Computer underground Digest Sun May 7, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 36 ISSN 1004-042X Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET) Archivist: Brendan Kehoe Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala Ian Dickinson Goddess of Judyism Editor: J. Tenuta CONTENTS, #7.36 (Sun, May 7, 1995) File 1--PNEWS,cr,cj-5/7> Truth, Political Action, and Cyberspace File 2--A solution to the digital copyright problem File 3--New GRAY AREAS includes Cybernews & Notes File 4--Vote FRO^H^H....(Ah, that ol' backspace) - (eye Reprint) File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Apr, 1995) CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 13:55:15 +0000 From: Richard K. Moore Subject: File 1--PNEWS,cr,cj-5/7> Truth, Political Action, and Cyberspace Truth, Political Action, and Cyberspace Richard K. Moore rkmoore@iol.ie 7 May 1995 Several threads were woven together in the CyberWinter Schedule, as is necessary for the overall picture to be presented. And given the concise nature of internet postings, it was obviously impossible to endow each point with comprehensive documentation or analysis in a single message. But I want to assure you that the thesis is not an exaggerated one, and that it was not an emotional response to recent alarming events, nor a paranoid interpretation of isolated phenomenon. It is my intention to take each point in turn in future postings, keying off of representative skeptical response-postings, and substantiate the point as necessary. Vigdor Shreibman has a favorite saying, "Speak truth to power". My preference is to "Speak truth to those who can benefit from it". Truth is not a matter of optimism or pessimism, nor a matter of feeling comfortable, nor a matter of expressing one's psychological attitude, nor of stating how one would like things to be -- truth is a matter of "what is". There are those who prefer to minimize the dangers facing them, because it gives them hope. There are others who prefer to exaggerate dangers, because it reinforces their personal sense of hopelessness, arising from their psychological neuroses. But if you have a serious desire to make a difference politically, you cannot afford to cloud your vision with preferences, nor to select the facts you look at in order to achieve personal comfort. In wartime, a good general must be totally honest about the enemy's capabilities, intentions, and style of engagement. In political activism, you must similarly be totally honest, unless your desire is simply to make yourself feel better by doing "something". --- The prospects for salvaging democracy in today's world happen to be grim. I wish it were otherwise. We happen to live in a world where the production and distribution of goods and information are increasingly organized on a global scale, and where the controlling parameters are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few score transnational corporations, and their growing network of commissions and agencies, operating outside the control of representative political frameworks. The scale and integration of global activity has quite simply outgrown the political structures that humankind has been able to construct to manage it. The majority of nations are minor players in the global drama, having a smaller annual balance sheet than the large corporations. Their sovereignty is subject to the dictates of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the autonomous policies of international financial institutions and industrial corporations. The flow of news and information is less and less controlled by domestic sources, and more and more by global media conglomerates. This isn't a theory (conspiracy or otherwise), this is simply how the global system works. This gobalization is not even denied by the forces which bring it about -- they proclaim it as a good thing, and paint it with euphemistic slogans like "modernization", "global competitiveness", and "reform". It is important to pay attention to the details of this globalist rhetoric. It always emphasizes economic factors, and carefully avoids discussion of the political aspects of the institutions being put in place. The new spate of mechanisms designed to consolidate and rationalize the global system -- GATT, NAFTA, and the like -- are sold entirely as mechanisms to streamline world trade. It is left to independent spokespeople -- Chomsky always being the first to come to mind, although he is by no means unique in his analysis -- to point out that these autonomous commisssions are being endowed with tremendous _political_ power. They are empowered to supercede national sovereignty with regard to the environment, labor, regulation of industry, and finacial policy. Under the rubric of preventing "protectionism", nations are increasingly unable to exercise responsibility over the quality of life or the welfare of their citizens. The political nature of the globalist system is intentionally downplayed because, if it wasn't, there are obvious questions which would arise, such as "Who chooses the commissioners?", and "What democratic controls exist over their deliberations and rulings?". These would be very embarrassing questions for the globalist forces to deal with, because the answers to these kinds of questions are also obvious: the commissions are populated by members of the corporate elite, are chartered to facilitate corporate operations, and are beholden to no effective democratic process. By focusing public attention on the "free trade" aspects of these commissions, and maintaining an effective blackout of the more general political ramifications, the critically-needed democratic discussion is avoided. --- Cyberspace is not all that central to this globalist drama, but is intertwined with it in very interesting ways. Cyberspace is inherently global in its reach, and its current independence from control by the globalist forces is a striking anomaly. As a realm of economic development, cyberspace offers the potential for significant corporate profits, and we can observe the globalist forces at work as they strive to transform it into yet-another marketplace. As a means of information dissemination, cyberspace is typical of other mass media, and we can observe the globalist forces as they attempt bring its content under the control of the same monopolies that control (directly or indirectly) most of the content of television news, and the international wire services. Where cyberspace is most unique, is in its potential to facilitate the independent distribution of information, and to enable grass-roots political activity. It is in this regard that cyberspace _does_ assume a central position in the globalist drama, at least potentially. It is not the profits lost due to free information distribution that is most threatening to the globalists, it is the fact that the information distribution is "out of control" -- people can exchange independent news and views with one another on a mass scale and across national boundaries; they can develop agendas and promote democratic activity; they have the potential to build political consensus that is outside the bounds of the smoothly running global propaganda machine, and the corporate-dominated political party regimes. We must honestly admit that this potential has gone largely untapped, but that may be beginning to change, and the threat is all-to-obvious to those currently holding the comfortable reins of power. This is why cyberspace is currently being attacked intensively and on a broad front, out of proportion to its thus-far effect. I don't mean to minimize the inspiring work being done on the net by thousands of individuals and organizations, but it has not yet succeeded in effectively breaking out of its virtual domain, and making a significant impact on real-world politics. The race is now on to see if cyberspace can earn the fear in which it is held by those in power, before it is effectively subdued due to its potential. --- As political activists, we have a responsibility to make much more effective use of this unprecedented educational and organizational tool while it remains available to us. And given the global nature of our tool, and the globalism of today's poltical forces, it is imperative that we think globally AND act globally. We need to bring together people and organizations with similar interests from around the world. Local trade unions in the north of England, for example, have more in common with similar groups in India or Chicago, than they do with the Tories or Mr. Blair's version of the Labour Party. Cyberspace provides the opportunity to build new constituencies and coalitions that cut across traditional boundaries of location, race, class, and political systems. The _content_ of our organizing must address the globalist forces that increasingly control the parameters of all of our lives. We cannot afford to focus most of our energy on minor skirmishes and superficial issues. We cannot limit our attention to issues directly related to the network, and most important -- we need to spend less time pursuing the intellectual fun of arguing with one another over arcane philosophical fine points, and learn to develop practical political agendas, and persue effective political organizaing. We need to break out of our various single-issue discussion groups, and learn to work and communicate on something approaching a net-wide basis (which automatically becomes a geographically global basis.) -rkm Estagon: ... Let's go Vladimir: We can't Estragon: Why not? Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett (1906-1989): Waiting for Godot A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond. Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74): Citizen of the World, No 7 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ========================================================================= Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) Working Group: CAMPAIGN FOR CYBER RIGHTS cyber-rights@cpsr.org Available online: web pointers, FAQ, list archives, library: World Wide Web: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/cyber-rights.html http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/cyber-rights.html FTP: ftp://jasper.ora.com/pub/andyo/cyber-rights You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages and online materials, for non-commercial use, pursuant to any contained copyright & redistribution restrictions. ========================================================================= ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by -- Richard K. Moore -- rkmoore@iol.ie -- Wexford, Ireland. Moderator for: CYBER-RIGHTS & CYBERJOURNAL (@CPSR.ORG) World Wide Web: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/cyber-rights.html http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/cyber-rights.html FTP: ftp://jasper.ora.com/pub/andyo/cyber-rights You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages and online materials, for non-commercial use, pursuant to any contained copyright & redistribution restrictions. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 14:38:59 -0500 (CDT) From: Wade Riddick Subject: File 2--A solution to the digital copyright problem Open Letter: Fixing the Digital Copyright Dilemma with Telerights: Copying is easy; decryption is not (c) 1995 By Wade Riddick All rights reserved Circulate freely unaltered Released May 7, 1995. After reading the National Information Infrastructure debate on intellectual property reform in the digital age, one could conclude that computers and copyrights have come to an impasse. The copyright code assumes that copying is difficult and expensive, hence authors are rewarded on a per copy basis. Digital technology makes such copying nearly costless. Why reward authors for their part in a costless transaction? Some have proposed drastically curtailing electronic technology in order to protect future publishers. They want to put all forms of computer copying under the copyright code -- even reading a program from disk into RAM. They want to ban the electronic resale or renting of copyrighted material fearing that the piracy which has plagued software will plague movies and books when they enter cyberspace. I believe it is possible to use this conflict as fuel for a new, stronger system of copyright protection. First we need to understand the function of intellectual property laws and the capabilities of digital technology. In the past, copyright law has not been able to reward authors based on the benefits others gain from using their creations. The law has had to equate purchasing or viewing a copy of the work with using it because the cost of verifying and enforcing any other kind of contract has usually been too high. It was also assumed users were literate enough to interpret the replicas they purchased. Digital documents, unlike written ones, can be quite easily manipulated, reproduced and transformed. Individuals can link numbers together into combinations that can be hard to understand. This fluidity contains the solution to the copyright dilemma. In the computer world, context is everything. Every byte gets interpreted at some point whether it's in a text file scanned by a printer putting symbols on a page or it's in a program being read by the microprocessor. Passive data doesn't exist; everything's an instruction. But the context needed for proper interpretation is not always portable on the user's whim. It is impossible, for instance, to run Windows programs on a Macintosh without purchasing a special operating context. We can adapt copyrights to the digital world if we realize that it takes a special form of literacy to use digital information. In other words, duplicating an author's digital work may be easy, but decrypting it is not. That requires extra, privately held information. Using this contextual insight to create secure digital copyrights requires adding two more layers of interpretation to computer operating systems. Not only must data be encrypted, it must also have the power to communicate with its publisher for the unique and private key needed to decrypt itself. Only by using two layers can we prevent the theft of both the original document and the private information (context) needed to make the document useful. I call this a system of 'telerights.' A user would buy an encrypted copy of the document from the author or publisher. Each individual version would have a different key, so the user could make many duplicates but in essence only own the one 'copy' that was paid for. When the user wanted to use the document, it would contact its publisher for the key. If no other versions with the same key were in use, the publisher would send the key to the user's machine and the document would decrypt itself into an area of temporary memory like RAM. When the user was done, the document would delete the decrypted version. Users would regain the fair use property rights in cyberspace they have come to expect in the printed domain. Users could make and pass around as many copies as they like because the publisher could guarantee a one to one correspondence between sales and use. A professor, for example, could lend out books to his students or sell used software -- two acts considered illegal under the current system of digital copyrights. The old problem of piracy would be turned on its head. The user instead of the publisher would have to worry about theft. When someone stole his copy, they would steal his use of it as well. There would be no assurance the person you buy used information from would delete their old copies. Because the bond of contractual trust between publisher and purchaser would be perpetually renewed, this would be a simple problem to guard against. The publisher would always know where and when a work was in use, so users could ask publishers to ban certain sites from using a particular version of a document (in the case of used data) or restrict use to a particular site or user ID (if we're dealing with virtual terminals). This is one way parents could control the flow of information going to their children. In any event, this wouldn't terribly onerous. A reseller could always purchase another version with a different key. Stronger property rights will vastly expand the market for copyrighted material. Libraries would no longer have to purchase books that went unread. They could average out their risk in the same way some banks do with mortgage derivations by pooling their funds together and purchasing expensive or esoteric information for their common use. Corporations could purchase telerighted documents, then double encrypt them and rent them out with fixed duration keys. By republishing a document you could loan it to a friend without worrying about it being returned. By knowing when, where and what parts of a collaborative work were in use, publishers would better know how to reward individual artists in a project. I could use parts of a telerighted document in my own publication and the original publisher would know better how to bill me for that use. Furthermore, one could break up the public airwaves into multiple private channels. ABC could teleright its sitcoms and distribute them freely over the internet. No one would ever watch quite the same thing at quite the same time again, but network store and forward technology would vastly decrease distribution costs. By telerighting each copy, the networks and their advertisers would know exactly who watched their programs and how often. Telerights combine networking technology with encryption, software meters and object oriented intelligent documents... items that have all been hot topics by themselves or in various subsets. To my knowledge no one has yet brought these concepts together under one roof, although a few efforts have come close. Since before the start of microprocessor clocks, Ted Nelson has been pushing the concept of hypertext publishers. His ideas have inspired World Wide Web development and a host of other network computing innovations. By itself, though, his theoretical Xanadu server lacks cryptological security and fails to take advantage of high bandwidth networks, distributed computing and object-oriented data distribution. The Copyright Office itself is creating an archive that will bind copyrighted documents together with information about their publishers. The Copyright Clearance Center has set up a World Wide Web site where users can negotiate rights with publishers and, in conjunction with Folio Corp., it is designing a CD-ROM LAN system so that universities and large businesses can be billed according to how they use information. These projects target large government institutions and private corporations because they have a large technological base and both use and publish vast amounts of intellectual property. They are natural starting places for new systems of copyright protection. These projects, though, won't keep up with the technology as it spreads into the home. In the future information won't be this easy to centralize. For one thing, CD-ROMs will be easy for individuals to copy and although piracy is rather easy to detect in large organizations, individual users won't be paralyzed by that same fear. On the consumer side of today's market we have 'interactive TV' -- a decidedly different sort of venture since most homes cannot manage digital information. This system gets around the piracy issue by directly broadcasting information on demand to home televisions. Because people lack the technology to copy the information entering the home in any useful way, many scholars have proposed using on demand broadcast as the model for the future distribution of intellectual property. I dislike the on demand system because it denies individuals the ability to own their own copies of information. Even if you get around the problem of future users being able to record information transmitted into their home, under telerights it will always be cheaper to resend a key instead of the whole document. 'Interactive TV' is a poor model for the future because it concentrates too much on the later half of the term -- the television, a very dumb device. These projects make important technical and social contributions to the protection of intellectual property. In all fairness to them, even though the technology exists, the infrastructure needed to make a system like telerights work is not yet in place. I think getting it in place will be the most difficult part of the whole affair. I am assuming, of course, that the problems telerights share with other internet projects can be solved -- namely, that everyone will get a personal, high bandwidth network connection and generic security issues will be laid to rest. If it turns out to be technically impossible to produce secure cryptographic codes or prevent the counterfeiting of network addresses, my project and a host of others will go down the drain. I'm optimistic these technological issues will be settled, so that leaves us with the question of how to standardize teleright technology and make it widespread. This will take some coordination among computer makers, operating system designers, phone companies, network providers, software concerns and, of course, the government. The government does not need to alter existing copyright laws; telerights are merely new contractual forms. It does need to clarify the regulatory environment and encourage companies to agree on and accept a standard. Since the government is a large producer and consumer of intellectual property, it can facilitate the acceptance of a standard by using public monies to purchase first generation systems. The contemporary regulatory breakdown of the old content/carrier distinction makes all this problematic. On the consumer end, there is the privacy issue. Any company that both maintains other people's teleright accounts and publishes its own documents will be tempted to use for financial gain private information about other companies' customers. It would perhaps be best to assign day to day teleright accounting to a government agency or semi-public utility. After all, when you transfer title on land, it's publicly registered at the local courthouse. Telerights aren't much different. Government is the ultimate enforcer of property rights and is also the best place to ensure anonymity in the collection of economic statistics. On the corporate end, without clearly defined lines in the market companies will be tempted to use the standardization process to compete against one another. It will take longer to establish a winner if rival standards emerge. In the interim, old copyright laws will continue to be inadequate in the digital world so a delay in the standardization process might make attractive solutions that look less palatable today. The issue of encryption itself is sticky because there are already two established and ideologically opposed groups fighting about it. The government must be coaxed into relaxing its objections to strong encryption and Clipper opponents must learn to accept a key escrow standard to which the government has warranted access. Bobby Inman has proposed using the Federal Reserve as one of the depositories for cryptological keys for a very good reason. In an information economy, information is money. Just as the government supervises banks to make sure that they do not launder money, counterfeit currency, falsify bank sheets or expose themselves or their customers to abnormal risks, so too must the government regulate telerights. One doesn't need to look at the Great Depression to remember the benefits of regulation. The '80s S&L debacle will suffice. The government must also encourage software and computer companies to accept some level of professionalization. With the proper tools and knowledge it will be possible to trap keys or decrypted documents stored in temporary memory. These tools and skills must be tightly regulated and those sections of the operating system must be shut off from amateur tampering. This may cause angst among some programmers but for most of us this should not be a burden. It does, after all, take a license (and the proper employer) to tamper with phone boxes and electric meters. Part of the digital frontier must be closed and civilized if society is to settle the land and make it productive. Although it may be possible to make telerights work without encryption, it would involve a more onerous regulation of programming. One would have to vastly restrict low level media access to make unencrypted telerights work because it would be easy to pull raw information off the disk with a sector editor. With encryption, the restrictions are narrower and easier to enforce because the data is coded wherever it is stored in permanent form. Only certain sections of the runtime environment need to be restricted. Telerights will not eliminate all forms of electronic piracy, but by lowering transaction costs and raising the risk and expense of counterfeiting, the most widespread individual and institutional forms of piracy will be severely curtailed. It won't prevent the pirating of physical, non-digital materials like books but it doesn't have to. Information goes digital because it is more useful in that form. Hypertext indices cannot be printed out and scanned back in nor can people make videotapes of movies playing on their screen and expect to retain the original fidelity. A digital document is a non-linear object that always plays back in a linear frame. Given the low costs of electronically distributing materials and the strength of the teleright protection system, many would-be pirates may opt instead to sub-license and re-publish materials both in physical and electronic form. Users do have to give up some 'privacy' to make telerights work, but their behavior is not turned into a public document. Like a number of other encrypted communication schemes, telerights breaks up public broadcast channels into a multitude of two-way private channels that span the boundaries of public and private, sprawling across an indeterminate number of nodes. Users will chose give up some privacy for the added convenience and the lower costs of information. They will also gain a measure back since they will be able to encrypt information about themselves and better control who has access to it. We are, to use the old Chinese pejorative, living in interesting times. Why the Chinese have historically found this undesirable I do not know. Their word for 'crisis' means both 'danger' and 'opportunity' and our western capitalism has always been fueled by such critical change. When it comes to social conflicts over the development of the internet, we shouldn't forget the creative part of Schumpeter's "creative destruction." We just need to follow Carver Mead's advice to "listen to the technology"... in this case, at least to our own cliches. If the future is one of distributed intelligence where everyone will be a publisher, then we should distribute the responsibility for enforcing copyrights by making our documents intelligent. We must stop thinking of copyright stamps as passive marks. Their presence has always made a very active social statement and should continue to do so in the future. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wade Riddick is a graduate student and National Science Foundation Fellow in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His email address is riddick@jeeves.la.utexas.edu. ------------------------------ Date: 04 May 95 13:16:41 EDT From: "Gray Areas Inc." <76042.3624@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: File 3--New GRAY AREAS includes Cybernews & Notes ((MODERATORS' NOTE: Gray Areas continues to put out consistently interesting counter-cultural articles, and specializes in computer issues and rock music. It's worth a look, and the low subscription price is a great bargain for a print medium)). Named "The #1 Zine of 1993" by PULSE! and "One Of The Top Ten Magazines of 1992" by LIBRARY JOURNAL, GRAY AREAS is a 164 page glossy paper magazine focusing on subject matter which is illegal, immoral and/or controversial. It examines the gray areas of life by exploring all points of view about the subjects it covers such as computer crimes, drugs, sex and intellectual property. GRAY AREAS has been favorably reviewed/mentioned in a wide variety of books and publications such as: ALTERNATIVE PRESS REVIEW, ANARCHY, THE BLACK FLAME, bOING bOING, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST, THE COVERT CULTURE SOURCEBOOK, DIRTY LINEN, EIDOS, FACTSHEET FIVE, FLIPSIDE, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES, GEAR, HOAX!, INFORMATION WARFARE, IRON FEATHER JOURNAL, NUTS & VOLTS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, PHRACK, RECORD COLLECTOR, REQUEST, SCREW, UNBROKEN CHAIN, WHOLE EARTH REVIEW. The latest issue is #7 (Spring 1995) which contains: - articles on the computer underground including an exclusive interview with the Internet Liberation Front, an article on scanning cellular phone calls and reviews of HOPE, DEFCON II and HoHoCon '94 - articles on drugs including Kava, Prozac, using hemp for paper, LSD and drug rehabilitation - articles on sex including prostitution, adult bookstores, stripping, AIDS, rape victims, abortion and Adult film actor Richard Pacheco on how his parents discovered that he had starred in porn films - articles on music including an interview with Mike Gordon of Phish, Paul McCartney, Woodstock '94, Lollapalooza and a complete list of known Jethro Tull video tapes - articles on other gray topics including gun control, adoption, robbery, lying, polygraph tests, Santeria and the art of serial killer John Wayne Gacy - articles on legal issues such as parody, Tort explosion, the Line Item Veto - an extensive 60 page review section of movies, CDs, concerts, books, zines, computer software, comics, cool catalogs, video games and live audio tapes A sample copy is $8.00 (U.S.) or $12.00 (foreign). A four-issue subscription is $23.00 U.S. bulk mail or $32.00 1st class mail ($40.00 foreign, shipped air). Checks should be made payable to Gray Areas, Inc. and sent to: P.O. Box 808, Broomall, PA 19008. GRAY AREAS may also be found at Tower Books/Records, Barnes & Noble, Borders and other places that carry zines. GRAY AREAS sells out immediately almost everywhere it is placed so you may have no choice but to order it by mail. There are six back issues available too at $8.00 U.S. or $12.00 foreign. Highlights of these issues are: Issue #1: Interview: John Perry Barlow on computer crimes Interview: Adult Film star Kay Parker Grateful Dead live video list Issue #2: Interview: Adult Film Director Candida Royalle Interview: Attorney/Musician Barry Melton Grateful Dead Bootleg CDs list Urine Testing Issue #3: Interview: Computer Virus Writer Urnst Kouch Interview: Shocking Musician GG Allin Interview: David Gans, Host of The Grateful Dead Hour Interview: John Trubee on Prank Phone Calls Adult Film Star Richard Pacheco Speaks Issue #4: Interview: RIAA Piracy Director Steven D'Onofrio Interview: Phone Sex Fantasy Girl Interview: Ivan Stang, Church of the SubGenius Leader Issue #5: Interview with a Phone Phreak Breaking Into The WELL (includes interview with two of the many crackers involved) Interview: S/M Dominatrix All About Smart Drugs Issue #6: Interview: Adult FIlm Actress Taylor Wayne Interview: Chris "Erik Bloodaxe" Goggans Jimi Hendrix Bootleg CDs Upcoming in issue #8 (out this summer) is an interview with Invalid Media, sysop of Unphamiliar Territory, an interview with an "Old School" Hacker, the results of a survey of the attitudes and opinions of today's hackers and part two of a list of Grateful Dead bootleg CDs. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 19:49:12 -0400 From: eye@INTERLOG.COM(eye WEEKLY) Subject: File 4--Vote FRO^H^H....(Ah, that ol' backspace) - (eye Reprint) VOTE FRO^H^H^H FOR ME! And Il'^H^H^H^H^ Set You Ftr^H^Hree By K.K. Campbell On May 1, Toronto's Online Direct announced it would hold Ontario's first "cyberspace election debate." Online prez Greg Vezina wants to conduct a variety of election forums, including a "Big Three" leadership debate. Under Vezina's plan, the leaders can participate from anywhere. "The beauty of this is that Mike Harris can be on his campaign bus, driving on highway 17, and still use a cellphone and go online," Vezina told eyeNET. Of course, one expects it will really be a 90-words-a-minute typist entering the words of a campaign spin doctor, while the leader soaks in a hottub. eyeNET Newsmedia Labs beat the rest to the punch and conducted its own Internet leadership debate, the very night the elections were announced. EYE.NET'S CAMPAIGN '95 ELECTRONIC DEBATE April 28, 1995, 7pm MODERATOR : Welcome, Ontario netters! This is a real time debate. You will see what the candidates type, as they type it. To prevent spin doctor charades, each candidate is locked in a lead-encased, sound-proof room with nothing but a terminal, bottle of Evian, and toilet. We contacted 1,000 high-volume newsgroups, requesting each elect a delegate. Each delegate is allowed one question. In the spirit of The New Internet, each politician is allowed to censor one newsgroup: Mr Rae chose to deny the existence of alt.politics.socialist.trotsky; Ms McLeod obliterated alt.homosexual; Mr Harris doesn't want to hear anything from rec.sport.golf . Candidates, greetings. [NDP PREMIER] RAE : I thank eyeNET for providing me this opportunity to talk with the people of ONtario in this exciting democratic forum. [Liberal leader] MCLEOD : It's nice to bve here. What a cute keybord!One key has a little apple on it! So much quiet than typoerwriter. Ifell like I am on the bridge of the Star Trek spaceboat! [Tory leader] HARRIS : He;;o MOD: First question: from the delegate from ont.general, for Mr Harris. Candidates, remember, you get maximum 10 minutes to type your answer. ARNIE : Mr Harris -- aren't you embarrassed to show your face in cyberspace after making such a complete ass of yourself over that phony Bob Rae email last December? HARRIS: Forgerys^Hs^Hies are vrery comon^H^H^H comMON^H^H^H MOD: Time. That was 10 minutes. By the way, Mr Harris, the backspace key only produces ^H marks. HARRIS: cmoln^H^H^H^H^H MOD: Question for Ms McLeod, from the rec.food.cooking.betty-crocker delegate. MRS COLIN FERGUSON : Hi Lynn! Maybe you remember me, Lynn, we met at the Thunder Bay Church Bakeoff Against Fags and Dykes last fall. MCLEOD: Marge Ferguson! Hello! MRS COLIN FERGUSON: You brought a delciious blueberry pie. I'm hoping to get your recipe, since you will be premier this fall and unable to attend! Ha ha ha! HARRIS: Com mn^H MCLEOD: It's an old family recipe, a secret for genrtations. I can't break with tradition. Besides, to give away would suggest I too confident. Ha ha ha! This is fun! I can see why young people love Enternet! RAE: mail teale-tales@io.com unsubscribe bob@inforamp.com ^D MOD: Mr Premier?? RAE: Is it my question? MOD: What are you doing? RAE: What...? Could you see that? MOD: Yes. HARRIS: allwasy^H^Hys t ell RAE: Oh... I just thought I'd catch up on email while others typed. I didn;t know you could see me. MOD: Email is disabled for the duration of the debate. Anything further, Ms McLeod? MCLEOD: But seriously, Marge,we LIbera;s are after a new bottoms up approach to government! No... I mean a from below... from below goverment. That sounds disgusting. Al Golombek says it better. I think it means we want people below us to do stuff. RAE: trn alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.female.JAP MOD: Mr Premier? RAE: My question? MOD: The newsgroups are also temporarily disabled. RAE: Oh. Sorry. MOD: Ms McLeod, you were say- HARRIS: wha t5 is fakl^H^Hake RAE: I guess I shouldn't even bother trying IRC, right? MOD: Correct. RAE: Jeez... How about pong? There's a little copy of pong in the corner of the screen. Can I at least play pong? MCLEOD: What's pong? MOD: Time. Question for the Premier, from the delegate from alt.flame . ANONYMOUS : Rae! I'm fucking your mom! She says HI! You shithead lamer!!!!1 LICK MY BAG, LOOSER!!!!!!!!!!!111111111 Mcloed, lay off the twinkies, y-- NO CARRIER MOD: Mr Premier? RAE: I have no comment. MOD: Ms McLeod? Comment? MCLEOD: My ears! Is thsi the true ENternet?!? If it is, then I agree with Herb and Allan we must CENSOR ENTERNET NOW!! RAE: mail mboyd@gov.on.ca OK, you were right. Have the OPP tamper with his breaks. Bob ^D MOD: Mr Premier, email is disabled for the debate. RAE: Right, right. Sorry. MOD: Mr Harris? HARRIS: didn t kno w it was forger5y!^H^H ry! MOD: We are onto a new question, now, Mr Harris. HARRIS: forgerisr8 shi t oops ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H MOD: Mr Harris. Please look up at your monitor. Look up at your monitor, Mr Harris. HARRIS: forgre^H^H^H MOD: Let's move on. [mass deletia -- 997 more delegate questions follow] -30- K.K.Campbell ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1995 22:51:01 CDT From: CuD Moderators Subject: File 5--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Apr, 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. 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