2d6c/attachment.bin From tomw@acslink.net.au Fri May 3 04:03:19 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 14:03:19 +1000 Subject: Adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960503140412.30371130@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> At 09:06 AM 3/05/96 +1100, Roger Clarke wrote: >Dear linkers ... Our communications are awfully boring. > >We allow ourselves occasional levity, but they're usually just little jokes >and asides. What we need is more of what follows - full-blooded parody... > >>>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 15:18:49 -0400 >>>Sender: ietf-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US >>>From: "Perry E. Metzger" >>> >>>...Also, I think we should have a whole raft of new flags. I would >>>propose the following tags: >>> >>>...Offensive/Not Offensive to >>> All Christians >>> Catholics >>> Calvinists >>> Lutherans >>> Baptists >>> All Muslims... Sorry to get serious again, but it sounds quite reasonable to me to use a PICS type mechanism for this purpose. What different groups of individuals find offensive differs widely. There is a danger that we will have a cultural bias built into the Internet of what one segment of the population (who built it) think is acceptable. Less seriously, inverse filtering should be very popular: ANDing the "naughty bits". Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From ewainwri@nla.gov.au Fri May 3 04:25:43 1996 From: ewainwri@nla.gov.au (Eric Wainwright) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 14:25:43 +1000 (EET) Subject: Publishing of intellectual property on Internet (fwd) Message-ID: ********************************************** Eric Wainwright Deputy Director-General National Library of Australia Phone: (06) 262 1377 Fax: (06) 273 1133 e.wainwright@nla.gov.au *********************************************** > Date: Thu, 2 May 96 15:29:33 EST > From: "Peter M M Chomley" > > The following announcement (edited) was made yesterday. It is appended for > information only and not for marketing purposes: > ---------------- > > May 1, 1996 > > IBM announced today at Internet World in San Jose, Calif., > the commercial availability of Cryptolope* containers. These are secure > packaging for digital information, enabling Internet users to buy and > sell content securely over the Internet. > > Cryptolope technology is a fundamental part of IBM's new > infoMarket service (http://www.infomarket.ibm.com). > IBM infoMarket combines a sophisticated search engine with an > unmatched body of content, secure container technology and > transaction and billing management, thus providing a framework for > secure electronic commerce. > > Users benefit from IBM infoMarket's ability to > search through commercial content, as well as USENET newsgroups > and other leading content sources. > > Once targeted information is found, commercial content will > be delivered in Cryptolope containers, accompanied by a content > abstract that provides users with the essential product knowledge > they need to make a buying decision. The content abstract may > also include the content source, summary, author, last update, > size, and price, as well as any unique terms of sale. Once the > user has decided to open the contents of a Cryptolope container, > a transparent digital key is issued unlocking the material > contained within. > > To view a free document, the user clicks on the article and > the information appears on the desktop. To view priced content, > the user agrees to any unique terms of the Cryptolope container > that are prepared by the rights holder and contained in the > content abstract. > > A user can forward a Cryptolope container to others allowing > content providers to take advantage of "superdistribution", a new > business model that, if permitted by the publisher, allows the > customer to send the Cryptolope to others who may be interested > in its contents, thus facilitating the first phase of > superdistribution. Publishers can now take advantage of the > Internet as a valuable business medium by which to sell their > information, over and over again. > > The IBM infoMarket service has created a clearinghouse for > commercial content providers to track the payment, delivery and > authenticity of contents held within a Cryptolope. > > The content provider sets marketing and pricing guidelines > for the use of commercial content or technology services. This > allows the owners of this valuable information to have greater > control over distribution, appearance and price of their content. > > The search feature of the IBM infoMarket service can take a single > search request and simultaneously search multiple, disparate, and > distributed information sources returning relevance ranked results. > IBM infoMarket's search capabilities allow users to simultaneously > investigate the broad scope of the Internet as well as authorized, > private commercial content. Keyword and Boolean search requests allow > for more complex information queries using OR, AND or NEAR connectors. > These search capabilities allow for manual selection of sources > that will best contain the desired information to meet users > needs. > > IBM infoMarket also provides a feature which enables users > to search by source. Users can pick an individual source, all or > a group of sources in a category, or select all sources. > Additionally, search results can be received in brief or with > more details. Detailed results provide the user with the content > abstract, which may include source, author, excerpt, date, size, > and pricing information. > > Also, IBM and Xerox announced the intent to jointly develop and integrate > key technologies to protect intellectual property on the Internet. > The technologies involved include IBM's Cryptolope* containers for > securing content, and Xerox's Digital Property Rights Language (DPRL), > a language for specifying the rules governing the use and pricing of > content. > > The two companies plan to share technologies currently under > development, with the intention of working together to enhance > and integrate them, and will support them in various products and > services. Their focus will be on protecting digital content, > controlling its use and facilitating appropriate payment to its > owners. > > Xerox's DPRL technology, created by Dr. Mark Stefik at the Palo Alto > Research Center, provides the language needed by content providers > to specifically designate what actions are sanctioned by end users > with regard to specific intellectual property. In combination, these > two technologies will afford intellectual property rights holders the > means for enhancing their control over the use of their content within > a network environment. > -- Chris Rusbridge Programme Director, Electronic Libraries Programme The Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK Phone 01203 524979 Fax 01203 524981 Email C.A.Rusbridge@Warwick.ac.uk From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Fri May 3 03:33:07 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 14:33:07 +1100 Subject: ADFA CS Seminar on 9th May Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 12:08:27 +1000 >From: ss@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au (Santha Sampath) >To: seminars@ra.anu.edu.au >Subject: ADFA CS Seminar on 9th May >Sender: seminars-owner@cs.anu.edu.au > > ******************* > * ADFA CS SEMINAR * > ******************* > >Topic: From Hypertext to Flat Text: A Tool for Document Construction > >Speaker: Mr Wanli Ma > Ph.D Student, Computer Science Laboratory, ANU > > >Where: Rm.No.152, School of Computer Science > Australian Defence Force Academy > Northcott Drive Campbell > >When: Thursday, 9 May '96, 11.10am > > Abstract > -------- > > The hyperlinked nature of documents on the World Wide Web (WWW) gives > users great freedom for browsing and authoring. However it becomes > awkward when a user wants to print a document with such a > hierarchical structure, for example, the on-line Netscape Handbook. > In this case, the user has to fetch and print each piece of the > interesting documents separately and then assemble them together > manually. Even worse, the assembling-together could not be possible > without physically cutting and pasting when a piece of document is > linked from the middle of its parent text. In this paper, we present > a flexible tool which can automatically follow the hyperlinks of a main > document and replace each link with the actual sub-document content. In > other word, it transforms a hierarchically structured hypertext to a > flat form in its final output so that hard-copy printing is possible. > >A full paper can be found at > "http://discus.anu.edu.au/~ma/AusWeb96/PaperTech05.html" > > >======================================= >Seminar coordinator: Dr Santha Sampath >School of Computer Science >Australian Defence Force Academy >Canberra >Phone: 268 8158 >Fax: 268 8581 >e-mail: ss@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au >======================================= > Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Fri May 3 15:10:39 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:10:39 +0000 Subject: Boring communcations? Message-ID: <199605030512.PAA08380@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Roger Clarke wrote: > Dear linkers ... Our communications are awfully boring. Speak for yourself! I switched off most of my "lets be careful and respectable" filter settings when I wrote my gonzo prelude http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/link/linksyd2.txt - with the intention that it be honest and entertaining. Many Link people, unlike myself, depend for their daily income on a large, prominent and respectable organisation, and so may feel inhibited about saying something honest, risque and interesting. I will be happy to do electronic work for musicians if telecommunications consulting and writing dries up, so I can be more relaxed in what I write in public. Any Link people who want to express something without associating their name with it - and so bringing their employer in to the context - should contact me. I can post it to Link or put it on my WWW site. I would be delighted to host a gallery of lively pseudonymous writing. So come on, even if you work for a respected consulting company, a prominent government organisation, or a big telecommunications company which is planning to shed executives like yourself - I know who at least some of you are and would be glad for your wry, irreverant and fiendishly on-the-ball perspectives to be available to other Link people! - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Fri May 3 15:10:39 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:10:39 +0000 Subject: More on PICS Message-ID: <199605030512.PAA08329@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> More on PICS ratings and Rosanne Bersten's post: Rosanne Bersten No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include > some form of PICS-based filtering control. Government can make whatever laws it likes but laws regarding features in a particular class of software are likely to have little effect. There is no way of enforcing such a law. Browser software can be written or modified locally by programmers working from publicly available code, and it would be relatively easy to hack a browser so as to disable its filter software. I think that governments and ISPs may well be able to encourage the use of PICS based filtering software, but that its use will proliferate anyway. Be sure to read the PICS stuff, it is capable of supporting much more flexible systems than the simple MA, R, X etc. classifications. There are several aspects to this: There can be multiple ratings systems intended to indicate such things as: * Level of violence. * Level of "hate speech", perhaps against a particular minority. * Level of interest to a particular minority, such as Harley Davidson riders, Buddhists or Attorneys General. * Degree of quality in terms of a particular aesthetic taste. * Relevance to a given debate. * Degree of adhesion to a particular religion or philosphy. Any rating service can define a ratings system with its own set of such dimensions, and give the ranges of possible values, (eg 0 to 1, 0 or 1, -10 to + 10, or any value whatsoever, but "0" will mean "Dont' bother"and "10" will mean "Must have"). Any rating service, or content creator, can create labels for any material, using any system they choose. Only content creators can imbed PICS labels in their files, but the labels may contain ratings they made themselves and/or ratings made by other people or services. Ratings services can make their labels available to anyone, or only to subscribers. The labels can refer to any document or resource, or any directory, set of directories, computer or domain of computers. There are provisions for datestamping labels to give them a certain life-time, for checking that the document being referred to has not changed since the label was created, and for checking the authenticity of labels using digital signatures. It takes a while to get your brain around the possibilities! I think it will evolve as a second body of data almost shadowing the resources which are available. Software and adults don't have to take any notice of a label in a resource, or any labels which can be found from rating service servers, but you can configure your software to save yourself and your browser software from retrieving or seeing things you *probably* don't want to see. Adults could configure their browser (and other) software, running on their own machine to filter things as they wish, and be able to prevent their children changing the settings. All this can happen without the direct involvement of ISPs of governments, but their support, if only for education, is likely to be valuable. Some reasonably elaborate examples: 1 OK everything which comes from a domain or sub-directory which is labelled by rating service X or Y as being likely to be correctly labelled for child suitability, plus all resources on your own private list of sites which you think are similarly well labelled, if the available rating labels say it is likely to be OK for children under 13, but not if any of the specific labels available for the document or in the document indicate the material involves violence *unless* there is an indication that the material concerns Christianity. >> Your 12 yo child is researching the crusades. 2 OK only those resources which are labelled by one of four ratings services such as "NaughtyNet QC" or "Mistress Q's Cyberotica Quality Watch" (to which you may pay a subscription), and which have a positive bondage rating and a high "production values" rating, but only those which have zero S&M and violence ratings. >> You are looking for high quality bondage photos or videos, but >> don't want to see anything gruesome or wade through lots of dross. 3 OK only those WWW sites and Usenet postings which have been labelled by one of several services rating the quality of contributions to debates. >> You are researching some contentious issue and want to avoid >> the flamewars, repetition and side-issues. A simpler example: 4 Only OK those documents (and graphics files, Java programs, interactive applications etc.) which have at least one rating from a respected service indicating it is likely to be suitable for children under 16, but not if one of the services rates it in a way which says it is not suitable. There are scary applications of this - a child could think they are surfing the Web, not knowing that all they were seeing were sites which reflected a positive view of their parent's religion, race or political party. I think that since the protection of children will be such an early and high valued application of PICS, a relatively simple and widely applicable "suitability for children" system of rating will develop and become widely used. Many ratings organisations, including teachers and parents creating their own ratings of certain documents or sets of Internet resources would supply a rating based on this system. Adults would typically configure filter software to look for labels using this rating system, as well as labels with ratings according to any other systems which they consider valulable. It could be as simple as a single dimension - simply a number of the age of the children which the rater thinks the material is suitable for. There is no need to use lumpy categorisations such as MA, R etc. Maybe there could be two dimensions, one the age that a child might be if accessing the resource on their own and another if they were in the company of an adult. Of course people making the ratings would have different ideas about this. When the filter software requests labels for a particular resource, it may get one pair of ages from the resource itself, this might result from the judgement of the creator or some other rating service which he or she wants to include in the document. The filter software may also retrieve several pairs of ages from several prominent ratings services, and from more specialised services, including ratings the parents or teacher made for the particular document or the subdirectory or computer from which it came. The filter software could be programmed to give the ages in such labels greater or lesser weight according to who made the rating, and how specific it was to the particular document. For instance the one rating service may provide a general rating for a complete WWW site, and a more specific rating for a particular document. The ratings provided by the parent or teacher, stored in the home computer and/or distributed to other computers or via ratings services would probably take precedence over ratings from elsewhere. The filter software would get the labels incorporating these ratings from a local PICS label server, direct from the ratings services or from a local store of labels created by the parent's or teachers. (Browser programs would soon have a tool for creating labels as people browse.) It could get this information in a few seconds and decide whether to allow the child to access the resource. The filter software might have different profiles stored for the various members of the family, or for classes of different ages. Ratings service could operate as a pooling and averaging system for many individual's judgements. The service could receive labels containing ratings according to a particular system from its users (and from elsewhere and from its own staff, if any) and publish a single label for every document or resource it knows of. That rating could be an average of the ratings received from users, or the product of a more sophisticated algorithm which rejected ratings which were too far from the average, but erred on the side of caution when creating a rating to be published. This me me thinking aloud about how such systems may develop. > You may be interested to know that both Netscape and Microsoft have already > endorsed PICS and Microsoft at least has said it will incorporate a > PICS-based filter into its Explorer browser. if Netscape does the same, > much of the browser market is covered. A parent/Teacher can then choose to > filter out R and X-rated stuff, or only look at G-rated stuff and MS has > also promised an option to filter out any non-rated material. If most of > the browser market could filter out non-rated pages, it would be an > incentive for everyone to take part in the rating system -- but still not > be mandatory. I think that this will happen, and that it will take two or so years to really become established and for people to fine tune what sorts of services, systems and dimensions they want to use when searching or browsing through a quantity of material a hundred times bigger than what is available today. Look into the Yellow Pages. Imagine every second business has a WWW site. Look at the white pages. Imagine every third home has a child or adult with a WWW site, containing all sorts of things. Multiply by the size of the developed world divided by the size of your own city. We are going to need filtering software based on other people's value judgements! Search engines which use ratings criteria as the person desires will become increasingly valuable. - Robin From owner-link Fri May 3 05:51:29 1996 From: owner-link (owner-link) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:51:29 +1000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: <9605030551.AA16048@charlotte.anu.edu.au> >From mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au Fri May 3 15:33:48 1996 PAA20762; Fri, 3 May 1996 15:32:16 +1000 (EST) From: McKenzie Wark Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:32:15 +1000 (EST) To: Robin Whittle Cc: link Subject: Re: Boring communcations? In-Reply-To: <199605030512.PAA08380@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-link Precedence: bulk -- or use the anon@penet.fi anonymous remailer. (Just send it a help message to get instructions). Assuming, of course, that linkers don't object to a policy of permitting unsigned messages. k ___________________________________________________ McKenzie Wark mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au lecturer in communications ph: +61-(0)2-850-8786 Macquarie University 2109 fax: +61-(0)2-850-8240 "We no longer have roots we have aerials"__________ __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From r.durie@aiia.com.au Fri May 3 05:03:44 1996 From: r.durie@aiia.com.au (R Durie) Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 16:03:44 +1100 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: I would echo David Vaile's comments that this subject is very much on topic. AIIA, which represents technology suppliers, is extremely concerned about the impact of any legislation on business use of the Internet. As well as talking to the ABA we are talking to departments in Canberra and will be sending our views to State Governments as well. I should add that I have found Roger Clarke's comprehensive Web site extremely useful in keeping up to date on what is a moving target. Rob Durie Deputy Executive Director Australian Information Industry Association Ph: + 61 6 282 4700 12 Campion Street Deakin ACT 2600 Australia Fax: + 61 6 285 1408 PO Box 246 Deakin West ACT 2600 Australia Email: r.durie@aiia.com.au From ron@comu.net.au Fri May 3 10:51:30 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 20:51:30 +1000 Subject: Boring communcations? Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960503105130.00727474@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> At 15:10 3/05/96 +0000, you wrote: I would be delighted to host a gallery of lively >pseudonymous writing. > > Robins anonymous mailer? .... :-) Ron. Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From LOCHRIN@am.sheila.snov00.sno.mts.dec.com Fri May 3 21:03:17 1996 From: LOCHRIN@am.sheila.snov00.sno.mts.dec.com (Dave Lochrin, System Consultant +61 2 561-7192) Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 21:03:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More on PICS Message-ID: <9217032103051996/A14103/SHEILA/11A51D2E2500*@MHS> Robin's discussion of PICS is interesting, but seems to be predicated on a particular set of values. For example, something which may be acceptable to a Western European may be totally unacceptable to some Eastern cultures. PICS would therefore have to catalogue material in terms of some meta-cultural language. I'll take my hat off to the peson who solves that problem! Dave Lochrin ==================================================================== Any views I express here are my own, and have no connection with my employer. ==================================================================== From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Fri May 3 21:27:37 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 08:27:37 +1100 Subject: The First 100 Feet ('Autobiography of a Millipede'?) Message-ID: >From: "Tim Leshan" >Organization: Kennedy School of Government >To: IIPLIST@ksgrsch.harvard.edu >Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 10:05:08 EST >Subject: Announcement and Call for Participation >Priority: normal > > Freedom Forum > > Harvard Information Infrastructure Project > > National Economic Council > > U.S. Department of Energy > > > > "THE FIRST 100 FEET" > > OPTIONS FOR INTERNET AND BROADBAND ACCESS > > > October 29-30, 1996 > The Freedom Forum > Arlington, Virginia > > > Announcement and Call for Participation > > > This conference looks at options for Internet and broadband >access from the perspective of home owners, apartment complexes, >and small businesses. It will evaluate opportunities and >obstacles for "bottom-up" infrastructure development and the >implications for traditional and alternative providers at the >neighborhood, regional, and national levels. We are seeking >original analysis, position papers, and background material for >use in the conference program, on the project website, and in a >book to be published in early 1997. > > The conference challenges business and policymakers to >rethink fundamental issues in telecommunications policy by >recasting the "problem of the last 100 feet" as "opportunities >for the first 100 feet." This paradigm shift suggests >consumer/property owner investment as an answer to the dilemma of >whether there should be one or two wires into the home. The >conference will survey alternative options for local connection >to the Internet from the perspective of homeowners with high-end >needs for data communications, apartment owners, small >businesses, and others with an interest in investing in end-user >equipment and real estate. It will consider prospects for >broadly distributed infrastructure investment and potential roles for >utility companies, special assessment districts, municipalities, >PCS providers, CAPs, IXCs, LMDS operators, and Internet access >providers, as well as telcos and cable companies. It will >consider strategies and policies for local interconnection and >interoperability among Internet access providers. > > The conference will investigate constraints on and >incentives for user infrastructure investment at federal, state, >and local levels; whether and how trenching, conduit, and right- >of-ways should be unbundled to promote consumer/property owner >investment and competition among heterogeneous providers; and >the need for and feasibility of interconnection at third-party or >publicly maintained neighborhood access points. It will look at >synergy with other policy goals and economic interests, such as >intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and energy demand >management. Finally, in assessing user investment as a driver >for two-way broadband, it asks how scenarios for Internet access >will affect broadband scenarios by stimulating demand for >high-bandwidth connectivity. > >Rationale > > The growth of the Internet has been propelled in significant >part by user investments in infrastructure: computers, internal >wiring, and the connection (dial-up line, leased line, microwave >link) to the Internet service provider. This "bottom-up" >investment minimizes the investment burden facing service >providers, since customers share the cost of the infrastructure >and providers have no obligation to develop the infrastructure >out to all potential users. Barriers to entry for service >providers are low, and users retain flexibility in choosing among >providers. > > The rapidly growing mass of Internet users, applications, >and resources is now shaping demand for underlying >infrastructure, so that plans for new infrastructure are driven >increasingly by data rather than voice and video. There are >opportunities to attract new customers instead of competing head- >on for old ones. Unlike voice and video, there are incremental >upgrade paths for data users and demand for upgraded access is >readily stimulated by experience. Higher bandwidth connections >are desired by a wide spectrum of users, from those who work at >home to recreational users of the World Wide Web. > > The value of continuous, rather than dial-up connection to >the Internet, is less widely appreciated because it is a >qualitative improvement. Continuous connectivity (which can be >provided by unswitched technologies) obviates tying up a >telephone line, enables instant delivery of email and other >time-sensitive information, and allows small businesses to >advertise and publish directly to the net. Most importantly, it >can enable real-time energy management with attendant cost >savings that can support major infrastructure investment, which >the advent of residential "wheeling" may induce consumers to make >on their own. A personal computer or an inexpensive router could >serve as a gateway extending Internet functions to other >computers in the home, manage utility demand, operate security >systems, and control any lights, sound equipment, and other >household appliances. > > As telecommunications and electric utilities are >deregulated, investment decisions will devolve into the hands of >consumers, where they can be made with greater knowledge of >particular benefits and tradeoffs. At the same time, new >technologies, such as wireless and data transmission over power >lines, will increase consumer options. There may be a variety of >options for configuring "the last mile," with different balances >between user-provided and centrally provided facilities. >Homeowners and small businesses may have opportunities to connect >to different suppliers at the curb, on the roof, on the side of >the house, or somewhere in between. > > The early government role and subsequent commercial >practices have facilitated interconnection of Internet service >providers, but the limited choices at the local level -- the >"last mile" as well as the "last 100 feet" -- may make >interconnection an issue. At present, many local Internet access >providers do not interconnect directly and traffic is sometimes >routed to one of the few national exchange points hundreds of >miles away. Opportunities for interconnection, along with >policies on access, may determine whether intermediary transport >providers, such as utility companies, emerge to link homeowner >facilities at the curb with high-bandwidth Internet service >providers. > > This analysis of "the first hundred feet" recognizes that >need and demand will naturally vary greatly from home to home >and from neighborhood to neighborhood. Much depends on whether >there are business or telecommuting needs that can be met by >individual investments in upgraded access. While this analysis >looks to the Internet, it raises the issue of how the bottom-up >model will affect the traditional model of a centrally provided >universal service. Given basic technology that is non- >proprietary and virtually commoditized, some argue that Internet >service is becoming the common denominator platform on which all >other services can be carried. The absence of service >class priority has hampered use of real-time voice and video on >the Internet, but this will soon change with the implementation >of protocols that allow bandwidth reservation and packet-level >service priority (RSVP and IPv6). > > **** > > We encourage submission of position papers as well >independent analysis. It is expected that papers will be posted >for review and revised promptly after the conference for >non-exclusive publication. (The book will be part of the Harvard >Information Infrastructure Project series published by MIT >Press.) To ensure consideration for the program, please submit >abstracts or outlines by June 20, 1996. > > Please direct submissions and requests for future mailings >to: > > Tim Leshan > Coordinator, Information Infrastructure Project > Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University > 79 JFK Street > Cambridge, MA 02138 > 617-496-1389; Fax: 617-495-5776 > leshan@ksgrsch.harvard.edu > >For additional information and updates see >http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/first.html >Tim Leshan >IIP Project Coordinator >http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/ > Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Fri May 3 22:36:49 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 09:36:49 +1100 Subject: Mason's Library Week Oration? Message-ID: Is anyone putting up Mason's paper from the Australian Library Week Oration at the State Library of NSW yesterday, Friday? The SMH this morning reports him as saying that large commercial publishers could restrict the free flow of information and ideas "through new technology" [whatever that means], to the detriment of library users. He attacked the Copyright Law Review Committee's report, and the moves of commercial publishers to expand the concept of copyright from the form of expression to information and ideas. (It's only a 15cm article, and doesn't appear to be in the SMH's web-pages). It seems like something linkers would like to know about. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From k.webb@nla.gov.au Sat May 4 03:15:21 1996 From: k.webb@nla.gov.au (Kerry Webb) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 13:15:21 +1000 Subject: Mason's Library Week Oration? Message-ID: <199605040315.NAA15503@email.nla.gov.au> Roger Clarke asked: > >Is anyone putting up Mason's paper from the Australian Library Week Oration >at the State Library of NSW yesterday, Friday? > See http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/mason.html Kerry Kerry Webb Director, Digital Library Projects National Library of Australia k.webb@nla.gov.au Phone: (+616) 2621535 Fax: (+616) 2571703 http://cliff.nla.gov.au/~kwebb From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Sat May 4 13:17:30 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 13:17:30 +0000 Subject: More on PICS Message-ID: <199605040319.NAA05672@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Dave Lochrin wrote: > Robin's discussion of PICS is interesting, but seems to be > predicated on a particular set of values. For example, something > which may be acceptable to a Western European may be totally > unacceptable to some Eastern cultures. > > PICS would therefore have to catalogue material in terms of some > meta-cultural language. The PICS material (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/) describes the generality of the protocol - it does not define values or value systems of its own. There are many purposes to which PICS protocol labels may be applied. Their examples use a simple and fanciful system for rating the sudsniness of soap. Here is another attempt at explanation: PICS is a protocol for labelling things. PICS is not a system of values. PICS supports anyone who wants to invent a set of values. PICS provides a simple extension to HTML which enables that person to publish a description of a labelling *system* with one or more dimensions (eg. value for money, quality, coolness) in their value system, and to describe the allowable ranges for the values which may be given. PICS enables anyone to create labels which provide ratings according to any value system (the label contains the URL of where to get the information about the system as just described). The label may say, according to the value system [URL of where to find its specification] I [identify the person or organisation who made the label] judge document(s) [URL of document or range of resources] to rate 7 on the "sudsiness" dimension of this value system and 3 on the "value for money" dimension of this value system. (Also the label can contain a validity date, a digital signature to check its authenticity, and a message digest of the document to enable the filter software to tell whether the document has changed since the label was made.) PICS provides an extension to the HTML language so that such labels may be included in the document itself, whether the labels contain ratings generated by the content creator or someone else. Labels may also exist separately from the document they rate. PICS provides a protocol by which a piece of filter software (for instance a filter function as part of a WWW brower) can request from a label server any available labels regarding a particular resource, or range of resources - an exact URL, or a directory of a WWW site, or an entire WWW site or an entire domain (edu.au for example!). The request can ask for labels containing ratings of any value system or of specific value systems. I think the request can specify the sources of the ratings as well if desired. The operation of label servers, and label caching proxy servers may be as simple as a set of suitable CGI-BIN scripts working within an existing HTTP WWW server program. What individuals do with all this is not specified by PICS, but I am greatly impressed at the way the protocol has been designed to be open and free of values or constraints in itself. With PICS, anyone can invent their own value system and a PICS compatible filter program will be able to use the URL contained within each label find the details of the system to which the ratings refer to. This enables the filter to use the ratings meaningfully and to display to the user the ranges and purposes of the dimensions in the value system. This is enormously open-ended stuff and I encourage you to read the material before deciding it is US biased or limited in any such way. The *only* bias of any kind which I can find is that it seems, like most Internet protocols to be based on 8 bit ASCII characters. However suitable software for Asian languages could no-doubt handle this. WWW documents with some Asian languages are successfully handled with HTML with a 16 bit character set. > I'll take my hat off to the peson who solves that problem! There is not a problem - it is up to people to invent their own value systems. I find learning about the underlying nature of the Internet to be a truly mind stretching experience - things I thought were fixed, inflexible or concrete generally turn out to be just one instance in a range of possibilities. I would want to research a protocol very carefully before I came to conclusions about the limitations on its use. - Robin From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Sat May 4 13:17:30 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 13:17:30 +0000 Subject: Request for "proofreading" help again Message-ID: <199605040319.NAA05655@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Saturday 1PM: I am working on an "Executive Summary" HTML document of what I see as the key points in the Internet censorship debate. As necessitated by the issues it is quite a few pages, but it starts with a five paragraph version for the executive with only a few minutes to spare. It includes a big table highlighting the many differences between Internet communications and broadcasting, and ends with a critique of Peter Webb's recent speech on online regulation. The target audience is the ABA Inquiry, Peter Webb and anyone else who wants to get a systematic overview of the issues. For people who have read my draft inclomplete explanation of how the Internet works, this summary goes straight to the policy questions, and tackles the four reasons (that I can see) for censorship separately. This summary should stand on its own without reading my explanation, and without reading Peter Webb's speech. However readers are directed to familiarise themselves with PICS, because this is the answer to most of the problems. I intend to put a draft version of this "Exec summary" on my WWW site at around 3PM this afternoon. I may still be working on the speech critique so when that is done I will post an updated version. I hope to finalise this by Monday evening and would be glad of assistance. "Proofreading" implies just typos and expression, but what is more important is the conceptual level - what have I missed out on or got wrong? How might it be expressed to suit those who we most need to connect with? Any comments at all will be welcome. If you want to make a few corrections, just quote the parts of the text in your email and mark pproblems in some way like this . . . ^^ (spelling) One way of doing this is to click-drag your cursor over Netscape's screen to select text, then copy it to the clipboard and paste it into your email program. If you wish to do a more detailed critique, save the file to disc, (HTML tags and all) edit it with your word processor and save it as text or as Word for Windows 2.0 and attach it to an email. Those with Netscape 2.0 Gold may also save the file to disc, edit it with Netscape (perhaps putting corrections in red) and include it as an attachement in an email back to me. However I have found my version of 2.01 Gold for Win95 less than perfectly reliable. The file will be: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/bigpic.htm Peter Webb's speech is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html My draft Internet explanation is at: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/draft/ Looking forward to your input, via email or phone. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From hilvertj@ozemail.com.au Sat May 4 03:23:32 1996 From: hilvertj@ozemail.com.au (John Hilvert) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 13:23:32 +1000 (EST) Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960504132139.09279cb4@ozemail.com.au> At 10:30 PM 2/5/96 +1100, Roger Clarke wrote: > >If this thread isn't your scene, sorry about this - I promise this is the >last on the topic for a while, at least from me!! I think it is definitely on topic and I am disturbed there is a feeling that it is not. I hope other linkers concerned with Net regulation check out the pages. >Robin's html'd it, and it's now available at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html > >My review of it is at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb960424.html > Essentially the theme of the ABA paper is that the Net needs to comply with mainstream regulation of other media. I am not in the least surprised by that. What I was surprised by, was Webb's almost making a _virtue_ of the fact that Net regulation might not be enforceable. He suggests that all criminal law is discretionary anyway so why should the Net pose any more obstacles, he seems to argue. This is a clever thread I tried to draw out in my account of his paper for the Oz. Is it an advance to have discretionary regulation of the Net or is it just symbolic regulation designed to please those that worry about it all? I also took Webb's paper to reflect a general failure by the Net community to make its point. Notwithstanding Whittle's mission, the tenor of Webb's paper is that the net standards should be made to conform to mainstream Australian media standards. At the conference that Stewart Carter and I attended, Webb would only confirm that NC (non-classifiable - eg pedophilia) material was definitely not getting a tick in the ABA report. Using the OFLC rating system, Webb seemed unprepared to rule out prohibiting material all the way down to MA material as well, judging by his defence of the NSW Government proposals. John Hilvert Journalist at Large "The shallower you are, the more ground you cover." For great education software reviews try http://www.edutainment.com.au/ From brd@netinfo.com.au Sat May 4 08:20:48 1996 From: brd@netinfo.com.au (Bernard Robertson-Dunn) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 18:20:48 +1000 Subject: Tax and the Internet Message-ID: <199605040820.SAA16999@student.anu.edu.au> > >In the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, Fri 3 May 1996, pp.21, 24: > > The Bottom Line Column - Max Walsh > > Cyberspace forcing changes to tax net I read the article and a few things bother me. The internet is a communications mechanism just as is snail mail, courier services, the telephone, radio, international shipping, airlines etc. All these mechanisms have certain characteristics in terms of speed, security, reliability, bandwidth, ability to handle physical objects etc. Business, government and private users of these systems utilise the different characteristics to achieve specific interactions and exchanges of both information and physical goods. The question I have is, what are the characterists of the internet (either now or in the future) that will change the nature of commerce and how will that impact current interactions? If the major characteristic is one of confidentiality, surely we already have that with other mechanisms - such as registered mail, private courier services etc. Is the issue one of ease of communications? Most transactions make use of a wider legal, financial and commercial infrastructure. Physical goods and services form part of the transactions, auditors and regulators monitor corporate behaviours, law enforcement agencies react in cases of perceived misbehaviours. Without this infrastructure, commercial interactions become very difficult. The result of a new communications mechanism will make the underlying transaction change, but without a co-operative attitude by all (or at least most) players, chaos would result. Governments provide the legal, financial and commercial infrastructure that is needed by individual organisations. It is in their best interests to make it work as well and as cheaply as possibly. The secure internet and other technologies will force changes in the infrastructure, but is the nature of commerce really likely to change? I have read of many technology driven predictions including: the demise of the motor car when everyone had a helicopter or hovercraft the paperless office the colonisation of the moon abundant leisure time for all as automated factories produced all our goods robots a cure for cancer In my experience, it is very hard to predict the way in which technology will change the world. The world is a very complex place, predicting how it (and we) will behave is an art, not a science. The one thing we can rely on is that the behaviour of most of the major players will not be logical. Decisions will be made on emotional and illogical grounds. Good and bad luck will play a significant part, as will vested interest. Forgive me if I appear jaundiced, I'm still bothered by the Port Arthur shootings. Notwithstanding all that, I would like to find out what the current thinking is re the impact of the internet on commerce. I am interested in realistic models of the future, not bald statements like "the internet will change our lives forever" Any pointers would be appreciated. regards brd +---------------------------------------------------------+ |Bernard Robertson-Dunn |If you get the architecture right| |BEng, MEng, Phd | the design is easy. | |Canberra |If you get the design right | |Australia | the programming is easy | |brd@netinfo.com.au |Maintenance is never easy | +---------------------------------------------------------+ From jwhit@primenet.com Sat May 4 11:12:34 1996 From: jwhit@primenet.com (Jan Whitaker) Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 04:12:34 -0700 (MST) Subject: on-line services legislation In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960504132139.09279cb4@ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: >From John Hilvert's posting: "He suggests that all criminal law is discretionary anyway so why should the Net pose any more obstacles, he seems to argue. This is a clever thread I tried to draw out in my account of his paper for the Oz." wow! Is this why the Premier from Victoria feel scomfortable admitting that his children smoke pot? Does this mean that laws are only for when some government official wants to carry a vendetta and wants something in their pocket that they can drag out to go after someone when they choose? This view that criminal law is discretionary is the scariest thing I think I've heard since I moved here last year. OK, you lawyer types who look after such things as the criminal justice system, is this true or have we just walked through a slider into another universe? Who gets to choose whether to enforce the law or not? If this is the state of things, why bother with any laws at all? And I thought the US was corrupt! Questioning the insanity of modern "democracies", Jan Jan Whitaker JLWhitaker Associates \--------/ - jwhit@primenet.com Educational Technology Consultant / - Video and Computer Specialties Melbourne, VIC, Australia \----/ - http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/ Voice: (+613)9534-4334 \--/ From pargy@msn.com Fri May 3 22:56:14 1996 From: pargy@msn.com (Philip Argy) Date: Fri, 3 May 96 22:56:14 UT Subject: Discretionary prosecutions Message-ID: This is an important issue that Jan Whittaker has raised. I know we lawyers are often accused of being semantic hair-splitters, but I have contrasted a provision which makes propagation of objectionable material an offence, prima facie catching everyone involved in the dissemination process with a 'no knowledge' defence, with the US Communications Decency Act approach which formulates the offence as knowingly disseminating material known to be objectionable to people known to be under 18. The multiple knowledge thresholds means that the prosecution would not even get off the ground unless there is clear evidence of knowledge on the part of a disseminator. However, there is a danger with a mere lack of knowledge defence that political imperatives will lead to prosecution test cases against hapless intermediaries who will have difficulty proving a negative, ie 'no knowledge'. This is not just a semantic issue - it goes right to the heart of principled legislation and, despite some of the flack that the CDA has copped because of its vague "patently offensive" test, it is much better than any of the State legislation I've seen in Australia to date (including that foreshadowed in NSW which is frustratingly still 'unavailable' for analysis). For a more detailed discussion of these issues see our submission to the ABA: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABASubmn And also consider in more detail my analogy table that was designed to help non-technical people understand the different functionality of 'the Internet': http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABASubmnLiab.html Philip Argy Chairman Economic, Legal & Social Implications Committee Community Affairs Board Australian Computer Society Partner Mallesons Stephen Jaques http://www.wp.com/PhilipArgy From gtaylor@gil.com.au Sun May 5 02:39:10 1996 From: gtaylor@gil.com.au (Greg Taylor) Date: Sun, 05 May 1996 12:39:10 +1000 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: <199605050241.WAA18522@iccu6.ipswich.gil.com.au> On 2/5/96 Roger Clarke wrote: >The ABA today provided Robin Whittle with the text of the paper by its >Chair, Peter Webb, to the On-Line Services Regulation Conference on 24 >April. > >Robin's html'd it, and it's now available at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html > >My review of it is at: >http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb960424.html Thanks Robin for your sterling efforts and Roger for your valued commentary, although I don't know why Roger found it necessary to apologise for posting on this issue. As far as I am concerned, the regulatory issue is the most important thread in this list. Deadly serious it may be, boring perhaps to some, but unless we make our voices heard we will be saddled forever with dangerous and ill-informed legislation. Thanks also Roger for re-posting the Perry Metzger parody ("IPv6 header" thread). If only the would-be regulators could see the point . I am indebted to Peter Webb also for raising the visibility of two great works from the past on the issue of censorship. Both of these are available on the net and make fascinating reading, although they are somewhat lengthy. The addresses: Areopagitica - by John Milton (1644) (in 6 parts of approx. 32K each) http://www.chronotope.com/24/milton.html On Liberty - by John Stuart Mills (1909) (286K) gopher://wiretap.spies.com/00/Library/Classic/liberty.jsm The Webb paper raises serious concerns about the outcome of the long-drawn out process of enquiry and the countless hours of submission-writing that has dominated the last year or more. It would now seem that the SCAG meetings will decide on criminal laws behind closed doors with little opportunity for public comment. This is a major flaw in the legislative process - new laws are often introduced without substantial public comment, and the politicians who must approve them are, in this case at least, unlikely to see the flaws that are obvious to those of us who will be most affected. Webb has certainly identified at least one obvious conclusion on which there can be little dispute - that there is a huge gulf between the opinions of net users and those of the regulators. Unfortunately the impression comes through that he considers that it is the net users who need a paradigm shift, not the regulators. He also refers to discretionary law, and in this respect I share Jan Whittaker's concerns. We must all be familiar with situations where over-zealous inspectors/regulators/bureaucrats have clearly abused their discretionary powers to conduct vendettas against individuals and organisations. This is not justice, merely vindictiveness, yet proving such motives is a legal nightmare. And if the foreshadowed legislation really is only intended to prosecute the most serious criminal offences, why on earth is it necessary to propose laws that apply restrictions to MA15+ material?? Another aspect that disturbs me is the continued reference to "the on-line industry" and the lack of industry representation. Maybe I'm wrong but I take this to refer to service providers. How often do we have to make the point that "the industry" is rarely the content-creator, that "the industry" DOES NOT BROADCAST material, and that the publishing of material is largely controlled by other organisations and private individuals. It been said often enough before but it needs to be said again and again until it finally sinks in, that "the industry" has as little involvement in content as do Telstra and Optus over the content of telephone calls. And how soon will it before ISP's as they currently exist become merely the Internet equivalent of a telephone exchange? Codes of practice are fine for an industry like television, and certainly have some role in the ISP industry, but how do you impose a code of practice on content creators, who can be as diverse as large corporations and government departments at one extreme, to, at the other extreme, private individuals using this unique medium for creative "cottage publishing". Who represents the interests of content creators? It is most certainly not the "industry". The EFA? Perhaps, but it will need a lot more support before it can effectively represent those who are going to be directly affected by new laws. The view of "net citizens" as some kind of alternative culture, as espoused by John Perry Barlow and others, and treated cynically by Peter Webb, is unfortunate. No doubt many of us can identify with such sentiments from time to time but the reality is that net users are a microcosm of society at large. If there is an apparent libertarian bias, perhaps it is because we see the opportunities and threats offered by the net far more clearly than those who are unfamiliar with it. And who is censorship intended to protect? If the views of "netizens" as represented in ABA submissions are apparently so anti-censorship, is it only non-users who favour it? How can someone who doesn't use the Net be offended by any material there? I have read many of the ABA submissions, and I saw a few from organisations who seem to have deliberately gone out of their way to find material that would offend them. However, I saw none from anybody who claims to have been offended by material they accidently came across on the Net. To whom is harm going to be done if the regulators do nothing? The current furore over gun laws provides an interesting contrast. Here we have the media and a substantial portion of the population *demanding* that politicians act to prevent more mass murders, while the politicians dither. With the net regulation issue we have just the opposite. The politicians are attacking the issue with all the fervour they can muster, despite little apparent public support. And for what? To ensure that no one will see or read anything on the net ORIGINATING IN AUSTRALIA that is unsuitable for children. The fact that they can and will still be exposed to material from any other country seems to have been conveniently overlooked. It now appears that the government is no longer calling for submissions, just submission! What then can we do? Since it now seems that the Attorneys-General are calling the shots, we need to re-focus our efforts there. The "Freedom March" on May 27 against the NSW proposals deserves widespread support, irrespective of where we live. If you are unaware of this issue, read aus.org.efa, or see: http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/NSWproposal.html or http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/march/ For the rest of us, expressing our views as strongly as possible to our respective Attorney-General would seem to be the way ahead. And, since the ABA door is still apparently open, perhaps some follow-up submissions there would do no harm ;-) Cheers, Greg ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Taylor, Brisbane Australia. EFA member. gtaylor@gil.com.au URL: "Whatever its ostensible motive, all censorship is political. It is about the use of social power - the imposition of one faction's wishes about what should be prohibited upon the free choices of the rest of us." Anthony Grey, 1993. From meteor@ip.portal.com Sun May 5 03:26:51 1996 From: meteor@ip.portal.com (Rhys Weatherley) Date: Sat, 04 May 1996 20:26:51 -0700 Subject: PICS - protecting children without censorship Message-ID: <199605050323.UAA02235@mail.ip.portal.com> At 05:26 PM 5/2/96 +1000, you wrote: >No but govt can make it mandatory for all Web browsing software to include >some form of PICS-based filtering control. I was going to post a heap of technical reasons why passing such a law would be futile, but other linkers have adequately addressed that. Suffice to say that if the government does try such a trick, then you need only whip up a 20-30 line Perl script which connects to a HTTP server, sends a requests, and sends the result to stdout to demonstrate how easy it is to make a primitive form of web browser. Call this the "10-minute Web browser" and then say to the government wonks: "Now, shall I add the 2000 lines of code necessary to support PICS on the off-chance that some kid _might_ use this program? And what's to stop the kid rewriting it themselves from scratch even if I did put PICS support in mine?". In any case, the government doesn't need to pass a law that says "web browsers must contain PICS-like functionality". All they need is something along the lines of: "The industry self-regulatory body must keep a list of web browsing software that has support for parental controls and provide that list to any parent seeking information about how to control the access of their children. Further, the industry is encouraged to add parental controls to any web browsing software that is easy to operate by children. This does not preclude the possibility of software without parental controls for those who do not require such functionality, but does require that software be available for those who do require such functionality." It is not necessary that _all_ software support PICS. It is only necessary that such software be available should parents request it. It is then the parent's responsibility to ensure that the children use that software and only that software. This point must be impressed on governments should they ever think of trying to regulate the functionality of web browsing software. Cheers, Rhys Weatherley. From dddab@hunterlink.net.au Sun May 5 03:57:44 1996 From: dddab@hunterlink.net.au (David Boxall) Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 13:57:44 +1000 Subject: Tax and the Internet Message-ID: <199605050357.NAA16776@mulga.hunterlink.net.au> (heavily edited) On: > Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 18:20:48 +1000 > From: brd@netinfo.com.au (Bernard Robertson-Dunn) > (snip) > The question I have is, what are the characterists of the internet > (either now or in the future) that will change the nature of > commerce and how will that impact current interactions? > (snip) > Is the issue one of ease of communications? > > Most transactions make use of a wider legal, financial and > commercial infrastructure. Physical goods and services form part of > the transactions, auditors and regulators monitor corporate > behaviours, law enforcement agencies react in cases of perceived > misbehaviours. > > Without this infrastructure, commercial interactions become very > difficult. The result of a new communications mechanism will make > the underlying transaction change, but without a co-operative > attitude by all (or at least most) players, chaos would result. > > Governments provide the legal, financial and commercial > infrastructure that is needed by individual organisations. It is in > their best interests to make it work as well and as cheaply as > possibly. > > The secure internet and other technologies will force changes in the > infrastructure, but is the nature of commerce really likely to > change? (snip) > > In my experience, it is very hard to predict the way in which > technology will change the world. The world is a very complex > place, predicting how it (and we) will behave is an art, not a > science. > > The one thing we can rely on is that the behaviour of most of the > major players will not be logical. Decisions will be made on > emotional and illogical grounds. Good and bad luck will play a > significant part, as will vested interest. (snip) > > Notwithstanding all that, I would like to find out what the current > thinking is re the impact of the internet on commerce. I am > interested in realistic models of the future, not bald statements > like "the internet will change our lives forever" > ======================================================================== I think the issue is one of globalisation and the inadequacy of existing nation-based structures. Globalisation made possible by improved communications and the use of those communications in commerce & employment. Inadequacy arising from nationalism and Nation State centered regulatory & legal structures. Consider an example, which I've seen repeated in various forms for quite some time: An employee in Australia teleworks for a company in Singapore. Her wages are transferred in Deutschmarks from the employer's account in Switzerland to hers in the Seychelles. Using EFT, she arranges digital credits through a Web site in Denmark. With the credits, she buys CDs through a Web site in Holland from a company in England. That company arranges delivery from a warehouse in Shanghai. This scenario assumes transaction security, which the 'net does not yet offer. Given that security, however, this scene could be played out without our mythical employee leaving her seat in a comfortable suburban bungalow. The financial transactions, though global in scope, need take no more than a few minutes (if not seconds). Concentrating on the problems of taxation, for example: The funds did not enter Australia, so what taxes are due in Australia? Was the work performed in Australia or Singapore? Were the wages paid in Australia, Singapore, Switzerland or the Seychelles? Was the sale made in England, Holland, Denmark, Shanghai or the Seychelles? Assuming the Seychelles is a tax haven, are any taxes payable on the income or the sale? The loss of revenue will increase in significance as 'net commerce grows. For a while, National governments will attempt to address the problem within their spheres. I believe that they will find the problems insurmountable. Eventually, we may end up with a global legal/regulatory regime. Two recent examples in law enforcement: - a 'net paedophile apprehended in Australia on information provided by an investigator in America. International cooperation. - the apparent inability of Australian states to embrace uniform firearms legislation. National chaos. David Boxall david.boxall@hunterlink.net.au From dddab@hunterlink.net.au Sun May 5 03:57:44 1996 From: dddab@hunterlink.net.au (David Boxall) Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 13:57:44 +1000 Subject: on-line services legislation Message-ID: <199605050357.NAA16773@mulga.hunterlink.net.au> On > Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 04:12:34 -0700 (MST) > From: Jan Whitaker > > "He suggests that all criminal > law is discretionary anyway so why should the Net pose any more > obstacles, he seems to argue. > (snip) > Does this mean that laws are only for when > some government official wants to carry a vendetta and wants > something in their pocket that they can drag out to go after someone > when they choose? > Sometimes, I wonder. > This view that criminal law is discretionary is the scariest thing I > think I've heard since I moved here last year. OK, you lawyer types > who look after such things as the criminal justice system, is this > true or have we just walked through a slider into another universe? > Who gets to choose whether to enforce the law or not? If this is > the state of things, why bother with any laws at all? And I thought > the US was corrupt! > Unquestioning obedience is far scarier. Remember Nuremburg. > Questioning the insanity of modern "democracies", The outcome of unquestioning obedience to the letter of the law is not always decent, or even sane. The mind games and debating tricks in which the legal community engage all too frequently reduce the law to a farce. The law is not discretionary, as much as it is a guide to the basically decent and reasonably intelligent. Unfortunately, those factors are not always evident in the practise. David Boxall |All the world be mad `cept me & thee david.boxall@hunterlink.net.au |and lately I be not so sure `bout thee From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Sun May 5 06:42:26 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 16:42:26 +1000 Subject: Boring communcations? Message-ID: approve chain >From mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au Fri May 3 15:33:48 1996 PAA20762; Fri, 3 May 1996 15:32:16 +1000 (EST) From: McKenzie Wark Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:32:15 +1000 (EST) To: Robin Whittle Cc: link Subject: Re: Boring communcations? In-Reply-To: <199605030512.PAA08380@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-link Precedence: bulk -- or use the anon@penet.fi anonymous remailer. (Just send it a help message to get instructions). Assuming, of course, that linkers don't object to a policy of permitting unsigned messages. k ___________________________________________________ McKenzie Wark mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au lecturer in communications ph: +61-(0)2-850-8786 Macquarie University 2109 fax: +61-(0)2-850-8240 "We no longer have roots we have aerials"__________ __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Mon May 6 17:14:20 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 17:14:20 +0000 Subject: Crititque of Peter Webb's speech for review Message-ID: <199605060716.RAA23062@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Monday 5 PM: I have finished the first draft of my critique of Peter Webb's speech on online regulation. There are a number of really worrying things in his speech and I have given it the detailed and respectful critique I think it deserves - holding him to the standards I believe we should expect from a senior regulator. It is at the end of a rather large HTML document, but I don't want this critique to become separated from my "executive summary" and my table comparing broadcast and Internet communications. I have not had any critical feedback regarding this and would be glad of any suggestions, from typos to expression and major conceptual issues. I want to finalise this on Tuesday evening and get a printed copy to Peter Webb ASAP after that. The file is: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/bigpic.htm Peter Webb's speech is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html My draft Internet explanation is at: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/draft/ - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Mon May 6 17:59:45 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 6 May 96 17:59:45 Subject: Censorship Restraint in Germany Message-ID: <9605060759.AA7465@worldcom-47.worldcom.com> In contrast to some other nations, Germany is asking for voluntary restraint rather than legal provisions to keep offensive Internet content in check. Reuters reports that Research and Technology Minister Juergen Ruettgers is looking to minimal regulation to spur economic growth associated with the net. He plans to press this view on other members of the Group of Seven nations at an upcoming meeting. Self-restraint is also a key feature of a pending net law in Germany. "The most important feature in the federal multimedia law is the openness of the multimedia market for both vendors and users," Ruettgers proclaimed. This view is in contrast with the actions of a German state last year. Bavaria placed legal pressure on CompuServe, and even raided the company's Munich offices, in an attempt to suppress child pornography. Reuters: === >From CinC: Culture in Cyberspace is produced by: Information Networking and Management Associates (INMA) World Wide Web creation, editing, and maintenance/ News and information services/ Computer system design, installation, and support http://www.radix.net/~wlefurgy/welcome.htm Copyright 1996 by William G. LeFurgy; all rights reserved. Excerpts and sample copies may be distributed for non-commercial use so long as they are attributed and provide the CinC e-mail address (wlefurgy@radix.net). From brd@netinfo.com.au Mon May 6 09:15:16 1996 From: brd@netinfo.com.au (Bernard Robertson-Dunn) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 19:15:16 +1000 (EST) Subject: Tax and the Internet Message-ID: <199605060915.TAA18093@wilma.netinfo.com.au> "David Boxall" wrote >Consider an example, which I've seen repeated in various forms for >quite some time: > An employee in Australia teleworks for a company in Singapore. > Her wages are transferred in Deutschmarks from the employer's > account in Switzerland to hers in the Seychelles. > Using EFT, she arranges digital credits through a Web site in > Denmark. > With the credits, she buys CDs through a Web site in > Holland from a company in England. > That company arranges delivery from a warehouse in Shanghai. > >This scenario assumes transaction security, which the 'net does not >yet offer. Given that security, however, this scene could be played >out without our mythical employee leaving her seat in a comfortable >suburban bungalow. The financial transactions, though global in >scope, need take no more than a few minutes (if not seconds). > >Concentrating on the problems of taxation, for example: > The funds did not enter Australia, so what taxes are due in > Australia? > Was the work performed in Australia or Singapore? > Were the wages paid in Australia, Singapore, Switzerland or the > Seychelles? > Was the sale made in England, Holland, Denmark, Shanghai or the > Seychelles? > Assuming the Seychelles is a tax haven, are any taxes payable on > the income or the sale? Thanks for the example, but why is the internet needed for this to happen? Electronic communications is not the internet and there have always been remote and travelling workers who live in one country and are paid in another. regards brd From ewainwri@nla.gov.au Mon May 6 09:26:06 1996 From: ewainwri@nla.gov.au (Eric Wainwright) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 19:26:06 +1000 (EET) Subject: Swedish law to control the Internet (fwd) Message-ID: ********************************************** Eric Wainwright Deputy Director-General National Library of Australia Phone: (06) 262 1377 Fax: (06) 273 1133 e.wainwright@nla.gov.au *********************************************** * SWEDISH LAW A Swedish government committee has prepared a proposal for a Swedish law to control the Internet, partially corresponding to the U.S. Communications Decency Act. An English translation of the proposal can be found at http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/SOU-1996-40-eng.html Source: ISOC Forum, Vol 2, No 4 From ewainwri@nla.gov.au Mon May 6 09:26:35 1996 From: ewainwri@nla.gov.au (Eric Wainwright) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 19:26:35 +1000 (EET) Subject: Case Citation Standards (fwd) Message-ID: ********************************************** Eric Wainwright Deputy Director-General National Library of Australia Phone: (06) 262 1377 Fax: (06) 273 1133 e.wainwright@nla.gov.au *********************************************** * ABA RECOMMENDATIONS A complete, preliminary draft report on recommendations of the American Bar Association (ABA) Special Committee on Citation Issues has been posted to ABANet and may be accessed at http://www.abanet.org Click on What's New the follow link to Preliminary Draft for Public Comment of the ABA Special Committee. Following is a summary of their recommendation. [Seems not yet to be up, as at 18:30 EST on Monday 5 June] BE IT RESOLVED, that the American Bar Association recommends that: 1. All jurisdictions adopt a system for citation to case reports that is equally effective for printed case reports and for case reports electronically published on computer discs or network services, that system consisting of the following key elements: A. The court should include the distinctive sequential case number described in paragraph C below in each decision at the time it is made available to the public. B. The paragraphs in each decision should be numbered. C. The court should require all case authorities to be cited by stating the year, a designator of the court, the sequential number of the decision, and where reference is to specific material within the decision, the paragraph number at which that material appears. D. Until electronic publications of case reports become generally available to and commonly relied upon by courts and lawyers in the jurisdiction, the court should strongly encourage parallel citations, in addition to the primary citation described in paragraph C above, to commonly used printed case reports. When a cited authority is not available in those printed case reports, the court should require counsel to provide printed copies to opposing counsel and to the court. The parallel citation should only be to the first page of the report and parallel pinpoint citations should not be required. E. An example of the recommended form of citation for a decision in a federal district court is: 1996 SDNY 15, 26, 23 U.S.P.Q.2d 456. In this citation, 1996 is the year of the decision, SDNY refers to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; 15 indicates that this citation is to the 15th decision released by the court in the year; 26 is the paragraph number where the material referred to is located, and the remainder is the parallel citation to the volume and page in the printed case report [United States Patent Quarterly] where the decision may also be found. Source: ISOC Forum, Vol 2, No 4 From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Mon May 6 12:31:52 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 22:31:52 +1000 Subject: Tax and the Internet Message-ID: At 19:15 96/05/06, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote: >Thanks for the example, but why is the internet needed for this to happen? > >Electronic communications is not the internet and there have always been >remote and travelling workers who live in one country and are paid in >another. The difference will be that up till now it has been a curiousity and of marginal effect to the taxation system. Soon it may be a major way of employment and threaten the ability of governments to raise revenue and thence govern. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Mon May 6 20:08:09 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 07:08:09 +1100 Subject: Money Laundering Conference Message-ID: Fowwarded by a mate off the cypherpunks e-list. In fact, the URL provided gives a 'no DNS entry' message ... Oh, I geddit, it's a security feature ... >Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 20:26 EDT >From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" >Subject: Money Laundering Conference with Government Types >To: cypherpunks@toad.com >Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com >Precedence: bulk >Status: U > > I thought people might find interesting the following conference >that I located at http://www.oceanlaw.com/20/conf/ml.htm. Know thine enemy, >and all that. It has a section on Digital Cash (note the title includes >"Cyberpayments"). > -Allen > > > [IMAGE] _OCEANA PUBLICATIONS, INC._ _in cooperation with the_ > _Centre for International Financial Crimes Studies_ > _Centre for Government Responsibility, College of Law, University of > Florida_ [IMAGE] > [IMAGE] > [IMAGE] Money > Laundering, > Cyberpayments, Forfeiture, > The Global Mafias, Offshore Investments, > Securities, Corporate Security > and International Financial Crimes > > [IMAGE] _A Unique Opportunity For_ > Bankers * Compliance Officers > Investors * Public Officials > Accountants * Money Transmitters > International Bankers * Attorneys > Law Enforcement Officials * Securities Brokers > _CLE/CPE Credit_ > > An Invitation from Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr., Professor of Law and > Director of the Centre for International Financial Crimes Studies, and > Robert J. Munro, Program Coordinator and Co-Director of the Centre for > International Financial Crimes Studies. > > _It's not enough to BE clean -- You must also LOOK clean._ > > Money Laundering and Asset Forfeiture are critical consequences for > the banks, attorneys, securities dealers and corporations, both > domestic and international, who may be inadvertently in > non-compliance. _Our program will give you:_ > > A clear understanding_ _of the _existing, new and pending initiatives_ > against Money Laundering. > > The necessary skills to _build or objectively trouble-shoot your own > compliance program_ by enhancing your knowledge of your customers. > > _The latest Money Laundering schemes and how they are created_ to > circumvent regulatory and compliance initiatives -- which may put you > and/or your clients at risk. > > The skills to _develop strategies which identify and secure your > assets _ and presence in the global banking community. > > An understanding of the _complex and subtle variances which exist in > different countries and regions_. > > __Full Access to the Experts!__ > > Our program has been designed to afford you interaction with our > international faculty of experts, and to ensure you a full-range > perspective on the latest issues surrounding Money Laundering, Asset > Forfeiture and White Collar Crime. > > _Ask questions and probe the speakers further_ -- each panel will open > up into a question and answer discussion -- learn from the leading > decision makers! > > _Make sure that specific interests are addressed!_ Submit questions in > advance to ensure coverage, your confidentiality is guaranteed. > > Join our _Open Forum_ discussions for a dynamic _exchange of ideas. _ > Make sure your position is heard! > >MONEY LAUNDERING, CYBERPAYMENTS, FORFEITURE, THE GLOBAL MAFIAS, OFFSHORE >INVESTMENTS, SECURITIES, CORPORATE SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CRIMES > > WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1996 > > 6:00-8:00 PM _PRE-CONFERENCE REGISTRATION, MARRIOTT MARQUIS IN NEW > YORK CITY, NY_ > > THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1996 > > 7:30 AM _REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST_ > > 8:15 _WELCOMING REMARKS AND INTRODUCTION_ > > Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin > > Robert M. Morgenthau > > The Hon. Jack B. Weinstein > > 8:35 _CYBERPAYMENTS, SMART CARDS, DIGITAL CASH, CYBERBANKING AND > ECONOMIC CRIME_ > > _* The Electronic/Criminal Threat to Bankers, Business, and Securities > Firms_ > > * INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES AND "STING" OPERATIONS > > * EMERGING PATTERNS OF MONEY LAUNDERING > > SPEAKERS: > > Dan Soto, Moderator > > Thomas Firnhaber > > Bob Kaimin > > Ezra C. Levine > > 9:30 _COFFEE BREAK_ > > 9:45 _THE GLOBAL MAFIAS, MONEY LAUNDERING AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION_ > > * STRATEGIC ALLIANCES BETWEEN THE MAFIAS > > * THE EASTERN EUROPE AND RUSSIAN MAFIAS > > * ASIAN ORGANIZED CRIME: THE TRIADS AND THE YAKUSA > > > > _*The Drug Cartels and Narco-States in Central and South America and > Russia_ > > * THE DECLINE OF NATION-STATES > > * POLITICAL INTEGRITY > > > > _Speakers_: > > Dr. Barry A. K. Rider, Moderator > > Ronald K. Noble > > Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr. > > 10:45 _OFFSHORE DOMICILES AND TAX PLANNING_ > > * INTERNATIONAL AND ESTATE TAX PLANNING > > * ASSET PROTECTION PLANNING > > * COMPARISON OF OFFSHORE DOMICILES > > > > _ __Speaker:_ > > Walter H. Diamond > > David Neufeld > > 12:00 _LUNCHEON_ > > 1:30 _KEYNOTE SPEAKER: RAYMOND W. KELLY; FORMER NEW YORK CITY POLICE > COMMISSIONER, AND PRESIDENT, INVESTIGATIVE GROUP INTERNATIONAL, NY > (INVITED) _ > > 2:15 _WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A BSA AUDIT AND FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONS: > OPERATIONAL DEFENSES FOR BANKERS, TRANSMITTERS, AND BUSINESSES_ > > * KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER > > * THE NEW CURRENCY TRANSACTION REPORT > > * SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORT > > * EXEMPTIONS REQUIREMENTS: MANDATORY OR DISCRETIONARY > > * BSA EXAMINATION MANUAL > > * CMP DELEGATED AUTHORITY > > * BSA EXAMINATIONS: TEST DRIVEN; PROCEDURES REVIEW > > * UPDATE ON WIRE TRANSFERS REGULATIONS > > * STATE OF NEW YORK REVIEW > > > > _ __Speakers:_ > > Susan Galli_, _Moderator > > Richard A. Small > > John Shockey > > 3:30 _COFFEE BREAK_ > > 3:45 _CORPORATE AND BANK SECURITY, INTELLIGENCE AND > COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE _ > > _ __Speakers:_ > > Dr. Barry A. K. Rider, Moderator > > Michael F. Zeldin > > 4:30 _OPEN FORUM AND EXCHANGE OF IDEAS _ > > 5:15 _COCKTAIL RECEPTION (CASH BAR)_ > > FRIDAY, MAY 17, 1996 > > 7:30 AM _CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST_ > > 8:00 _WORKSHOP FOR BANKERS AND MONEY TRANSMITTERS: REPORTING > REQUIREMENTS, CTR FORM, CMIR FORM, FORM 8300, SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY > REPORT, WIRE TRANSFERS_ > > SPEAKERS: > > Amy G. Rudnick > > Ezra C. Levine > > 8:45 _A REGULATOR'S ROLE IN SUPERVISION OF BANKS AGAINST MONEY > LAUNDERING _ > > SPEAKER: > > William A. Ryback > > 9:30 _NEW YORK - ORGANIZED AND ECONOMIC CRIME_ > > SPEAKERS: > > Mary Jo White > > John Moscow > > James D. Herbert > > 10:30 _COFFEE BREAK_ > > 10:45 _SECURITIES FRAUD, MONEY LAUNDERING, INSIDER DEALING AND MARKET > MANIPULATION_ > > _ __Speakers:_ > > William McLucas > > G. Philip Rutledge > > Dr. Barry A. K. Rider > > 10:45_ OPEN FORUM AND EXCHANGE OF IDEAS_ > > 12:00 _LUNCHEON_ > > 1:15 _KEYNOTE SPEAKER: STANLEY E. MORRIS, DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL CRIMES > ENFORCEMENT NETWORK, U. S. TREASURY, WASHINGTON, DC_ > > 2:00_ STRATEGIES TO FIND AND RECOVER ASSETS WITH FOCUS ON INSURANCE > AND BUSINESS FRAUD_ > > _ __Speaker:_ > > Dr. Barry A. K. Rider > > 2:45_ COFFEE BREAK_ > > 3:00_ BANK SECRECY ACT: 1996 UPDATE_ > > * 1995-1996 STATUTORY AND REGULATORY CHANGES > > * PROPOSED CHANGES IN 1996 > > _ __Speakers:_ > > Peter Djinis > > Dan Soto > > 3:30 _UPDATE ON FOREIGN BANKING ISSUES_ > > SPEAKER: > > William A. Ryback > > 4:00 _THE FAIRNESS OF CIVIL FORFEITURE AND DOUBLE JEOPARDY ISSUES: A > REVIEW OF RECENT AND UPCOMING U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON > FORFEITURE AND MONEY LAUNDERING_ > > * DEGEN V. UNITED STATES, 95-173 (CERT. GRANTED, JAN. 12, 1996) > > * UNITED STATES V. URSERY, 95-345 (CERT. GRANTED, JAN. 12, 1996) > > _* United States v. $405,089.23/100, 95-346 (Cert. granted, Jan. 12, > 1996)_ > > * BENNIS V. MICHIGAN, ARGUED NOVEMBER 29, 1995 > > * LIBRETTI V. UNITED STATES, 64 U.S.L.W. 4005 (NOV. 7, 1995) > > _ __Speaker:_ > > Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr. > > 4:30 _OPEN FORUM AND EXCHANGE OF IDEAS_ > > CLOSING REMARKS: PROFESSOR FLETCHER N. BALDWIN, JR. > > 5:15 _ADJOURNMENT_ > > DISTINGUISHED FACULTY > > _Professor Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr._, Conference Chairperson, > Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for International > Financial Crimes Studies, College of Law, University of Florida, > Gainesville, FL, Co-Author, Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture and > International Financial Crimes > > _Walter H. Diamond_, United Nations Tax Treaty and Free Trade Zone > Advisor, Senior Vice- President, Offshore Institute, Editor, > Economist, Author, International Tax Treaties of All Nations > > _Peter Djinis_, Director, Office of Regulatory and Enforcement, Law > Enforcement, Under Secretary for Enforcement, Department of the > Treasury, Washington, DC > > _Thomas Firnhaber_, Policy Advisor, Office of Financial Institutions > Policy, FinCEN, U.S. Treasury, Washington, DC > > _Susan Galli_, Vice President, Citibank, N.A., New York, NY > > _James D. Herbert_, Chief, Organized Crime Strike Force Unit, U.S. > Attorney's Office,Boston, MA > > _Bob Kaimin_, Senior Advisor, Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC > > _Raymond W. Kelly_, U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Enforcement > Nominee, Former New York City Police Commissioner, and President, > Investigative Group International, New York, NY > > _Ezra C. Levine_, Attorney at Law, Howrey & Simon, Ad hoc Industry > Group of Nonbank Money Transmitters, Washington, DC > > _William McLucas_, Director of Enforcement, Securities and Exchange > Commission, Washington, DC > > _Robert M. Morgenthau_, District Attorney, New York, NY > > _Stanley Morris_, Director, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, U.S. > Treasury, Washington, DC > > _John Moscow_, Assistant District Attorney, County of New York, NY > > _Dr. Robert J. Munro_, Conference Co-Chairman and Program Coordinator, > Co-Director of the Centre for International Financial Crimes Studies, > College of Law, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, Co-Author, > Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture and International Financial Crimes > > _David Neufeld_, Attorney at Law, Hill Wallach, Princeton, NJ > > _Dr. Barry A. K. Rider_, Director, Institute of Advanced Legal > Studies, University of London Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge > University, England > > _Amy G. Rudnick_, Of Counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Washington, DC > > _G. Philip Rutledge_, Deputy Chief Counsel, Pennsylvania Securities > Commission, Philadelphia, PA > > _William A. Ryback_, Associate Director for International Supervision, > Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Washington, DC > > _John Shockey_, Special Assistant, Enforcement and Compliance > Division, U.S. Office of the Comptroller of Currency, Washington, DC > > _Richard A. Small_, Special Counsel, Division of Banking, Supervision > and Regulation, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, > Washington, DC > > _Dan Soto_, Senior Special Examiner, Division of Banking, Supervision > and Regulation, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, > Washington, DC > > _The Hon. Jack B. Weinstein_, Senior Federal Judge of the Southern > District of New York, NY > > _Mary Jo White_, U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, NY > > _Michael F. Zeldin_, Managing Director and General Counsel, Decision > Strategies, Washington, DC and Former Chief, Money Laundering Section, > Department of Justice, Washington, DC > > CONFERENCE DETAILS > > _Marriott Marquis, New York, New York_ - A block of rooms has been > reserved at a discounted nightly rate of $189. To register at the > hotel please contact the reservations department at1-800-843-4898 > (local number is 212-398-1900) or fax to 212-704-8969, and mention the > group name: "Money Laundering/Oceana.". The New York > Marriott Marquis is located at1535 Broadway, New York City, New York, > 10036. > > _Travel Discounts (Hotel, Airfare)_ - For travel discount information > contact Chappaqua Travel at 1-800-666-5161 or 914-238-5151 or fax to > 914-238-5533. Please refer to the group name: "Money > Laundering/Oceana." > > _Tax Deduction of Expenses_ - An income tax deduction may be allowed > for expenses of education (including travel, meals & lodging) > undertaken to maintain and improve professional skills (see Treasury > Ref. 1-162-5; Coughlin v. Commissioner, 203 F. 2d 307). Co-sponsor of > the Conference is the Centre for International Financial Crimes > Studies, Center for Government Responsibility, College of Law, > University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. > > _Continuing Education Credit: _ __Attorneys, Accountants, Bankers, > Fraud Investigators__ - Continuing Legal Education Credits where > applicable, are available upon request. For specific information about > CLE or other professional accreditation, contact Robert Munro, > University of Florida at 904-392-0417,_ prior_ to the conference. > > _Cancellations Policy_ - Refunds for registrations cancelled up to ten > working days before the Conference will be reduced by a non-refundable > administration fee of $125. > > _Program Confirmation_ - Written confirmation of your registration > will be sent to you upon receipt. Please bring it with you to the > Conference as proof of registration. If you do not receive the > confirmation notice prior to the Conference, please call Oceana at > (914) 693-8100 at least 48 hours in advance to confirm that your > registration was received. > > _Conference Course Materials _- Course materials, developed and > prepared by the Conference Faculty Sponsors, are included with the > price of registration. > > _Payment_ - Registration Fees are payable by CREDIT CARD (American > Express/Mastercard/Visa), CHECK (Payable to Oceana Publications, Inc., > payable in U.S. dollars and drawn on a bank physically located in the > U.S.), or by WIRE TRANSFER_ _(add $25 to the registration fees for > banking processing charges and make payment to Bank of New York, 138 > Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains, NY 10601 USA; Account # 670-9198651; > Bank of New York ABA # 021000018.) Registration fees do not include > transportation or hotel accommodations. Conference fees do include > scheduled breakfasts, coffee breaks and luncheons as well as course > materials. > > DON'T MISS OUT ON THIS INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY. > > REGISTER NOW -- SEATING IS LIMITED! > > CALL OCEANA'S INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS DIVISION > > _toll free at 1-800-831-0758 or 1-914-693-8100 (outside the U.S.) for > more information._ > >--- end forwarded text > > > >----------------- >Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) >e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"If they could 'just pass a few more laws', > we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo >The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >To unsubscribe from this list, send a letter to: Majordomo@ai.mit.edu >In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb >Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb >If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB@ai.mit.edu > > ========================================================= = Kevin Jeffery 2 Union Street = = Internet Researcher/Consultant Tharwa ACT 2620 = = Electronic Trading Concepts Australia = ========================================================= "I had a handle on life, but it broke!" Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From jwhit@primenet.com Tue May 7 08:25:47 1996 From: jwhit@primenet.com (Jan Whitaker) Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 01:25:47 -0700 (MST) Subject: Tax and the Internet In-Reply-To: <199605060915.TAA18093@wilma.netinfo.com.au> Message-ID: On Mon, 6 May 1996, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote: > > Thanks for the example, but why is the internet needed for this to happen? > > Electronic communications is not the internet and there have always been > remote and travelling workers who live in one country and are paid in > another. I started a response to this topic Monday morning that was far too wordy. BRD says it well. I would add that the concern is perhaps more about scope or scale than the existance of international "business" or work. I think there may be a typical over-reaction that the electronic format will be harder to "manage" by the tax offices. They are kidding themselves that they are "managing" the existing situations. It would be just as easy to evade tax working in other countries for those who choose to be dishonest in a non-electronic way. I'm the schmuck and report all my income, practically to the last penny. But it would not have been difficult to have fudged it, either with the Australian Tax Office or the IRS. They rely on people being fairly conscientious about these things. Jan Jan Whitaker JLWhitaker Associates \--------/ - jwhit@primenet.com Educational Technology Consultant / - Video and Computer Specialties Melbourne, VIC, Australia \----/ - http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/ Voice: (+613)9534-4334 \--/ From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 7 20:38:46 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 07:38:46 +1100 Subject: Sen. Burns Introduces New Crypto Bill (et al.) Message-ID: Generally I only pick out any items from the Alert periodical that are of obvious interest to linkers. Quite a few of these items are; so I'm forwarding a fair bit of it, including subscription details for this authoritative and very professional (and gratis) newsletter ... Roger ============================================================= @@@@ @@@@ @@@ @@@@ @ @ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@ @@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@ @ @@@ @@@@ @ @ @@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ ============================================================= Volume 3.09 May 7, 1996 ------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/ ======================================================================= Table of Contents ======================================================================= [1] Sen. Burns Introduces New Crypto Bill [2] New Report Finds U.S. Workplace Privacy Lacking [3] Federal Eavesdropping Increases [4] Counter-Terrorism Bill Signed into Law [5] FAA Infringes on Travelers' Right to Privacy [6] Senate Passes Immigration Bill [7] DOD Key Escrow System Problems Surface [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events ======================================================================= [1] Sen. Burns Introduces New Crypto Bill ======================================================================= Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has introduced legislation designed to relax export controls on privacy-enhancing encryption technology. The "Promotion of Commerce On-Line in the Digital Era (Pro-CODE) Act" would place export control authority in the Commerce Department, rather than the State Department and the National Security Agency (NSA) -- the agencies currently charged with that responsibility. The bill also contains a "prohibition on mandatory key escrow" and would restrict the Department of Commerce's ability to impose government-mandated encryption standards (such as the Clipper Chip) on non-governmental entities. As Sen. Burns explained in a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated to other members of the Senate: This Act will allow businesses and individuals worldwide to choose the strong security features that they need to protect information being communicated in electronic commerce by: 1) prohibiting the government from imposing government-designed encryption standards on the private sector; 2) prohibiting "Big Brother" from mandating a back door into people's computer systems; and 3) updating U.S. export controls on the sale of encryption products in foreign commerce, and placing U.S. businesses on a level playing field with their foreign competitors. Co-sponsors of the Pro-CODE Act include Sens. Robert Dole (R-KS), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Nancy Murray (D-WA), Larry Pressler (R-SD) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). Sen. Dole's co-sponsorship is particularly significant, as it places him squarely at odds with the Clinton administration on an issue of paramount importance to Silicon Valley and the nation's technology industry. The proposed legislation comes in the midst of an ongoing debate concerning U.S. encryption policy and at a time when the need for secure electronic communications is becoming widely recognized. The explosive growth of the Internet underscores the need for policies that encourage the development and use of robust security technologies to protect sensitive personal and commercial information in the digital environment. As Sen. Burns noted upon introduction of his bill, "Computer users will not be willing to transmit creative content, business plans or even send letters without assurances of data security." EPIC recently joined with more than two dozen other organizations to create the Internet Privacy Coalition (IPC). The mission of the IPC is to promote privacy and security on the Internet through widespread public availability of strong encryption and the relaxation of export controls on cryptography. The IPC has launched the "Golden Key Campaign" to raise public awareness of these issues. Additional information is available at the IPC website: http://www.privacy.org/ipc/ The text of the Pro-CODE legislation, and Sen. Burns' floor statement on the bill, are available at: http://www.epic.org/crypto/pro_code.html ... ======================================================================= [4] Counter-Terrorism Bill Signed Into Law ======================================================================= On April 23, President Clinton signed S. 735, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The signing followed more than a year of contentious debate in the Congress over the proper role of federal law enforcement and whether or not to give the FBI new powers. ... The bill, however, makes two substantive changes to current wiretap laws which are characterized as "Exclusion of Certain Types of Information from Definitions." One provision eliminates current requirements to obtain a warrant to intercept wireless transmissions of data (e.g., from a computer attached to a cellular telephone or a wireless LAN). This was a provision included in the Digital Telephony bill of 1993 at the recommendation of the Department of Justice. The other provision removes the requirement to obtain a warrant to intercept information related to an "electronic funds transfer." More information on the counter-terrorism bill is available from: http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/ ====================================================================== [5] FAA Infringes on Travelers' Right to Privacy ======================================================================= In a series of letters to the Federal Aviation Administration, Privacy Journal editor and EPIC board member Robert Ellis Smith has challenged the FAA's requirement that travelers must show photo ID before they can board a plane. Smith challenged the constitutionality of the requirement and has demanded that the FAA drop the requirement and make information concerning its policy public. In a response letter to Smith, the FAA's Association Administrator for Civil Aviation Security admitted that while the secret directive requires the airlines to ask for ID, it does not require the passenger to provide it: "While an airline is required to request identification, the actual presentation of identification by the passenger is not absolutely required, and there is currently no prohibition against allowing someone on an aircraft without such identification." The FAA refused to release the regulation, citing security reasons. EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the FAA for a copy of the regulation. ... ======================================================================= [7] DOD Key Escrow System Problems Surface ======================================================================= According to reports in several trade magazines, the Defense Messaging System (DMS) is nearly ready for implementation, but prospective users are threatening to shun the universal e-mail platform unless Pentagon officials eliminate cumbersome security procedures designed by the NSA. DOD designed DMS a decade ago to replace the aging AUTODIN message system and to serve as the armed services' global e-mail infrastructure. Officials familiar with DMS' security features, which rely on the National Security Agency's Fortezza encryption card, said the system's slowness is likely to alienate users who send mostly unclassified messages over commercial e-mail systems. Users of wireless systems are also complaining about the high overhead. The DMS adopted the Fortezza card and is expected to implement over 450,000 cards in the next few years. Inside sources note that the NSA is using the DMS as a justification for paying companies such as Microsoft and Netscape to adopt the Fortezza card as a standard for their products. NSA has pushed agencies such as the CIA, NASA, IRS and the Federal Reserve to adopt Fortezza without success. Cost is also a major factor. Fortezza's PCMCIA cards cost nearly $100 each and all computers must be equipped with a card reader that costs an additional $150. ======================================================================= [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events ======================================================================= ... Visions of Privacy for the 21st Century: A Search for Solutions. May 9-11, 1996. Victoria, British Columbia. Sponsored by The Office of Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia and the University of Victoria. Program at http://www.cafe.net/gvc/foi Internet Privacy and Security Workshop. May 20-21, 1996. Haystack Observatory, MA. Sponsored by Federal Networking Council and MIT. Contact: papers@rpcp.mit.edu. ... Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy. June 24-26, 1996. New South Wales, Australia. Sponsored by Australasian Society for Electronic Security and University of Wollongong. Contact: Jennifer Seberry (jennie@cs.uow.edu.au). ... DEF CON IV. July 26-28. Los Vegas, NV. Annual Hacker Convention. Contact: dtangent@defcon.org or http://www.defcon.org/. ... Fifth International Information Warfare Conference, "Dominating the Battlefields of Business and War", September 5-6, 1996. Washington, DC. Sponsored by Interpact, NCSA, OSS. Contact: infowar96@ncsa.com Advanced Surveillance Technologies II. Sponsored by EPIC and Privacy International. September 16, 1996. Ottawa, Canada. Contact: http://www.privacy.org/pi/conference/ottawa/ or email pi@privacy.org. ... ======================================================================= The EPIC Alert is a free biweekly publication of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. To subscribe, send email to epic-news@epic.org with the subject: "subscribe" (no quotes). Back issues are available via http://www.epic.org/alert/ ======================================================================= The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research center in Washington, DC. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy issues relating to the National Information Infrastructure, such as the Clipper Chip, the Digital Telephony proposal, medical record privacy, and the sale of consumer data. EPIC is sponsored by the Fund for Constitutional Government, a non-profit organization established in 1974 to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights. EPIC publishes the EPIC Alert, pursues Freedom of Information Act litigation, and conducts policy research. For more information, email info@epic.org, HTTP://www.epic.org or write EPIC, 666 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 301, Washington, DC 20003. +1 202 544 9240 (tel), +1 202 547 5482 (fax). If you'd like to support the work of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, contributions are welcome and fully tax-deductible. Checks should be made out to "The Fund for Constitutional Government" and sent to EPIC, 666 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 301, Washington DC 20003. Your contributions will help support Freedom of Information Act and First Amendment litigation, strong and effective advocacy for the right of privacy and efforts to oppose government regulation of encryption and funding of the National Wiretap Plan. Thank you for your support. ---------------------- END EPIC Alert 3.09 ----------------------- Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au Wed May 8 15:15:11 1996 From: Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au (Tom Worthington/Defence Materiel/AU) Date: 8 May 96 15:15:11 Subject: Australian Defence Policy After the Year 2000 Message-ID: <9605081913.AA2243@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au> The address to the conference "The New Security Agenda in the Asia-Pacific Region" entitled "Australian Defence Policy After Year 2000" by The Hon lan McLachlan AO MP, Minister for Defence, is available on the Internet at: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/minister/m960403c.htm Also details of the 1996 Defence Procurement Conference, 1-3 July, are available at: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/al/iic/pc96main.htm Tom Worthington Deputy Director Information Management Plans & Defence Web Administrator, Information Management Branch Department of Defence Room APW2-1-06, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Wed May 8 17:57:14 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 8 May 96 17:57:14 Subject: Writers Versus Publisher Message-ID: <9605080657.AA3345@worldcom-45.worldcom.com> I know this is marginally off-topic so pls feel free to pass onto other lists -- as a comitted freelance writer, I found it pretty interesting-dant ---------------------- Forwarded by Dan Tebbutt/ACP on 08/05/96 05:58 PM --------------------------- pagre @ weber.ucsd.edu (Phil Agre) 08/05/96 05:43 AM To: rre @ weber.ucsd.edu @ Internet cc: (bcc: Dan Tebbutt/ACP) Subject: Writers Versus Publisher =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 08:06:41 EDT From: Alexandra Owens/ASJA <75227.1650@COMPUSERVE.COM> To: Multiple recipients of list JOURNET Subject: Writers Versus Publisher The Authors Registry (212-563-6920) The Authors Guild (212-563-5904) American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) (212-997-0947) For immediate release May 1, 1996 AUTHORS' GROUPS JOIN TO SUPPORT FREELANCE DAVIDS AS E-RIGHTS COURT BATTLE AGAINST GOLIATHS HEATS UP Authors' organizations representing tens of thousands of writers yesterday submitted a "friend of the court" brief in support of several freelancers who are embroiled in battle with the New York Times, Time Inc. and other major publishers and database producers over the hot writers' issue of the 90s: electronic rights. The show of solidarity came from the Authors Registry, the new royalty collecting and licensing agency that counts more than 50,000 enrollees, and two leading writers' groups--the Authors Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). The lawsuit, proceeding in U.S. District Court in New York City, is backed by the National Writers Union. Defendants are the publishers of the Times, Sports Illustrated (Time Inc.) and Newsday (Times-Mirror), and the producers of the Nexis and UMI article databases. At issue is whether the publisher defendants, after initial publication, had the right to license the database producers to sell articles by freelancers in online and CD-ROM formats without permission of the authors. The defendants maintain that no permission or extra payment was needed. The writers and their supporters argue that since, under the law, freelancers own the copyrights in their work, and the writers involved had not licensed electronic rights to the publishers, the additional use constitutes infringement. Atlantic Monthly, also a defendant when the lawsuit was filed in December 1993, recently settled with the writer whose work it had sublicensed for electronic use. Terms of the settlement have not been made public, but Atlantic now says it will negotiate electronic rights with freelance contributors. Originally, 11 writers were involved in the lawsuit, but in the nearly two and a half years the case has plodded through the court schedule, depositions and motions, several have dropped out. Both sides--the five remaining defendants and six remaining plaintiffs--have filed for summary judgment. U.S. District Judge Sonya Sotomayor is scheduled to hear arguments on the cross-motions in June. If neither side prevails, a trial would likely be ordered. "I am enormously appreciative that the Registry, the Guild and ASJA have supported our position," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Emily M. Bass of Burstein & Bass. "They have spoken very eloquently on behalf of their members and very forcefully on behalf of all writers. Their brief brings home very clearly the economic impact that a ruling in favor of the defendants would have on freelancers." The "friend of the court" brief, prepared by Authors Guild lawyers for the Registry, the Guild and ASJA, points out that new technologies "extend the shelf-life of the contributions to periodicals by making the articles perpetually available for resale anywhere in the world." The brief continues: "The overwhelming majority of publishers procure specific licenses from authors for these electronic uses. To our knowledge, only defendants have claimed that the Copyright Act itself allows these specific uses without license." The writers' groups argue that the defendants' interpretation of the law "distorts the plain language of the statute, its legislative history and the clear intent of Congress, demonstrated over and over in the statute, that the market must properly reward authors as well as their publishers for their valuable work in order to encourage continued production of useful information. That fundamental policy of copyright demonstrates, we believe, that these plaintiffs own the reproduction rights that the publisher defendants purported to grant to the database defendants." As money flows into cyber-publishing, the right to profit from electronic use of articles has become a growing issue with writers. Now, as the Registry, the Guild and ASJA noted in their brief, the New York Times predicts it will take in $80 million in royalties over the next five years from the publisher's portion of search and download fees paid by users of the Nexis online database. To the freelancers, that would be good news except that the Times intends to keep all the money. According to Contracts Watch, an ASJA bulletin that keeps tabs on freelance rights issues, some periodicals have begun to split with authors the royalties received from such ventures as the Nexis and UMI databases while others pay fees for the rights. The Authors Registry was established in 1995 chiefly to collect electronic-use royalties of the sort that the defendants have refused to pay. It quickly gained wide support, now counting more than 30 writers' organizations and 95 literary agencies among its endorsers. The Registry began operations in February 1996. ### Contacts: Authors Registry - Paul Aiken, 212-563-6920 Authors Guild - Kay Murray, 212-563-5904 ASJA - Dan Carlinsky, 212-997-0947 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Wed May 8 09:55:33 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 20:55:33 +1100 Subject: Internet Public Access Terminals Message-ID: There was an ad. in the SMH this morning of interest to both net-watchers and Internet Commerce lurkers: "INTERNET" COLLECT CASH EVERY WEEK FROM YOUR OWN COIN OPERATED INTERNET PUBLIC ACCESS TERMINAL Placed in fully established locations such as coffee shops - pubs - bars - clubs - shopping centres - airports - hotels - etc. [snip] Your customers Surf the Net, use E-mail, CD-ROM, play games, view movies, plus much more. [Tasmania?] [snip, including large dollar figures] Free Call 1 800 810 987 IPAT Internet Public Access Terminal Pty Ltd Leaving commercial questions aside (my own quick, risk-averse reaction was that maybe macadamia nut plantations aren't quite so bad after all ...), the idea combines elements of the games-arcade, Internet-cafe, public-kiosk and private mini-TV screen as in first-class aircraft seats and the Boeing 777. And, thanks to the dynamics of the Internet, it can shortly integrate 'home'-banking, 'home'-shopping, the TAB, and the casino (and SP bookies - did you *really* believe all that rot about disintermediation??). I was interested in whatever they were prepared to provide in the way of paperwork. The number was engaged a couple of times during the day, and not available from my area - 06 - after 5:00pm. But: http://www.ipat.com.au is pretty enough, and: http://www.ipat.com.au/corp/brochure/ipat1.html provides info on the terminal itself. There's no corporate info, and I was only visitor 1382, so it's presumably early days yet. But good luck to IPAT, and to all who sail in her. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Wed May 8 22:36:53 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 08:36:53 +1000 Subject: Writers Versus Publisher Message-ID: At 17:57 96/05/08, Dan Tebbutt wrote: >I know this is marginally off-topic so pls feel free to pass onto other lists Actually its not. It concerns the tensions between authors and publishers when the authors find that they can sell their works directly across the network without the publisher. Will the net empower those who create material to sell it direct or whether then still need big distribution organisations. I hear icebergs cracking. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Wed May 8 23:16:52 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 09:16:52 +1000 Subject: Software package query Message-ID: Approve link >Message-Id: >Date: 9 May 1996 07:47:40 +1000 >From: "Joy Sutton" >Subject: Software package query >To: "link list=7F" > >Subject: Software package query >Hello > >I'm hoping someone may be able to help. I have had an enquiry from Brazil >for an >Australian software product called Smartkey. Apparently this is a keyboard >macro product that is/was produced by FBN Research. I have lodged enquirie= s >with a couple of software places (waiting for response), but if anyone else= can >shed any light on this I would be most appreciative. > >Thanks > >=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D= +=3D+=3D+=3D >Joy Sutton >Energy Research and Development Corporation >GPO Box 629 >Canberra, ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA >---------- >Phone: +61 (0)6 274 4888 >Fax: +61 (0)6 274 4801 >E-mail: joy@erdc.com.au >=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D+=3D= +=3D+=3D+=3D > __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From hilvertj@ozemail.com.au Thu May 9 00:45:24 1996 From: hilvertj@ozemail.com.au (John Hilvert) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 10:45:24 +1000 (EST) Subject: Software package query Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960509104323.08df1dba@ozemail.com.au> At 09:16 AM 9/5/96 +1000, Tony Barry wrote: >Approve link > >>Message-Id: >>Date: 9 May 1996 07:47:40 +1000 >>From: "Joy Sutton" >>Subject: Software package query >>To: "link list=7F" >> >>Subject: Software package query >>Hello >> >>I'm hoping someone may be able to help. I have had an enquiry from Brazil >>for an >>Australian software product called Smartkey. Apparently this is a= keyboard >>macro product that is/was produced by FBN Research. I have lodged= enquiries >>with a couple of software places (waiting for response), but if anyone else can >>shed any light on this I would be most appreciative. >> Don't we even remember our own local heros? Sheez! SmartKey was voted best Australian software product 1988 at Australian PC= World! Nick Hammond - now Commander in charge of Defence's IT Boffins, wrote this indispensable and clever macro utility way back in the early eighties. I am sure orders can still be taken at FBN ("Fly By Night" was what it used to stand for) FBN 2 Solander Court Yaralumla ACT 2600 or PO Box 19 Woden ACT 2606 Tel: (06) 285 2218 or (Fax) (06) 285 2265 John Hilvert Journalist at Large "The shallower you are, the more ground you cover." For great education software reviews try http://www.edutainment.com.au/ From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Thu May 9 01:23:12 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 11:23:12 +1000 Subject: Software package query Message-ID: <19149660@dist.gov.au> Possible answer: My recollection is that "Smartkey" was a technology used by Sydney company Keycorp in the mid 1980s for programmable keyboard function keys (with LCD windows on/above each FN key). I called the company just now but the people with the corporate memory are out, so this is not absolutely certain. Full information on Keycorp is available on the DIST home page through on-line access to the IT Industry CD ROM capability directory (URL: www.dist.gov.au under heading "directories". Use "Keycorp" as the query word.) Company Contact info: phone 02 415 2900 Managing Director: John Wood International Business Manager: Peter Gjersoe Hope this helps David Nicholls Director International S&T Programs DIST ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Software package query Author: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) at AARNET Date: 09/5/96 9:16 AM Approve link >Message-Id: >Date: 9 May 1996 07:47:40 +1000 >From: "Joy Sutton" >Subject: Software package query >To: "link list" > >Subject: Software package query >Hello > >I'm hoping someone may be able to help. I have had an enquiry from Brazil >for an >Australian software product called Smartkey. Apparently this is a keyboard >macro product that is/was produced by FBN Research. I have lodged enquiries >with a couple of software places (waiting for response), but if anyone else can >shed any light on this I would be most appreciative. > >Thanks > >=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= >Joy Sutton >Energy Research and Development Corporation >GPO Box 629 >Canberra, ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA >---------- >Phone: +61 (0)6 274 4888 >Fax: +61 (0)6 274 4801 >E-mail: joy@erdc.com.au >=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= > __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Thu May 9 02:05:08 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 12:05:08 +1000 Subject: Looking for remarkable young Australians Message-ID: approve chain >To: link >From: Anne.Hugo@educ.utas.edu.au (Anne Hugo) >Subject: Looking for remarkable young Australians > >I reckon some august Australian linkers would be in a good position to help >with this, which I realise is off link's usual subject matter. Original >message was mailed to the YARN listserv (Youth Affairs Research Network >based at the Univ. of Melbourne). >Thanks for your time/patience anyway, >Anne. > >>Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 03:54:18 -0400 >>Mime-Version: 1.0 >>To: yarn-list@yarn.insted.unimelb.edu.au >>From: jake@gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au (Shane Warren) >>Subject: Looking for renmarkable young Australians >> >>08/05/96 > ------ > >>As part of the Youth Services Program [background info at end of message] >>committment to promoting the valuable >>work of young Australians within the Australian community we are writing an >>article on young Australian going places. This will be published >>nationally. >> >>I am currently asking people to nominate young people (under 27) they feel >>have or are making a valuable contribution to their community or the nation >>as a whole - your assistance in this would be greatly appreciated. If you >>know of anyone please just e-mail me outlining why you think they are >>'remarkable'. We will use this material to access a group of about 50 and >>use these young people's expereinces in the article. >> >>I am encouraging people to nominate others who have excelled in the area of >>interest this could be the arts, sports, community, bussiness to young >>people who have made a valuable committment to overcoming one difficulty >>and getting there. >>I beleive most of us see what we would define remarkable young people - >>please share this with us! >> >>The individuals' permission will be sought before the publication of the >>article. >>Thank you for your time. >>Any questions drop me a line. >>Bye for now >>Shane > >Background info: >Youth Services Program - http://gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au/~jake - >is a multi-faceted peer service based, non-profit community welfare >organisation that offers education, training and resources on social >issues; counselling and support; and social and cultural participatory >projects for young people and youth services providers. > >This association works with young people, their families, Governments, >Corporate Australia and other institutions within our society to provide >young people to participate as equals within Australian regardles of their >age, gender, race, religion or status quo within the community. > >- - - - >Info received 9/5/96 and message forwarded by > > >* * * * * * * * >* Anne Hugo >* >* Information Resources Specialist >* National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies >* GPO Box 252C, Hobart, Tasmania 7001 Australia. >* >* Tel (+61 02) 20 2591; Fax (+61 02) 20 2578 >* Email Info service: Youth.Monitor@educ.utas.edu.au >* >* >* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From r.durie@aiia.com.au Thu May 9 01:35:51 1996 From: r.durie@aiia.com.au (R Durie) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 12:35:51 +1100 Subject: Software package query Message-ID: I see John Hilvert has already answered this query but Linkers might like to know about the Australian IT&T Capability Directory. AIIA produced the Directory for the Department of Industry Science and Tourism. The Directory is available at and on CD Rom from AIIA. (Unfortunately FBN are not in the diretory but 785 other companies are!) >>I'm hoping someone may be able to help. I have had an enquiry from Brazil >>for an >>Australian software product called Smartkey. Apparently this is a keyboard >>macro product that is/was produced by FBN Research. I have lodged enquiries >>with a couple of software places (waiting for response), but if anyone >>else can >>shed any light on this I would be most appreciative. >> >>Thanks >> >>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= >>Joy Sutton Rob Durie Deputy Executive Director Australian Information Industry Association Ph: + 61 6 282 4700 12 Campion Street Deakin ACT 2600 Australia Fax: + 61 6 285 1408 PO Box 246 Deakin West ACT 2600 Australia Email: r.durie@aiia.com.au From MVale@dca.gov.au Thu May 9 21:12:05 1996 From: MVale@dca.gov.au (MVale@dca.gov.au) Date: 9 MAY 96 16:12:05 EST Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <0000hbhbhbrd.0000gkecyeqm@dca.gov.au> The following notice may be of interest to subscribers: You are invited to join The National Rural and Resources Press Club for the launch of a RIRDC report "Electronic Information Services for building enterprises and community beyond the cities" by Dr Roger Buckeridge Thursday 23 May Lunch at 12.15pm for 12.30pm National Press Club, National Circuit, Barton ACT Menu: Open sandwiches and beverages Cost: $15.00 members, $18.00 non-members (you may pay at the door or in advance) RSVP: 20 May 1996 to Dimitra (06) 273 3855 Cheers Mike Vale Department of Communications & the Arts From joy@erdc.com.au Thu May 9 07:58:45 1996 From: joy@erdc.com.au (Joy Sutton) Date: 9 May 1996 17:58:45 +1000 Subject: Re software package query Message-ID: Subject: Re software package query Hello again Thanks to everyone who has responded to my query this morning. I lost track of which responses went to the list and which came to me direct, so in case anyone else is interested in this general purpose macro product (thanks to John Hilvert and apologies for a short memory), it is in stock, costs $125, DOS version 6.2 (Windows on drawing board) from FBN on (06) 285 2218 or fax (06) 285 2265. And who knows, maybe a copy will be an Oz ambassador in Brazil soon - thanks to link. =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Joy Sutton Energy Research and Development Corporation GPO Box 629 Canberra, ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA ---------- Phone: +61 (0)6 274 4888 Fax: +61 (0)6 274 4801 E-mail: joy@erdc.com.au =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= From davaile@law.usyd.edu.au Sun May 5 02:55:02 1996 From: davaile@law.usyd.edu.au (David Vaile) Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 12:55:02 +1000 Subject: Discretionary prosecutions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Philip Argy wrote: > However, there is a danger with a mere lack of knowledge defence > that political imperatives will lead to prosecution test cases > against hapless intermediaries who will have difficulty proving > a negative, ie 'no knowledge'. KNOWLEDGE As you point out, Philip, this is a fundamental issue. Would any 'hapless intermediaries' running a cache, router, ISP, website or other net service be sensible to remain ignorant of the contents of the traffic through their nodes? Or would they in effect be assumed to have knowledge of the contents of every message hosted or passing through, unless they could somehow demonstrate their ignorance? This could encourage everyone in the Internet chain who feels potentially susceptible to prosecution to institute their own version of surveillance and restriction, driven by the uncertainty of both the conduct which is criminalised and the likelihood of enforcement. What implications does this have for random sampling of the traffic? If there is a technical capacity to surveill the traffic, would it be assumed to be used? Does the Telecommunications Interception Act (Cth) prohibit such surveillance? Or will the hunt for objectionable material constitute a defence to bugging-type offences? DISCRETION The element of discretion is one of the most disturbing features of the censorship proposals. In other areas where there is discretionary enforcement of prohibitions against certain sorts of speech, the burden seems to fall heavily on particular parts of the community, while other sectors appear almost immune to prosecution or conviction. For instance, I understand there is research indicating the "offensive language" provisions of the Summary Offences Act (NSW) have historically been predominantly used against Aboriginal kids and poor white kids in the street, while police and respectable citizens who "swear like troopers" are rarely, if ever, subject to enforcement. The substantial unenforceability of the net censorship proposals leaves open scope for selective enforcement (typically against certain less-acceptable groups) or corrupt enforcement/non-enforcement by the authorities. This uncertainty may have a great chilling effect on anyone wanting to develop forums for robust discussion on unpopular issues, or provide access to marginalised groups who might not be "nice" enough in their expression to satisfy the local informers and monitors. ___________________________________________________________ David Vaile Ph: +61 2 318 2877 Fax: +61 2 318 2863 davaile@law.usyd.edu.au or David_Vaile@fcl.fl.asn.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 9 10:49:15 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 21:49:15 +1100 Subject: Interactive Gaming Hacker Challenge Message-ID: >X-Sender: jde@mail.intersphere.com >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 15:04:08 -0500 >To: sportlist@intersphere.com >From: Jeffrey Erb >Subject: Press Release >Sender: owner-sportlist@intersphere.com >Precedence: bulk > >PRESS RELEASE > >For: Interactive Gaming & Communications Corp. >595 Skippack Pike - Suite 100 - Blue Bell, PA > >05/08/96 3:00 PM - Immediate Release > >Blue Bell, Pennsylvania: > >Internet Sports Wagering System to debut Monday, May 13, 1996 > >Interactive Gaming & Communications Corporation (SBET) announced today that >it will >unveil its "Wiseguy Sports Wagering System", a PC based, Internet ready, >sports book >wagering, management & accounting software system on Monday, May 13, 1996. >It will >initially be open for testing by the public by IGC's Antiguan based >subsidiary company, >Sports International Ltd. To begin testing the system, a client must fill >out the online >application, to receive $1000.00 in play money to begin wagering. A $200.00 >cash prize >will be given out to the person who wins the most money at the end of each >week. An >additional $1000.00 is being offered to the first person who can prove they >are able to >"hack" into the system and manipulate wagers or results. IGC hopes to >receive feedback >that will help to enhance the abilities of the "Wiseguy" system for it's >final release. The >system will debut at IGC's World Wide Web site: http://www.gamblenet.com/bet/ > >The system will be made available to all domestic and off-shore sports wagering >companies and will provide full sports book wager tracking, account management, >accounting, and full Internet access using the World Wide Web. Access to the >sports book >system is accomplished by using any of the popular Web Browsers like Netscape, >Compuserve or America OnLine. > >Depending on a company's system configuration and custom requirements, complete >system costs can range between $50,000 and $250,000 for full online >interactive Internet >sports book wagering system. The software system will also require an annual >licensing >and support fee. > >With the sports wagering industry experiencing exponential growth with, at >least, 10 new >sports book companies now operating off-shore, the need for such a product >and service >becomes clear. IGC's president Mike Simone announced that IGC's offshore gaming >subsidiary, Sports International Ltd., anticipates its company's on-line >Internet wagering to >match, if not exceed, the $50,000,000 in wagers handled through telephone >wagering. > >For more information regarding sales and licensing, interested parties >should contact IGC >directly at their new U.S. Corporate headquarters in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania at >1-215-540-8185. > > > > >Interactive Gaming & Communications Corporation is a publicly traded company >whose >stock is traded on the NASDAQ bulletin board under SBET. Their 10-Q report >can be >found on the Internet at http://www.gamblenet.com/bet/filings/10Q-995.html > > # # # Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From ron@comu.net.au Thu May 9 16:49:02 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 02:49:02 +1000 Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960509164902.0072bf28@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> At , you wrote: >The following notice may be of interest to subscribers: > >You are invited to join The National Rural and Resources Press Club for the >launch of a RIRDC report > Love to go Mike but I'm a bit too busy making it happen to stop and read about who the government is going to throw money at so they can waste it on meetings, airfares and lunches. How about they ask us how to do it and how much money we need to make it happen instead of getting some academic to decide which other academics will be getting free lunches for the next few years. Forgive me if I sound upset but its 2.30 in the morning and this is fairly routine for us at the pointy end and we are constantly bombarded with this stuff while we work on a shoestring and pay staff from our pockets. What is worse is when we do have a win (like getting free public access in the libraries (provided and maintained by private enterprise)) the govt bofins claim it as their own doing, puff their chests out and put it in the papers. Betcha 5 bucks the report recommends that the regional Uni's get the money to set up committees to investigate how to deliberate on the economics of making such a policy decision. By the time their paper is released there wont be any more money left and anyway private enterprise will have completed the original task. The nearest politician will then grasp the report, walk up to a terminal (probably connected to a rural access one pop) and say what a wonderful job the govt has done. We in the country have been watching it happen for a while now. I hope to loose $5 but I doubt it..... Ron. p.s. sorry if gips.com.au is down but its hard to get unix blokes out here.. Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From hilvertj@ozemail.com.au Thu May 9 21:22:56 1996 From: hilvertj@ozemail.com.au (John Hilvert) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 07:22:56 +1000 (EST) Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960510072057.2ddf6c10@ozemail.com.au> At 02:49 AM 10/5/96 +1000, Ron Ipsen wrote: >At , you wrote: >>The following notice may be of interest to subscribers: >> >>You are invited to join The National Rural and Resources Press Club for the >>launch of a RIRDC report >> > >Love to go Mike but I'm a bit too busy making it happen to stop and read >about who the government is going to throw money at so they can waste it on >meetings, airfares and lunches. > > How about they ask us how to do it and how much money we need to make it >happen instead of getting some academic to decide which other academics will >be getting free lunches for the next few years. > > Forgive me if I sound upset but its 2.30 in the morning and this is fairly >routine for us at the pointy end and we are constantly bombarded with this >stuff while we work on a shoestring and pay staff from our pockets. > > What is worse is when we do have a win (like getting free public access in >the libraries (provided and maintained by private enterprise)) the govt >bofins claim it as their own doing, puff their chests out and put it in the >papers. > > Betcha 5 bucks the report recommends that the regional Uni's get the money >to set up committees to investigate how to deliberate on the economics of >making such a policy decision. By the time their paper is released there >wont be any more money left and anyway private enterprise will have >completed the original task. > > The nearest politician will then grasp the report, walk up to a terminal >(probably connected to a rural access one pop) and say what a wonderful job >the govt has done. > > We in the country have been watching it happen for a while now. > > I hope to loose $5 but I doubt it..... I can sympathise with your plight. It's been a pain getting a decent feed in Mallacoota, Victoria. However Dr Buckeridge is really one of our own linkers. Together with Terry Cutler, Buckeridge has authoritatively mapped the local online economy and set the agenda, prodding the pollies and telcos to be bolder than they care to be. I, for one, will be interested in what Buckeridge has to say in this area. John Hilvert Journalist at Large "The shallower you are, the more ground you cover." For great education software reviews try http://www.edutainment.com.au/ From tomw@acslink.net.au Thu May 9 22:16:51 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 08:16:51 +1000 Subject: Internet Public Access Terminals Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960510081744.235f0a1a@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> At 08:55 PM 8/05/96 +1100, Roger Clarke wrote: > FROM YOUR OWN COIN OPERATED > INTERNET PUBLIC ACCESS TERMINAL I tried a coin operated terminal in a cyber-cafe in Perth last December. It worked okay. The concept is reasonable, but would be more practical with a smart card, rather than coins. I suspect that public kiosks, public telephones and public video games will converge to one unit. You just pay different amounts of money for different services. Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From tomw@acslink.net.au Thu May 9 22:17:07 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 08:17:07 +1000 Subject: Software package query Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960510081800.235f74b0@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> At 12:35 PM 9/05/96 +1100, R Durie wrote: >... Australian IT&T Capability Directory. AIIA produced the >Directory for the Department of Industry Science and Tourism. The >Directory is available at and on CD Rom from >AIIA... Congratulations to the AIIA and DIST for the directory. DIST might like to add a pointer to the AIIA information hosted by the ACS at: http://acslink.net.au/~tomw/aiia.html Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From philip.mccrea@syd.dit.csiro.au Thu May 9 23:01:25 1996 From: philip.mccrea@syd.dit.csiro.au (Philip McCrea) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 09:01:25 +1000 Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <199605092259.IAA02365@alba.syd.dit.CSIRO.AU> Ron Ipsen wrote: > How about they ask us how to do it and how much money we need to make it >happen instead of getting some academic to decide which other academics will >be getting free lunches for the next few years. > > Forgive me if I sound upset but its 2.30 in the morning and this is fairly >routine for us at the pointy end and we are constantly bombarded with this >stuff while we work on a shoestring and pay staff from our pockets. I have to agree with John Hilvert, Ron. Roger Buckeridge is one of 'our own', and writes with authority. Have you read the most recent report he co-authored - The On-line Economy? Terrific value at $95 or whatever it is. Roger is not an academic... Phil ___________________________________________________________________ philip.mccrea@syd.dit.csiro.au Business Development Manager CSIRO Division of Information Technology mobile: (0411) 102 548 Locked Bag 17 tel: +61 2 325 3103 NORTH RYDE NSW 2113 AUSTRALIA fax: +61 2 325 3101 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Thu May 9 22:13:07 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 09:13:07 +1100 Subject: Society and the Future of Computing 1996 Conference Message-ID: (Please Pardon multiple postings and imposing title) Steve Sawyer <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> SFC Update, April 29th, 1996 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Society and the Future of Computing '96 June 16-19, 1996, Snowbird, Utah, USA http://www.lanl.gov/SFC <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> The conference structure includes keynote speakers, panels of invited speakers, Net-connected poster presentations, debates, and workshops. The intent is to share ideas in a multidisciplinary environment for mutual enrichment and learning, ultimately to affect the directions of computer science research and applications for the benefit of all. In This Issue: ------------- * Early Registration Discount Deadline is May 1st! * Poster Deadline Extended to May 19th. * High-speed Televideo Conference Technology to Link England and Snowbird. * Highlights of Finalized Program. Early Registration Discount Deadline is May 1st! ------------------------------------------------ Registration is open and you are encouraged to take advantage of the early registration discount and save $100! To receive this savings, use the electronic registration form at http://www.lanl.gov/SFC/96/reginfo.html#Regform by May 1st, 1996. Poster Deadline Extended to May 19th ------------------------------------ Due to the overwhelming response and the need to accommodate the many people who want to present Internet-connected posters at the conference, the deadline for proposals has been extended. THERE ARE STILL SOME BOOTHS AVAILABLE, SO PLEASE COME AND SHARE YOUR WORK AND IDEAS! See the "Participation Opportuntities" page at: http://www.lanl.gov/SFC/96/participation.html for details. *** Each poster booth will have Internet connections so you can include live demonstrations in your poster. *** High-speed Televideo Technology to Link England and Snowbird ------------------------------------------------------------ An entire technical session of the conference will be conducted with the panelists and moderator located in Leicester, UK, and the attendees in Snowbird, Utah, USA. Dedicated high-speed ISDN televideo systems will provide high-quality two-way audio and video through which the discussion will be shared. Highlights of Finalized Program ------------------------------- The conference program is now finalized as detailed on the Web agenda page (http://www.lanl.gov/SFC/96/program.html). Here are some highlights: Keynote Panel of Industry Laboratory Leaders: -------------------------------------------- Moderator: Rick Light, Los Alamos National Laboratory Panelists: Hassan Dayem, Los Alamos National Laboratory Bob Lucky, Bellcore Bud Wonsiewicz, U S WEST Advanced Technologies Keynote Speakers: ---------------- Laura Breeden, Formerly of USDC National Telecommunications & Information Administration "Whose Voice Is Heard? Listening to the Computer and Communications Revolution" Tom Landauer, University of Colorado, Boulder "Computers, Usefulness, Usability, Productivity, and Happiness" Bill Wulf, University of Virginia "Information Technology is the Lever, But Where Shall We Stand?" Technical Sessions: ------------------ WORK, PRODUCTIVITY, JOBS: ------------------------ --- "Working in the Networked Economy: Issues" Moderator: Gary Chapman, University of Texas, Austin Panelists: Stanley Aronowitz, City University of New York Benjamin Hunnicutt, University of Iowa Lodis Rhodes, University of Texas, Austin --- "Working in the Networked Economy: Opportunities" Moderator: Phil Agre, University of California, San Diego Panelists: Jonathan Grudin, University of California, Irvine Scott Ralls, State of North Carolina Department of Commerce Brian Turner, Work and Technology Institute CULTURE AND IDENTITY: --------------------- --- "The European Information Society" A Video Teleconferenced Panel Between Snowbird, Utah, USA, and Leicester, UK, with High Speed ISDN Audio and Video. Moderator: Terry Bynum, Southern Connecticut State University Panelists: Jacques Berleur, Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Belgium Jacek Sojka, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland Simon Rogerson, De Montfort University, UK Juliet Webster, University of East London, UK --- "If Anyone Can Publish, Who Will Edit?" Moderator: Karen Coyle, University of California, Berkeley Panelists: Clifford Lynch, University of California, Berkeley Paul Resnick, AT&T Research David H. Rothman, Author of "Silicon Jungle" DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP: -------------------------- --- "On the Internet No One Knows You're a Dog" Moderator: Brenda Allen, University of Colorado Panelists: Sara Kiesler, Carnegie-Mellon University Steven E. Miller, CPSR, Author of "Civilizing Cyberspace" Joseph B. Walther, Northwestern University --- "Government On-Line: Report Card and Futures" Moderator: Charles N. Brownstein, Corporation for National Research Initiatives Panelists: David Farber, University of Pennsylvania Fred Wendling, National Science Foundation --- "Closing Session" Moderator: Blaise Liffick, Millersville University of Pennsylvania Panelists: Jeff Johnson, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Rick Light, Los Alamos National Laboratory Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland A Lively Debate: --------------- "Contrasting Visions of the Future" Moderator: Allan Kuchinsky, Hewlett-Packard Labs Debaters: F. Randall Farmer, Electric Communities Scott McDonald, Time-Warner Inc. John M. Carroll, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg Electronic Village Project Discussant: Lucy Suchman, Xerox PARC Workshops: --------- Cisler, Uncapher, Press: "Implications of the Net for Industrialized Countries, Developing Nations, and Indigenous Cultures" Epstein: "Emerging Realities, Virtual and Otherwise" Meyer: "Anthropology and SFC'96 Computer Technologies" Shneiderman: "The Durango Declaration Continued: Toward A Snowbird Conference Statement" Questions? ---------- Any questions or comments you might have may be addressed to sfc96@lanl.gov. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From pandrews@enterprise.powerup.com.au Thu May 9 23:27:22 1996 From: pandrews@enterprise.powerup.com.au (Peter Andrews) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 10:27:22 +1100 Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address References: <2.2.32.19960509164902.0072bf28@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> Message-ID: <31927F5A.33EC@mail.powerup.com.au> I have just seen Ron I note back to the Rural Press and although he has got a lot of it right i do not think that he can generalize about all academics. The major problem does not appear to me to be the academics but the bean counters. The garbage that i have to go through to get things done at the moment is frustrating, criminal, timewasting, and expensive. It takes two weeks to get a signature on a document to do something by someone who has not got a clue what i am doing. In the meantime i am still paying support staff to sit around a twidle their thumbs! He is right about the media grabbing though. Every positive set forward i have taken means that i have to advise some bureaucrat so they can stand in the light. As a contracted worker i am now on the list for non-renewal of my contract as i have spoken up. Ah well, back to private enterprise..... My point Ron is that it is not the academics but the bureaucrats and the fact that all money issued is accountable. This accountability is at a depth that private enterprise would not understand, but would screem if it was not adheared to. Oh by the way, academics also work until 2:30 and 3:00 am. I prefer not to be at the pointy end watching where we are going but in the middle steering! :-} Regards -- Peter Andrews pandrews@mail.powerup.com.au Lecturer Information Technology and Aboriginal Culture Project Manager Electronic Multimedia Discovery Learning Centre for Adult Aboriginal Students Faculty of Indigenous Peoples' Australia Southbank Institute Kangaroo Point Campus From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Fri May 10 12:19:14 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 10 May 96 12:19:14 Subject: List of public access News servers.... Message-ID: <9605100122.AA1134@worldcom-45.worldcom.com> For those wondering about public access news servers: there even appears to be a few in Australia. DAN ---------------------- Forwarded by Dan Tebbutt/ACP on 10/05/96 12:19 PM --------------------------- From: lb@acp.com.au Check them out at http://wopr.cs.utas.edu.au/open-news-servers/ From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Fri May 10 13:16:15 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 13:16:15 +0000 Subject: PICS: V chip and ABC Radio's Click On program Message-ID: <199605100318.NAA12464@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> PICS and the V Chip ------------------- In "The Age" yesterday (9 May 1995), and perhaps in the Sydney Morning Herald, there was an article regarding the V Chip, under another article regarding an inquiry headed by Senator Alston (Minster for Communications and the Arts) on links between the broacast of violent material and violent behaviour. The top article mentioned that the government "would also examine the use of technology, such as the V-chip used in the United States, which can block the broadcast of violent material on individual television sets". (The word "broadcast" is inappropriate here, "display" is the correct term.) Ben Potter's article on the V-chip is entitled "Censors seize on new device", which is an attractive headline, but it should be noted that the V-chip is *not* censorship, except from the point of view of the children whose viewing it restricts. Indeed the V-chip, if widely adopted, reduces the arguments for censorship of broadcast TV material. *Access control software* (abetter term than "filtering software, which may imply the software determines which material passes purely on the nature of the material itself) working with ratings labels using the PICS protocol, is a far more sophisticated approach than the V-Chip. Since people are coming to understand the V-Chip idea, this may be a good analogy to start the discussion of a PICS based access control system. The V-Chip idea is basically a very good one, because it gives adults another means of controlling the nature of TV material their children watch. However there are considerable technical hurdles in making a V-Chip system which children can't hack, and yet can be used by adults (who are generally incapable of using the cryptic timer controls on a VCR). Also there is the question of work arounds - the kids might record the program on a VCR (however the ratings information is encoded in the top few, normally invisible, lines of the video signal, so the TV should see them on playback - if the VCR faithfully reproduces them.) A V-Chip needs to be built into a TV - retrofitting costs would be very high. A V-Chip system will probably rely on a single, nationally based value system and source of ratings, typically the OFLC in Australia. This will probably provide relatively inflexible, "lumpy" categorisation of suitability of children, but a V-Chip system could be designed to be responsive to a number of value systems, including those not developed when the TV was made. However this raises increasing problems of controlling the system on a domestic TV, which lacks a keyboard. Philips is quoted as saying that a V-Chip for PAL could be available for sale in TV sets in 2 years - but this is marketing speak. No marketer would ever say more than 2 years no matter what the prospects are. However, this time frame may be realistic if all the standards settng processes go smoothly, which for a fixed item of hardware meant to last for decades, they probably will not. The executive director of the Federation of Australian Television Stations, Mr Tony Branigan, was quoted as saying that it could be a decade before half the TV sets in use had the V-Chip. The Internet, being based on software, is far more flexible, powerful and quick to alter. I would not be surprised if PICS was up and running and becoming useful to parents and educators by the end of 1996 - 20 months after the idea was first proposed and 14 months after the protocol was developed. The V-chip is an excellent idea, but it is necessarily bogged down in hardware and the one-way nature of broadcast technology. PICS is an excellent idea which will cost less, be easy to "install" (browsers will support it at no extra cost) and be easy to upgrade as requirements for the system change. If a home has a permanet Internet connection, then there is every reason why a TV could be connected to the computer which runs PICS access control software - to control the display of the TV just as it would control the display of a file. The TV program could have some HTML tags in its V-Chip data stream (The V-chip standard would need to allow for this) or there would have to be some way the access control software could identify the program. Then the access control software would request ratings labels for the program from various sources via the Internet, and use any ratings label it found in the video program. Sophisticated and easy to use software would give parents a high level of control over what the TV showed, including their own specific requirements about times and particular programs. The V-Chip idea is directly related to analogue TV, via cable, microwave, satellite or VHF/UHF. It does not matter whether this is a pay TV or free service. The classification data is encoded in the "Vertical Blanking Interval" the brighness information of the first few lines of the frame which are normally not visible on the screen. These lines are typically transmitted in the period at the end of each 1/50 second vertical scan of the electron beam towards the bottom of the tube, when the beam is turned off and the deflection magnets change state ready to direct it to the top of the screen again. Hence, the V-Chip idea, in my understanding, directly relates to analogue video signals. (A problem is that the vertical blanking interval is already used by many broadcasters for videotex an similar signals - this alone could make the V-Chip proposal very hard to develop a workable standard for.) However, analogue TV is not the only way of doing things. Digital video broadcasts (pay and free) using MPEG-2 video compression technology will be increasingly used in the future. This is 2 to 8 Mbit/sec for PAL broadcast quality standard format video and sound, with more bits for wider and higher resolution formats. I am reasonably certain that the MPEG-2 data stream can easily have suplementary information included in it, so it will be no drama at all to include V-Chip like ratings, and any amount of HTML tags including PICS labels. So in the future, especially when digital video signals are closely associated with the home computer (for buffering and editing out adverts, instant-replay, storing and printing of ads and program images etc. etc.) that a PICS based system, will become feasible for broadcast material. Even if the computer is not net connected, the vast data stream of the MPEG-2 video program could easily accommodate a large number of PICS ratings labels from various sources and according to any number of value systems, continuously transmitted during the program. (This might occupy 1 kbit/sec at the most, out of 2 to 8 megabit/sec.) When VOD (Video On Demand) finally is feasible around the year 2000, when broadband links to the home and the massive video servers are available, I expect it will effectively be the WWW with full motion video. I expect that normal Internet communications via TCP/IP, HTTP etc. will be used to select and control the material, but that the huge data stream will be sent to the home as ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) cells (fixed length packets which can be instantly routed by ATM routers at any data rate) instead of the more unweildy (for such huge data rates) IP packets of the Internet. However PICS access control will be well established by then, so when individual streams of video are sent to the home, on a free or paid basis, as in individual playback of pre-recorded material or as individual access to a live broadcast, all the PICS based software and ratings systems and services will be used with little or no modification to cover video in the home. Hence, VOD can be seen as an extension of the WWW to accomodate multi-megabit video data streams. The V-Chip can be seen as a valuable, but very limited PICS like access control system (probably based on a single set of values and a single source of ratings) for analogue TV signals (pay and free). PICS itself will probably grow to be a global value and classification system for almost every kind of content - far beyond its original application of protecting children. Interview regarding PICS for "Click On" --------------------------------------- Today I recorded a brief interview with Stephen Rappley for the ABC Radio National show "Click On" this Sunday afternoon. I mentioned PICS, and while what I say is a subset of what has been said about PICS on Link, you may be interested in how this matter is brought to (hopefully) many listeners in the compressed time frame of broadcast media. I wish I had had time to mention that the V-Chip was a good idea, that PICS was cheaper, and much more flexible and powerful, that neither were censorship of the broadcast or Internet communciations (except from the child's point of view) and that both reduced the arguements for censorship. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From pargy@msn.com Wed May 8 15:07:38 1996 From: pargy@msn.com (Philip Argy) Date: Wed, 8 May 96 15:07:38 UT Subject: Writers Versus Publisher Message-ID: The Australian position was reasonably clearly settled a few years ago in a case against Neville Jeffress Advertising's use of articles for its press clipping service. I believe that electronic press clippings and abstracts would be similarly treated. Philip Argy http://www.wp.com/PhilipArgy ---------- From: owner-link@charlotte.anu.edu.au on behalf of Dan Tebbutt Sent: Wednesday, 8 May 1996 18:49 To: link Subject: Writers Versus Publisher I know this is marginally off-topic so pls feel free to pass onto other lists -- as a comitted freelance writer, I found it pretty interesting-dant ---------------------- Forwarded by Dan Tebbutt/ACP on 08/05/96 05:58 PM --------------------------- pagre @ weber.ucsd.edu (Phil Agre) 08/05/96 05:43 AM To: rre @ weber.ucsd.edu @ Internet cc: (bcc: Dan Tebbutt/ACP) Subject: Writers Versus Publisher =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 08:06:41 EDT From: Alexandra Owens/ASJA <75227.1650@COMPUSERVE.COM> To: Multiple recipients of list JOURNET Subject: Writers Versus Publisher The Authors Registry (212-563-6920) The Authors Guild (212-563-5904) American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) (212-997-0947) For immediate release May 1, 1996 AUTHORS' GROUPS JOIN TO SUPPORT FREELANCE DAVIDS AS E-RIGHTS COURT BATTLE AGAINST GOLIATHS HEATS UP Authors' organizations representing tens of thousands of writers yesterday submitted a "friend of the court" brief in support of several freelancers who are embroiled in battle with the New York Times, Time Inc. and other major publishers and database producers over the hot writers' issue of the 90s: electronic rights. The show of solidarity came from the Authors Registry, the new royalty collecting and licensing agency that counts more than 50,000 enrollees, and two leading writers' groups--the Authors Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA). The lawsuit, proceeding in U.S. District Court in New York City, is backed by the National Writers Union. Defendants are the publishers of the Times, Sports Illustrated (Time Inc.) and Newsday (Times-Mirror), and the producers of the Nexis and UMI article databases. At issue is whether the publisher defendants, after initial publication, had the right to license the database producers to sell articles by freelancers in online and CD-ROM formats without permission of the authors. The defendants maintain that no permission or extra payment was needed. The writers and their supporters argue that since, under the law, freelancers own the copyrights in their work, and the writers involved had not licensed electronic rights to the publishers, the additional use constitutes infringement. Atlantic Monthly, also a defendant when the lawsuit was filed in December 1993, recently settled with the writer whose work it had sublicensed for electronic use. Terms of the settlement have not been made public, but Atlantic now says it will negotiate electronic rights with freelance contributors. Originally, 11 writers were involved in the lawsuit, but in the nearly two and a half years the case has plodded through the court schedule, depositions and motions, several have dropped out. Both sides--the five remaining defendants and six remaining plaintiffs--have filed for summary judgment. U.S. District Judge Sonya Sotomayor is scheduled to hear arguments on the cross-motions in June. If neither side prevails, a trial would likely be ordered. "I am enormously appreciative that the Registry, the Guild and ASJA have supported our position," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Emily M. Bass of Burstein & Bass. "They have spoken very eloquently on behalf of their members and very forcefully on behalf of all writers. Their brief brings home very clearly the economic impact that a ruling in favor of the defendants would have on freelancers." The "friend of the court" brief, prepared by Authors Guild lawyers for the Registry, the Guild and ASJA, points out that new technologies "extend the shelf-life of the contributions to periodicals by making the articles perpetually available for resale anywhere in the world." The brief continues: "The overwhelming majority of publishers procure specific licenses from authors for these electronic uses. To our knowledge, only defendants have claimed that the Copyright Act itself allows these specific uses without license." The writers' groups argue that the defendants' interpretation of the law "distorts the plain language of the statute, its legislative history and the clear intent of Congress, demonstrated over and over in the statute, that the market must properly reward authors as well as their publishers for their valuable work in order to encourage continued production of useful information. That fundamental policy of copyright demonstrates, we believe, that these plaintiffs own the reproduction rights that the publisher defendants purported to grant to the database defendants." As money flows into cyber-publishing, the right to profit from electronic use of articles has become a growing issue with writers. Now, as the Registry, the Guild and ASJA noted in their brief, the New York Times predicts it will take in $80 million in royalties over the next five years from the publisher's portion of search and download fees paid by users of the Nexis online database. To the freelancers, that would be good news except that the Times intends to keep all the money. According to Contracts Watch, an ASJA bulletin that keeps tabs on freelance rights issues, some periodicals have begun to split with authors the royalties received from such ventures as the Nexis and UMI databases while others pay fees for the rights. The Authors Registry was established in 1995 chiefly to collect electronic-use royalties of the sort that the defendants have refused to pay. It quickly gained wide support, now counting more than 30 writers' organizations and 95 literary agencies among its endorsers. The Registry began operations in February 1996. ### Contacts: Authors Registry - Paul Aiken, 212-563-6920 Authors Guild - Kay Murray, 212-563-5904 ASJA - Dan Carlinsky, 212-997-0947 From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Fri May 10 06:29:02 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 16:29:02 +1000 Subject: The Clever Country.... Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 14:11:27 +1000 >X-Sender: wisby@mailhost.ultra.net.au >Mime-Version: 1.0 >To: owner-link@charlotte.anu.edu.au >From: Marjorie Wisby >Subject: The Clever Country.... > >Hi, > >Hope this is not off topic.... > >In my travels, came across an interesting place. Stats on the Net. >(available at: http://www.nw.com/zone/WWW/dist-bynum.html) > >It shows: > >Host Distribution by Top-Level Domain Name > > Domains Domains Percent Domains >Domain Hosts Queried Missed Missed > >TOTAL 9472224 240520 126155 34% > > com 2430954 132216 109366 45% Commercial > edu 1793491 10081 833 8% Educational > net 758597 9054 2819 24% Networks > gov 312330 1873 361 16% Government > org 265327 11823 3612 23% Organizations > mil 258791 866 157 15% US Military >-------------------------- all above are US sites --------------------------- > de 452997 6302 393 6% Germany > uk 451750 9979 1923 16% United Kingdom > ca 372891 5909 733 11% Canada > au 309562 5608 352 6% Australia > : > : > >Australia has the 5th largest number of internet hosts in the world. > >These numbers are *not* per capita...... > >The legislators are willing to kill *this*???? > >Granted the US dominates, but I think we are making a respectable showing. > >TTYL, > >Marjorie >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >~ Marjorie N. Wisby From every mountain-side ~ >~ wisby@ultra.net.au Let Freedom ring. ~ >~ http://www.netprophet.co.nz - Samuel Francis Smith ~ >~ http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/alert.htm (_America_) ~ >~ ~ >~ Have you noticed that people who are most unwilling to accept ~ >~ responsibility for their own actions, are the most keen to regulate ~ >~ everyone else's? ~ >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Fri May 10 06:19:50 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 17:19:50 +1100 Subject: The Clever Country.... Message-ID: Marjorie N. Wisby via Tony wrote: http://www.nw.com/zone/WWW/dist-bynum.html) shows: >> >>Host Distribution by Top-Level Domain Name >> >> Domains Domains Percent Domains >>Domain Hosts Queried Missed Missed >> >>TOTAL 9472224 240520 126155 34% >> >> com 2430954 132216 109366 45% Commercial >> edu 1793491 10081 833 8% Educational >> net 758597 9054 2819 24% Networks >> gov 312330 1873 361 16% Government >> org 265327 11823 3612 23% Organizations >> mil 258791 866 157 15% US Military >>-------------------------- all above are US sites--------------------- us 5820000 / 250m = 23280 hosts per m >> de 452997 6302 393 6% Germany / 90m = 5033 hpm >> uk 451750 9979 1923 16% United Kingdom / 60m = 7529 hpm >> ca 372891 5909 733 11% Canada / 23m = 16212 hpm >> au 309562 5608 352 6% Australia / 18m = 17197 hpm BUT: - the population figures are guesses (I'm lazy and in a hurry) - this makes no allowance for server-capacity or server-content or server-access volumes. Those would cut both ways (US has many large but also many small servers), so maybe it's not such a bad metric ... Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Fri May 10 18:22:38 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 10 May 96 18:22:38 Subject: Writers Versus Publisher Message-ID: <9605100822.AA1377@worldcom-47.worldcom.com> >The Australian position was reasonably clearly settled a few years ago in a >case against Neville Jeffress Advertising's use of articles for its press >clipping service. I believe that electronic press clippings and abstracts >would be similarly treated. > >Philip Argy > >http://www.wp.com/PhilipArgy Yep, aware of that case, but as I understand it (and maybe you can clarify) publishers such as Fairfax are applying govt pressure to have Martin v NJP overturned "so Aust is not left behind in online publishing". Are you aware of any news/lobbying on this front? DAN From ron@comu.net.au Sat May 11 07:44:11 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 17:44:11 +1000 Subject: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960511074411.0071f2e8@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> >Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 01:21:55 +1000 >To: k.webb@nla.gov.au >From: Ron Ipsen >Subject: Re: Rural Press Club Lunch Address > >At 08:26 10/05/96 +1000, you wrote: >>Ron >> >>In you post to link you said, inter alia, >> >>> What is worse is when we do have a win (like getting free public access in >>>the libraries (provided and maintained by private enterprise)) the govt >>>bofins claim it as their own doing, puff their chests out and put it in the >>>papers. >>> >>What do you mean by this? If you're talking about VICnet, I thought that it was >>provided by govt money through a commercial ISP. What is the involvement >>of private enterprise in providing (the funds for) the service? >> >>Kerry >> > > You must read too many newspapers kerry :-) > > It goes like this:- small underfunded section of state library set up to give appearance of substance and govt support to good idea. (Vicnet early stages.) > >Larger picture comes into view of what is actually required, request for funds to complete initiative, state gov't doesnt give them (much) money, they do what they can with it, tender out concept - privately built. > > , Govt blessing, privately maintained, govt takes kudos. > > > Pretty simple really. VICnet are great friends and allies of mine and they have acheived heaps, I dont want to detract from the work they are doing at all, and in truth I draw inspiration from some of their projects (NETC.net at Wangarratta etc) and concepts. But they dont have buckets of money and no matter what the press releases imply, the govt has not paid for the setup of the rural POP's or for their maintainance. > > Gips are in joint venture with the commercial provider. We are reselling the commercial bandwidth to try to make the POP's commerially viable for the provider and to fund the setting up of the community networks (majordomos, websites, commercial servers etc). The aim is to build a self funding/sustaining community network. We maintain the P/cs and public links in the libraries we are not paid for that. > > We don't get any govt money, They dont even fund the web pages we write for them. Most of them cant see the point of putting it up on the net anyway. > > anyway back to the point. No Govt money has been paid to the ISP that I am aware of. Vicnet have been promised millions (literally) and given a shoestring. it is all done with mirrors. ;-) > > The govt seems to support the multimedia concept with millions of dollars but I dont know where it is going. CDrom seems to be the vogue though I cant see why. > > I thought it might be going into training but half my staff are on the multimedia traineeships and I havent seen any training for them yet. Oh, I forgot I got $1000 for each of them to begin their training and will get the same amount when they are finished (after 12 months).. I think I'll make my fortune this way,-not. It doesnt even cover the travelling expenses to the promised govt courses - which I also havent seen anything of yet. > > Yes some parts of vicnet are funded. Yes, the rural pops were put there by commercial providers. No this was not paid for by govt funds or even with govt assistance. Yes the govt is taking the credit. No, large hardware in rural areas does not pay for itself with the present level of literacy and usage. > > > >>I have to agree with John Hilvert, Ron. Roger Buckeridge is one of 'our >>own', and writes with authority. Have you read the most recent report he >>co-authored - The On-line Economy? Terrific value at $95 or whatever it is. >>Roger is not an academic... > >>Phil > >I do wish to apologise to the innocent academics on the link and in particular to Roger. >If so many of our good people are willing put personal support behind him then I apologise if I have >offended him and stand corrected. > > But the question remains:- did I loose my $5? > > > Ron > > soon to begin using robins anon mailer i think :-) > > > Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Sat May 11 11:50:14 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 22:50:14 +1100 Subject: ACLU v. RENO: Trial Update 5/10/96 Message-ID: I'm not entirely sure what to make of what follows, because it's laced with typical U.S. over-excitement; but it seems like good news ... Roger _________________________________________________________________________ CPSR Members and Friends, [CPSR = Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility] CPSR member Craig Johnson witnessed closing arguments Friday in the ACLU/ALA lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act. His initial reaction was very position; a more complete report will follow by Monday. Audrie ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This just in from the ACLU! I was in Philly today folks, and I can tell you, the update below is an understatement; it was a rout! The ACLU and the ALA, with ample help from the judges and Government counsel, literally pulled the legs off the Government case! I'll be posting my own version on this by Monday. Suddenly, there is a new light in cyberspace! Craig @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ACLU V. RENO: TRIAL UPDATE AT CLOSING ARGUMENTS, ACLU CALLS ON COURT TO PROTECT FREE SPEECH IN CYBERSPACE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Emily Whitfield Friday, May 10, 1996 212-944 -9800, x426 emilyaclu@aol.com PHILADELPHIA-- A three-judge panel heard closing arguments today regarding a law that would criminalize free speech in cyberspace. Plaintiffs and defendants each had approximately two hours to make their case and answer questions from the judges. Much of the government's argument today hinged on a proposal requiring Internet users to identify so-called indecent or patently offensive words or images with an electronic"tag." But by the end of the day, *********************************************************************** * government lawyers conceded -- under pointed questioning * * from the judges -- that it would be impossible to implement this * * scheme given the technology currently available.[Roger's emphasis] * *********************************************************************** That concession alone, the ACLU said, could justify granting plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction against the censorship provisions of the Communications Decency Act, which criminalizes making available to minors "indecent" or "patently offensive" speech online. "It's about time that the government conceded what the cyberspace community has known all along -- that this is an unworkable law," said Christopher Hansen, who presented oral arguments for the ACLU. "And even if it were feasible, it is constitutionally unthinkable to give the government the power to restrict valuable speech, or to compel people to pejoratively label their speech." ************************************************************************* * Government lawyers also acknowledged today that the law criminalizes * * speech of value -- e.g., artistic, literary or medical information * * -- not just "pornography" or other prurient words or images that * * aren't covered under existing obscenity laws. [Roger's emphasis] * ************************************************************************* In fact, as Hansen pointed out to the Court, Congress made sure that the Communications Decency Act applied specifically to libraries and educational institutions, and rejected several opportunities to make any exceptions for valuable speech. Such an omission might have been a "legislative craftsmanship problem," suggested Anthony Coppolino, one of the lawyers appearing for the Department of Justice. But that argument was met with skepticism from the judges. "The government is basically saying eetrust me' when it comes to determining what kind of online words and images will be considered eeindecent' or eepatently offensive,'" said Marjorie Heins, a lawyer on the ACLU v. Reno team. "But they were not able to offer a coherent explanation as to what those terms mean." The risk involved to individuals in making such a determination is especially grave when criminal penalties are involved, the ACLU emphasized. The CDA provides for penalties of up to two years in jail and $250,000 in fines. Addressing this issue, Judge Stewart Dalzell asked the government how it would view an individual such as ACLU plaintiff Kiyoshi Kuromiya, who has vowed to maintain his website no matter what. Kuromiya has testified that his website, the Critical Path AIDS Project, provides "lifesaving" information on safer sex practices -- some of it necessary sexually explicit -- aimed at reaching teens around the world. Justice Department lawyer Jason Baron responded that if Mr. Kuromiya didn't want to comply, "he can take the consequences." Overall, the ACLU said, plaintiffs succeeded in making three essential points to the court: -- The Communications Decency Act is a criminal statute with criminal penalties. -- The law is aimed specifically at speech that is constitutionally protected. -- The government's tagging scheme would force every American to censor him/herself to avoid risk of criminal prosecution. Plaintiffs also reminded the Court that the censorship law applies not only to websites, but to newsgroups, chat rooms, mail exploders, and other fora that constitute a vital part of the Internet. The ACLU has asserted in its brief -- and the government largely conceded today -- that various schemes for self-censorship would be unworkable in these environments as well. At the conclusion of today's proceedings, Chief Judge Dolores K. Sloviter said that the Court would issue a ruling "in due course." Under expedited provisions, any appeal on rulings regarding the new censorship law will be made directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. ACLU v. Reno, which was filed the day the Communications Decency Act was signed into law, was consolidated on February 26 with a second case brought by the American Library Association and 26 co-plaintiffs, known as the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition. Lawyers for the ACLU appearing before the judges are Christopher Hansen, Marjorie Heins, Ann Beeson, and Stefan Presser, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. Attorney Bruce J. Ennis presented oral arguments today on behalf of the ALA/CIEC coalition. -end- @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ~ CYBER-RIGHTS ~ ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Visit The Cyber-Rights Library, accessible via FTP or WWW at: ftp://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/Library/ http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/Library/ You are encouraged to forward and cross-post list traffic, pursuant to any contained copyright & redistribution restrictions. ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -- Audrie Krause CPSR Executive Director PO Box 717 * Palo Alto, CA * 94302 Phone: (415) 322-3778 * Fax: (415) 322-4748 * * E-mail: akrause@cpsr.org * * * Web Page: http://www.cpsr.org/home.html * Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From mbaker@pobox.com Sat May 11 13:19:16 1996 From: mbaker@pobox.com (Michael Baker) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 00:19:16 +1100 Subject: Boring communcations? Message-ID: <199605111403.XAA04807@dove.mtx.net.au> >From: McKenzie Wark >Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:32:15 +1000 (EST) >To: Robin Whittle >Cc: link >Subject: Re: Boring communcations? > >-- or use the anon@penet.fi anonymous remailer. >(Just send it a help message to get instructions). >Assuming, of course, that linkers don't object >to a policy of permitting unsigned messages. I have no objection. I assume that on balance this will inject more useful points of view to issues under discussion. Michael. -- Dr Michael Baker, EFA Board Member PO Box 5, Flaxley, SA 5153, Australia Ph:08 388 8439 Fax:08 262 3633 [08=+618] Fidonet:Michael Baker, 3:800/838 For EFA info or From mbaker@pobox.com Sat May 11 13:19:26 1996 From: mbaker@pobox.com (Michael Baker) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 00:19:26 +1100 Subject: PICS: V chip and ABC Radio's Click On program Message-ID: <199605111403.XAA04821@dove.mtx.net.au> At 01:16 PM 10/5/96 +0000, Robin Whittle wrote: >PICS and the V Chip >------------------- > [snip] > .... or there would have to be some way the access >control software could identify the program. ... How about using the G-code? I suspect its only broadcast at the begining of the program, so some software would have to "watch" each channel constantly to know what was being broadcast. The G-code could be used to look up the program at at a "G-code web site". The page for each program could have embeded PICS classifications and could be looked up at third party rating services. Michael. -- Dr Michael Baker, EFA Board Member PO Box 5, Flaxley, SA 5153, Australia Ph:08 388 8439 Fax:08 262 3633 [08=+618] Fidonet:Michael Baker, 3:800/838 For EFA info or From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Sun May 12 03:08:09 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 14:08:09 +1100 Subject: Identified Family Law Judgements on the Web Message-ID: The 'Sunday Telegraph' is a Sydney tabloid. Its front-page story today, 12 May, is about sensitive identified information in the form of judgements of the Family Court being available on the Internet. The reports fill most of pages 1 and 2, with a pointer to a lawyer's column on p.162. [No, I *don't* normally read the Sunday Telegraph; but I half-heard a radio interview following on from it, and then saw the front page in the local petrol station ...] The material in question appears to be that indexed at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/family_ct/recent-cases.html There are about 100 judgements listed there, dated between July 1995 and March 1996. I randomly chose one, and it happened to be a case, which was reported on in this morning's Canberra Times, about a father precluded from taking his child, who is in his mother's custody, to a church of his choice. For the voyeur and the fan-zine editor, there are much juicier cases than that one. At a quick glance, the newspaper articles seem to be remarkably responsibly written. They highlight the fact that publishing identified details from Australian Family Law Court proceedings is strengstens verboten. Yet the Court itself appears to have infringed the spirit of its own governing statute, by making the judgements available through one of the most open channels available. The web-site, the Australian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), is probably the largest and the most successful electronic source of legal materials anywhere in the world. (One of its two Co-Directors, Graham Greenleaf is a linker - albeit a quiet one, and one who's probably in the air at the moment, coming back from a privacy conference in Canada. Mmmmm, I wonder if any of that's a breach of confidence on my part ...). This raises a whole swag of issues: - presumably publishing on the web is subject to the same laws as publishing via any other channel or medium - defamation, confidence, anti-discrimination, obscenity, privacy, etc. [yes, I'm being hopeful, but any analysis has to start *somewhere*]. (Anyone got Stuart Littlemore's email address, to get a gratis, unbinding opinion?) - presumably the Court is subject to some kinds of non-disclosure requirements in relation to identified data. (It's probably not feasible for it to be subject to the same clauses as everyone else, so maybe there's a slip in the design of the legislation); - presumably the publisher is the Family Court; - presumably AustLII and its ISP (which is probably a University) are merely common carriers, and have no direct responsibility for content, until and unless material on the site in breach of the law is brought to their attention [okay, so I'm being naive - see qualification above]; - there is a significant public interest in judgements being available to the public, and the Internet/Web is already one of the most appropriate channels. (AustLII and the Family Court are to be congratulated, etc.); - there is a significant privacy interest in personal data from such judgements *not* being publicly available; - to publish the judgements sans identifying data is not simple, e.g.: (a) cases are traditionally identified using the names of the parties; (b) replacing the names of the parties with pseudonyms would be simple enough, but there's quite a rich set of data in such a judgement, and the scope exists (e.g. through indirect references and correlation among the various data), in at least some cases, for the assiduous reader to interpolate, or just guess, who the pseudonym refers to. Hence absolute privacy protection and publication of judgements are mutually exclusive; - there may be no precedent for de-identifying judgements [but, then again, what do they do when an ASIO or ASIS operative is involved?]; - de-identifying judgements will cost money that the Family Court will of course claim it hasn't got, and which in the current climate it isn't likely to get (unless AustLII's Andrew Mowbray and Geoffrey King can come up with yet more artificially intelligent software to perform it automatically). My feel for it is that this is pretty important stuff to linkers generally, so if you're making a comment about a general principle, I suggest it be to link as a whole; if in doubt, just send it to me. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Sun May 12 14:11:00 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 14:11:00 +0000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: <199605120413.OAA23679@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Front page headlines in the Melbourne "Sunday Herald Sun" (12 May 96): Cash, sex, divorce on the Net FAMILY SECRETS EXPOSED The story which covers most of page 1 and 2 reveals that a large number of Family Court case details are available from the AustLII WWW site. They do not give the URL, but do quote a few details of three cases they found there with the names removed, and state that the cases can be found with search systems. One such case involved a dispute concerning children and Pentecostal religion. I went to http://www.austlii.edu.au/ I clicked on "Search AustLII Collection", selected "Family Court of Australia Cases", typed in "Pentecostal" and clicked "Run Query". Four seconds later, I was reading the names of the couple and the details of their family problems and court case. The AustLII database can be searched sucessfully using the names of the people in the cases - or any word in the text of each report. I tried AltaVista, Lycos and InfoSeek - but it seemed that none of these seach engines had indexed the contents of this case or the others. I have heard it is possible to direct well behaved search engines not to go any further with a file called robots.txt, or some other means. However these reports are available to anyone who knows where to look. The Sun Herald reports that people mentioned in the files were surprised and angered at the details of their private lives being made available in this way. Apparently the material is summaries of court cases for the use of lawyers and students, and is already available in printed publications. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Department was quoted as saying: "There is no difference to picking up the 'Family Law Reporter' or popping into a legal library. "Its an electronic version of a publication." The questions seem to be: 1 - On what basis are these details made available in legal publications of any kind? 2 - What permission was sought of the people concerned about this level of disclosure of the most troubling aspects of their private lives? 3 - Did anyone think to check with the people concerned when the material was made available freely and globally, searchable on words including their surnames, religion, model of car, "abuse" and even specific amounts of money like "$3900"? 4 - What is the law here? See the relevant section of the Family Court Act which bans publication of such material with a few exceptions: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/fla1975114/s121.html In particular check clause 9 (e) (ii): which provides an exception for: "any publication bona fide intended primarily for use by the members of any profession, being: (i) a separate volume or part of a series of law reports; or (ii) any other publication of a technical character; AustLII is a technical publication mechanism intended for the use of members of at least some professions. I expect that this law was written when "publication" was though to mean a costly, physical, printed book or similar. It may not have anticipated CD-ROMs, the WWW or search engines. 5 - What should the law be to cover these new modes of communication? The final paragraphs of the article, which was written by Derek Balantine and Graeme Hammond are: Names have been deleted from some cases involving sexual abuse. But some cases set out extensive details about bank accounts, shareholdings, and personal disagreements. Media reporting of Family Court proceedings is generally banned. Exceptions are spelled out under Section 121 subsection 9 of the Family Law Act, and include publication of material at the direction of the court or publication for use by the legal profession. Locating Family Law cases in law books involves tedious research and most people would not know how to go about it. But the information can be easily accessed through a personal computer using any number of search systems. Mr Puplick (previously introduced as Chris Puplick, chairman of the NSW Privacy Committee) said he had been unaware divorce, property settlements and custody matters were being broadcast in such a manner. "My response is one of alarm and incredulity that this sort of material is so freely available. "The entire spirit of the Family Law Act is to deal with matters of great personal sensitivity with the maximum degree of discretion and confidentiality. "At the end of the day, these matters are not of public interest. These are matters which relate to the interests of the parties and nobody else." Apart from terms like "broadcast" and "on the Internet" (instead of available via the Internet), and the questionable printing of personal details of three cases, I think the article is well written. At present, I consider this to be a shameful re-purposing of information. A prominent and publicly accessible WWW site is very different from a legal reference book. Only some cases are available, rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands which must have passed through the court in the past years. The search form had a limit of 1000, and when I searched for "Family" - to get all the cases - it returned reports of 981 cases, each of which seems to be separate. There is some irony in that it is the Attorney General's department which seems to have slipped up here - and is apparently defending its actions, at a time when the same department is considering Internet censorship provisions. This is but one example of the kinds of human, technical and administrative problems we will face as people explore the profusion of new communication modes. I started writing this around 11.30 this morning, being connected most of that time. Now, at 1.40 PM, I find that the search form still works, but that the reports of the cases are no longer available. I tried searching for "Pentecostal" - which previously took me straight to a single report - there was just a simple HTML file which had virtually no content. Searching for "Landcruiser", took me as before to a list of four reports, but clicking on the names of the reports returned similarly blank files, whereas an hour ago at least one had lead to a full report. I believe that someone has taken action at AustLII to delete these files or make them unavailable while I wrote this, and a good thing too. I have saved a copy of the big list of 981 cases. Each entry lists the names of the people concerned, the file name and the date. The cases are listed in approximate date order - and concern matters from 1996 to 1981 or earlier. I did not save any report files, but I may have some in my Netscape cache directory. So here is an apparent privacy violation which the mass media seems to have blown the whistle on earlier, or more effectively, than Internet users. I had recently looked at AustLII, and seen the mention of Family Court Cases, but did not look into it. Link Power investigative reporter, Robin Whittle, signing off from the scene of the . . . . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Sun May 12 14:11:00 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 14:11:00 +0000 Subject: PICS: V chip: G-Code Message-ID: <199605120413.OAA23668@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Micheal Baker wrote that the G-code for VCR programming involved a information in the video signal. I don't think it does - so G-code not a means of including labels in the video signal. My understanding is that a G-code device simply sends channel selection and record commands when the program starts and a stop command at the end - to the VCR via infra-red. The VCR, receives these just like its normal remote control commands. The G-code controller has a clock inside it, so it always knows the time and date. The G-code itself is a numbering system so that a particular decimal number refers to a particular starting time and day (something trickier than day of the week or day of the month), together with a particular program length. The system is predefined, so that a number like 909 will record on 12 May Channel 2 from 7.00 PM for 30 minutes. The system is cleverly designed so that the most popular times have the shortest numbers. Micheal suggested using the G-code as a means of identifying programs to a content rating system - including perhaps one based on the PICS protocol. In principle, this could work, provided the city of the broadcast was also identified. This might be useful for a non-real-rime system - to check some ratings relating to the program before it goes to air. For instance if I want to find ratings for next Thursday's Channel 10 screening of "The Changeling", it might be possible to enter "Melbourne 2563210" into some system and have it return labels with ratings according to child suitability, production values or whatever. However, a WWW search and an online movie guide - complete with links to viewer contributed reviews and relevant PICS ratings labels would probably be better and more likely to eventuate. For controlling children's use of TV, in real-time, with a permanently net connected computer, the software needs to know the time (get it from a video signal or stop the kids altering the computer's time) and it needs to know what TV stations are on each channel. Alternatively it needs to get some digital encoded data from whatever video signal is currenly being tuned, to uniquely identify the program and/or the station and time, so this can be used to index into a content labelling system. Then it needs to communicate with a service somewhere to find ratings for the current program, and decide whether it can be viewed. The G-code would not be a part of this. The G-code is just a shorthand, easy numeric system so that a person can enter a single number into a controller to make it send recording commands to a VCR - Robin > From: Michael Baker > Subject: Re: PICS: V chip and ABC Radio's Click On program > How about using the G-code? I suspect its only broadcast at the begining of the > program, so some software would have to "watch" each channel constantly to know > what was being broadcast. The G-code could be used to look up the program at > at a "G-code web site". The page for each program could have embeded PICS > classifications and could be looked up at third party rating services. > > Michael. > > -- > Dr Michael Baker, EFA Board Member > PO Box 5, Flaxley, SA 5153, Australia > Ph:08 388 8439 Fax:08 262 3633 [08=+618] Fidonet:Michael Baker, 3:800/838 > For EFA info or ---------------------------------------------------------------------- . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From edwin@cascade.apana.org.au Sun May 12 05:31:41 1996 From: edwin@cascade.apana.org.au (Edwin Parsons) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 15:31:41 +1000 (EST) Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII In-Reply-To: <199605120413.OAA23679@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: On Sun, 12 May 1996, Robin Whittle wrote: > Front page headlines in the Melbourne "Sunday Herald Sun" (12 May 96): > > Cash, sex, divorce on the Net > > FAMILY SECRETS EXPOSED > > The story which covers most of page 1 and 2 reveals that a large > number of Family Court case details are available from the AustLII > WWW site. They do not give the URL, but do quote a few details of > three cases they found there with the names removed, and state that > the cases can be found with search systems. > Having been personally a party to one of the longest running disputes in the Family Court, I have recently found the AustLII publications helpfull. I have used the Family Law Practice Books online, which I could otherwise only obtain by travelling some 40km's to Melbourne and using them at the Legal Aid Library. The easy access to this material makes it easier for people who wish or who are compelled to respresent themselves. I remember thinking that it was about time these books were available in e-text. I see the easy access to legal materials as a very good thing for the man on the street. The newspaper articles regarding the details of cases is misleading as these are cases which have been published due to precedents. They are printed into the cases sections of practice books and the same details are available in the library. Applying the same standards to internet as newspaper or television in wrong. I am continually appalled by the way the media treats the internet. regards Edwin Parsons From edwin@cascade.apana.org.au Sun May 12 05:38:26 1996 From: edwin@cascade.apana.org.au (Edwin Parsons) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 15:38:26 +1000 (EST) Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII In-Reply-To: <199605120413.OAA23679@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: On Sun, 12 May 1996, Robin Whittle wrote: > > At present, I consider this to be a shameful re-purposing of > information. A prominent and publicly accessible WWW site is very > different from a legal reference book. Yes it is... thousands of dollars different in some cases. > Only some cases are available, rather than the tens or > hundreds of thousands which must have passed through the court in > the past years. The search form had a limit of 1000, and when I > searched for "Family" - to get all the cases - it returned reports of > 981 cases, each of which seems to be separate. Yes, because they contained legal precedent which is important to someone preparing a case. > I believe that someone has taken action at AustLII to delete these > files or make them unavailable while I wrote this, and a good thing > too. Yes, thanks to more scare-mongering , poor people like me will have to again go to extra-ordinary lengths to access legal materials which will cost me a fortune once again. regards Edwin Parsons From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Sun May 12 07:48:23 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 17:48:23 +1000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: At 00:11 96/05/13, Robin Whittle wrote: >A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Department was quoted as >saying: > > "There is no difference to picking up the 'Family Law Reporter' > or popping into a legal library. > > "Its an electronic version of a publication." Court cases are normally written up and a precis published in law leporting journals which are available for purchase by subscription. Increasingly these have been made available in electronic form such as CDROM databases. I would imagine they will not get reported if they there is no legal issues involved worth reporting or if the court at the time of the hearing suppresses publication. In Australia there is TITLE Family law reports. PUBLISHED Sydney : Butterworths. In the UK TITLE Butterworths family law service. PUBLISHED London : Butterworths. In the US - TITLE Family law reporter. AUTHOR Bureau of National Affairs (Washington, D.C.) PUBLISHED Washington, D.C. : Bureau of National Affairs. and so on. "Justice must be seen to be done" therefore our courts are open to the public, their proceedings are published and indexed via paper services and now via electronic. As Robin points out there are limiations based upon what can be reported from the family Court. Those services which publish commentary can be found in any law library or major research library. This means the information can be obtained by anybody willing to visit a University or State library. > Locating Family Law cases in law books involves tedious research > and most people would not know how to go about it. But you can always ask a librarian. As a young librarian working in the Parliamentary Library 30 years ago I found that law reporting services were just another index which you could find your way round to supply answers to people who asked questions. Sure the network makes it easier to find the information but the question is whether the information should be published at all not whether it should be easy to access. > A prominent and publicly accessible WWW site is very >different from a legal reference book. I don't think so. The WWW site, like a book, is not a broadcast medium. You have to seek out the information. My assumption is that the information on the net is the same as that in the printed service. If the WWW site gets censored the print volumes should be recalled also. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From edwin@cascade.apana.org.au Sun May 12 09:37:12 1996 From: edwin@cascade.apana.org.au (Edwin Parsons) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 19:37:12 +1000 (EST) Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sun, 12 May 1996, Tony Barry wrote: > At 00:11 96/05/13, Robin Whittle wrote: > >A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Department was quoted as > >saying: > > > > "There is no difference to picking up the 'Family Law Reporter' > > or popping into a legal library. > > > > "Its an electronic version of a publication." > > Court cases are normally written up and a precis published in law leporting > journals which are available for purchase by subscription. Increasingly > these have been made available in electronic form such as CDROM databases. > I would imagine they will not get reported if they there is no legal issues > involved worth reporting or if the court at the time of the hearing > suppresses publication. Yesterday, people like me had access to a cheap, reliable and well managed way of gaining access to legal material that was otherwise expensive or almost impossible to obtain. A really good initiative to bring legal information to people generally was available which meant if you couldn't afford a lawyer you could at least research and prepare your own case without having trudge into libraries every time you needed to check something. Family Law Practice books and precedents are only made available in a few libraries and then are never available for borrowing. They are prohibitively expensive and require subscription to keep up to date. However the AustLII site brought such resources to many more people. If you didn't have access to the net at home you could at least go to your local library. But on a cold Sunday in May a bunch of do-gooder, ill-informed, tabloid journalists decided that such 'BREACHES OF PRIVACY HAD TO STOP NOW'. Then a few academics who wouldn't have a clue what it was like to live in the real world got into the act. Before we knew what had happened, a handfull of reasonably well paid, sheltered and otherwise unrepresentative group of people helped shut down one of the best aspects of the internet in Australia. In the meantime someone like me, who had actually seen the saving in the expense of accessing such materials translate into food on the table suffers. I am disgusted that a well presented positive site can be affected in this way while the more offensive aspects of the internet remain. regards Ed Parsons. From ron@comu.net.au Sun May 12 10:42:39 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 20:42:39 +1000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960512104239.0071d600@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> At 19:37 12/05/96 +1000, you wrote: > > >On Sun, 12 May 1996, Tony Barry wrote: > >> At 00:11 96/05/13, Robin Whittle wrote: & Edwin Parsons >> >A spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Department was quoted as >> >saying: >> > >> > "There is no difference to picking up the 'Family Law Reporter' >> > or popping into a legal library. >> > >Yesterday, people like me had access to a cheap, reliable and well managed >way of gaining access to legal material that was otherwise expensive or >almost impossible to obtain. > >A really good initiative to bring legal information to people generally >was available which meant if you couldn't afford a lawyer you could at >least research and prepare your own case without having trudge into >libraries every time you needed to check something. > >Family Law Practice books and precedents are only made available in a few >libraries and then are never available for borrowing. They are prohibitively >expensive and require subscription to keep up to date. However the AustLII >site brought such resources to many more people. If you didn't have >access to the net at home you could at least go to your local library. > Perhaps a compromise could be reached :- say if the site was not html but ftp in nature. an ftp site would remove the casual browsing whilst still having the info available for those that really needed it. An ftp site would also not make the same kind of press. Something about the media is beginning to bother me in their relationship with the online community, perhaps it is the inevitability of the impact we will have on their purses. Perhaps not. Anyway, I believe that transformation of the site from html to a straight ftp site would fulfill the requirements of all but the most rediculous arguments. The information is still there for the public and not on show for the sensitive. Maybe the press would like to publish it and distribute it to all who need it for the same cost as it is available online :-) Ron. Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From rachel@juno.virago.org.au Sun May 12 11:03:37 1996 From: rachel@juno.virago.org.au (Rachel Polanskis) Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 21:03:37 +1000 (EST) Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960512104239.0071d600@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> from "Ron Ipsen" at May 12, 96 08:42:39 pm Message-ID: <199605121103.VAA06193@juno.virago.org.au> Ron Ipsen writes: > > Perhaps a compromise could be reached :- say if the site was not html but > ftp in nature. > This whole thing really annoys me. The Internet is supposed to make available information, and to make the dissemination of information simple and widely accessible. The removal of such information defeats the whole purpose of the Internet. It should be no less than what is available at a well stocked library. We live in the *Information Age* and we have to take into account that these documents are already published and publically available. What are we going to remove next? The High Court decisions? Let's get on with opening up the already freely available content, restricting what is private and identifying what is offensive, e.g. pornography. If people really reckon the extremely *useful* AUSTLII site is a problem, make it password accessed, restrict the domain to the IP addresses of the .edu.au domain, or special subscribers and keep the bloody clueless tabloids out of it. What do we want - a useful quality resource of world wide information available to the academic, the interested, the student and researcher, or a bunch of soporific graphics based advertisements for people only interested in being a computer equivalent of the couch potato? Rachel Polanskis -- Rachel Polanskis Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia grove@zeta.org.au http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au http://www.nepean.uws.edu.au/library/ "When the revolution comes, I will be shot by both sides" From mbaker@pobox.com Sun May 12 15:08:29 1996 From: mbaker@pobox.com (Michael Baker) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 02:08:29 +1100 Subject: PICS: V chip: G-Code Message-ID: <199605121552.BAA01403@dove.mtx.net.au> At 02:11 PM 12/5/96 +0000, Robin Whittle wrote: >Micheal Baker wrote that the G-code for VCR programming involved a >information in the video signal. Oops - [scrapes egg off face] >For controlling children's use of TV, in real-time, with a >permanently net connected computer, the software needs to know the >time (get it from a video signal or stop the kids altering the >computer's time) and it needs to know what TV stations are on each >channel. [I'll make a second attempt, see if I can get the other foot in my mouth too.] >From memory of Teletext in the UK, the time and channel are displayed on every teletext page. Is it the same here? Michael. -- Dr Michael Baker, EFA Board Member PO Box 5, Flaxley, SA 5153, Australia Ph:08 388 8439 Fax:08 262 3633 [08=+618] Fidonet:Michael Baker, 3:800/838 For EFA info or From jnunn@pobox.com Sun May 12 22:18:37 1996 From: jnunn@pobox.com (James Nunn) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 08:18:37 +1000 Subject: EFA on IRC - Tuesday @ 9.00pm EST Message-ID: <199605122214.IAA02061@tornado.netspace.net.au> The Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) welcomes you to participate in our regular weekly on-line discussion with the board of EFA and other interested users. Details are as follows: Server: sydney.irc.org.au OR wollongong.irc.org.au irc.mpx.com.au OR au.undernet.org Channel: #efa Date: Tuesday, 14 May 1996 Time: 9.00 pm (EST) <<<--- Note change in time!! Board members will be in attendance throughout the night on the channel and will welcome any questions, comments or feedback you may have. Board Members can be identified by the "\" in front of their nicks. The topic of the current discussion will be posted as part of the channel title. A topic that will be discussed on Tuesday is the upcoming NSW March on Parliament. At times the channel may become moderated (depending on the number of participants). If this is the case details on how to ask questions and comment will be posted on the channel, or ask one of the board members. Hope to see you there on-line!! James Nunn EFA Board Member -- ___ James Nunn {~._.~} ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ( Y ) Email: jnunn@pobox.com URL: http://pobox.com/~jnunn/ ()~*~() Telephone: 0411 241 041 Fax: (+61 3) 9564 7729 (_)-(_) Board Member of Electronic Frontiers Australia Email: efa-info@efa.org.au URL: http://www.efa.org.au/ From tomw@acslink.net.au Sun May 12 22:17:25 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 08:17:25 +1000 Subject: Internet talks to ACS, industry and WA Government, 24 May Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960513081818.46c7a05c@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> I will be giving talks in Perth on Friday 24 May: * Serious Business on the Internet, 9:00am http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw/twadd9.htm * Accessing the Networked Nation, 5:30pm http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw/twadd8.htm I would appreciate any comments or suggestions for the talks. The evening one is free for ACS members and guests, the morning one costs money (see the Web pages or ph 09 470 4878 E-mail: lena@acslink.net.au for details). In between these the ACS WA Branch has arranged a meeting with the Deputy Premier. The evening talk is wide ranging but short, and is an update of one I gave in SA : on Internet regulation, my daily routine on-line and a plug for the ACS. The morning talk is on how government and private organizations can use the Internet for "serious business" in Australia. This expands on a theme at ACS Canberra Branch Conference , I had hoped the ACT Government would take an interest in, for developing Canberra's economy. However they didn't and the West Australians have. Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Sun May 12 22:57:10 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 08:57:10 +1000 Subject: A Special Invitation! Message-ID: Cyber democracy in action! This is the first time a political party has sought my assitance across the net! If it was an _Australian_ party I might be more interested .... Sigh.... I can see it now - "Subscribe to The Sun Warmed Ripe Tomato Party email list today!" (We actually had one locally in the ACT). Tony =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= >Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 16:05:48 -0500 >X-Sender: listmaster@democrats.org (Unverified) >Mime-Version: 1.0 >To: vote96@democrats.org >From: Democratic National Committee >Subject: A Special Invitation! > >MEMORANDUM > >To: Online Democrats > >From: Donald L. Fowler > DNC National Chair > >Re: Help Us Win In 96! >----------------------------------- > >I'm happy to invite you to participate in the DNC's newest effort to >communicate directly with Democratic activists and supporters across the >country. > >Never before have we had the opportunity to reach thousands of >our supporters so efficiently! > >Thanks to Internet email, the Democratic Party has an unprecedented >opportunity to stay in regular -- and nearly instantaneous -- contact with >thousands of our supporters. Think about the potential... For the first >time in our Party's history, we have the ability to arm state and local >Democrats like you with up-to-the minute news and information direct from >Party Headquarters! > >A SPECIAL INVITATION >********************* > >That is why I'm urging you to join DEMOCRATIC NEWS -- the online newsletter >of the Democratic Party. > >DEMOCRATIC NEWS will help you! When the DNC launched DEMOCRATIC NEWS our >goal was very simple -- to help equip supporters with the information they >need to deliver the Democratic Party's message. DEMOCRATIC NEWS will enable >the Party to get the same information to thousands of Democrats across the >country instantaneously. > >As a subscriber to DEMOCRATIC NEWS, you will receive regular email from >Democratic Party Headquarters -- briefings, press releases, party >publications, and information about candidates, events, and issues. > >I hope every dedicated supporter of the Democratic Party will take this >opportunity to subscribe to DEMOCRATIC NEWS. Thanks in advance for >participation! > >HOW CAN I SUBSCRIBE ?? >********************** > >Once we receive your email, your name will be automatically added to our >subscription list, and you'll start receiving DEMOCRATIC NEWS within the >next few days. > >Thanks very much for your generous support of the Democratic National >Committee. I look forward to working with you during the '96 campaign! > >1. Send an e-mail to majordomo@democrats.org -- You must send the message >from the account that you wish to subscribe. Otherwise, we won't know which >mailbox to send NEWS to. > >2. Message subject should be left blank. > >3. Message body should say ONLY the following: SUBSCRIBE NEWS > >Once we receive your email, your name will be automatically added to our >subscription list, and you'll start receiving DEMOCRATIC NEWS within the >next few days. > >Thanks very much for your support of the Democratic National Committee. I >look forward to working with you during the '96 campaign! > > Sincerely, > > Donald L. Fowler > DNC National Chair > >P.S. Don't forget to visit the Democratic National Committee Web site! >(http://www.democrats.org) > > >MEMORANDUM > >To: Online Democrats > >From: Donald L. Fowler > DNC National Chair > >Re: Help Us Win In 96! >----------------------------------- > >I'm happy to invite you to participate in the DNC's newest effort to >communicate directly with Democratic activists and supporters across the >country. > >Never before have we had the opportunity to reach thousands of >our supporters so efficiently! > >Thanks to Internet email, the Democratic Party has an unprecedented >opportunity to stay in regular -- and nearly instantaneous -- contact with >thousands of our supporters. Think about the potential... For the first >time in our Party's history, we have the ability to arm state and local >Democrats like you with up-to-the minute news and information direct from >Party Headquarters! > >A SPECIAL INVITATION >********************* > >That is why I'm urging you to join DEMOCRATIC NEWS -- the online newsletter >of the Democratic Party. > >DEMOCRATIC NEWS will help you! When the DNC launched DEMOCRATIC NEWS our >goal was very simple -- to help equip supporters with the information they >need to deliver the Democratic Party's message. DEMOCRATIC NEWS will enable >the Party to get the same information to thousands of Democrats across the >country instantaneously. > >As a subscriber to DEMOCRATIC NEWS, you will receive regular email from >Democratic Party Headquarters -- briefings, press releases, party >publications, and information about candidates, events, and issues. > >I hope every dedicated supporter of the Democratic Party will take this >opportunity to subscribe to DEMOCRATIC NEWS. Thanks in advance for >participation! > >HOW CAN I SUBSCRIBE ?? >********************** > >Once we receive your email, your name will be automatically added to our >subscription list, and you'll start receiving DEMOCRATIC NEWS within the >next few days. > >Thanks very much for your generous support of the Democratic National >Committee. I look forward to working with you during the '96 campaign! > >1. Send an e-mail to majordomo@democrats.org -- You must send the message >from the account that you wish to subscribe. Otherwise, we won't know which >mailbox to send NEWS to. > >2. Message subject should be left blank. > >3. Message body should say ONLY the following: SUBSCRIBE NEWS > >Once we receive your email, your name will be automatically added to our >subscription list, and you'll start receiving DEMOCRATIC NEWS within the >next few days. > >Thanks very much for your support of the Democratic National Committee. I >look forward to working with you during the '96 campaign! > > Sincerely, > > Donald L. Fowler > DNC National Chair > >P.S. Don't forget to visit the Democratic National Committee Web site! >(http://www.democrats.org) > __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From sldavey@fl.asn.au Sun May 12 23:18:50 1996 From: sldavey@fl.asn.au (Sandra Davey) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 09:18:50 +1000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: <199605122321.JAA26747@Tandem1.opennet.net.au> Gidday Everyone, As part of the Foundation Law project, it was us and AustLII that actually got the material onto the Internet by way of an agreement (contract) with the Cth AG's department (for all Cth material in the SCALE database to be released onto the Internet). The database has been removed temporarily so the the Family Court of Australia can find out whether the decisions (which has been available online in the SCALE database for upto 10 years!!) have been sufficiently anonymised to be publicly released. This 'problem' is an issue for the Family Court of Australia. The Law Foundation and in particular AustLII, have worked extremely hard to promote public access to legal information. I hope people realise that the issue lays with the FC of Australia not the fact that it is on the Internet (it is available in many other places already). I'll keep everyone posted. Regards, Sandra Davey <:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>:><:><:><:><:> Sandra Davey Ph: 61 2 299 5621 Manager, Foundation Law Email: sldavey@fl.asn.au Law Foundation of NSW Mobile: 0412 442 921 GPO Box 4264 Fax: 61 2 262 1660 Sydney NSW 2001 URL: http://www.fl.asn.au <:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>:><:><:><:><:> From sldavey@fl.asn.au Sun May 12 23:28:21 1996 From: sldavey@fl.asn.au (Sandra Davey) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 09:28:21 +1000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: <199605122331.JAA29820@Tandem1.opennet.net.au> Gidday Robin, >I tried AltaVista, Lycos and InfoSeek - but it seemed that none of >these seach engines had indexed the contents of this case or the >others. I have heard it is possible to direct well behaved search >engines not to go any further with a file called robots.txt, or some >other means. Geoffrey King, the Manager of AustLII, has indeed setup the robots.txt file not to index most of AustLII. I would guess most of those search engines might fall over if they try to index a database worth a couple of Gig with 9 million odd hypertext links. You would have to go into AustLII and do a full text search using their search engine SINO, to actually pull anything up from the Family Court. Cheers, Sandra Davey <:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>:><:><:><:><:> Sandra Davey Ph: 61 2 299 5621 Manager, Foundation Law Email: sldavey@fl.asn.au Law Foundation of NSW Mobile: 0412 442 921 GPO Box 4264 Fax: 61 2 262 1660 Sydney NSW 2001 URL: http://www.fl.asn.au <:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:><:>:><:><:><:><:> From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Sun May 12 23:09:51 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 10:09:51 +1100 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: Marketing using the Internet is becoming more circumspect. Here's an unsolicited offer that appeared in my mailbox this morning. It's not a very good piece of salesmanship, because I'm not terribly clear what they're selling. And it took an awfully long timew to arrive. On the other hand: (a) it states that it's an opt-in arrangement; and (b) it's short. I was interested to find that I shrugged my shoulders and didn't send my usual 'go away or else' reply to such offers. Maybe all this waffle some of us go on with, about there being an Internet ethos, has got something in it after all? >Comments: Authenticated sender is >From: "ADDS2U" >Organization: ADDS2U >To: adds2u@netcom.com >Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 21:56:22 +0000 >Subject: subscribe >Reply-To: adds2u@netvoyage.net >Priority: normal > >Please excuse this intrusion. > >!!!!!!!!YOU WILL RECIVE NO FURTHER MAILINGS UNLESS YOU REPLY!!!!!!!!! > >If you would like to remain on the ADDS2U mailing list please "REPLY" to this >message by using the Reply feature . > >CAUTION: If you reply to this mailing you will be added to the ADDS2U >Classified >mailing list. At ADDS2U we thank you for the opportunity for serving your >Internet advertising needs. > Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Sun May 12 23:14:11 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 10:14:11 +1100 Subject: Identified Family Law Judgements on the Web aka Privacy alert Message-ID: This morning's Sydney Morning Herald confirms Robin's belief that the data was 'pulled' Sunday lunchtime. See: http://www.smh.com.au/daily/national/national5.html The search for cost-effective anonymisation mechanisms is in train ... Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Mon May 13 01:02:12 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 11:02:12 +1000 Subject: Privacy alert: Family Court case reports from AustLII Message-ID: Frequently we have hear critisism that the internet will create a new class of information poor as it is - Expensive Complex Available only in some places Those of us in the library profession also hear that automatic indexing is not a patch on real human indexing. We now find that with respect to the Family Court reporting we are being told that the information is more easily available on the internet than the print equivalent and that the keyword indexes are better that the manual. This is inconsistent. We have also have been saying that internet publishing is more like paper publishing than publishing via the broadcast media but now there is the suggestion that the restrictions placed on broadcast media NOT those placed on paper are the ones which should be applied to the internet with respect to family Law matters. Again an inconsistency. I'm with Sandra on this. Its up to the Family Court to decide what gets published. I hope they have the good sense to apply the same rules they apply to print to the internet. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Mon May 13 00:59:24 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 10:59:24 +1000 Subject: PICS: V chip: G-Code Message-ID: <1968A710.1646@dist.gov.au> >Micheal Baker wrote >From memory of Teletext in the UK, the time and channel are displayed on every teletext page. Is it the same here? So far as I am aware, only one channel transmits teletext ie the Seven (Prime) Network. It does transmit the time, but not, I think the channel number (which differs from place to place). I don't recall whether the ABC transmits the time with its subtitles. So teletext would not be a good medium for verifying channel or time. You can also defeat the teletext messaging by reducing the signal to noise ratio - ie adding in some "snow" - which garbles the text characters. Besides, most TV sets don't have the teletext chip fitted. David Nicholls From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Mon May 13 11:54:22 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 11:54:22 +0000 Subject: New content reg. material on my WWW site Message-ID: <199605130156.LAA22983@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> I have finalised, for the time being at least, my material on content regulation, protection of children and censorship. This is all at: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg The material includes: * "Executive summary" of the major policy issues of the Internet censorship debate - especially an analysis of the four major purposes why content regulation or censorship is proposed. * Table comparing broadcast and Internet communications. They differ or are quite the opposite of each other in many respects. * Critique of the speech in April 1996 by the Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, Mr Peter Webb regarding online censorship. Includes pointers to his speech at Roger Clarke's WWW site, and to his response to my critique. * An explanation of how the Internet actually works. This is specifically intended for people interested in content regulation. * Exploration of, and links to PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection. Contains the the recent Link PICS discussions. * An outline of what would also be a major paper if I had time to complete it: an analysis of proposals for Internet censorship for each protocol. * My submissions to the Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Online Content Regulation late in 1995. * A demonstration of how a WWW page is not a concrete thing, but something which comes together at the user's computer - in this case with text from my site, and an image from Florida. * This table, which is an attempt to identify the twelve most important questions in this messy debate and to answer them too! Purpose for Is it Can it be done Can it be done with content desirable? with PICS based censorship? regulation labelling and (ISP or govt. based access-control attempts to limit (filtering) all access to software? certain material.) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A:Enabling adults to Yes Yes No (Even if censorship protect children from was practical, it would unsuitable material. be too inflexible.) B: Adults controlling Yes Yes No (See above & below.) their own access to material they do not wish to see - to respect personal standards and standards of the comm- unity to which the adult chooses to belong. C: Government imposing a No No No (Even strong laws single set restrictions on and expensive, the communications of all disruptive enforcement adults. (AKA "protecting measures would be easily community standards" where bypassed, and so would it is assumed there is only marginally reduce just one community or one banned communications.) set of standards.) D: Preventing communication Yes No No (As above.) by anyone, including adults, of material which is illegal to possess: eg. child-porn. ============================================================================= I have been offered space on the Electronic Frontier Foundation WWW site and hope to have this material available from this US site soon, probably in a directory under: http://www.eff.org/pub/Organizations/ - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From geoff@austlii.edu.au Mon May 13 02:15:03 1996 From: geoff@austlii.edu.au (Geoffrey King) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 12:15:03 +1000 Subject: AustLII Press Release (13th May 1996) Message-ID: ********************************************************************* THE AUSTRALASIAN LEGAL INFORMATION INSTITUTE PRESS RELEASE Monday 13th May 1996 http://www.austlii.edu.au/ ********************************************************************* The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is an internet based legal research facility which provides access to Australian legislation, case law and secondary materials. It is a free university operated service established in the public interest. One of the databases contained on the system includes written judgments of the Family Court of Australia as selected by the Court. As is the case for a number of other courts, the Family Court judgments are provided to AustLII by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department from its public database service Scale. The release of the judgments to AustLII for the purpose of publishing them on the internet has been authorised by the Court. Apart from being published on Scale and AustLII, all of the judgments have also been published for many years on the US based service Lexis and via other electronic and paper based information services. Following an article which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph of 12 May, access to the Family Court decisions on AustLII has been suspended. This has been done to allow time for negotiations with the Attorney-General's Department and the Court to resolve the concerns raised in the Sunday Telegraph article. Although AustLII will continue to offer the most comprehensive service possible, we are sensitive to the need to balance the public's right of access to the law with the individual's right to privacy. The Family Court is a particularly sensitive area. We have been disappointed with the way that this matter has been handled by the media. At no time prior to the publication of the Sunday Telegraph article, were we contacted to alert us to any possible problem. AustLII is not a commercial operation. It exists by virtue of a tremendous amount of work for love, goodwill and cooperation. Although again we stress our recognition of the seriousness of safeguarding personal privacy, we are concerned that the off handed approach of some sections of the media has done us, and the public interest generally, a great deal of harm. It would of have been much simpler and more responsible, if the issue had been raised directly with us, the Court or the Attorney-General's Department. Andrew Mowbray Co-Director - AustLII Geoffrey King Manager - AustLII ------------------------------ Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) http://www.austlii.edu.au/ PO Box 123 Broadway NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA Ph: (02) 281 2699 Fax: (02) 281 2127 ------------------------------ end From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Mon May 13 13:55:58 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 13:55:58 +0000 Subject: ABA Chairman's speech and response to critique Message-ID: <199605130358.NAA23127@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> The text of the speech which Peter Webb, Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, gave on 24 April 1995, entitled: >>> Examining the regulatory and legislative future <<< >>> of Australia's on-line economy and society <<< is available from: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebb.html Roger's critique is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebbCommRC.html My critique is at: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg (in file bigpic.htm) Peter Webb's response to my critque is at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/ABAWebbResp.html Email lists, Usenet news or in this case WWW sites are in many ways a more flexible and communicative means of debate than books, magazines, newspapers or broadcast media. Without the restriction of newsprint or airtime costs, and without having to satisfy editors, sponsors and large organisations, Internet based debates can involve anyone and discuss issues in the detail they deserve. I hope that the many parliamentarians and adminsitrators follow the ABA's lead and make the most of Internet communications. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Mon May 13 04:19:26 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 14:19:26 +1000 Subject: AustLII Press Release (13th May 1996) Message-ID: At 12:15 PM 13/5/96, Geoffrey King wrote: >judgments have also been published for many years on the US >based service Lexis and via other electronic and paper based >information services. For those of you who may not know Lexis is an expensive electronic service available across the internet which is used by most big law libraries and many law firms. Until recently there was a deal to give all university libraries access to this service on a national basis. Typically this service would be available to law students as well as staff. The result of the present imbroglio is that the material is still available and can be accessed for a fee over the net or freely by the public in many libraries. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Mon May 13 05:36:17 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 16:36:17 +1100 Subject: Residential Demand for Access to Broadband Networks Message-ID: AIIA reports that there's a Bureau of Transport & Communications Economics Occasional Paper out on 'Residential Demand for Access to Broadband Networks'. "Installation and rental prices and household income [appear to be] the principal determinants of subscription intention, although education levels, employment status, age and the number of children in a household also have an effect." [sounds like all our a priori expectations, right?] Available from Australian Government Bookshops [well, probably "available *someday* from ..."]. Sorry, no ISBN or other reference was provided. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Mon May 13 05:55:51 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 16:55:51 +1100 Subject: Regulation and the Internet Message-ID: AIIA (the dominant IT industry association) is holding a forum for AIIA members to discuss proposals by various Australian governments to regulate the Internet. It's in Sydney next Thursday, 23 May. The responsible executive within AIIA is a linker, so if anyone wants him to make sure he covers some particular aspect, you can say it to link (or pass it via me, if you prefer). My tuppence-worth is: - make sure speakers and delegates are aware of Robin Whittle's accessible source of education on the issues: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg/ - make sure that speakers and delegates are aware of the primary collection of sites on regulation: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn - give them a copy of Peter Webb's exhortations that the IT industry get its act together, and speak with a reasonably unified voice. That involves consulting each of the links starting at: http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn#ABA2 [Declaration of interest: my company is an AIIA member. But this does not necessarily mean that I think that AIIA should rule the roost, and that no ISP association should be formed - competition works in this market sector as well. What matters is that sufficient collaboration occurs that regulators can work out what the industry and relevant parts of it think about issues and about the relative degree of imposition involved in alternative regulatory measures] Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From DEREKW@newvenus.slv.vic.gov.au Mon May 13 21:53:11 1996 From: DEREKW@newvenus.slv.vic.gov.au (Derek Whitehead) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 16:53:11 EST Subject: (Fwd) Re: Rural Press Club Lunch Address Message-ID: <2EED5D42CA@newvenus.slv.vic.gov.au> Greetings to Link from VICNET A few comments in reply to Ron Ipsen's posting and Kerry Webb's comments, etc, on Saturday night, about VICNET. Thanks to Ron first of all for the nice things he said about VICNET and his staff - all totally accurate. (Although I don't think that Peter Jamieson in Wangaratta would be all that keen on being called one of our achievements - we helped). Second, quite clearly Library Week has been the usual lead balloon. During Library Week, in a number of locations (all libraries) there were announcements of the next chunk of Victorian Government funding for VICNET and the rollout of access in public libraries - around $1.4 million in all. It is also important to distinguish between two things. First, the VICNET operation has a staff of 11 and is funded by the Victorian Government, supported by the State Library of Victoria, and also charges for some services. Second, provision of public access to VICNET/the Internet in public libraries is funded by a mix of arrangements: libraries themselves, State Government grant funding, the $1.4 million mentioned above, and generous assistance from Access One, an Internet service provider, which provides a number of Internet connections to country library services. About 15% of Victorian public library branches have free public Internet access. VICNET facilitates this process. Iits not true to say that private enterprise pays for free public access - it is a partnership effort. At present most of the access in the country has been provided by the commercial partner, most in the city by the Victorian Government. The Victorian Government has now committed about $4 million to complete the roll-out of Internet access in public libraries (among other things). The Government is paying some of the costs of putting country libraries on the Net, although it couldn't be done nearly as well without the support from Access One. We are working on ways to give them due credit. Heaps more yet to be achieved! We are looking forward to getting down to Gippsland soon - what is going on in the La Trobe Valley looks impressive. They key thing is to get everyone working together, since there will never be as much money as we all want. The goal for us to to get those community access points and networks into place, to build self sustaining community networks. We need to work on increasing the level of network literacy and use in rural areas, and in the city too. Derek Whitehead Director, VICNET 328 Swanston Street Melbourne. 3000. tel. (03) 9669 9989 fax (03) 9663 1480 email: derekw@vicnet.net.au From jwhit@primenet.com Mon May 13 09:50:23 1996 From: jwhit@primenet.com (Jan Whitaker) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 02:50:23 -0700 (MST) Subject: net regulation question - gambling? Message-ID: I just read the Whittle/Webb/Clark debate and was very impressed. I think there is room for learning from each other here, which I hope is still the point. But, in all the furor over "objectionable material" and classification systems [which may be seen too easily as the magic bullet, Robin, sorry], what about the process activities such as gambling on the net or through other electronic systems [phone bookies as well]? Are the bodies making any noises about how they are going to protect the children from the risks associated with this development? and come to think of it, other than the teeny tiny type of age limits on the TV add against the MONSTROUS SIZED phone number and physical attributes of the models, what are the fines and criminal records associated with the 1-900 numbers and having participation by minors? Are these services discretionarily pursued? What operational rules are in place to protect adults who use these services from invasion of privacy? How do the police/ABA/etc. enforce these age-based regulations/laws? just more grist for the mill(s?) :-) Jan Jan Whitaker JLWhitaker Associates \--------/ - jwhit@primenet.com Educational Technology Consultant / - Video and Computer Specialties Melbourne, VIC, Australia \----/ - http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/ Voice: (+613)9534-4334 \--/ From larocque@acslink.net.au Mon May 13 12:51:22 1996 From: larocque@acslink.net.au (John Larocque) Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 22:51:22 +1000 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: At 10:09 AM 13/5/96, Roger Clarke wrote: >Marketing using the Internet is becoming more circumspect. > More circumspect than what? :=) Since 24 January this year I have received thirteen unsolicited junk mail postings. The goods and services on offer have included: - international telephone call back; - "intimate connections" for men and women; - horoscopes; - specific conferences; - batch mailings to "qualified" mailing lists for advertising purposes; - several separate pitches for magazine subscriptions - "FREE a powerful audio tape called "Death by Default - What Most Doctors Can't or Won't Tell You" by Dr. E. Jackson Stockwell." - an Estonian English-language news digest - vaguely non specific services for "cyberpreneurs" - the Cash Machine 2000 Software & Book Dealer Package Two observations: 1. All except one said something along the lines "Please, contact us if you would like more information". The exception was this: "If you would not like to receive any more of these newsletters, please reply to this message with the word "REMOVE" in the subject heading. Thank you." [Roger would have shrugged at that one!] 2. All except two were NOT addressed to me (larocque@acslink.net.au) but to an unfamiliar address. eg: To: sabatini@ccnet.ccnet.com To: 75@popd.ix.netcom.com To: Multiple recipients of Apparently-To: Music@emxp.com To: internet.announcement.service@r1.f64.n8769.z303.fidonet.org To: mary@datalink-info.com The 'music' one is the only one I can explain - I ordered some CDs from a web site. They may have sold my email address. Anyway, how come these messages end up in my mailbox when they don't have my address on them? Roger, I would still need some convincing that it has merit but I am thinking that maybe we should start a 'scams and spams' space on your web site. I will donate my collection of 13. jl ________________________________________________________________________ John Larocque voice/fax: +61 6 290 2526 33 Batchelor St email: larocque@acslink.net.au Torrens ACT 2601 Janeece Pty Ltd ACN 064 741 073 Canberra, Australia Information Systems Planning & Evaluation ________________________________________________________________________ From jnunn@pobox.com Mon May 13 21:51:40 1996 From: jnunn@pobox.com (James Nunn) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 07:51:40 +1000 Subject: Internet Public Access Terminals Message-ID: At 8:55 PM 8/5/96, Roger Clarke wrote: * There was an ad. in the SMH this morning of interest to both net-watchers * and Internet Commerce lurkers: * * "INTERNET" * * COLLECT CASH EVERY WEEK * FROM YOUR OWN COIN OPERATED * INTERNET PUBLIC ACCESS TERMINAL * * Placed in fully established locations such as coffee shops - * pubs - bars - clubs - shopping centres - airports - hotels - etc. * Whilst visiting Sydney in early March, one of these machines (in conjunction with Smirnoff) was located at one of the hotels there (I have the free cap and t-shirt to prove it). All you had to do was buy a drink (naturally with a Smirnoff product in it) and you got a token, which you popped into the "cyber-zone" machine and you had your choice of a game or internet connection (courtesy of CompuServe). Each token gave you 10 minutes of internet access (web pages, etc), though IRC was limited to the CompuServe chat forums, but I think this was mainly due to the promoter, not quite knowing enough about it. Anyway, I took a liking to Vodka that weekend :-)) Being there with a bunch of internet know-hows, the guy promoting the product was inundated with questions, and he wasn't much help, except that he advised that it was mainly aimed at pubs and clubs for those customers that wanted something more than just a video game or pool table. I think this is a great concept and having experienced it first hand would recommend anyone who frequents pubs which has one of these machines to try it!! Just my bit on this topic! James ___ James Nunn <<< NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS!! >>> {~._.~} Email: jnunn@pobox.com URL: http://pobox.com/~jnunn ( Y ) Telephone: 0411 241 041 Fax: (+61 3) 9564 7729 ()~*~() Board Member of Electronic Frontiers Australia (_)-(_) Email: efa-info@efa.org.au URL: http://www.efa.org.au/ From ghart@mail.act.apana.org.au Tue May 14 08:22:17 1996 From: ghart@mail.act.apana.org.au (Karin Geiselhart) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 08:32:17 +10 Subject: Family Court cases Message-ID: <199605132238.IAA30872@posgate.acis.com.au> I agree with Rachel and Edwin: if we are champions of freedom of access to information at low cost, then we have to accept that in all its complexities. It's not good enough when information is theoretically publicly available, but only at great expense and effort. Openness of communication cuts both ways - if individuals can be exposed, then there is a good argument to make government and business information similarly transparent. And you can't have accountability without transparency. Karin Geiselhart --------------------------------------------- Karin Geiselhart ghart@mail.act.apana.org.au From chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au Tue May 14 00:50:02 1996 From: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris and Sharon) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 11:20:02 +1030 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: Linkers John Laroque wrote, in response to Roger Clarke's message: >At 10:09 AM 13/5/96, Roger Clarke wrote: >>Marketing using the Internet is becoming more circumspect. >> >More circumspect than what? :=) Since 24 January this year I have received >thirteen unsolicited junk mail postings. The goods and services on offer >have included: > - international telephone call back; > - "intimate connections" for men and women; > - horoscopes; > - specific conferences; > - batch mailings to "qualified" mailing lists for advertising purposes; > - several separate pitches for magazine subscriptions > - "FREE a powerful audio tape called "Death by Default - What Most >Doctors Can't or Won't Tell You" by Dr. E. Jackson Stockwell." > - an Estonian English-language news digest > - vaguely non specific services for "cyberpreneurs" > - the Cash Machine 2000 Software & Book Dealer Package > As a marketer of products and services, this topic interests me greatly. It also worries me greatly too. In our society we tend to look upon sales and sales methodology with disdain - riff-raff and something we would rather not have to deal with. We switch off ads on the TV and radio, we put signs banning the "junk-mail" from our letter-box, and we shun door-to-door salespeople. Marketing is a most maligned science... Whilst the standard of some of this probably justifies our disdain, as a sales and marketing person myself, I am concerned about this *exclusive* attitude and the rising intollerance on the Internet associated with such offers. Aside from totally bogus material, con-artists, tricksters, and straight out spams, in my opinion there should be no particular bar to the existance of sales and marketing enterprise on the net. As individuals we can have filters and screen out any stuff we don't want anyway, to remove any unsolicited e-mail. Most good mailing-lists screen out spams and crap too. My point is this: How can we say on one hand that the Internet must not be censored and regulated and on the other hand say, "but we must regulate those nasty sales and marketing campaigns"? I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be free in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the same road we are trying to avoid with censorship and over-regulation. Note: I am talking about the Internet as a whole - e-mail, mailing-lists, WWW, whatever. I'd be interested to hear what Linkers feel about this (and I can feel the flames already ;-) and where they think marketing fits in the cyberlandscape... Regards Chris _______________________________________________________________________________ Chris Nicholls chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au PO Box 445 ph: +61-6-241 2112 Dickson ACT 2602 fax: +61-6-241 8926 Australia mob: 018 628 678 _______________________________________________________________________________ From LOCHRIN@AM.SHEILA.SNOV00.SNO.mts.dec.com Tue May 14 11:04:04 1996 From: LOCHRIN@AM.SHEILA.SNOV00.SNO.mts.dec.com (Dave Lochrin, System Consultant +61 2 561-7192) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 11:04:04 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Sensitive information and "robots.txt" Message-ID: <3304041114051996/A03803/SHEILA/11A572C13600*@MHS> From Sandra Davey: >Geoffrey King, the Manager of AustLII, has indeed setup the robots.txt >file not to index most of AustLII. One should NEVER rely on robots.txt, which is purely "advisory" in nature and may not be supported (or not honoured) by all web crawlers. It's there for operational efficiency, not security. I believe the intention of this mechanism is to flag areas which are not suitable for indexing, for example a page containing data which is continually being updated. However it's no bar, since there's really nothing to distinguish an indexer from an interactive user. Dave Lochrin... ======================================================================= Any views expressed here are my own, and have no connection with my employer. ======================================================================= From hilvertj@ozemail.com.au Tue May 14 01:58:58 1996 From: hilvertj@ozemail.com.au (John Hilvert) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 11:58:58 +1000 (EST) Subject: Telstra's Plan to take Over Internet Supply Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960514115648.219fb816@ozemail.com.au> Just a brief note for Linkers: See http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm for the full and fascinating story from Stewart Fist. Among material exclusively for Net users are: The Transcript and Summary of the leaked report. Whatever happened to AARNet and On Australia? What is Optus doing? And what does the ISP Industry think? What in the hell is InfoCall 1-900? Comments and discussion on Community Service Obligations and Restraints of Trade legislation. Stewart Fist is a regular columnist for The Australian and The Australian Online. Check out his homepage for other interesting material. John Hilvert Journalist at Large "The shallower you are, the more ground you cover." For great education software reviews try http://www.edutainment.com.au/ From JHoughton@dist.gov.au Tue May 14 02:10:29 1996 From: JHoughton@dist.gov.au (John Houghton) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 12:10:29 +1000 Subject: Telstra, bless 'em... Message-ID: <197EB4E0.1646@dist.gov.au> Thought I'd read something relaxing over lunch, but found http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm instead. From kerry@BIBLIO.CURTIN.EDU.AU Tue May 14 11:03:44 1996 From: kerry@BIBLIO.CURTIN.EDU.AU (Kerry Smith) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 11:03:44 WST+8 Subject: (Fwd) Action item - Copyright Message-ID: <555A1C05F74@biblio.curtin.edu.au> Linkers Oz is not alone ... Cheers Kerry ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 18:09:44 -0600 (CST) From: Les Pourciau at UMem To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Action item - Copyright ALAWON Volume 5, Number 24 ISSN 1069-7799 May 10, 1996 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (220 lines) URGENT: IMMINENT CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON NII COPYRIGHT LEGISLATION THREATENS TO LEAVE LIBRARIES AND SCHOOLS IN THE LURCH IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED SAMPLE LETTER _____________________________________________________________ URGENT: IMMINENT CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON NII COPYRIGHT LEGISLATION THREATENS TO LEAVE LIBRARIES AND SCHOOLS IN THE LURCH IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED: Your immediate faxes and calls to key House Committee Members critical. BACKGROUND: The House is rushing the "NII Copyright Protection Act" bill to "mark up" in the House Courts and Intellectual Property Subcommittee on Wednesday of next week, May 15! The House completed its hearings in February on this bill. (Earlier ALAWON's have described in detail the "NII Copyright Protection Act" taken from the Administration's "White Paper" and introduced in Congress last September.) Worse yet, the Courts and Intellectual Property Subcommittee is also considering wrapping the Copyright Term Extension Act (which would lengthen the term of copyright protection by 20 years) into the "NII Copyright" package on May 15. That action could short-circuit negotiations between ALA and copyright owners that began last October to craft an exemption from the term extension for libraries, archives and non-profit educational institutions. If approved in its current form, the bill would: *** make it a copyright violation to simply browse the Net without a license from copyright owners; *** subject computer system operators -- such as on-line services and networks at schools and libraries -- to potentially crippling liability for the copyright violations of their users, even if the operator; *** cripple "distance education" efforts especially vital to rural communities and the disabled; and *** make it illegal to manufacture, import or distribute devices and software (including computers and VCRs) needed by industry, schools and libraries to make "fair use" of encrypted information by overruling long-standing Supreme Court precedent. The Senate is moving deliberately on this tremendously imbalanced package and has indicated that changes in it need to be made to protect libraries and schools. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which just held the first of its own (non-joint) hearings on this bill on May 7, and is taking a far more deliberate approach to these complicated issues. In fact, Chairman Hatch appeared open at the hearing to many of the proposals backed by libraries and educational groups put forward by Prof. Robert Oakley (of AALL) on behalf of the Digital Future Coalition, in which ALA has been very active. (The DFC was given one of only five total witness slots at this important hearing held coincidentally on ALA's annual Legislative Day.) Sen. Hatch also indicated that he would hold at least one additional hearing which is likely to include a "library" witness. ACTION NEEDED NOW: Please immediately fax a letter to AND CALL all Members of the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee listed below who represent you or an institution with which you are affiliated. These contacts must be made NO LATER THAN Tuesday, May 14 and preferably sooner. Contact info and a sample letter follow. For more information about the bill, the dangers it poses and the constructive solutions offered, please see the DIGITAL FUTURE COALITION WEBSITE at http://www.ari.net/dfc *************************************************************** Using appropriate style for addressing Congress, please address all letters to Members, as listed below e.g., "2346 RHOB" for "Rayburn House Office Building", LHOB=Longworth and CHOB=Cannon) + Washington, DC 20515. Info appears as: [snipped for brevity] SAMPLE LETTER **************************************************************** [DATE] [Hon. ____________________ United States House of Representatives] __# __ ____ Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Representative__________: As a member of the American Library Association and an active {your connection to libraries and their work, e.g., librarian, trustee, volunteer, etc.}, I am writing today to ask that you do everything in your power to assure that two bills now pending before the House Courts and Intellectual Property Subcom- mittee are not voted out of Committee unless and until they are amended to help libraries serve the public in the following ways. First, the "NII Copyright Protection Act of 1995" (H.R. 2441) must be changed to permit libraries to use the latest technologies to preserve crumbling older works and to have sufficient copies of those works on hand to guarantee their survival. Provisions that will continue to foster "distance education" also are critically important. More broadly, balance must be restored to the legislation by adopting a series of amendments proposed by the Digital Future Coalition (DFC), many of which are based on a strong commitment to the Fair Use Doctrine. I share that commitment. If Congress is to update copyright law for the digital age, the rights of copyright owners and the needs of information users must both be fully respected and advanced. I support the DFC's package of amendments to the Copyright Act, particularly those related to Sections 106, 107 and 108. Second, and just as critically, the "Copyright Term Extension Act"(H.R. 989) must also be rebalanced to protect and foster library preservation efforts and education at all levels. In its current form, this bill would extend the length of copyright in published materials by 20 years. It would also lengthen the term of copyright for unpublished works by 10 years. In other words, the bill will impose a 10 or 20 year moratorium on works entering the public domain. The costs of tracking down the owners of these works (often 100 or more years old) imposes costs on libraries better spent on serving the public. ALA's representatives in Washington have been negotiating a suitable amendment to this bill with major copyright industries since December of last year. The Register of Copyrights is mediating those talks. Please do everything that you can to allow that process, which I am told is going well, to bear fruit. Premature action on this bill would be disastrous for libraries and schools. Thank you very much for helping libraries make the most of new technology and the Internet to bring the benefits of information technology to all Americans, and especially those in [INSERT THE NAME OF YOUR STATE, CITY OR COUNTY REPRESENTED BY THE MEMBER TO WHOM YOU'RE WRITING]. ALA's Washington Office staff would be pleased to provide you or your office with more information. They can be reached at 202-628-8410. Sincerely, _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname]" to . ALAWON archives gopher.ala.org; select Washington Office Newsline. Web page HTTP://www.ala.org/alawashington.html. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Contributor to this issue: Adam M. Eisgrau All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. ================================================================= Kerry Smith, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, School of Social Science and Asian Languages, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6001. phone (09) 351 7217 fax (09) 351 3152 email kerry@biblio.curtin.edu.au From fred_pilcher@dpa.act.gov.au Tue May 14 18:56:38 1996 From: fred_pilcher@dpa.act.gov.au (fred_pilcher@dpa.act.gov.au) Date: Tue, 14 May 96 13:56:38 EST Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: <9604148321.AA832107476@SMTPLINK.DPA.ACT.GOV.AU> Chris Nicholls wrote "My point is this: How can we say on one hand that the Internet must not be censored and regulated and on the other hand say, "but we must regulate those nasty sales and marketing campaigns"? I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be free in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the same road we are trying to avoid with censorship and over-regulation." Good points, Chris. My opinion follows... Few would suggest that advertising on the net should be banned. But there's a big difference between an advertiser who sets up a web site with product and ordering information and one who emails me direct. When I go to my snail mail box, I can simply dump unwanted advertising in the recycling bin. I rarely have to open it as the difference between "genuine" mail (i.e. mail from friends and associates or stuff that I've requested) and advertising is immediatly apparent. It aint necessarily so with email. Unless the subject line gives it away, I have to open a document and read at least some of it before I realise that it's advertising. Indeed, advertisers will tend to utilise this fact and "bury" the advertisement in plausible text to increase the likelyhood that I'll read it. Further, I rarely receive advertising from overseas in my snail mail- it's usually material from my local pizza shop. I suspect that email advertisers are more likely to use a "scatter gun" approach that will see me receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of unsolicited advertisements every day. I don't need to describe the consequences. My advice, Chris, is to put up a great web site, giving people comprehensive and useful information about your products or services. If I'm looking for your product/service on the net then I'm likely to find your site and order from you. If you dump stuff into my mailbox, I'm more likely to respond negatively, in which case it's unlikely that I'll ever be a customer. Good luck. Fred Pilcher From tomw@acslink.net.au Tue May 14 01:33:02 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 11:33:02 +1000 Subject: Software package query Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960514113354.0ccf6aae@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> At 10:45 AM 9/05/96 +1000, John Hilvert wrote: >>...enquiry from Brazil for an Australian software product called Smartkey... > >Nick Hammond - now Commander in charge of Defence's IT Boffins, wrote this >indispensable and clever macro utility way back in the early eighties. > >I am sure orders can still be taken at FBN... Nick Hammond can be contacted by e-mail at: nhammond@pcug.org.au >From one of the Boffins. ;-) Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Tue May 14 15:20:25 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 15:20:25 +0000 Subject: Family Court cases Message-ID: <199605140522.PAA27256@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Karin Geiselhart" wrote: > Openness of communication cuts both ways - if individuals can be > exposed, then there is a good argument to make government and > business information similarly transparent. And you can't have > accountability without transparency. "Transparent" is an awkward term - it means different things to different people. To some it means "invisible" rather than "everything is visible without the possibility of being hidden". > I agree with Rachel and Edwin: if we are champions of freedom of > access to information at low cost, then we have to accept that in > all its complexities. It's not good enough when information is > theoretically publicly available, but only at great expense and > effort. This does not mean however that there are no significant differences between making private information available in print and via a WWW site. I think the publication in law books of these personal details without anonymisation was questionable to say the least - probably something that just happened which might have been avoided with better planning. With the benefit of hindsight, here is what I think of the AustLII Family Court problem: The Family Court reports of precedent setting cases are clearly a valuable resource for lawyers, students and other people dealing with the law. Assuming that this was the only material available from AustLII, the press reports, and my own, did not explain the reason why reports of these cases were being made publicly available. However to the person casually browsing there was no such indication of the purpose or the nature of the cases. It just said "Family Law Cases", and somewhere there was a thankyou for making "this data" available. Making them available on AustLII seems especially valuable, not just by saving costs. If this availability improves justice and the lives of families - and it obviously does - then this is an immensely valuable service. I suppose that anyone who goes to court runs the risk of their life becoming a test case and forever the subject of legal study and perhaps dispute in subsequent court cases. Like the risk of being called up for jury service for a long criminal trial, most people accept it as a necessary part of the justice system which we all rely on. It seems likely that not all the people mentioned in these reports were aware that their cases had set precedents and that reports of the cases were available in law books and legal CD-ROMs and (paid for, non Internet based and non- public) legal on-line services. Assuming that we accept this situation as reasonable (and it could be argued that an anonymisation system should have been used in Family Court cases, to protect the privacy of the many people involved), the question is: How should this material have been made available using the Internet? The legal owners of the data, may well have been legally correct in allowing the data to be published via a publicly accessible WWW site such as AustLII. In this case the legal owners were none less than the AG's Department. They may have been of the opinion that a WWW is no different from a book in a library shelf, and in some respects they are right. However it is very different indeed from a book, when looked at from the data subject's point of view - the people whose worst personal disputes are detailed in the reports. * The WWW site is globally, publicly accessible. While its initial context is that of a legal resource, and its contents were not found by external search engines, this context could easily change as people came to know about the material. This happened in a spectacular fashion via newspaper reports, radio (and maybe TV) news programs on Sunday and Monday. * The 981 reports were searchable on any word, whereas in the printed version, their indexing was probably much less detailed - along the lines of name, date and precedents. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that either AustLII or the AG's Department should have recognised that this represents too radical a change in the use of personal information, to be made without the permission of the thousands of data subjects. If there was no other way of putting it on the Internet than the raw form it was, then I believe it should not have gone ahead. I do not think that the undeniable value of net access can simply justify this kind of increased exposure for these families. One person's or family's gains from using the material and another family's privacy are two different measures of value for two groups of people who do not know each other. I don't' think one can justify the other. Making the material available via an FTP server rather than a WWW server would make little difference at all. WWW browsers (software and people) use FTP just as readily as HTTP. There is no easy way of making it available only to people browsing from Australia. The server cannot always find the text name of the host computer from which the access comes - sometimes it just gets an IP address. There is no way of knowing (other than traceroute and/or specialised net knowledge) whether an IP address is in Australia or not. Many computers with apparently overseas based text names, like warehouse.com, are in fact based in Australia, and computers with .au text names could physically be anywhere in the world. In either case, an overseas person could make their browser use an Australian publiclly open HTTP proxy server and AustLII would think the request was coming from Australia The things which could be done include: 1 - Anonymisation of the information so it could still be used, but not expose people's private lives as much. 2 - Make the material available only to people who have a password. This would be labour intensive for AustLII, and detract just a little from the ease of access, but anyone who seriously wanted to use the material would not find this a barrier. Maybe point 1 would be a worthwhile approach, for the entire legal profession in the matter of family court cases - for printed, commercial on-line, CD-ROM access to these case reports as well. Maybe this would be sufficient precaution to make the material suitable for unrestricted WWW access. Point 2 seems quite achievable, although AustLII, which is apparently very stretched for resources, would need funding to manage the password system. Alternatively the handing out of passwords, probably involving checking people's bona-fides or identity to some limited degree - with time limits for each password - could be handled by some other organisation. Neither of these measures may be needed as strongly or at all in cases regarding criminal, commercial and civil law. However, for family law, when people commit no crime and are probably having the worst time of their lives, all administrative and technical steps should be taken to respect the privacy of the people concerned. In my on-the-spot report, I said that I considered this to be a "shameful re-purposing of information". From the point of view of the data subject, I think this is true. The AG's department and AustLII apparently considered this was simply a better way of fulfilling the purpose they had for the "data", so I would not say that they deliberately chose a new purpose for it. However, the data subjects might reasonably expect that the combination of AustLII's knowledge of the net, AG's department and the Federal Privacy Act would have prevented their personal information being subject to such wide disclosure. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Tue May 14 15:20:25 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 15:20:25 +0000 Subject: Touting for Business: PICS to the rescue! Message-ID: <199605140523.PAA27274@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Chris Nicholls (Chris and Sharon) wrote: > As a marketer of products and services, this topic interests me > greatly. It also worries me greatly too. In our society we tend to > look upon sales and sales methodology with disdain - riff-raff and > something we would rather not have to deal with. We switch off ads > on the TV and radio, we put signs banning the "junk-mail" from our > letter-box, and we shun door-to-door salespeople. Marketing is a > most maligned science... One of the central tenets of Total Quality Management, and of any truly customer focused business or administrative regime is: "Quality is what the customer say it is." Therefore, if people think that TV adverts, junk mail, outbound telemarketing calls and door-to-door sales people are by-and-large generally shit, then they generally *are* shit. Some sales people are able to ignore the mountains of evidence that intrusive sales and marketing approaches are rejected by the vast majority of people who they are directed at. These sales people continue their activities, and may continue to make a profit, because their product is good and/or their sales pitch is effective and/or they reach a large enough proportion of wood-ducks (as a window-shutter telemarketer who called me once referred to the people they sought) to reap sufficient profit to cover their expenses. Any marketing person who is sensitive to the needs of customers will recognise that intrusive marketing seriously damages the public standing of their product or company. For some companies, this is no loss, like the fertiliser and window shutter companies in Melbourne who never advertise and simply telemarket their way through the white pages (from a non Telstra CD-ROM no-doubt). The window shutter company always starts its spiel by asking whether you have received their catalogue yet. The last time they tried this I asked for a copy in the mail and was informed that they had run out. I then asked the caller to describe the catalogue and she told me that she had not seen one and in fact there were no copies in the company at the time - to the background noise of dozens of other telemarketers systematically intruding into the majority of Melbourne homes with the same spiel. For the other companies the near-term gains, from immediate sales in a small proportion of people contacted is used to justify the continuation of intrusive marketing, and the long-term damage to reputation is ignored or hidden from upper management and shareholders. I believe that the long term costs to companies with major public image assets and/or liabilities of outbound telemarketing far outweigh the short term gains. The most prominent examples are Telstra and Optus. In a commodity market where people choose the company they feel like, trust and mutual respect often plays a determining role in the choice of carrier. What then could be worse than telemarketing people - including, stupidity of all stupidity, such indiscriminate telemarketing that you disturb people who are already your own customers?? Whether it is Telstra/Optus, or some agent representing them, or some churn house or a telemarketing company is irrelevant to the damage caused to the company's public standing. The only reason these practices continue is that the marketers in both companies are equally pushy and their management equally incapable or unwilling to take the long-term view. BTW, I am not afraid of rubbing these people up the wrong way regarding consulting. I have already earned money telling one carrier just this, and one of Australia's most senior telco consultants was well paid for telling a room full of Telecom suits that a marketing campaign was "_STUPID_". When asked what they should do, he told them very slowly and deliberately, to make sure they understood, that "You_ _should_ _STOP_ _IT_." He was doing his job well and got paid OK. Some sales people boost their egos by referring to "professionalism", "quality of the promotion", "product quality and value" and now "science". Burglary is arguably a science too, and a profession and sometimes profitable too -if you are not too worried about your public standing. Burglary, like intrusive marketing, can remain profitable despite being an overall burden on society and adversely affecting the vast number of people who it affects. The quality of the promotion, of the product, or its value is almost always entirely irrelevant to the widespread rejection of telemarketing, junk postal mail and email. People just do not want their attention distracted simply because some over-confident marketing type presses a few keys on their computer in their effort to reach out and touch thousand of potential clients. If your intrusive marketing campaign generates 100% success in sales (assuming the buy decision is unpressured and properly informed) then you really know who wants the product! Congratulations! I don't think that anyone will be upset. However, for all those people who don't buy your product, or who do not otherwise welcome the approach for some other reason, then you are burdening them unreasonably with something they cannot defend themselves from. There is no means of protecting yourself from outbound telemarketers, and no technical means is available. (I will be putting some of my telemarketing material on my WWW site fairly soon.) Nor is there any practical way of protecting against unsolicited sales material via postal or electronic mail. There are prospects for protecting against door to door sales people. The majority of businesses have a sign saying something like "Absolutely NO Hawkers" on their door. I have had a sign saying "No Charity, Sales or Religious Callers Please." on my front door and it generally works. The exceptions have been a mentally disabled charity caller and two pumped up, bold as brass young suited sales blokes who couldn't understand my incredulity a them proceeding with their spiel. It is fair to conclude that this pair had been mentally disabled by their sales training. It is almost certainly a loosing battle trying to instil sensitivity and respect in a sufficient proportion of marketers to deter them from making a pest of themselves. New potential sales people come into the field every day, and the first thing a lot of them do is pay lots of money for some course run by super-sales-people which instils the boldness, confidence and insensitivity required to get them going. > Whilst the standard of some of this probably justifies our disdain, > as a sales and marketing person myself, I am concerned about this > *exclusive* attitude and the rising intollerance on the Internet > associated with such offers. The fact is that people targeted by unsolicited, intrusive marketing, cannot tell, and do not want to have to tell, what the nature of the offer is. They just want to be left alone. Their disdain is generalised for any intrusive marketer. Perhaps if only 10% of intrusive marketing was unwelcome, they wouldn't complain, just as a certain percentage of wrong number calls is tolerated - if the caller is respectful. Intrusive marketing is disrespectful unless you really know that a person is in the market for something. You will generally only know that if they have already communicated with you, or in some other public manner indicated their interest in a product. For instance posting to a list or newsgroup saying "What is the best 28.8K modem?" > Aside from totally bogus material, con-artists, tricksters, and > straight out spams, in my opinion there should be no particular bar > to the existence of sales and marketing enterprise on the net. As > individuals we can have filters and screen out any stuff we don't > want anyway, to remove any unsolicited e-mail. Most good > mailing-lists screen out spams and crap too. There is currently no practical means of avoiding unsolicited phone calls, email or postal mail. There could be ways of using a central spam (Shit Parading As Meat) database to automatically remove email and Usenet news spam at the user's computer, so they never see it. (Using PICS for this is discussed below.) There are means of maintaining a telemarketing opt-out list in Australia, but it will only be effective with legislated penalties against those who consistently ignore it. Details of this on my WWW site soon I hope. There may be a scope for doing this with email - a list of email addresses which wise marketers will not send unsolicited email to. Unfortunately there are plenty of unwise marketers too and they might choose to send their stuff to everyone on the list. Given the options for unsolicited sales approaches, here is how I rate their value and impact. My view, and the view of each individual, is what counts - not the view of marketers. Phone calls: Absolutely no way! I have a whole list of reasons: they are intrusive, useless for conveying product information etc. Leave a brochure or advertise and let me call you on a toll free number. Door to door: Absolutely no way! Leave a brochure in my letter box or use normal advertising. Let me call you. Street solicitations. Piss off! Unsolicited email: You had better know me personally - to be sure enough that your announcement is likely to be interesting. With the searchability of the WWW, make sure you can be found easily and I will email you when I want to. Direct mail and letterbox drops: I don't mind too much, except that the volume of stuff, especially over the weekend means that I have to get a neighbour to empty it once or more each day if I am away - so as to make the house look lived in. Also a litter problem. However direct mail and catalogues etc. on printed material, and inserts and ads in magazines etc. are an excellent way of informing people about a product and leaving them with material they can keep and pass to friends. I would rather 1000 junk mails than one telemarketing call. Smart direct marketers check their targets are not on the Australian Direct Marketing Association's opt-out-list. This does not work for telemarketing - smart, principled marketers do not do outbound telemarketing. Given the searchability of the WWW, there is no justification for unsolicited email to people who you do not already have a relationship with. Unfortunately the global scope and the effectively zero cost of email, together with means of building lists, means that junk email is likely to become a major burden. > My point is this: How can we say on one hand that the Internet must > not be censored and regulated and on the other hand say, "but we > must regulate those nasty sales and marketing campaigns"? As for censorship, I don't think there is a practical way of stopping marketing at its source. As for censorship, I think there could be good civil liberties reasons for not doing it even if we could. The answer is filtering at the targeted site: PICS! ===== If PICS labels cannot already refer to email addresses, then I expect that it can be extended easily. (I think it already can.) The email address would presumably would be good enough to identify the problem material. If it wasn't, some method could be devise to identify the pattern of the problem spam email, even if its senders cleverly generated unique messages for each target. Automatic email filtering software could find an incoming email from an unfamiliar source, compare notes with a central PICS label service, which would recieve a blast of similar queries - within seconds or minutes. The email would almost instantly be identified as spam - enabling user software to delete it instantly or more likely file it in a spam folder for the person to check at their leisure. To guard against false alarms from new subscribers to mailing lists, bona-fide mailing lists could be recognised by the labelling service. > I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be free > in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the same road > we are trying to avoid with censorship and over-regulation. > > Note: I am talking about the Internet as a whole - e-mail, > mailing-lists, WWW, whatever. I agree. Regulation of the Internet is extremely impractical and generally undesirable. Even the most clearly desirable forms of regulation are unfortunately also impractical. > I'd be interested to hear what Linkers feel about this (and I can > feel the flames already ;-) and where they think marketing fits in > the cyberlandscape... I have a special offer on asbestos/wool blend suits specifically designed for direct marketers: $576 usually, but for you, if you respond to this personal offer today, just $495, YES! JUST $495 if you respond with your credit card number to firstpr@ozemail.com.au before midnight, or use our WWW page form facility. In the instantly searchable Internet connected future the message is: Make sure your WWW site is easy to find, attractive and informative. Don't call or find us, we will find and call you! Ideally PICS could be used to filter incoming telephone calls - but only if there was a reliable way of knowing the caller's number. Due to the fact that the telephone is established as a default anonymous send service, there are powerful privacy reasons why Calling Number Display should not be introduced in a compulsory or opt-out fashion. I will soon by putting an article on CND (which I wrote for Privacy Law and Policy Reporter) on my WWW site. So PICS, can't save us from telemarketers - unless we choose to refuse calls without displayable numbers, which for most people would be impractical. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au Tue May 14 15:52:17 1996 From: Tom_Worthington/Defence_Materiel/AU.DEFENCE_MATERIEL@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au (Tom Worthington/Defence Materiel/AU) Date: 14 May 96 15:52:17 Subject: 1996 Questionnaire on Government Internet Practices Message-ID: <9605141948.AA0728@dmd.a-l.defence.gov.au> The 1996 Questionnaire on Government Internet Practices has been distributed to Commonwealth (Australian) government agencies and it is requested be completed by 27 May 1996. If your agency has not received a questionnaire, it is available on the Web: * Web form for completion on-line: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/imsc/intsrv1.htm * MS-Word document for printing: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/imsc/intsrv1.doc * MS-Word template for e-mailing back: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/imsc/intsrv1.dot The questionnaire has been designed by the Information Management Steering Committee (IMSC) to elicit information on Internet usage, in particular world wide web usage. Information obtained from this questionnaire will be used to develop a government Internet strategy designed to minimise duplication of government effort and services. The aim is to provide a consistent (whole of government) and effective method of delivering government information, including the definition of a unique government entry point. The IMSC under the Chair of Mr Eric Wainwright, Deputy Director-General, National Library of Australia, is a committee of the Government Information Services Policy Board (GISPB). Further details of the IMSC and GISPB are linked to the questionnaire at: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/imsc/intsrv1.htm Posted by: Tom Worthington Deputy Director Information Management Plans & Defence Web Administrator Information Management Branch Department of Defence Room APW2-1-06, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 06:08:24 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 16:08:24 +1000 Subject: Family Court cases Message-ID: At 1:20 AM 15/5/96, Robin Whittle wrote: >However it is very different indeed from a book, when looked at from >the data subject's point of view I only agree in part. >* The WWW site is globally, publicly accessible. So are the law reporting services on paper and CDROM and so are the prexisting online services like LEXIS. > While its initial > context is that of a legal resource, and its contents were not found > by external search engines, It wasn't available via an external search engine only ASTLII's >* The 981 reports were searchable on any word, They have been in the CDROM and LEXIS services for some years. >whereas in the printed > version, their indexing was probably much less detailed - along the > lines of name, date and precedents. Some would argue such indexes are selective so as to make material easier to find... >If there was no other way of putting it on the Internet than the raw >form it was, then I believe it should not have gone ahead. It already WAS on the internet in for form of a LEXIS database in the US. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 06:25:30 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 17:25:30 +1100 Subject: Family Court cases Message-ID: Robin Whittle wrote (inter alia): >The legal owners of the data may well have been legally correct ... There ain't no such thing as 'ownership of data', and we'll open a can of worms if we talk as though there were (see the parallel thread on intellectual property). >With the benefit of hindsight, I think that either AustLII or the >AG's Department should have recognised ... AustLII is a common carrier [or replace that with your preferred metaphor]. It's up to the organisation which has custody of or legal responsibility for [note: not ownership of] the data to make a decision. In law, that seems likely to be the Family Court, not A/G's (separation of judiciary and executive, etc.). >The things which could be done include: ... >2 - Make the material available only to people who have a password. This > would be labour intensive for AustLII, and detract just a little from > the ease of access, but anyone who seriously wanted to use the > material would not find this a barrier. Passwords in public space are a non-goer. I've lost track of the few such userids and passwords I ever had, and have given up on the pages concerned as a result, even though a couple of them were potentially pretty useful. User authentication (e.g. using chip-cards carrying a biometric) may be an element of the solution, but what we really need is authentication of status or role, and that's very difficult to achieve, in electronic as in real life. >In my on-the-spot report, I said that I considered this to be a >"shameful re-purposing of information" ... Which was incorrect (I didn't respond at the time, because I agreed with so much of your evaluation that it seemed like a quibble). These are judgements of a court which is senior enough that its judgements represent precedent. The purpose of the publication of judgements is to make precedents findable by, well historically lawyers, but, cross fingers, increasingly the public in general. As I said in my analysis, congrats to the Family Court. (As an aside, do you realise that they are intensive web-publishers, even though they don't even have email. Now *that's* a reversal of the normal sequence, isn't it?!). Now, net-devotee's hat off, and privacy advocate's hat back on: the problem is that the public interest in access to precedents was pursued without any thought for the privacy interest (I discussed that in my post to link; but it got swamped by Robin's and no-one seems to have read it - ah, well, it's an open competition for attention out there, even on link!). The Family Court (leant on by A/G's) is in the process of considering whether both objectives are achievable for reasonable cost, or whether the harm to privacy is unavoidable. My suspicion is that the greatest problem isn't the replacement of with , but the removal of from the case citation - we could find ourselves fighting a whole legal reporting industry. Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 06:25:00 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 17:25:00 +1100 Subject: Govt Info and Public Policy: Euro and N.S.W. Confs Message-ID: >From cirg-l@nla.gov.au: 1. "Access To Public Information: A Key to Commercial Growth > and Electronic Democracy" Stockholm, 27-28 June 1996 > >The Conference programme and general information can be accessed >on the European Commission World Wide Web site at the following http://www.echo.lu/legal/stockholm/welcome.html > >This conference is organised by Directorate General XIII >(Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of >Research) of the European Commission with the assistance of the >Joint Interpretation and Conference Service (SCIC). 2. >There is also a Colloquium on Government Information and Public Policy >which is being held at the NSW Parliament House on October 3-4, 1996. > Does anyone have any leads on the second? I can't see anything at: http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/nsw.html Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From James_Latham@mail.indcom.gov.au Tue May 14 17:29:32 1996 From: James_Latham@mail.indcom.gov.au (James_Latham@mail.indcom.gov.au) Date: Tue, 14 May 96 17:29:32 GMT Subject: Family Court cases Message-ID: <9604148320.AA832059124@mail.indcom.gov.au> If I can add an economics perspective to this debate regarding whether putting Family law cases on the internet is the same as CD-ROM/book publishing. This is opinion off the top of my head. Much of economics concern incentives, and one of these is cost. That is not just monetary costs, but also search costs (time, etc). It is much more expensive for a casual user to search through paper publications, purchase CD-ROMs or track down a US based internet service, than to quickly search a nearby, well know, free internet site. Thus fewer people would do so. The Economist discussed this issue (comparing a written letter to the editor, and a nearly costless - in money and time - e-mail) in its most recent edition, see: http://www.economist.com/issue/11-05-96/ld2.html These costs effect nearly all human activity. They can also be harnessed to reduce demand without denying full public access. While all Australian have the right to make a Freedom of Information request, a nominal charge is made to reduce the amount of vexatious requests. In the case of Family Law Cases, it may be the free provision of full search capabilities has created some problems, problems that may be considered quite serious. It may be that unless full anonymisation can be achieved, the introduction of costs could reduce demand to those with a genuine desire to utilise the material. This does not necessarily mean monetary cost, but may mean increasing search costs ie. having to go to the library to use the CD-ROM. Everyone still has access, it just cost them a bit to do so. Remember that cost in many cases are used to reduce demand to only genuine requests, from FOI to court charges, to the cost of having to walk to the police to fill out a form. A good example is that in Australia we allow all citizens to watch court cases from the public gallery, however we do not broadcast court cases to the whole country via free-to-air TV. Nor do I believe that most people would think this is a good idea. Anyway, just some ideas, I don't necessarily believe them, but I hope they provide a interesting response to the 'all information should be provided to all people, free' view. James Latham INDUSTRY COMMISSION ------------------------------------------------------------------ "The pen is mightier than the sword, James Latham * And mightier than the literary award, Melbourne * Without the pen we'd be unable, AUSTRALIA * To leave those notes on the kitchen table, james_latham@ * Nothing lovlier ever penned, mail.indcom.gov.au * With three small crosses at the end, zoltan@suburbia.net * Made for no-one else to see: * The literature of you and me." - Michael Leunig MY OPINIONS! * ------------------------------------------------------------------ From chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au Tue May 14 08:11:10 1996 From: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris and Sharon) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 18:41:10 +1030 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: Fred wrote, in reply to my earlier message: >> "My point is this: How can we say on one hand that the Internet must >> not be censored and regulated and on the other hand say, "but we must >> regulate those nasty sales and marketing campaigns"? >> >> I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be free >> in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the same road we >> are trying to avoid with censorship and over-regulation." >> > > Good points, Chris. My opinion follows... > > Few would suggest that advertising on the net should be banned. But > there's a big difference between an advertiser who sets up a web site > with product and ordering information and one who emails me direct. What about where association allows contact between people offering services and products with those who need/want such services and products. Eg.Via the mailing list someone asks "has anyone heard of a product called Netstrangler?". And then a response from someone says "Yes I have! And funny you should ask, because there will be a free seminar on Netstrangler V 8.3 on Wednesday next..." Something similar to this happened recently on this very mailing list. Is this acceptable? Is it only acceptable to raise marketing and sales issues on the Internet when asked and when it is in WWW sites? > > When I go to my snail mail box, I can simply dump unwanted advertising > in the recycling bin. I rarely have to open it as the difference > between "genuine" mail (i.e. mail from friends and associates or stuff > that I've requested) and advertising is immediatly apparent. It aint > necessarily so with email. Unless the subject line gives it away, I > have to open a document and read at least some of it before I realise > that it's advertising. Indeed, advertisers will tend to utilise this > fact and "bury" the advertisement in plausible text to increase the > likelyhood that I'll read it. Why is the Internet any different here? I have bought heaps of magazines, newspapers, and watch plenty of TV which has "advatorial" in it... even dear old ABC is guilty... tsk tsk tsk. Is that unacceptable too? > > Further, I rarely receive advertising from overseas in my snail mail- > it's usually material from my local pizza shop. I suspect that email > advertisers are more likely to use a "scatter gun" approach that will > see me receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of unsolicited > advertisements every day. I don't need to describe the consequences. Sure. I agree entirely. But how do you and should you, control this? And what happens when broadband becomes a reality... > > My advice, Chris, is to put up a great web site, giving people > comprehensive and useful information about your products or services. > If I'm looking for your product/service on the net then I'm likely to > find your site and order from you. If you dump stuff into my mailbox, > I'm more likely to respond negatively, in which case it's unlikely > that I'll ever be a customer. For what it's worth, I wasn't planning on dumping anything in your mailbox. I mearly posed the question "should such matters be censored and controlled?". And by the way... how *will* you find my great site? Hmmm? Regards Chris _______________________________________________________________________________ Chris Nicholls chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au PO Box 445 ph: +61-6-241 2112 Dickson ACT 2602 fax: +61-6-241 8926 Australia mob: 018 628 678 _______________________________________________________________________________ From ron@comu.net.au Tue May 14 08:05:09 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 18:05:09 +1000 Subject: 1996 Questionnaire on Government Internet Practices Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960514080509.0073a0fc@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> >From Tom, >government effort and services. The aim is to provide a consistent (whole of >government) and effective method of delivering government information, that would explain telstras moves to try to monopolise the industry. The tender will no doubt go to the service with the most POPs etc. Perhaps we will see some real action in the rural areas, will there be a commitment from telstra to establish facilities to deal with the cultural change brought about by the changes? Another wog.net.au.. :-) sorry wog.gov.au. ron. Ron Ipsen, Managing Director, Gippsland Internet Pty Ltd www.comu.net.au, Gippslands Community Network www.gips.com.au, bringing Gippsland business online. From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 07:11:53 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 18:11:53 +1100 Subject: The Info Society - Euro Style - 1 of 2 Message-ID: This report is awfully big, and only seems to be available by download rather than by display in discrete segments. I think it's important enough that I've extracted the Exec Summary and enclose it below. The URL for the full report is: http://www.ispo.cec.be/hleg/hleg.html I'm supposed to be writing a book review for the journal, The Information Society, so all assistance is very welcome! __________________________________________________________________________ Building the European Information Society for Us All First Reflections of the High Level Group of Experts Interim Report January, 1996 This is the first interim report of the High Level Expert Group on the Social and Societal Aspects of the Information Society. It contains a set of first reflections which form the basis for discussions with the Comm=1Fission, members of the European Parliament and other European committees, and outside experts, in view of the preparation of a final policy report to be presented in May 1996. The expert group consisted of: Hans Blankert, Gerhard Bosch, Birgitta Carlson, Manuel Castells, Liam Connellan, Ursula Engelen-Kefer, Chris Freeman, Lisbeth Knudsen, Yves Lasfargue, Isabelle Pailliart, Jorma Rantanen, Luc Soete (chairman), Armando Rocha Trindade and Pier Verderio. =0CFor further copies contact: European Commission Directorate General V Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs DG V/B/5 Adaptation to Industrial Change Secretariat of the High Level Group of Experts Rue de la Loi 200 B-1049 Brussels, Belgium Anyone with the ability to use the World Wide Web may access this report in English, French or German, and other documents relating to the High Level Expert Group on the Information Society, at the Internet address: http://www.ispo.cec.be/hleg/hleg.html Responses to this report should be addressed by e-mail to: hleginfo@fse.dg5.cec.be __________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents Executive Summary i-xiv Introduction 1 Theme I: The IS and Employment 5 1. The IS and the jobs of the future 5 2. New "regulation" for new employment and growth 7 3. Deregulation and existing jobs 8 4. The social distribution of jobs in the IS 10 5. Jobs and globalisation 11 Theme II: Work organisation and the IS 13 1. IS and internal restructuring: towards the "flexible" firm 13 2. IS and "external" restructuring: the growth of networking 17 3. The IS and different form of "teleworking" 19 Theme III: The IS and the Future of Work 21 1. The IS and the changing notion of work 22 2. The IS and working time 23 3. The IS and new health and safety issues: from physical to mental stress 24 Theme IV: The IS and Labour Markets 26 1. Recruitment and retraining systems 26 2. Enhancing employability 27 3. The transition to work from college 29 4. Negotiated change - social dialogue in the IS 29 Theme V: Social Cohesion and the Quality of Life in the IS 32 1. The potential for increased social integration within the community = 33 2. ICTs as tools for improving life quality and social integration of disadvantaged groups 33 3. The IS and exclusion 34 4. Making IS easy for all: barriers to use 35 5. A threat to social cohesion and quality of life: reduced human contact 36 6. The IS as a threat to quality of life: "virtual" reality, abstraction and informa=1Ftion stress 37 7. The IS and consumer behaviour 38 8. The IS, the family and the use of ICTs 38 =0CTheme VI: Regional Cohesion and the IS 40 1. The IS, "universal service" and information infrastructure development 40 2. The IS, liberalisation and cohesion 42 3. The IS and regional cohesion beyond universal service 43 4. Telecooperation and regional cohesion 47 Theme VII: Education and Training in the IS 49 1. A broad educational agenda for the IS 50 2. The learning society 52 3. A European learning agency and network (ELAN) 54 4. The IS will be a life-learning society 55 Theme VIII: Health in the IS 57 1. New possibilities for the development of health service 57 2. New needs and possibilities for learning and competence building 6= 0 3. The need for new regulation 62 4. New needs for research and collaboration 63 5. Health services for all 63 6. Review of ethical codes 64 Theme IX: The IS and Culture 65 1. The IS and Europe's cultural diversity 66 2. Culture and community 67 3. Culture and digitised media 68 Theme X: The IS and the Media 70 1. The IS and the economic challenges to the media industry 70 2. Concentration and a monopoly of information 71 3. The IS, intellectual property rights and information quality 73 Theme XI: The IS and Democracy 75 1. Expression and debate in democratic societies 76 2. The forming of opinion 76 3. Avoiding technological disenfranchisement 77 4. IS and the maintenance of pluralism 78 5. A young citizens programme 79 6. The danger of the IS as a "transparent society" 79 Conclusions: Towards the Information Society, the Group's Vision 81 1. Possibilities for new jobs and new types of work 82 2. A possible new concept of community 83 3. A possible new culture of literacy and understanding 83 4. Possible new politics and culture for the IS 84 __________________________________________________________________________ =0CEXECUTIVE SUMMARY The vision The 1990s have witnessed a great proliferation of reports and papers on Informa=1Ftion and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and on what is now described as the 'Information Society' (IS). This burgeoning literature is mainly concerned with the advent of the 'Information Highways' and the ways in which even greater amounts of information may be distributed ever more quickly, efficiently and cheaply to more and more households and businesses throughout the world. The objective of this report is not to add one more document to this already over=1Esubscribed field. Rather, it is to transcend this discussion from the outset, by making a separation between data and information, and by distinguishing between the notion of information and the need for knowledge. It is necessary to separate out the transmission of data from communication between people, and the acquisi=1Ftion of knowledge. Most present-day telecommunication systems are still systems of trans=1Fmission o= f data. In this report, we focus our attention on ways in which information can be converted into useful knowledge, so that the 'information economy' may become a 'knowledge=1Ebased economy' and the technology be put at the disposal of all. The underlying ICTs provide the potential for great increases in productivity and many new and improved products and services. However, history shows that the ability to convert this potential into actual gains in productivity and improvements in living standards and quality of life depends on a prolonged process of learning and institutional change. The technology in itself is neither good nor bad. It is the use which human beings make of any technology which determines both the nature and extent of the benefits. Moreover, these do not accrue automatically to everyone in society. For most innovations, both benefits and costs are unevenly distributed. While some individuals and groups may benefit greatly, others may be seriously disadvantaged, through for example, loss of employment or erosion of skills. We welcome the opportunity to present this interim report based on the group's first reflections, hoping that it might provoke discussion and help us in formulating our final policy report. It gives us the chance to identify a number of key themes which we believe should be moved to the centre stage of the discussion of the IS, realising that it is neither possible nor desirable to separate the social and societal aspects from the technical, industrial and economic ones. In the future there could be different models of Information Societies, just as today we have different models of industrialised societies. They differ in the degree in which they avoid social exclusion and create new opportunities for the disadvan=1Ftaged. In the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Com=1Fmission underlined the importance of the social dimension which characterizes the European Model. A strong ethos of solidarity should also characterize the European Model of the Information Society. This is not an easy goal to achieve since the traditional structures of the welfare state will have to undergo substantial changes. To adapt to these changes, an active rather than passive concept of solidarity is needed. We would like to emphasise four features of such an active solidarity. =46irst and foremost, it is essential to view the IS as a "learning society"= From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 07:13:03 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 18:13:03 +1100 Subject: The Info Society - Euro Style - 2 of 2 Message-ID: Regional cohesion ICTs have a much remarked-upon and potentially powerful ability to 'shrink distance'. In essence, new industrial and social geographies could emerge, particular=1Fly with regard to services which can be delivered over the wire= From edwin@cascade.apana.org.au Tue May 14 08:21:50 1996 From: edwin@cascade.apana.org.au (Edwin Parsons) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 18:21:50 +1000 (EST) Subject: Family Court cases In-Reply-To: <9604148320.AA832059124@mail.indcom.gov.au> Message-ID: On Tue, 14 May 1996 James_Latham@mail.indcom.gov.au wrote: > > In the case of Family Law Cases, it may be the free provision > of full search capabilities has created some problems, problems > that may be considered quite serious. It may be that unless > full anonymisation can be achieved, the introduction of costs > could reduce demand to those with a genuine desire to utilise > the material. This does not necessarily mean monetary cost, but > may mean increasing search costs ie. having to go to the > library to use the CD-ROM. Everyone still has access, it just > cost them a bit to do so. > > Remember that cost in many cases are used to reduce demand to > only genuine requests, from FOI to court charges, to the cost > of having to walk to the police to fill out a form. I have never heard so much rubbish in my life. The whole point of these materials being online at AustLII in the first place was to make them easily accessable, which greatly assists people who need to represent themselves or don't have much money. regards Ed Parsons From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 09:25:05 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 20:25:05 +1100 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris Nicholls) qrote: >For what it's worth, I wasn't planning on dumping anything in your mailbox. >I mearly posed the question "should such matters be censored and >controlled?". And by the way... how *will* you find my great site? Hmmm? That's disingenuous - spiders and the value-added web-pages that I trust, just like I do now. But seriously, this is the best thread I've managed to stir up in ages! Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Tue May 14 20:48:31 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 14 May 96 20:48:31 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: <9605141029.AA5843@worldcom-18.worldcom.com> (at the risk of touting for my own 'business') i have just written a piece on this issue of business online and possible conflicts with net.culture. Several linkers including Jenny Cram and Frank Crawford gave me very useful feedback including this point: part of the hidden cost of spam is worn by all users but especially by the recipient of spam *who actually pays to download the spam* mail/news. Another new problem is what i called 'spider spamming' -- including text on every possible subject in HTML metadata or a web page so that a page is indexed by search engines under numerous topics -- including competitive products! (another linker alerted me to this point) Full story in June Australian Personal Computer and should appear on the web site within fortnight: http://www.com.au/apc dan fred_pilcher @ dpa.act.gov.au wrote: 15/05/96 04:56 AM Chris Nicholls wrote "My point is this: How can we say on one hand that the Internet must not be censored and regulated and on the other hand say, "but we must regulate those nasty sales and marketing campaigns"? I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be free in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the same road we are trying to avoid with censorship and over-regulation." Good points, Chris. My opinion follows... Few would suggest that advertising on the net should be banned. But there's a big difference between an advertiser who sets up a web site with product and ordering information and one who emails me direct. When I go to my snail mail box, I can simply dump unwanted advertising in the recycling bin. I rarely have to open it as the difference between "genuine" mail (i.e. mail from friends and associates or stuff that I've requested) and advertising is immediatly apparent. It aint necessarily so with email. Unless the subject line gives it away, I have to open a document and read at least some of it before I realise that it's advertising. Indeed, advertisers will tend to utilise this fact and "bury" the advertisement in plausible text to increase the likelyhood that I'll read it. From Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Tue May 14 10:50:03 1996 From: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au (Roger Clarke) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 21:50:03 +1100 Subject: a computer that's shaped like a book Message-ID: >* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * >* INFOSYS: The Electronic Newsletter for Information Systems * >* Volume 3, Number 13 ISSN: 1173-3764 May 14, 1996 * >* * >* Editor: Dennis W. Viehland, Massey University, New Zealand * >* Listowners: Greg Welsh, American University, Washington DC * >* Peter M. Weiss, Penn State * >* Sponsor: boyd & fraser publishing, Danvers, Massachusetts * >* * >* Current Subscribers = 5,021 * >* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ..... > >THE ONE BOOK: MIT Media Lab instructor Joseph Jacobson is developing >a computer that's shaped like a book, complete with pages, but >whose content can be changed countless times. The electronic book >will comprise 200 very thin and flexible display panels, stacked one >on top of the other, like pages. The content is controlled by a >display driver hidden in the book's spine. Software would then >dictate which text is displayed on the panels. Text size could even >be changed by the reader for optimal viewing. (Technology Review >May/June 96 p12) (Delegates at the VALA Conference in Melbourne earlier in the year will be aware that two of the keynote speakers had contrary views on the death / ongoing health of the book. Thesis and antithesis beget synthesis ...). Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 6 288 6916 Fax: +61 6 288 1472 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au Engineering and Information Technology Information Sciences Building Room 211 Tel: +61 6 249 3666 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 249 0010 From redhead@dstc.edu.au Tue May 14 13:08:09 1996 From: redhead@dstc.edu.au (Tim Redhead) Date: Tue, 14 May 96 23:08:09 +1000 Subject: Touting for Business: PICS to the rescue! In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 May 96 15:20:25 GMT." <199605140523.PAA27274@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: <199605141308.XAA13631@foxtail.dstc.edu.au> >> Marketing is a most maligned science... ROTFL! And 'science' is a most maligned term :-) >> I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be >> free in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the >> same road we are trying to avoid with censorship and >> over-regulation. >> >> Note: I am talking about the Internet as a whole - e-mail, >> mailing-lists, WWW, whatever. (Still rolling :-) What is the essential difference between email and the WWW? Or, to illustrate... What is the difference between evangelists knocking on your door at 8.00am on Sunday morning, and having the opportunity to attend a church service at 8.00am on Sunday morning? What is the difference between listening to my ABBA collection late one Tuesday night, and being forced to listen to my neighbour's ABBA collection late one Tuesday night? What is the difference between my allowing you to browse my photos of the 1993 B&S ball, including the one of me at the recovery keg, dressed in nothing but a litre of golden syrup... and my deciding to leave said photos on your desk one morning. As for censorship... well... What is the difference between my not deciding to go to church this Sunday, and my religion being banned? What is the difference between my deciding to burn my ABBA collection, and ABBA being placed on the 'non-classified' list. (Trick question: Nothing; the ends justifies the means in both cases :-) What is the difference between me keeping my B&S photos to myself, and me being not allowed to show them to anybody at all. (Another trick question I think!! :-) Thanks, Tim. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Redhead Level 7, Gehrmann Labs, University of Queensland., Qld., Australia, 4072 email:redhead@dstc.edu.au http://www.dstc.edu.au/Staff.html Telephone:+617 3654310 Facsimile:+617 3654311 Speak for yourself; I do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au Tue May 14 13:33:38 1996 From: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris and Sharon) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 00:03:38 +1030 Subject: Touting for Business Message-ID: Roger and Link members... Roger wrote: >>For what it's worth, I wasn't planning on dumping anything in your mailbox. >>I mearly posed the question "should such matters be censored and >>controlled?". And by the way... how *will* you find my great site? Hmmm? > >That's disingenuous - spiders and the value-added web-pages that I trust, >just like I do now. Not meaning to be disingenuous at all Roger... quite sincere. Marketing is not simply direct mail, it can be advertising and forwarding links to link lists and directories and establishing indexing for search engines (see Dan Tebbutt's e-mail). I was trying, (obviously misread) to make the point that we are all being marketed to in a subtle way which we find acceptable, via the search engines and link lists. > >But seriously, this is the best thread I've managed to stir up in ages! Hmmm... Since these responses I have found some very interesting material which can be viewed on http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/BL/ - "the Internet Blacklist page" Here's a short segment that is appropriate to my original question: "9. How to advertise on the Internet? My advice is: create your own WWW page and announce it to the net. Note that the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.announce does not accept commercial announcements any more, since it is operated by a volunteer. But you can find a twice-weekly FAQ titled "** FAQ: How To Announce Your New Web Site (Other Places) **" there. You also want to get your page listed in the various WWW libraries and indexes. Information about how to do this is at http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html You can then publish your WWW address in paid ads in the print media as well. If you must advertise on usenet, then the biz.* and *.marketplace groups are for you (not all at once!). As a general rule, you should read every group for at least a week before you post anything there. This way, you can find out what the group is all about and whether commercials are appreciated there. Note that *.forsale groups were created to accommodate users who want to sell some personal stuff and not for commercial ads. Also: the *.marketplace groups in local hierarchies like ny.* are only for products that have a genuine connection to that area, e.g. New York; it is not sufficient that you hope that someone from New York might want to buy your product. For information about these advertising newsgroups check out the Usenet Marketplace FAQ at http://www.phoenix.net/~lildan/FAQ Never send out unsolicited commercial e-mail to individuals or mailing lists. Here is a list of documents describing the netiquette and how it relates to advertising: Read the FAQs in the news.announce.newusers newsgroup, which are archived on ftp.cs.columbia.edu in the directory /archives/faq/news/announce/newusers. The Usenet primer by Chuq Von Rospach and the Usenet Posting Rules by Mark Horton are good places to start. I also dug up a good article by Daniel P Dern about how to advertise on the net (must be good: has the word "Blacklist" in it): gopher://gopher.internet.com:2200/00/News/cmd-ibiz An excellent paper explaining the rationale behind the netiquette is at BL/netmyths.html and has been contributed by Guy Berliner. Read Robert Raisch's essay about "Postage-Due Marketing" at http://www.internet.com:2010/marketing/postage.html Netiquette for Usenet Site Administrators is explained by the Indiana University Support Center in http://ancho.ucs.indiana.edu/FAQ/USAGN/ -Copyright Axel Boldt ." I think I have my answer. Regards Chris _______________________________________________________________________________ Chris Nicholls chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au PO Box 445 ph: +61-6-241 2112 Dickson ACT 2602 fax: +61-6-241 8926 Australia mob: 018 628 678 _______________________________________________________________________________ From tomw@acslink.net.au Tue May 14 22:15:36 1996 From: tomw@acslink.net.au (Tom Worthington) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 08:15:36 +1000 Subject: net regulation question - gambling? Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960515081630.27ffe374@mail01.cbr.aone.net.au> At 02:50 AM 13/05/96 -0700, Jan Whitaker wrote: >...what about the process activities such as gambling on the net... >Are the bodies making any noises about how they are going to >protect the children from the risks associated with this development?... This was raised in the ACS Senate submission "Attachment 2: The Best and the Worst of the Internet", dated 2 April 1995. In that I quoted Jason Baragry (baragry@amdahl1.lat.oz.au) Wed, 29 Mar 1995 14:24:15 GMT: "Gambling: I ran into this the other day and its ramifications are quite interesting/scary. The Internet Online OffShore Electronic Casino http://www.casino.org/cc/ ..." As best I can recall the Senators did not express interest in this (someone might like to check the Hansard or the video). Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Tue May 14 23:49:10 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 09:49:10 +1000 Subject: a computer that's shaped like a book Message-ID: <1991D0D0.1646@dist.gov.au> Roger Clarke relayed: > >THE ONE BOOK: MIT Media Lab instructor Joseph Jacobson is developing >a computer that's shaped like a book, complete with pages, but >whose content can be changed countless times. The electronic book >will comprise 200 very thin and flexible display panels, stacked one >on top of the other, like pages. The content is controlled by a >display driver hidden in the book's spine. Software would then >dictate which text is displayed on the panels. Text size could even >be changed by the reader for optimal viewing. (Technology Review >May/June 96 p12) This has been an obvious idea for a long time - in terms of ease of reading, ease of use - in fact, all the advantages books have over screens including the worries coming out of Sweden about VDT injury (see http://www.isy.liu.se/~tegen/febost.html - it's a lot more than just danger during pregnancy). But the real challenge is the "page" technology. Paper takes a lot of punishment before it decays. I can't see this sort of thing becoming viable in less than 10 years (recall the delays and current high cost for 34cm thin screen TVs, promised a decade ago). We'll see. Would be great if it works. David Nicholls DNicholls@dist.gov.au nicholls@netinfo.com.au nicholls@ah.net or will it soon be nicholls@telstramonopoly.au ? From Clive.Mackrow@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au Wed May 15 00:22:13 1996 From: Clive.Mackrow@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au (Clive.Mackrow@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 09:52:13 +0930 Subject: net regulation question - gambling? Message-ID: <0050000001317208000002*@MHS.ncom.nt.gov.au> Dear All For those of you who are interested in the effects of Gambling on the Net as I am, you may be interested in a report to which I was happy to contribute by way of online demonstration to the Committee. The report to the Northern Territory Parliament by the Select Committee on Interactive Television Gaming is published at http://www.nt.gov.au/lant/broadband.html Primarily, I have been researching the potential effects of Internet trading on Government revenues, and of course one of those activities by which Governments raise revenues is through the imposition of gaming taxes of one sort or another. Over the last year or so the opportunity to gamble on the Internet has grown considerably and with the advent of electronic cash it is now a real possibility for those enterprises willing to provide a service to fill that niche market. In the absence of adequate and effective legislation, and I am not sure that can be done, there is a real possibility that some of Australia's gambling dollars can/will go offshore. A truly borderless world state would seem to be upon us, scary isn't it. Or is it. It may mean that if we get our collective national act together we can become a major electronic trader in the international community in the same way that any small business, with the right approach, can now command as big an audience on the net as the major players. There is some opinion/research I recall reading last year which stated that generally speaking small niche businesses get a bigger return per dollar invested in the Internet than does the very large or multi-national enterprise, remember Netscape!. Specialized gambling may fall into this catagory. Nations ignoring the opportunities on the Net may be doomed to the back waters, remember the Swiss watch industry trying to ignore the arrival of the electronic age, the Japanese now own the watch business. As regards protecting our children, I believe all efforts must be made to shield them from the less desireable elements of the net including gambling. Of course to gamble you need money, electronic money, and while that may be cumbersome at the moment, watch this space, kids have credit cards don't they. Twenty years ago we may have said that was not going to happen either. Well these are just a few thoughts of my own, but I would be interested to hear the view of others, perhaps it is inappropriate on this thread and should move to ICA. Regards Clive +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | The view expressed here is my own, and not that of my Employer | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Clive Mackrow | |Internet Services Manager | |NCOM Services | |Department of Transport and Works | |GPO Box 4000 | |DARWIN NT 0801 | |Phone: +61 8 8999 6314 | |Fax +61 8 8999 6790 | |EMail clive.mackrow@nt.gov.au | |URL:http://www.nt.gov.au/ | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: net regulation question - gambling? Author: owner-link@charlotte.anu.edu.au at SMTP Date: 15/5/96 8:54 AM At 02:50 AM 13/05/96 -0700, Jan Whitaker wrote: >...what about the process activities such as gambling on the net... >Are the bodies making any noises about how they are going to >protect the children from the risks associated with this development?... This was raised in the ACS Senate submission "Attachment 2: The Best and the Worst of the Internet", dated 2 April 1995. In that I quoted Jason Baragry (baragry@amdahl1.lat.oz.au) Wed, 29 Mar 1995 14:24:15 GMT: "Gambling: I ran into this the other day and its ramifications are quite interesting/scary. The Internet Online OffShore Electronic Casino http://www.casino.org/cc/ ..." As best I can recall the Senators did not express interest in this (someone might like to check the Hansard or the video). Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From michael.baczynski@alia.org.au Wed May 15 00:33:06 1996 From: michael.baczynski@alia.org.au (Michael Baczynski) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 10:33:06 +1000 Subject: net regulation question - gambling? -Reply Message-ID: Tom Worthington wrote: (snip) >"Gambling: I ran into this the other day and its ramifications are quite >interesting/scary. The Internet Online OffShore Electronic Casino >http://www.casino.org/cc/ ..." > >As best I can recall the Senators did not express interest in this >(someone might like to check the Hansard or the video). As I recall, the Senators lumped the problems associated with off-shore gambling in with those discussed at an earlier inquiry into the use of overseas 1-900 numbers for similar activities (gambling, phone-sex etc). Cheers Michael Baczynski _________________ Opinions expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer. _________________ Tom Worthington http://www.acslink.net.au/~tomw President, Australian Computer Society Inc, GPO Box 446, Canberra ACT 2601 Ph: +61 6 2474830 Fax: +61 6 2496419 Mobile/AH/Pager: 041 1182326 From chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au Wed May 15 07:05:46 1996 From: chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au (Chris and Sharon) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 17:35:46 +1030 Subject: Touting for Business: PICS to the rescue! Message-ID: Tim > >> Marketing is a most maligned science... >ROTFL! And 'science' is a most maligned term :-) Check your Macquarie Dictionary Tim (and Robin).... Science: 2.systematised knowledge in general. 3. a particular branch of knowledge. 4. skill; proficiency.From the Latin scientia = knowledge. Hey if you want semantics...:-) > > > >> I think the Internet must be free in this respect as it must be > >> free in other respects. To suggest otherwise is going down the > >> same road we are trying to avoid with censorship and > >> over-regulation. > >> > >> Note: I am talking about the Internet as a whole - e-mail, > >> mailing-lists, WWW, whatever. > >(Still rolling :-) > >What is the essential difference between email and the WWW? > >Or, to illustrate... > > What is the difference between evangelists knocking on your door at > 8.00am on Sunday morning, and having the opportunity to attend a > church service at 8.00am on Sunday morning? > > What is the difference between listening to my ABBA collection > late one Tuesday night, and being forced to listen to my neighbour's > ABBA collection late one Tuesday night? > What is the difference between an expression of opinion and a diatribe? Okay, I think I got the gist after your first sentence. I respect the fact that you don't like spams and direct sales e-mail; my questions were: Where does sales and marketing fit in to the scheme of things on the Internet? My question was not: What is wrong with spams and direct sales e-mail? I was genuinely interested in what Linkers felt about such matters - not just e-mail spams, but broadly. If we are going to have reasonable debate in Link can y'all keep to the point and cut the flames back a bit. Evangelists and burglars... Sheesh! Kind regards Chris. _______________________________________________________________________________ Chris Nicholls chrisn@tyndale.apana.org.au PO Box 445 ph: +61-6-241 2112 Dickson ACT 2602 fax: +61-6-241 8926 Australia mob: 018 628 678 _______________________________________________________________________________ From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Wed May 15 07:21:14 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 17:21:14 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <19986A20.1646@dist.gov.au> Telstra responded (at URL http://www.telstra.net/14may.html) to the Stewart Fist article in yesterday's Australian (and Net page at http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm ) as follows: "Telstra's Internet Directions - Statement 14 May 1996 Today's Australian newspaper published extracts from an internal Telstra draft discussion paper and the accompanying commentary may have created confusion and uncertainty amongst the Internet business community. The newspaper article interpreted the document as a committed course of action by Telstra with the intent to dominate the Internet access market. In fact this is not the case. That document has not been finalised, neither has it been approved for implementation by Telstra. In any event:- Telstra is not seeking to control the Internet - Telstra is committed to a competitive Internet market At present there are other major companies providing Internet connection (eg AT&T, Sprint, IBM - American companies), Optus is also looking at this issue. Internet access provision is a business opportunity for Telstra (100% Australian owned) to do what most other carriers, worldwide are doing. Telstra already sells Internet access to residential customers via On Australia and to corporate customers via Telstra Internet. Telstra views entry into this market as a logical evolution from its acquisition of AARNet last year. Since then it has strengthened the domestic infrastructure and moved points of presence into exchanges and significantly increased international bandwidth. This is in the interest of providing Australians with a quality service engineered for reliability. Some Internet Service Providers have already been consulted and acknowledge Telstra's entry into the residential market as a logical and not unexpected next step. In a radio interview late this afternoon, the Internet Industry Association stated that it welcomed Telstra's involvement so long as it was on a level playing field basis. This is our intention. We hope the above clarifies Telstra's position and we look forward to your support as we build a quality Internet service for all Australians." I don't think this actually denies the substance of Fist's article. David Nicholls DNicholls@dist.gov.au nicholls@netinfo.com.au nicholls@ah.net or will it soon be nicholls@telstramonopoly.au ? From simon@magna.com.au Wed May 15 07:39:03 1996 From: simon@magna.com.au (Simon Vandore) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 17:39:03 +1000 Subject: TelstraNet and Family Court articles Message-ID: <31998A17.2E21@magna.com.au> Hi all, I've just added some major stories to Australian Personal Computer magazine's Web site, relating to Telstra's plan to dominate the Internet access industry, and The Sunday Telegraph's story about Family Court documents on the Net. The writers are Stewart Fist and Angus Kidman, and the site is http://www.com.au/apc Cheers, Simon. -- "They 'rally round the family' - with a pocket full of shells" RAtM simon@magna.com.au - nomis~/ua.moc.angam.www//:ptth - My ideas only Online Editor, Australian Personal Computer - http://www.com.au/apc Board member, Electronic Frontiers Australia - http://www.efa.org.au From edwin@cascade.apana.org.au Wed May 15 08:32:30 1996 From: edwin@cascade.apana.org.au (Edwin Parsons) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 18:32:30 +1000 (EST) Subject: The Tesltra response In-Reply-To: <19986A20.1646@dist.gov.au> Message-ID: On Wed, 15 May 1996, David Nicholls wrote: > Telstra responded (at URL http://www.telstra.net/14may.html) to > the Stewart Fist article in yesterday's Australian (and Net page > at http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm ) > as follows: > > "Telstra's Internet Directions - Statement > [SNIP] > We hope the above clarifies Telstra's position and we look > forward to your support as we build a quality Internet > service for all Australians." This last paragraph says it all... paraphrasing... 'We (telstra) want your support at we (telstra) build a (quality?) internet service for ALL Australians (everyone)' > I don't think this actually denies the substance of Fist's > article. Nope, it actually strengthens it because the press release is a perfect example of Telstra's well developed ability to make really unsavoury things smell like roses. ed From mbaker@pobox.com Wed May 15 08:40:42 1996 From: mbaker@pobox.com (Michael Baker) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 18:10:42 +0930 (CST) Subject: The Tesltra response In-Reply-To: <19986A20.1646@dist.gov.au> from "David Nicholls" at May 15, 96 05:21:14 pm Message-ID: <199605150840.SAA06956@dove.mtx.net.au> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 945 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/attachments/83c01484/attachment.bin From wisby@ultra.net.au Wed May 15 11:28:49 1996 From: wisby@ultra.net.au (Marjorie Wisby) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 21:28:49 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960515212652.2c27b80c@mailhost.ultra.net.au> At 06:10 PM 15/05/96 +0930, you wrote: >David Nicholls wrote: >> I don't think this actually denies the substance of Fist's >> article. > >I agree. From Fist's article on the web it appears to me that Telecom are >looking for ways to tilt the playing field in an unobservable manner. >But what is to be done about it? Prior to this, certain people had a fairly reasonable success against Telstra simply by exposing them to the gaze of the world. It is remarkable efficacious, as they are selling themselves overseas, and trying to maintain market share in Aus. Maybe we need to increase the anti-Telstra pages some of us are maintaining, and we need to get back onto the international bandwagon. I suspect this will be a little harder, but not impossible. TTYL, Marjorie ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ Marjorie N. Wisby From every mountain-side ~ ~ wisby@ultra.net.au Let Freedom ring. ~ ~ http://www.netprophet.co.nz - Samuel Francis Smith ~ ~ http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/alert.htm (_America_) ~ ~ *New: http://www.netfreedom.org.au/ ~ ~ ~ ~ Have you noticed that people who are most unwilling to accept ~ ~ responsibility for their own actions, are the most keen to regulate ~ ~ everyone else's? ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From wisby@ultra.net.au Wed May 15 11:28:44 1996 From: wisby@ultra.net.au (Marjorie Wisby) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 21:28:44 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960515212650.09bf899c@mailhost.ultra.net.au> At 06:32 PM 15/05/96 +1000, you wrote: > >> We hope the above clarifies Telstra's position and we look >> forward to your support as we build a quality Internet >> service for all Australians." > >This last paragraph says it all... paraphrasing... > > 'We (telstra) want your support at we (telstra) build a > (quality?) internet service for ALL Australians (everyone)' > >> I don't think this actually denies the substance of Fist's >> article. > >Nope, it actually strengthens it because the press release is a perfect >example of Telstra's well developed ability to make really unsavoury things >smell like roses. Edwin, (how are you? Long time...) how could you doubt Telstra's veracity? Shame, shame, shame. (Sounds familiar. Where have I heard *that* before? Hmmm) Those lovely people at Telstra are planning to help us all, and here you are casting aspersions at their honesty and fair mindedness. How could you misunderstand them so badly? Sad that On Australia didn't work. TTYL, Marjorie ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ Marjorie N. Wisby From every mountain-side ~ ~ wisby@ultra.net.au Let Freedom ring. ~ ~ http://www.netprophet.co.nz - Samuel Francis Smith ~ ~ http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/alert.htm (_America_) ~ ~ *New: http://www.netfreedom.org.au/ ~ ~ ~ ~ Have you noticed that people who are most unwilling to accept ~ ~ responsibility for their own actions, are the most keen to regulate ~ ~ everyone else's? ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Wed May 15 12:30:31 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 22:30:31 +1000 Subject: Touting for Business: PICS to the rescue! Message-ID: At 17:05 96/05/15, Chris and Sharon wrote: >Where does sales and marketing fit in to the scheme of things on the Internet? > >My question was not: > >What is wrong with spams and direct sales e-mail? These are sensible questions. Our society's commercial activities are based upon communication facilities. Most of us believe that the internet will be significant, if not dominent, in communications fairly soon. Commerce will happen. How can we help in happen in this medium and avoid the faults of the other (like ads after every try on the football!!)? > >I was genuinely interested in what Linkers felt about such matters - not >just e-mail spams, but broadly. Yep. There is no way this will NOT be a medium for selling. What is good behavior - not just for the reader/viewer but for the person selling who will want a mechanism that works and doesn't get up everybody's nose? >If we are going to have reasonable debate in Link can y'all keep to the >point and cut the flames back a bit. Evangelists and burglars... Sheesh! Hey! be gentle with Chris and Sharon as they are from private enterprise where everybody is nice so are not used to the rough and tumble of debate B-] Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au Wed May 15 12:30:36 1996 From: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 22:30:36 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: At 17:21 96/05/15, David Nicholls wrote: >Telstra responded (at URL http://www.telstra.net/14may.html) to Fast off the mark to find this > internal Telstra draft discussion paper and the accompanying > commentary may have created confusion and uncertainty > amongst the Internet business community. WHICH bit of Telstra did it??? There are a number interested in the internet. > At present there are other major companies providing > Internet connection (eg AT&T, Sprint, IBM - American > companies), Optus is also looking at this issue. Yes but over whose pipes? Optus is looking as I suspect none of Optus's pipes are in use. > > Internet access provision is a business opportunity for > Telstra (100% Australian owned) to do what most other > carriers, worldwide are doing. 100% under a government that wants that to be reduced to 70%. Ooopps sorry... thats what they said during the election ... > Telstra views entry into this market as a logical > evolution from its acquisition of AARNet last year. Yeah. I though that a year ago and wondered about (on this list) conflicts of interest and trade practices. > Telstra views entry into this market as a logical > evolution from its acquisition of AARNet last year. Since > then it has strengthened the domestic infrastructure and > moved points of presence into exchanges and significantly > increased international bandwidth. This is in the interest > of providing Australians with a quality service engineered > for reliability. Yeah. The "logical evolution" has just about kept up with the demand. I'm sure we are all going to say that what they have done is a terrific impovement. > > Some Internet Service Providers have already been > consulted and acknowledge Telstra's entry into the > residential market as a logical and not unexpected next > step. I might have got confused but maybe some were displeased? > > In a radio interview late this afternoon, the Internet > Industry Association stated that it welcomed Telstra's > involvement so long as it was on a level playing field > basis. This is our intention. What's a level playing field? If you play on my fibres, I'll play on my fibres and you'll get to Optus before me??? NEVER on the bonny banks of Loch Lomand maybe? > > We hope the above clarifies Telstra's position and we look > forward to your support as we build a quality Internet > service for all Australians." > Gosh. I'm not good at "clarifies" but I'll be there are people who might feel unclarified and want to ask questions. Heee Heee Roger??.. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au From rachel@juno.virago.org.au Wed May 15 14:32:38 1996 From: rachel@juno.virago.org.au (Rachel Polanskis) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 00:32:38 +1000 (EST) Subject: The Tesltra response In-Reply-To: from "Tony Barry" at May 15, 96 10:30:36 pm Message-ID: <199605151432.AAA15566@juno.virago.org.au> Tony Barry writes: > > At 17:21 96/05/15, David Nicholls wrote: > >Telstra responded (at URL http://www.telstra.net/14may.html) to > > Fast off the mark to find this > > > internal Telstra draft discussion paper and the accompanying > > commentary may have created confusion and uncertainty > > amongst the Internet business community. > Which part of Telstra indeed? I know a few people in Tesltra, basically at the customer service end, but it would appear that knowledge of the Internet in that end of the organisation is almost nothing. I would have thought that such an organisation as Telstra would be making its staff net.aware, but most of the ones I know personally only know they have Microsoft Mail (Such as it is) and they can't even tell me if they have external access to the Internet or not. I feel that Telstra keeps it's IT business very separate from its other services when it suits them. Not keeping its staff in touch with the technology is a bad move - when I queried a few C.S. phone clerks on ISDN and the like, I could not get a straight answer, when I mentioned the Telstra Web Page, I got a "what?" and when I showed a couple of my Telstra friends the WWW.telstra.com.au home page, I was captivated by their looks of awe and had to explain off questions like "are you allowed to do this?" I wonder whose hands we should be letting hold the IT strategies of our nation. I know it does not have much to do with the current thread, but it is something that troubles me, everytime I hear "Telstra" and "Internet" in the same sentence. Rachel -- Rachel Polanskis Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia grove@zeta.org.au http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au http://www.nepean.uws.edu.au/library/ "When the revolution comes, I will be shot by both sides" From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Thu May 16 00:43:34 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 00:43:34 +0000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <199605151446.AAA10541@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> The idea of Telstra providing direct Internet access seems to have got a generally negative response. If we accept the current situation of Internet access through ISPs as fundamentally healthy and see Telstra as being in a position to wipe them out, then the concern is justified. I think there is a lot of truth in this, but I want to explore an alternative viewpoint. These are the early days of the Internet - equivalent to the days when carriage builders were building horseless carriages and laws were being passed (equivalent to today's censorship proposals) reqiring all horseless carriages to be preceded by a person waving a red flag. Henry Ford was starting to crank up the production line - threatening the many carriage builders. The roads - which had been built for horses, were only adequate for low speeds, and reliable travel for long distances was the exception, not the norm. Isn't condemming Telstra a lot like condemming the mass production of motor cars in 1908? In four years time roughly the same proportion of homes which today have decent home computers - say 15% - will have permanent IP connection via HFC cable modems. Some of these people will want to run complete, permanent systems with their own domain name, DNS server, email server, WWW server and whatever else - or its equivalent of the day. I expect to be doing this by the end of 97. Not everyone will want to take this administrative and technical responsibility - they will want fast IP access at times, but will not leave their computers on. They will want someone else - an "ISP" - to collect email, give them access to a news server and provide a permanent WWW server for their material. It will hardly matter where in the world that "ISP" is, unless perhaps they are receiving and sending large quanities of email - perhaps voice or video mail - in which case it would be faster and perhaps cheaper to use an Australian "ISP". They will grab their email from wherever they are - home, work, mobile computer and GSM (or other technology) mobile phone link. (Probably the portable computer will integrate the GSM phone functions - the reverse is already happeing.) They may well use Internet access points in public places. In a few years time we will no more be mucking around with dial-up modems and pesky scripts than people today carry a crank handle to start their engine on cold mornings. We will all want cheap, standardised, no fuss IP connectivity and we will not be particularly fussy about where we get it from - just as we hardly care what brand of petrol we put in our cars. This is not going to happen by the current arrangment of IP connectivity going via ISPs. The primary problem is that we have to get a link to the ISP's Point Of Presence (POP), which means mucking around with phone calls and their costs, or (I doubt this will happen much) using HFC cable modems on a Telstra or Optus system to provide a link to an ISP's POP. Internet connectivity can be done on a small scale. You can get a permanent 28.8 k link (with the complements of Telstra and all its owners and customers allowing you to make a local call for 25 cents even if it lasts for months) get a few extra phone lines and modems, get a PC and the free (and excellent) Linux operating system and you are an ISP! You will always be able to be an ISP like this in one way or another, just as it has always been possible to build a car from scratch in your garage and sell it to someone. The future of IP connectivity is clearly a mass market game. Having the economies of scale to do the Internet side is one thing. A big IP provider will have their own backbone and routers, with links to other IP providers in Australia. They will have fast links not just to the US West Coast, but directly to the major centres where Australian Internet traffic actually wants to go. So there would be direct one-hop pathways from Australia to several parts of the US and Canada, to the UK and one or two points in mainland Europe, to Singapore, Japan and to China. This means the current ssslloooowwnneesss of UK access will disappear. This is caused not by packet delays, but by excessive packet losses due to having to traverse the US and the two biggest oceans through 20 or so routers and data links, each of which is congested and drops packets accordingly. When something like 40% of packets are lost, it takes a lot of retransmissions to get the data across, and there are other factors - but the packet delivery time remains just a second or so. It takes 20 hops to get to the Icelandic Parliament, (althingi.is) and at least half of those hops would disappear if there was a single link from an Australian backbone to New York or Denmark. There are also tremendous economies of scale in providing the local side of an IP provider's service. This exactly equates to their ability to get their infrastructure close to the people who want to use it. Ignoring start-ups, there are three classes of company which might be providing this. Firstly the two major wired infrastructure carriers - Telstra and Optus. Secondly AAPT, British Telecom and other companies which are currently not carriers, but want to be - especially if a big overseas carrier buys one or more of these to get a foothold. Thirdly the existing ISPs. I find it impossible to beleive that in the next few years, say 2000, when the HFC systems are humming away, when cable modems are relatively standardised, when ATM carries TCP/IP to the home and ATM is the method of choice for delivering MPEG-2 streams from "WWW" sites (exactly the same thing as Video On Demand), that the big providers of IP connectivity will be anything other than Telstra or Optus - *unless* some regulatory structure gets in the way. "ISP"s may still be around, providing all sorts of services - but there is no way anyone could compete with Telstra and Optus for providing direct, low cost IP connectivity via fat pipes to major traffic destinations all over the world. Today's ISPs have known this since day one. Should we be getting in the way of this? I am writing an article on the Optus HFC based telephony system and how NetComm will provide a 640 kbit/sec IP router interface between this system and the home or office Ethernet LAN (or standalone computer with an Ethernet card). My guess is that technically they might have this working by early next year in a production sense - and steaming ahead with selling the service after that. The bandwidth on the cable is managed on a split-second basis in 64 kbit/sec chunks, so it is not like hogging 512 kbit/sec for half an hour at a time just to get this peak performance. There are rapid developments in much faster cable modems too - that will be in a second article. Like carriage builders, blacksmiths and small grocery shops, the "ISP" as we know it will soon be a thing of the past. We will remember our pioneering days of installing troublesome software, like one bloke I met who built his first one valve radio in the bush back of Cairns in the 1920s. When we are old and grey we will listen wistfully to recordings of the squarks of courting 28.8 k modems. The test for the true pioneers will be knowing the significance of "Mosaic". Those few who claim to have used ARPANET will be looked on with the same disbelief as we regard someone who claimed to have worked on ENIAC. The young people of the day will look at us funny if we tell them we wanted to hold on to our old ways. > Telstra is not seeking to control the Internet - > Telstra is committed to a competitive Internet market Yeah, thats what they all say. Denying any commercial linkage with the carriers and donning my asbestos/wool blend flame suit already . . . (I sold one yesterday!) - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From hartr@hedland.edu.au Wed May 15 16:25:41 1996 From: hartr@hedland.edu.au (Robert Hart) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 00:25:41 +0800 (WST) Subject: The Tesltra response In-Reply-To: <199605151446.AAA10541@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: On Thu, 16 May 1996, Robin Whittle wrote: > In four years time roughly the same proportion of homes which today > have decent home computers - say 15% - will have permanent IP > connection via HFC cable modems. Some of these people will want to > run complete, permanent systems with their own domain name, DNS > server, email server, WWW server and whatever else - or its > equivalent of the day. I expect to be doing this by the end of 97. Good grief - do people realise how many misconfigured DNS sites there are around already? Try a dnswalk over the BBC (Pebble Mill) site for an example of a large organisation that has its DNS set up wrong! My system log here is FULL of DNS errors (most commonly MX sites that point to CNAMEs)...DNS is NOT something for Mum/Dad (or even the techo kids) to try to do. Thinks about it - without clean DNS, the Internet falls apart. There are also ISP's around with misconfigured DNS as well... Robert Hart hartr@hedland.edu.au Voice: +61 (0)91 72 0429 Fax: +61 (0)91 72 3560 Hedland College, PMB 1, South Hedland WA 6722 Australia From hilvertj@ozemail.com.au Wed May 15 23:12:24 1996 From: hilvertj@ozemail.com.au (John Hilvert) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 09:12:24 +1000 (EST) Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <2.2.16.19960516090946.2b1723e8@ozemail.com.au> At 12:43 AM 16/5/96 +0000, Robin Whittle wrote: >The idea of Telstra providing direct Internet access seems to have >got a generally negative response. If we accept the current >situation of Internet access through ISPs as fundamentally healthy >and see Telstra as being in a position to wipe them out, then the >concern is justified. > >I think there is a lot of truth in this, but I want to explore an >alternative viewpoint. > >These are the early days of the Internet - equivalent to the days >when carriage builders were building horseless carriages and laws >were being passed (equivalent to today's censorship proposals) >reqiring all horseless carriages to be preceded by a person waving a >red flag. Henry Ford was starting to crank up the production line - >threatening the many carriage builders. The roads - which had been >built for horses, were only adequate for low speeds, and reliable >travel for long distances was the exception, not the norm. > >Isn't condemming Telstra a lot like condemming the mass production of >motor cars in 1908? > I think not. The issue raised by Fist (at http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm) is whether we believe there should be a competitive market in Internet supply or not. The efficiency issue is a second order one. Most economists as well as policy twonks though would pause before annointing a monopoly or even a duopoly as the most efficient means of supply. The Telstra documents imply that TelstraNet would enter the mass supply market leveraging vertical integration techniques. These have _nothing_ to do with the so-called Ford mass production model as far as I can see. It has privileged access to the 1-900 system - which it proposed to use for extended coverage. There is also a suggestion that it could be cross subsidised by other services. Why can't Telstra just compete for Net retail custom like everyone else? It is also worth recalling the comments it has received for its premium pricing of ISDN. Apart from Forrester, Buckeridge, even the OECD's ICCP is starting to query the Net pricing of monopoly carriers at http://www.oecd.org/dsti/gd_docs/s96_xxe.html John Hilvert Journalist at Large "The shallower you are, the more ground you cover." For great education software reviews try http://www.edutainment.com.au/ From tcomber@scu.edu.au Wed May 15 22:21:17 1996 From: tcomber@scu.edu.au (Tim Comber) Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 22:21:17 GMT Subject: The Tesltra response In-Reply-To: <199605151432.AAA15566@juno.virago.org.au> References: <199605151432.AAA15566@juno.virago.org.au> Message-ID: <319a559c.59718359@mailhost.scu.edu.au> On Thu, 16 May 1996 00:32:38 +1000 (EST), Rachel Polanskis wrote: >Tony Barry writes: >> >> At 17:21 96/05/15, David Nicholls wrote: >> >Telstra responded (at URL http://www.telstra.net/14may.html) to >I know a few people in Tesltra, basically at the customer service end, >but it would appear that knowledge of the Internet >in that end of the organisation is almost nothing. I can confirm this. My wife works for Telstra and there is no access to the web or even their own web site though it is possible for her to send me email. However Telstra has a strict policy that email is only to be used for business, no personal, trivial, "human" stuff, so I doubt that Telstra would countenance access to the internet for their staff. ----------------------------------------------------------- Tim Comber email: tcomber@scu.edu.au Postgrad - HCI-layout complexity, Hobbies - gems & minerals, classical guitar Rocks, gems Home Page Faculty Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia. From michael.baczynski@alia.org.au Wed May 15 23:21:44 1996 From: michael.baczynski@alia.org.au (Michael Baczynski) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 09:21:44 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response -Reply Message-ID: Rachel said: " I know a few people in Tesltra, basically at the customer service end, but it would appear that knowledge of the Internet in that end of the organisation is almost nothing." Yeah, well, a certain ISP (which will remain nameless save for the fact that they are a multi-national company) aren't much better. I rang their inquiries line to find out if they could provide an ISDN connection for an office. After having to explain what an "ISDN thingy" was, the operator realised that I was from an office (after having told him three times) and said that they only provided access for individual users. Makes you wonder a little dosen't it? (-; Cheers Michael _______________________________ Any cheeky comments are my own fault and no one elses. From JHoughton@dist.gov.au Wed May 15 23:27:47 1996 From: JHoughton@dist.gov.au (John Houghton) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 09:27:47 +1000 Subject: The Telstra response Message-ID: <19A68160.1646@dist.gov.au> Robin Wittle's comments make a good deal of sense, although I am not so convinced of the importance of economies of scale in ISP/IAP. However, I think the real issue is that of integrating or separating lines of business - more a case of potential economies of scope. To pursue Robin's analogy, Henry Ford may have revolutionised the automobile industry but he wasn't allowed to privatise all roads and railways. In fact the case of Chrysler (I think) taking over the LA buslines and tramways in the 1920s and immediately closing them is often cited as an example of allowing inappropriate 'integration'. One that led to all sorts of externalities/public costs - as anyone who has ever tried to either drive or breath in LA would know. The issue is that there has to be enforced separation of the Telstra highway construction company, the Telstra Bus company, the Telstra automobile manufacturing company, etc. etc. ******************************************************************** John Houghton Principal Economist Bureau of Industry Economics GPO Box 9839 Canberra ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA Ph +61 6 276 1858 Fax +61 6 276 1846 E-Mail JHoughton@dist.gov.au http://www.das.gov.au/~dist/bie/bie-home.html ******************************************************************** The views expressed here are those of the author not the institution ******************************************************************** From DNicholls@dist.gov.au Thu May 16 00:48:08 1996 From: DNicholls@dist.gov.au (David Nicholls) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 10:48:08 +1000 Subject: The actual Telstra paper Message-ID: <19A7C320.1646@dist.gov.au> Further to Simon Vandore's post, for those who haven't yet followed it up:: The original Telstra paper which provoked all this has a pointer to it from the Australian Personal Computer page (URL: http://www.com.au/apc/9605/specials/telstra.html ) The APC page has another short article by Stewart Fist plus all the other links. The Telstra paper is at http://www.suburbia.net/~coms/ (It's 22 A4 pages long but is not set up for convenient printed page breaks.) Might be worth downloading before Telstra gets stroppy. The first page is labelled "No Unauthorised Copying" ;-) Cheers David Nicholls DNicholls@dist.gov.au nicholls@netinfo.com.au nicholls@ah.net or will it soon be nicholls@telstramonopoly.au ? From u833885@student.canberra.edu.au Thu May 16 01:13:02 1996 From: u833885@student.canberra.edu.au (Karin Geiselhart) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 11:13:02 +1000 Subject: Telstra Message-ID: <199605160113.LAA04410@student.canberra.edu.au> >From the comments Linkers have made about Telstra we can conclude this is not a progressive organisation which is aware of the latest thinking on management. Keeping staff in the dark about technology or corporate goals is a no-no. And our networked future lies in their hands? The communet list is talking about setting up an international organisation for community networking. What happened to the idea of the gov providing community access funding? Is there some way to get Telstra to fund a public space? The ACT gov draft community information strategy is not very enlightened, either. Are we heading for Cyberia? Karin Geiselhart u833885@student.canberra.edu.au From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Thu May 16 11:15:46 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 16 May 96 11:15:46 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <9605160113.AA0755@worldcom-47.worldcom.com> Robin Whittle wrote: >"ISP"s may still be around, providing all sorts of services - but >there is no way anyone could compete with Telstra and Optus for >providing direct, low cost IP connectivity via fat pipes to major >traffic destinations all over the world. > >Today's ISPs have known this since day one. I think this misses one of Fist's primary points -- no one objects to sensible economies of scale on the technology (IP connectivity, fat pipes) -- but it does not follow that Telstra (or Optus in time) should be allowed to vertically integrate the Internet market and kill off the price competitors at the retail end. Telstra basically owns the wholesale market and if they decide to go aggressively into the retail market (with cross-subsidies) then consumers will have less choice and probably in the end higher prices. Then Australia can kiss any information industry goodbye. See Fist's comment on vertical integration at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stewart_fist/Vertical.htm It seems the technology issue can be differentiated from the trade practices issue. From Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au Thu May 16 11:23:19 1996 From: Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au (Dan Tebbutt) Date: 16 May 96 11:23:19 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: <9605160024.AA6422@worldcom-18.worldcom.com> John Hilvert wrote: [slice] >The Telstra documents imply that TelstraNet would enter the mass supply >market leveraging vertical integration techniques. These have _nothing_ to >do with the so-called Ford mass production model as far as I can see. [dice] >Why can't Telstra just compete for Net retail custom like everyone else? [puree] Agreed John. Telstra is presently attempting to compete in the retail market with the re-launched OnAus company using IP -- and they have a good service. But apparently that is not enough for Telstra which feels it must dominate the market through vertical integration. If allowed to run its course and compete through normal means Telstra could do very well with OnAus against other ISPs -- but instead its monopolistic attitude rears its ugly head again. It's not a legitimate market force that allows a near monopoly wholesaler to choke retailers to death. Consumers and business stand to lose a lot if the govt is too stupid to reign Telstra in -- and privatisation can only make this worse (the profit motive). From robert.mcdonald@nepean.uws.edu.au Thu May 16 04:44:32 1996 From: robert.mcdonald@nepean.uws.edu.au (Robert McDonald) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 14:44:32 +1000 Subject: a computer that's shaped like a book Message-ID: <199605160444.AA23536@kilo.uws.EDU.AU> At 09:49 AM 5/15/96 +1000, David Nicholls wrote: > >But the real challenge is the "page" technology. Paper takes a lot of >punishment before it decays. I can't see this sort of thing becoming >viable in less than 10 years (recall the delays and current high cost >for 34cm thin screen TVs, promised a decade ago). > Two points. 1. Depends which sort of paper. The newsprint of today and a lot of other publications on recycled paper are just not built to last. An old edition of the _Times_ from 1812 actually has a better chance of survival into next century than a copy of today's _Sydney morning herald_. Short fibres and high acid content are a problem for archivists and librarians. 2. About 10 years ago an Australian guy from the Foreign Bible Society devised something called the "smart book". It didn't have pages you could turn but you could insert a smart card into a small, light and portable device that was smaller than the screen of my Toshiba notebook, and on one smart card carry the Bible or several works of Charles Dickens with you. The guy who invented it did so because he had problems carting paper around on his missionary work, and he wanted something more lightweight and durable. If I recall correctly, he tried to interest CCH Australia into using it to replace loose-leaf publications but it never eventuated and now CCH is using CD-ROM for those who hate filing masses of paper. The whole thing quietened down after it was praised in _Online currents_ and demonstrated to enthusiastic librarians. Then the same or a similar device popped up a few years later on the TV series _Beyond 2000_, which reported it was all the rage in Japanese subways, where spreading out a newspaper is quite a feat. The whole thing seems to have quietened down again. So, as you say, anticipate long delays before this new idea becomes viable. Ten years and the smart book still hasn't taken off, although I thought it was a goer at the time. Rob McDonald Access Librarian (Engineering) Centre for Access to Networked Information University of Western Sydney - Nepean PO Box 10 Kingswood NSW 2747 Phone: (047) 360 931 Fax: (047) 360 480 Flap's Law: Any inanimate object, regardless of its position, configuration or purpose, may be expected to perform at any time in a totallly unexpected manner for reasons that are either entirely obscure or else completely mysterious. From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Thu May 16 15:20:12 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 15:20:12 +0000 Subject: PICS & censorship in 900 words! Message-ID: <199605160522.PAA15623@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> For the Australian Unix User Group column in The Australian's computer section, the essay assignment says 600 to 800 words. I have attempted to cover PICS and the major issues in the Internet Censorship debate and done it in 900 words. I gave instructions to delete paragraphs 6 or 5 & 6 if space is tight. Here is the text before the sub-editors doctor it to suit the needs of the mass media. PICS for protecting children - not censorship ============================================= The debate about Internet censorship encompasses some diametrically opposed views, including the proposal of the NSW Government to impose harsh criminal penalties for any networked communications, including email, which would be classed as "Mature Adult" or beyond in the film classification scheme. This article highlights some of the problems in the current debate and points to the solution for protecting children. More detailed information is available from http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr/contreg. Internet communications will soon provide adults with an unprecedented level of control over access to resources by the children in their care. The sophistication of control offered by the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS - http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS) far exceeds that which is possible with current Internet filter software such as "Net-Nanny" or with the V-Chip proposal for television. Those who support Internet censorship and those who oppose it agree on at least one human value: that adults must provide children with a safe and supportive environment in which to play and learn. Differing human values are significant in the dispute about censorship of communications between consenting adults. One view is that community standards must be protected. Another is that free-speech is of paramount importance. A third is that no single set of standards is appropriate to all citizens of multicultural Australia, so adults should not be constrained by one official "community standard". The child protection and adult censorship debates are often confused. There is insufficient understanding of the value of the new PICS protocol and how impractical and unnecessary it is to attempt to censor Internet communications. Much of this confusion arises from poor understanding of the Internet and from the belief that it is a broadcast medium. The Internet most closely resembles the postal network and the telephone system. It is not a broadcast or mass media at all. It is a bidirectional, point-to-point, global communications network - three of the many factors which distinguish it from the unidirectional, one-to-many, nationally confined distributive model of broadcasting. Some Internet high level protocols support publishing, based on user driven requests of material from millions of sources - including from domestic users. Broadcasting involves a relatively small number of source controlled streams of material which viewers simply switch between. With cryptography and the inherent flexibility of the Internet, it is impossible to reliably block or monitor communications between motivated individuals - just as it is impossible to censor the postal service or the telephone network. The clearly desirable goal of thwarting criminal communication - including paedophiles transferring image files - is unfortunately impossible to achieve. With or without Internet communications, for better and for worse, we are now in an era of extreme information fluidity in which every barrier to information flow can be bypassed in several ways. How then are we to protect children from unsuitable material? Three of the four proposals for protecting children from unsuitable material are unworkable. The fourth, based on the PICS protocol, is very promising. The first proposal is to censor "Internet content" at its source. While this might be achieved, at tremendous social cost, within a single country, it is obviously impossible on a global scale. The second proposal is to install simple software in the user's PC to detect "banned" words. Thus an incoming text file which includes the word "breast" could be blocked entirely. This cannot work with image files and is such a blunt and poorly directed approach as to be unworkable. The third approach is to block information packets being sent to or from particular IP addresses. This can be accomplished in the home PC or, with much greater difficulty, in the ISP's router. The immediate effect is to block all communication with specific computers - for instance a single computer which provides email, FTP, WWW and many other services for an entire university. This "IP address blocking" is a coarse and disruptive method of blocking access to Internet resources. It is also completely ineffective, since even a child can configure their WWW browser to use one of the many publicly accessible HTTP proxy servers anywhere in the world. This enables them to access any site via the proxy - completely bypassing local barriers to particular IP addresses. The fourth approach is software to control access according to PICS ratings labels. Netscape, Microsoft and other companies plan to integrate this into their browser products by late 1996. This software uses external sources of ratings about Internet resources, enabling adults to fine tune the access criteria for each child in their care. Before the browser software accesses each file or Internet resource, it first requests labels regarding that resource from one or more PICS label servers - which could be anywhere in the world. These labels contain ratings according to any number of value systems - for instance several different aspects of child suitability. Within a few seconds the access control software receives these labels and uses their ratings to decide whether to request and display each file or image, according to thresholds set by the adult. PICS based filtering can only be done within the user's PC. It cannot be achieved or imposed by the ISP or government. It does not censor adult use of the Internet. PICS enables a sophistication of control far beyond what most participants in this debate have so far imagined - while attempts to block access to "sites" or censor material at its source offer little or no protection at all. Copyright 1996 Robin Whittle firstpr@ozemail.com.au Distribute freely if the complete text and this message remain intact. . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Thu May 16 15:20:12 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 15:20:12 +0000 Subject: Internet economies of scale & scope vs. lack of competition Message-ID: <199605160523.PAA15664@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> I agree with John Hilvert's points about a competitive market being a more significant issue than the economies of scale. If there was only Telstra in this game, I would be a lot more worried about a monopoly, however Optus is charging ahead with its HFC system. Duopolies can be pretty sus too. Each knows that a price cut is cutting their own throat just as much as the other company's. Hence prices stay high, but enormous sums of money from those higher prices are ploughed into marketing campaigns. Some of this "buying customers" marketing activity is constructive - it supports commercial TV and magazines which people like to watch, and it may be used to subsidise customer equipment: mobile phones or soon cable modems. The downside is that a significant proportion of fees goes into this marketing. The worst aspect is the intrusive marketing (telemarketing and door-to-door) and disrespectful marketing, such as the awful "Coming home to Telstra from Stalinist East German Optus" TV ad. Because anyone from Telstra, to someone with a few thousand dollars, can offer IP connectivity in some way, and because Optus and other large companies will be competing with Telstra, I think there will not be a monopoly and probably not a duopoly. > I think not. The issue raised by Fist (at > http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/special/telnet.htm) is > whether we believe there should be a competitive market in Internet > supply or not. I absolutely believe it should and will be a competitive market, no matter what Telstra does - and it can do a lot. I am not saying we should relax, just that we shouldn't assume that Telstra's moves will lead to a monopoly. > The Telstra documents imply that TelstraNet would enter the mass > supply market leveraging vertical integration techniques. These have > _nothing_ to do with the so-called Ford mass production model as far > as I can see. With little capital investment, Telstra will (within year or two) be able to offer direct modem and ISDN connection to routers at each of its exchange sites (around 200 phone exchanges for the entire country as explained in my article on the Future Mode of Operation in April "Australian Communications"). These are impressive economies of scale, and I don't think any company could do better at these lower data rates. Beyond modems and Basic Rate ISDN (1 or 2 64 kbit/sec channels), it is HFC cables (or perhaps ADSL over twisted pair phone lines). Both Telstra and Optus are in the HFC business and their economies of scale will be hard to match for access at higher data rates. I can't quite explain why, and maybe I am wrong, but I foresee a huge surge in demand for Internet access and a whole variety of means of getting it. With the profusion of technologies and companies, I am not too worried about a monopoly or a duopoly. > Why can't Telstra just compete for Net retail custom like everyone > else? That is what it is proposing to do. Unless they overprice, make a technical mess of it, or are restrained (perhaps there are valid reasons) then I think they will do quite well. So will Optus. Meanwhile, especially with untimed local calls, you will always be able to shop around for modem IP connectivity from many other sources who are reselling Telstra's or Optus' connectivity or using someone else's - such as Access One, Connect.com etc. > even the OECD's ICCP is > starting to query the Net pricing of monopoly carriers at > http://www.oecd.org/dsti/gd_docs/s96_xxe.html I have not read this yet. Obviously, monopolies are a bad thing, unless the economies of scale or some other reason dictates there is no other way of providing a service. John Houghton looked at economies of scope, and the undesirability of one company using leverage in one aspect of an industry to build market share in another. To the extent that any market share or influence unfairly restricts the ability for other companies to compete, then they are almost certainly a bad thing - unless it is considered desirable to have a single unified service with few costs of duplication and marketing. (The argument against competition in telecommunications, electricity, water, gas and public transport and one of the arguments against private road construction.) > To pursue Robin's analogy, Henry Ford may have revolutionised > the automobile industry but he wasn't allowed to privatise all > roads and railways. In fact the case of Chrysler (I think) > taking over the LA buslines and tramways in the 1920s and > immediately closing them is often cited as an example of > allowing inappropriate 'integration'. One that led to all sorts > of externalities/public costs - as anyone who has ever tried to > either drive or breath in LA would know. > > The issue is that there has to be enforced separation of the > Telstra highway construction company, the Telstra Bus company, > the Telstra automobile manufacturing company, etc. etc. I was using analogy to stimulate discussion rather than argue a case - and so is John. In the Internet situation, I think this analogy translates into content/carriage separation. Michael Lee called Optus' bluff on this over a year ago. They threatened not to build their HFC cable unless they had tight control over who could use it. This would be a normal thing for any private investment, but the government correctly said "No. This is a major piece of infrastructure and you should be forced to open it to other people" in terms of 'content' and provision of alternative "services". Given the fact that the federal government basically gave Optus the right to string aerial cables despite local protests, and the national importance of the infrastructure, I think this was a reasonable demand. I don't know the conditions in detail, but I think that at one point Telstra was critical of Optus' demand and then it changed its mind and made similar demands itself. Michael Lee stuck to his guns and I think we should all be thankful. This may be the key which enables other companies - such as Connect.com to utilise the HFC systems for their own IP connectivity service - thus nipping seriously at the heels of any duopoly which might be about to develop. The dangers of not enforcing content/carriage separation include: * The dominant carriage company or companies using financial muscle and economies of scope to dominate (and hence restrict diversity) of "content" - the stuff that really matters. * The carriage companies using traffic patterns for their own marketing purposes or to sell to other companies. This is a whole can of worms in itself. Who owns the knowledge of which Telstra customers made particular numbers of calls to takeaway food restaurants? At present, the Telco Act stops a carrier from disclosing this highly valuable information. An IP connectivity provider could sample the IP addresses which its customers were communicating with and build and sell a database of what sort of sites each customer was accessing. I don't know if this is covered by the Telco act No doubt there are others dangers. However the content provision process for Internet communications is totally different from that of broadcast and print media. With Internet communications, the cost of making "content" available is minimal - the huge capital outlays required for printing presses, transmitters and licences etc. do not apply. It is easy to make "content" or services globally available via small or large WWW server facilities on a monthly fee basis - no capital outlay is required at all. I am not concerned at all about IP connectivity providers dominating "content" provision. The most valuable Internet "content" and services are highly specialised - the complete opposite of what large companies are good at providing. There are dangers in considering Internet communications to be analogous to broadcasting or other models. Forgetting the Internet for the moment, I don't think there would be a problem with a car manufacturer building roads. There is a problem with them buying and/or closing down bus companies and railways! For the Internet, I don't think we need to worry about the big companies being able to supply "content" still less dominate or restrict its supply by others. For one thing, no item of Internet content gets in the way of any other - quite the opposite of broadcasting and printed publications (see my WWW site for a broadcasting vs. Internet comparison). Some analogies are directly applicable to the Internet: Does Telstra provide people for you to make telephone calls to? Does Australia Post dominate the sources and destinations of mail? Neither company could hope to generate many of the reasons for the traffic they carry. There would not be a problem with Ford developing destinations for car-trips - unless these destinations crowded out the others. There would certainly be a problem with them trying to buy up and/or close down all destinations which were not theirs. However the car companies generally decided to concentrate on making cars and let other people develop the reasons for travel. If Telstra says it wants to buy Australia Post - *then* worry. Likewise if it wants to influence or control print or electronic mass media. Dan Tebbutt wrote: > Telstra basically owns the wholesale market and if they decide to go > aggressively into the retail market (with cross-subsidies) then consumers will > have less choice and probably in the end higher prices. Then Australia can kiss > any information industry goodbye. I think Telstra's dominance of the wholesale Internet market and the general high speed data carriage market is increasingly under threat: with (hopefully) good access arrangements to its national and international raw data SDH fibre data pipes (typically 622 Mbit/sec easily subdivided to 155 and then into 2 Mbit/sec units) and with other companies installing Internet routers and their own data pipes (fibre, microwave and satellite). I am not advocating complacency, but I am not as worried as Dan seems to be. Telstra cross-subsidies probably *are* a worry - effectively buying a large number of customers at the expense of a balanced industry, at least in the short term. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au Thu May 16 15:20:12 1996 From: firstpr@oznet02.ozemail.com.au (Robin Whittle) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 15:20:12 +0000 Subject: DNS is not for the feint hearted Message-ID: <199605160523.PAA15700@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Robert Hart wrote that running a proper, independent 24 hour a day Internet service is fraught with difficulites: > Good grief - do people realise how many misconfigured DNS sites there are > around already? Try a dnswalk over the BBC (Pebble Mill) site for an > example of a large organisation that has its DNS set up wrong! My system > log here is FULL of DNS errors (most commonly MX sites that point to > CNAMEs)...DNS is NOT something for Mum/Dad (or even the techo kids) to > try to do. Thinks about it - without clean DNS, the Internet falls apart. > > There are also ISP's around with misconfigured DNS as well... Understanding the Domain Name System, running a DNS server and administring your own domain, administering a range of IP addresses and fine tuning routers and setting up Sendmail are a few of the difficult tasks which must be done. Even sendmail - for the comparitively basic function of handling email is a doozy - the O'Rielly book on sendmail is 600+ pages and an experienced ISP networking speciallist I know is barely a third of the way through it. Two ISP operators have told me that OzEmail, Australia's largest retail ISP (with ~57,000 customers) does not know how to run its DNS system and that they have given up complaining to them. Evidence is is in the header of this email. My email address is firspr@ozemail.com.au, but OzEmail's Sendmail program somehow insists (not always) on inserting the name of the particular computer my account is on within OzEmail. ^^^^^^^^ Bug! The question of ensuring that only well configured systems are connected to the Internet is probably supposed to be handled by devolved responsibility. Whichever ISP provides service to the rogue ISP should probably take responsibility - maybe threatening to cut them off. With the money at stake, the fast pace of developments and the fact that the technical staff at all levels of the industry are still learning their basic Internet ropes, this seems not to be happening sufficiently. - Robin . Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music . From joy@erdc.com.au Thu May 16 04:16:54 1996 From: joy@erdc.com.au (Joy Sutton) Date: 16 May 1996 14:16:54 +1000 Subject: The Tesltra response Message-ID: Reply to: RE>>The Tesltra response Notwithstanding specific issues in Robin Whittle's contribution such as have been highlighted by a few linkers so far, I applaud (what is the opposite of flame?) Robin's crystal-ball-gazing approach and resultant scenario - and the analogies are wonderful even if their applicability may be questionable in part. As part of a small organisation with very little IT skill, the task of trying to establish a new ISP relationship (we are based in Canberra but are presently paying STD rates which is dumb) is PAINFUL. I'll say no more. The scenario presented by Robin is just what we want now - a service much like a utility, ubiquitous and implicit. Just departing the central theme of this thread momentarily (and apologies if UUCP-induced delays mean I am a bit behind the needle), something Robin said ("Secondly AAPT, British Telecom and other companies which are currently not carriers, but want to be - especially if a big overseas carrier buys one or more of these to get a foothold.") brought to the front of brain an issue I have a lot of problems with - duplication of infrastructure. Now excuse me if I am being naive and/or ignorant (throw me one of those flame suits), but why is the telecommunications setup any different, conceptually I mean, from other utilities. In the electricity supply industry for eg, there has been considerable change recently with a separation of functions - generation, transmission and distribution. Whilst the generation and distribution functions are more or less open slather supposedly being driven by market forces, the transmission function, ie the poles and wires etc. is not. Why do we have Optus spending billions (which ultimately means you and me spending billions) to duplicate infrastructure which we have already spent billions on (Telstra's existing infrastructure)? I know this sounds simplistic, but I am referring to the overall setup of the industry. The thought that perhaps any other big telcos that come in after next year might decide that they also need their own pipes fills me with dread. Triplicates or multiplicates of wires, cables, poles, environmental mess and so on - no way! When the Democrats, Greens and notionally the Labour Party, say they don't want Telstra sold, what are they really wanting to protect? Isn't a key feature of what we (and presumably this includes the opposition pollies) want public ownership of the *means*, ie the telecommunications infrastructure, of conveying the *message* whatever that might be - e-mail, WWW, video, phone whatever? Joy Sutton From Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au Thu May 16 06:20:08 1996 From: Tony.Barry@anu.edu.au (Tony Barry) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 16:20:08 +1000 Subject: Osemail subscribers - was DNS is not for the feint hearted Message-ID: At 1:20 AM 17/5/96, Robin Whittle wrote: >Evidence is is in the header of this email. My email address is >firspr@ozemail.com.au, but OzEmail's Sendmail program somehow insists >(not always) on inserting the name of the particular computer my >account is on within OzEmail. > > Our list has a bounce coming off an ozemail computer from somebody who is unsubscribed from the list! Beats me how it is happening. I'm going to have to email all of you who are on ozemail to try and identify where the problem is coming from as the header information shows the message boucing around within their system and it is unclear to me what is happening. Apologies in advance. Tony __________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing and Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information Australian National University Library Phone: +61 6 249 4632 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 6 279 8120 Email: Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au CU-SeeMee: ningaui.anu.edu.au From ron@comu.net.au Thu May 16 08:14:58 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 18:14:58 +1000 Subject: Link's not what it could be Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960516081458.006dd9ac@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> was it only a month ago that this thread was around? ron From hartr@hedland.edu.au Thu May 16 08:21:35 1996 From: hartr@hedland.edu.au (Robert Hart) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 16:21:35 +0800 (WST) Subject: DNS is not for the feint hearted In-Reply-To: <199605160523.PAA15700@oznet02.ozemail.com.au> Message-ID: On Thu, 16 May 1996, Robin Whittle wrote: > Robert Hart wrote that running a proper, > independent 24 hour a day Internet service is fraught with > difficulites: > > > > There are also ISP's around with misconfigured DNS as well... > > Two ISP operators have told me that OzEmail, Australia's largest > retail ISP (with ~57,000 customers) does not know how to run its DNS > system and that they have given up complaining to them. > > Evidence is is in the header of this email. My email address is > firspr@ozemail.com.au, but OzEmail's Sendmail program somehow insists > (not always) on inserting the name of the particular computer my > account is on within OzEmail. Oh boy - use the "who do I massquerade as" option in sendmail.cf - I would hardly classify that as a "doozy" - but I must agree that sendmail is tough! Mind you, at least it has a book - try configuring innd from the available documents (O'Reilly advise me that there has been a book "gestating" for nearly three years...)! > The question of ensuring that only well configured systems are > connected to the Internet is probably supposed to be handled by > devolved responsibility. Whichever ISP provides service to the > rogue ISP should probably take responsibility - maybe threatening to > cut them off. With the money at stake, the fast pace of developments > and the fact that the technical staff at all levels of the industry > are still learning their basic Internet ropes, this seems not to be > happening sufficiently. I agree - so how do we handle this in the "anarchy" of the Internet? I have in the past tried polite emails to sites and have had * (a very few) polite responses with thanks and a check back has shown the problem was fixed. * (a few) abusive replies telling me to mind my own business and asking me what I thought I was doing checking their DNS anyway! (and no action taken to correct the error) * mostly total silence - and no action either. This issue is very much a "hidden" one, but without some action, the utility of the Internet will degrade rather rapidly as it expands. In the past, AARNET used to run checks - at least within the .edu.au domain - in the early days I received notification that our site had a config problem on the email system, but now that Telstra has taken over I don't know if any sort of checking occurs... Robert Hart hartr@hedland.edu.au Voice: +61 (0)91 72 0429 Fax: +61 (0)91 72 3560 Hedland College, PMB 1, South Hedland WA 6722 Australia From jwhit@primenet.com Thu May 16 10:03:57 1996 From: jwhit@primenet.com (Jan Whitaker) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 03:03:57 -0700 (MST) Subject: The Tesltra response -Reply In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 16 May 1996, Michael Baczynski wrote: > Rachel said: > > " I know a few people in Tesltra, basically at the customer service end, > but it would appear that knowledge of the Internet in that end of the > organisation is almost nothing." > > Yeah, well, a certain ISP (which will remain nameless save for the fact > that they are a multi-national company) aren't much better. I rang their > inquiries line to find out if they could provide an ISDN connection for an > office. After having to explain what an "ISDN thingy" was, the operator > realised that I was from an office (after having told him three times) and > said that they only provided access for individual users. > > Makes you wonder a little dosen't it? I didn't know that Telstra was multi-national now! Gee! That's almost the exact experience I had calling them about ISDN tariff rates and it took about 10 different forwards to get the answer. You would think that a communication company would know how to do that, communicate I mean. > (-; ;-) Jan Whitaker JLWhitaker Associates \--------/ - jwhit@primenet.com Educational Technology Consultant / - Video and Computer Specialties Melbourne, VIC, Australia \----/ - http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/ Voice: (+613)9534-4334 \--/ From jwhit@primenet.com Thu May 16 10:12:44 1996 From: jwhit@primenet.com (Jan Whitaker) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 03:12:44 -0700 (MST) Subject: The actual Telstra paper In-Reply-To: <19A7C320.1646@dist.gov.au> Message-ID: Why would anyone buy from Telstra direct? If it's pricing, with quality service of course, then so be it. The worry seems to be if they refused to sell access to the ISPs at all. The only way that the US got a competitive long distance market was legal action to require the ATT to sell access to their installed lines. To that time, you bought long distance from "ma bell". That's when prices dropped. If Telstra is allowed to block access to secondary carriers, then we really need to scream because it will then be a true monopoly. Or did I miss something? Jan Whitaker JLWhitaker Associates \--------/ - jwhit@primenet.com Educational Technology Consultant / - Video and Computer Specialties Melbourne, VIC, Australia \----/ - http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/ Voice: (+613)9534-4334 \--/ From ron@comu.net.au Thu May 16 11:37:07 1996 From: ron@comu.net.au (Ron Ipsen) Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 21:37:07 +1000 Subject: The Actual Telstra Paper Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960516113707.0073dbb8@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> Funny how Telstra can change the rules as it suits them, isn't it. They can drop the prices of ISDN just to increase their market share. How long have we asked for that for rural acees and community reasons? They can put POP's in the exchanges,- excuse me but if youve already told the other ISP's that they cant do it and forced them to purchase ISDN lines to POP's outside the exchanges isnt that Unfair trading of some sort? Introduction of timed local calls, but only 25c "flagfall" on calls to their own ISP service? Are these blokes in Fairy land?. Throwing in an additional line to the house for data with the modem software package? The document is full of it. No wonder they are worried about- "(possibly unfavorable) scrutiny from Austel." "Existing ISPs will be invited to become dealers which will involve them handing over their customers to Telstra and winding down their Infrastructure." A good old australian tradition - _Stand and deliver_ :-0 And who does their research. "Average customer spend(residential) is expected to be between $100 and $200 per month." ROFL. Maybe they will spend that much if they use the M$ help desk..... Speaking of which... how many staff are required? Trained by when? still r