Computer underground Digest Sun Mar 26, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 24 ISSN 1004-042X Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Semi-retiring Shadow Archivist: Stanton McCandlish Intelligent Agent: David Smith Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Monster Editor: Loch Nesshrdlu CONTENTS, #7.24 (Sun, Mar 26, 1995) File 1--"Communications Decency Act" Update File 2--EFF Statement on Gorton/Exon "Comm Decency" Amendment File 3--Commentary on "Indecency Bill" from CDT File 4--B. Meeks commentary on Exon Bill (From CyberWire Dispatch) File 5--Additional Commentary on the Exon Legislation File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Mar, 1995) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 14:45:05 -0500 From: ACLU Information Subject: File 1--"Communications Decency Act" Update March 23, 1995 A Cyber Liberties Alert From the ACLU Senate Committee Backs Cyber Censorship, and Imposes Criminal Penalties WHAT JUST HAPPENED The Senate Commerce Committee adopted late this morning a modified version of the Exon bill, the so-called "Communications Decency Act" (originally introduced as Senate Bill 314). Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), who had cosponsored S. 314 with Senator James Exon (D-NE), proposed the amendment in Exon's absence. It was adopted on voice vote as an amendment to the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995. The amendment would subject on-line users to scrutiny and criminal penalties if their messages were deemed to be indecent, lewd, lascivious or filthy -- all communications that are protected by the Free Speech Guarantees of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Although protecting children from pornography is its most often cited rationale, this is really a "bait and switch" with your rights at stake. Note that the amendment in fact goes way beyond child pornorgaphy. It's like the opponents of TV violence who first said children should be protected and then made "Murder She Wrote" with Angela Landsbury their number one target. Or like the censors who banned "Huckleberry Finn," "Where's Waldo?" and even Webster's Dictionary (it has "bad" words in it, after all). The Exon/Gorton Amendment would invite active interference in the basic speech of everyone using any telecommunication device -- simply because some government bureaucrat somewhere thought the speech was indecent or lascivious. All senators on the committee had been informed that the Exon/Gorton amendment would violate the Constitution, assault the liberties of net users, stifle development of new technologies (many of which offer greater choice and control by all users -- including parents), and spawn expensive litigation -- while not succeeding at reducing access by children to pornography. A coalition of civil liberties organizations -- including the ACLU -- and numerous commercial companies warned against adopting the Exon/Gorton amendment, which originally would also have made all online service providers (in fact, anyone transmitting an offensive message) criminally liable. Some commercial companies offered Exon and Gorton language exempting themselves from liability while still letting their subscribers be prosecuted. Today Senator Gorton said that the amendment had been modified to exempt those merely "transmitting" the message. The amendment would, however, still cover anyone who originates a message deemed indecent, lascivious etc. WHAT YOU CAN DO 1. Contact the senators from your state, and all senators on the Commerce Commitee expressing your disappointment with this morning's action. Thank Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-SD) for not including the Exon/Gorton amendment in his proposed bill, and urge him to support action on the Senate floor to remove the anti-cyber amendment. 2. Contact your online service providers and ask them what they have been doing about this Exon/Gorton assault on your liberties. Some providers are still standing up for your rights; others may not have.Urge them, not to support any legislation that protects them, but violates your free speech rights. Urge them to oppose the modified Exon/Gorton amendment. 3. Contact all the other senators and urge them to support deletion of the Exon/Gorton amendment when the bill comes to the Senate floor. 4. Stay tuned for further information and action items for both House and Senate. The American Civil Liberties Union is a nationwide, nonpartisan organization of over 275,000 members. Now in its 75th year, the ACLU is devoted exclusively to protecting the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, whereever these liberties are at risk--in a bookstore, in school, on the street, in cyberspace, wherever. The ACLU does this through legislative action, public education and litigation. --------------------------------------------------------------- Send your letter by e-mail, fax, or snail mail to: Senator Larry Pressler, S.D. Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation SR-254 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-6125 (202) 224-5842 (phone) (202) 224-1259 (fax of Commerce Committee) e-mail: larry_pressler@pressler.senate.gov To maximize the impact of your letter, you should also write to the members of the Senate Commerce Committee and to your own Senators. Majority Members of the Senate Commerce Committee ------------------------------------------------- Senator Bob Packwood, Ore. SR-259 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-3702 (202) 224-5244 (phone) (202) 228-3576 (fax) Senator Ted Stevens, Alaska SH-522 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0201 (202) 224-3004 (phone) (202) 224-1044 (fax) Senator John McCain, Ariz. SR-111 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0303 (202) 224-2235 (phone) (202) 228-2862 (fax) Senator Conrad Burns, Mont. SD-183 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2603 (202) 224-2644 (phone) (202) 224-8594 (fax) Senator Slade Gorton, Wash. SH-730 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4701 (202) 224-3441 (phone) (202) 224-9393 (fax) e-mail: senator_gorton@gorton.senate.gov Senator Trent Lott, Miss. SR-487 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2403 (202) 224-6253 (phone) (202) 224-2262 (fax) Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Tex. SH-703 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4303 (202) 224-5922 (phone) (202) 224-0776 (fax) e-mail: senator@hutchison.senate.gov Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Maine SR-174 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-1903 (202) 224-5344 (phone) (202) 224-6853 (fax) Senator John Ashcroft, Mo. SH-705 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2504 (202) 224-6154 (phone) (202) 224-7615 Minority Members of the Senate Commerce Committee ------------------------------------------------- Senator Ernest F. Hollings, S.C. SR-125 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4002 (202) 224-6121 (phone) (202) 224-4293 (fax) Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii SH-772 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-1102 (202) 224-3934 (phone) (202) 224-6747 (fax) Senator Wendell H. Ford, Ky. SR-173A Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-1701 (202) 224-4343 (phone) (202) 224-0046 (fax) e-mail: wendell_ford@ford.senate.gov Senator J. James Exon, Neb. SH-528 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2702 (202) 224-4224 (phone) (202) 224-5213 (fax) Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, W. Va. SH-109 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4802 (202) 224-6472 (phone) (202) 224-1689 (fax) Senator John F. Kerry, Mass. SR-421 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2102 (202) 224-2742 (phone) (202) 224-8525 (fax) Senator John B. Breaux, La SH-516 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-1803 (202) 224-4623 (phone) (202) 224-2435 (fax) Senator Richard H. Bryan, Nev. SR-364 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-2804 (202) 224-6244 (phone) (202) 224-1867 (fax) Senator Byron L. Dorgan, N.D. SH-713 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-3405 (202) 224-2551 (phone) (202) 224-1193 (fax) You can also write or fax your own Senator at: The Honorable ______________________ U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 Senate directories including fax numbers may be found at: gopher://ftp.senate.gov:70 gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu:70/0/socsci/polscilaw/uslegi Additional information about the ACLU's position on this issue and others affecting civil liberties online and elsewhere may be found at: gopher:\\aclu.org:6601 OR request our FAQ at infoaclu@aclu.org -- ACLU Free Reading Room | American Civil Liberties Union gopher://aclu.org:6601 | 132 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY 10036 mailto:infoaclu@aclu.org| "Eternal vigilance is the ftp://ftp.pipeline.com | price of liberty" ------------------------------ From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: File 2--EFF Statement on Gorton/Exon "Comm Decency" Amendment Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:32:34 -0500 (EST) Communications Decency Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee ------------------------------------------------------------ Electronic Frontier Foundation - March 25, 1995 - Distribute widely March 23, 1995, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed telecom legislation that included an amended version of the Communications Decency Act of 1995, commonly known as "the Exon Amendment." This draft was introduced by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-VT). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) opposes the inclusion of the "decency" provisions in this legislation for the following reasons: * The bill places operators of smaller systems at risk. While the new version of the bill seems to attempt to protect large information service providers by including a list of available defenses, smaller bulletin board systems (BBSs) and other information services that cannot afford to assert these defenses in court are left without any protection at all. Operators of smaller, local systems will be unable to test the line where constitutional speech ends and criminal speech begins. These small businesses of the online world are put at a competitive disadvantage. Also, protections such as lack of editorial control (Section 402[d][2]) may not apply to the majority of bulletin board systems and many other online services that provide content as well as conduit, nor to systems that present certain types of moderated forums. The ambiguity of the coverage and defenses leaves gaps that raise serious constitutional issues. In 1989, the Supreme Court in _Sable_Communications_v._FCC_ established that indecent material cannot be banned entirely, and that prohibiting indecency to protect minors is an unconstitutional violation of the free speech rights of adults. The prohibition of "filthy" speech has no legal authority whatsoever. The Gorton/Exon amendment may fail to distinguish between consensual and non-consensual activities, and between private and public communications. A steamy love note sent privately between spouses could be a criminal violation of this statute, and there may be a potential for system operators to be held liable for failing to label users' private email as "filthy". Finally, the Communications Decency bill attempts to apply to online media many restrictions that do not apply to printed or verbal expression. Transmitting an online version of a "lascivious" book could subject the sender to unreasonable fines and imprisonment, while mailing the book in hardcopy or reading aloud from the book would be protected under the First Amendment. * The bill is vague and leaves system operators open to prosecution under diverse community standards. The bill does not define "obscene" communications, leaving individual states to assert their own definition of community standards and to prosecute system operators maintaining systems anywhere in the country. _U.S._v._Thomas_, a case currently under appeal in Memphis federal court - in which two system operators running a BBS in California were convicted of obscenity charges after a federal officer dialed in from Tennessee and downloaded material from the BBS - clearly illustrates the danger of leaving terms like "obscenity" undefined in an online world. Also, passages such as "to provide users with the means to restrict access to communications" (Section 402[d][3][A]) are so vague that the entire Internet is already either in violation or in compliance, depending upon interpretation. Such failures to express clearly the extent and nature of the defenses would allow prosecutors to claim and "prove" virtually any lack of such means to restrict access given a sympathetic court, leaving system operators attempting to comply with the law little guidance on how to avoid being brought up on criminal charges. * The bill would negate the rights of adults to choose what to read and with whom to associate, as well as the rights of parents to decide what is and is not appropriate for their own children. EFF supports the ability of online communities to establish their own standards and to self-regulate content as a more reasonable and realistic model of dealing with potential problems of online subject matter. Parents can direct their children to areas of age-appropriate material online, where participants, including parents, engage in "neighborhood watch" activities to limit possibly offensive content. "Filtering" technologies already in development and use by online services can further help to ensure that parents can restrict their own children's access to electronically-distributed materials. In general, passing restrictive laws is not the way to solve problems with rapidly evolving technologies like telecommunications - particularly when the laws are based on obsolete regulations of wholly different media. It is ironic that the Gorton/Exon amendment, which would chill the development of online services and communities, has been attached to a bill deregulating communications infrastructure. This deregulation has been presented as a boost to the pace of development of the very technology to support these services and communities. EFF believes that parents, not Congress or the FCC, have the right and responsibility to determine what is appropriate for their children to see, and we do not think Congress should make outlaws out of adults for engaging in speech that may not be suitable for minors. As Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter ruled in _Butler_v._Michigan_ in 1957: The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. For amendment text, updates and action alerts, see: ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/ gopher.eff.org, 1/Alerts http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/ For more information, contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation ask@eff.org +1 202 861 7700 (voice), +1 202 861 1258 (fax) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:29:05 -0600 From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas) Subject: File 3--Commentary on "Indecency Bill" from CDT CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY ------------------------------------------------------------- A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online ------------------------------------------------------------ CDT POLICY POST 3/23/95 Number 5 CONTENTS: (1) Exon Indecency Bill Approved by Sen. Commerce Committee (3) About the Center For Democracy and Technology This document may be re-distributed freely providing it remains in its entirety. ------------------------------------------------------------ EXON INDECENCY BILL APPROVED BY SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE The Senate Commerce Committee voted unanimously today to adopt S. 314, Senator Exon's "Communications Decency Act", as an amendment to the Senate telecommunications reform legislation. The amendment was introduced by Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) on behalf of himself an Exon (D-NE). It received no significant debate and was unanimously approved on a voice vote. The bill was amended from its original form to limit liability for telecommunications carriers and online service providers, but users and content providers would still be criminally liable for any communications that are deemed "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent". An analysis of these provisions by CDT, as well as the full text of the bill will be posted later today. On initial analysis, CDT still believes that the bill is an unconstitutional violation of the free speech and privacy rights of network users and content providers. Although the Commerce Committee did vote to send the Telecommunications reform legislation to the Senate floor, there are still serious disputes about the entire package. Because of this, there are still many opportunities to remove the "Indecency Provision" as the bill moves to the floor. Stay tuned for further analysis and additional information from CDT. -------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public interest organization. The Center's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that advance constitutional civil liberties and democratic values in new computer and communications technologies. Contacting us: General information on CDT can be obtained by sending mail to www/ftp/gopher archives are currently under construction, and should be up and running by the end of March. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:29:10 -0600 From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas) Subject: File 4--B. Meeks commentary on Exon Bill (From CyberWire Dispatch) CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1995 // Warning: This article contains material that is potentially criminal in nature and could be considered "indecent" under certain provisions of the proposed Senate Telecommunications reform bill. You have been warned. Jacking in from the "You Can't Fool All the People All The Time" Port: Washington -- The brain-dead, ill-named Communications Decency Act (S.314) was, as expected, folded into the Senate's telecommunications reform package today, which was approved on a 17-2 vote by the Commerce Committee. This bill, sponsored by Senator James Exon (D-Neb.), who is punching out of the Senate after his term ends this year, would essentially make criminals of anyone sending messages ambiguously defined as "indecent" across the Internet. The bill makes no distinction between consensual or nonconsensual: If you're given to sending the occasional lusty message to that someone special, under this bill, you're fucked. In fact, under the language of the bill, that last sentence could land me a cozy jail cell and tap my checkbook for a cool $100,000 in fines. The bill has whipped up a firestorm of controversy, resulting in what amounts to a virtual uprising among Internet users. The day before the Senate committee vote, an Internet driven petition that garnered more than 100,000 "signatures" was presented to Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.). The petition apparently fell on deaf ears. The bill, added as an amendment to the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995 was passed on a voice vote; there were no dissenters. The bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), gave lip service to the concerns raised by civil liberties groups, saying that because our "kids have access to all this junk" on the Internet, the amendment was needed. Gorton said Exon had sufficiently addressed the "outcries" of the Internet community by changing language in the bill that would have held Internet service providers, commercial information systems such as America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy and telecommunications carriers libel by the mere fact that they were party to the "indecent speech" because it was swept through their electronic veins. Apparently, only the individual sending the message is now held criminally responsible. Well, fuck that. (Damn, that's two counts of indecency... quick, delete this from your system or you, too, may be held accountable...) Just how much Exon has changed the bill isn't known; his staff didn't circulate the amendment's new language. Regardless, the bill is bad blood. "We absolutely still oppose this bill," said Jerry Berman, ex-EFF director who's now heading his own policy group, the Center for Democracy and Technology. Even if the bill has been "narrowed" to sting only individuals, "it's still unconstitutional," Berman said. Berman's group has floated a proposal that relies on technological advancements that would enable parents to keep their innocents from being virtually violated by the Internet's sometimes rough and tumble language. The bill is flawed from the outset. While a 12-year-old can sneak a peek at Playboy at this local 7-11 or drool while reading the graphic descriptions of blow jobs in a Daniel Steele novel at Crown Books, the same type of material will land you in jail under this bill. And now, instead of being able fight the bill as a stand alone item, it's now wrapped into the broader telecommunications reform package, a piece of legislation that everyone in the industry with a heart beat has a hard on for. To defeat this beast now will require procedural surgery when the reform bill hits the Senate floor for debate. The moronic stance of this bill can be illustrated by taking a short stroll to men's restroom, the one just down the all from where this august body of lawmakers was holding forth on how to shape the future of telecommunications. Once inside the men's room, a left turn into any of the several stalls reveals entire walls of graffiti that looked like they were plucked from Alt.Sex.Suck-My-Dick. Here you'll find phone numbers with invitations to get personal with someone's "Big 10 inch." There are anatomically correct -- if slightly exaggerated -- sketches of homoerotic acts. And in another stall, someone has even clipped what appears to be photos from a sexually explicit gay men's magazines and pasted them to the walls and toilet paper dispensers. Exiting the restroom, a youngster, no more than 10, visiting his "lawmakers in action" pushed passed me to the stalls, a pained, urgent look on his face... Leaving the restroom I turned to check for a warning sign, something, anything that would have warned my urgent young stranger about the experience he was about to partake of in the pursuit of a moment of freedom. There was no warning. No sign. I made a note and dropped it off at Exon's office. I was going to Email him, but he doesn't have it... and I doubt he'd accept it from an "indecent message trafficker" such as myself anyway. Meeks out... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:51:01 EDT From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 5--Additional Commentary on the Exon Legislation The "Communication Indecency Act" has received considerable media attention, and little of it favorable. Little wonder--there is nothing of redemptive value in the Bill, and reasonable observers recognize it as a threat to Constitutional speech protections or--worse--a potential mechanism for over-zealous moral entrepreneurs to engage in witch hunts for "objectionable" or offensive material not to their liking. One of the greatest dangers in the legislation is that it risks making the lowest threshold of tolerance the national standard. Speech content that one jurisdiction finds "offensive," even if not legally obscene, risks felony prosecutionn. Successful passage of the law could make it a felony to transmit public federal documents across the Nets. Who, for example, could not cringe when reading the Jacob Baker "snuff" extracts from his public federal indictment? Who would want their 12 year old to read the prosecutor's vivid descriptions of the Amateur Action BBS indictment? More complicates is what counts as offensive or objectionable? There is no historical justification to believe that prosecutors would not expand the wording of the law to include a wide range of expressions that were either socially unproper or that or of value as political currency to ambitious politicians and prosecutors. Fortunately, the legislation has not escaped media attention. For example, Peter Lewis, writing in the March 26, 1995 (CYBERSEX STAYS HOT, DESPITE A PLAN FOR COOLING IT OFF) notes: "My major concern is to make the new Internet and information superhighway as safe as possible for kids to travel," said Sen. Jim Exon, D-Neb., author of the proposed Communications Decency Act of 1995, in a telephone interview on Saturday. The proposal, which cleared the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday without dissent, would impose fines of as much as $100,000 and two-year prison terms on anyone who knowingly transmits any "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" communications on the nation's telecommunications networks. The law would apply to telephone systems, cable, and broadcast television systems, and public and private computer networks, including the global Internet. ....................... "The potential danger here is that material that most rational and reasonable people would interpret as pornography and smut is falling into the hands of minors," Exon said. "The information superhighway is in my opinion a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions or guidelines on it." The proposals for restrictions have been met with incredulity and outrage by Internet users, legal experts, and civil libertarians, who contend that efforts to halt the flow of information in cyberspace - where, in effect, every computer is both a bookstore and a printing press - are futile on both technical and legal grounds. ....................... So attempting to filter out sex-related material from the torrent of digital bits passing through tens of thousands of computer networks "is like shooting an ICBM at a gnat," said David Banisar, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a lobbying group in Washington. "It can't be done without the absolutely most Draconian methods being used." Dan L. Burk, visiting assistant professor of law at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., noted that courts had required earlier attempts to protect minors from objectionable information, as in telephone "dial-a-porn" cases, to use the "least restrictive means" to accomplish the goal. A comprehensive ban on such material on computer networks, he said, could restrict material that courts have ruled legal to disseminate to adults through more conventional outlets. "If the burden becomes too high for protected adult speech, then the statute clearly is not going to pass muster" in the federal courts, Burk said. Stephen Chapman, an editorialist for the Chicago Tribune (March 26, 1995: Sect. 4, p. 3) argued that the proposed legislation uses a "scattershot approach" to ban the transmission of not only anything that is legally obscene, "a very narrow category, but anything that is 'indecent,' an exceedingly broad term that could implicate even G-rated fare. He identifies two major problems with Exon's proposal: The first is that it may expose on-line services to criminal liability just for letting adults willingly converse, or exchange material, on sexual subjects of interest to both of them." ............ The second problem is that the measure curtails not only the access of children to adult fare, but the freedom of adults to see and read what they choose. Most of us have no interest in participating in a discussion of weird sexual practices, but that's no reason to gag the people who do. We don't restrict such voluntary, private communications if they take place on the phone or face-to-face; why should the Internet be treated differently? Coincidentally, the Chicago Tribune also began on Sunday a substantial four part series on the Internet, extolling its virtues. If the legislation proposed by Exon survives, the chilling effect of either direct or indirect censorship will subvert some of the most significant virtues--namely, the freedom to express ideas, even outrageous and offensive ones. Few would argue that children should be given unrestricted access to some of the excesses of Internet expressivity. The battle is over how to implement safeguards. The primary flaw with the Exon proposal is that it confuses restricting access with restricting speech, pursuing the latter and ignoring the former. Legislators are not known for their techno-literacy. But, there is some irony in the fact that a Congress that advocates "getting government off our backs" seems so willing to invoke government power to suppress speech rather than find ways to accommodate to the freedom of expression while restricting access to some forms of expression to minors. Stephen Chapman, hardly known for liberalism has it right: Freedom can be a scary thing for lawmakers who think they have a right to police our thoughts, but freedom has been the lifeblood of computer communications. Sacrificing that freedom is likely to stifle communications, and progress, without appreciably improving our morals. The Exon proposal, the text of which I have received via E-mail from a federal source, is truly offensive. If the legislation passes, the authors and purveyors are the CuD candidates for the first prosecutions. ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 22:51:01 CDT From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Mar, 1995) Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are available at no cost electronically. CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest Or, to subscribe, send a one-line message: SUB CUDIGEST your name Send it to LISTSERV@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-0303), fax (815-753-6302) or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. To UNSUB, send a one-line message: UNSUB Send it to LISTSERV@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (NOTE: The address you unsub must correspond to your From: line) Issues of CuD can also be found in the Usenet comp.society.cu-digest news group; on CompuServe in DL0 and DL4 of the IBMBBS SIG, DL1 of LAWSIG, and DL1 of TELECOM; on GEnie in the PF*NPC RT libraries and in the VIRUS/SECURITY library; from America Online in the PC Telecom forum under "computing newsletters;" On Delphi in the General Discussion database of the Internet SIG; on RIPCO BBS (312) 528-5020 (and via Ripco on internet); and on Rune Stone BBS (IIRGWHQ) (203) 832-8441. 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