From: colin@eecg.toronto.edu (Colin Plumb) Subject: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn" Message-ID: <1992Jul21.164722.252@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Date: 21 Jul 92 20:47:23 GMT Actually, a wider audience would probably be interested in this. It appeared in the Globe and Mail, Monday July 20 1992. I wrote a letter to the editor complaining about mixing up the Internet and Usenet, and Ray Johns' "monkey see, monkey do" estimation of people. It's been posted to alt.sex.bondage. Anyway, enjoy. (Reposted to alt.sex.bondage so people there will see the followups; it's no extra bandwidth.) [With permission] -- -Colin === Beginning Notes: double paragraph spaces indicate drop caps. This began on the bottom of the front page and continued on page 6, which also included a shot of two people at some terminal-like things I don't recognize titled "Two students use computers with ability to access Internet system at the University of toronto's Robarts Library." It might be the computer room in the basement. There are two articles here, the second is "Network lets users `say what they think'" Which was also on page 6. I'm pretty sure all spelling and grammatical errors (San Franciso, for example) are in the original, but something may have slipped past me. Computers graphic when it comes to porn NETWORK SEX: Is increasingly explicit material on some computer bulletin boards free speech, or obscenity? BY PETER MOON The Globe and Mail Toronto Pornographic photographs and obscene stories dealing with the violent sexual degradation of women and children are available to virtually anyone in Canada with a computer and a telephone link. The stories and photographs can be sent through an international computer system that was developed initially to exchange information between academics and scientific researchers. The system quickly became a vital communications link for the exchange of academic and scientific information and ideas, which is still its main purpose. But in the past 10 years, it has exploded into an interconnected, worldwide system that appears to have little ability to control the worst of its content. The worst includes photographs and stories involving bestiality, sexual torture, rape and murder. Defenders of the system say the worst is only a small part of what is offered and that much of what is offered is useful discussion about sex. The fiction, they argue, is more erotic than obscene. After complaints by women's groups, two schools - the University of Manitoba and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia - decided this summer to stop making the material readily available to students through their publicly financed computer systems. The decisions have provoked a debate about freedom of expression and censorship. Canadian universities enter the computer system that includes the controversial sex bulletin boards through Internet. Please see COMPUTER - A6 Computer porn prompts outcry * From Page A1 The biggest computer network in the world, it links millions of people through more than 750,000 "host" connections. For the past two years the number of users has been growing at a rate of 20 per cent a month, according to California's Stanford Research Institute. The system is becoming increasingly available at non-academic places of work and through private companies which, for relatively modest fees, make access available to the public. Once in the system, users can post messages, articles or stories that are available to anyone. They can also communicate privately by E, or electronic, mail. Some computer groups on Internet, primarily the academic and scientific, have a voluntary system of modified censorship. Others have none at all. Major subject groupings, known as news groups, deal with academic and scientific subjects, computing, discussions of a social or cultural nature and current affairs. The alternate news groups, many of which have no controls, deal with subjects ranging from hobbies to sexual lifestyles, illegal drugs and racism. The content of the alternate groups includes serious discussion and exchanges of advice and information. There are attempts at humour, and more personal opinion than some people have the time to get through. There is a lot of writing about sex, some of it serious, some of it helpful, some of it of questionable taste, and a small part of it obscene by virtually any definition. "Well, if this one doesn't get us all shut down, probably nothing will," bragged the anonymous author of a graphic story about the sexual violation of a 12-year-old girl before posting the tale on one of the uncensored alternate news groups called "alt.sex.bondage." (Alt. is an abbreviation for alternate, which warns a reader that the news group is in the unregulated part of Internet. Sex and bondage describe the group's subject matter.) Alt.sex.bondage and others like it continue to thrive because, like some kind of headless science-fiction monster, they appear to have a self-generating life of their own a complex system that has no central control but is connected by hundreds of thousands of computers linked by long-distance, high-capacity lines leased from telephone companies. The sex news groups are phenomenally popular. A survey by DEC Network Systems Laboratory, of Palo Alto, Calif., of more than 1,500 news groups found that in April three of the sex bulletin boards were among the 10 most looked at in the world. A group called alt.sex ranked first. Alt.sex.bondage came fifth and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, which distributes erotic and obscene pictures, was 10th with 130,000 viewers. [Chart: INTERNET GROWTH Internet hosts (in thousands) '81..'92, topping out at about 720,000 Source: Stanford Research Institute] Among the pictures moved recently was a photograph of a woman having sexual intercourse with a dog. The photo left nothing to the imagination. It was one of several photographs and fictionalized accounts of sexual violence to women that ended up last May on the desk of Inspector Ray Johns, head of the Winnipeg Police vice squad. The stories involved rape, bestiality, incest, involuntary bondage and the torture of women. "There is no doubt in my mind that some of it contravened the obscenity sections of the Criminal Code," Insp. Johns said in an interview. "Our concern was that it could prompt somebody to act out their fantasy in real life." The material had been gathered by a women's group at the University of Manitobs, where students were reading and viewing it through Internet. The university administration promptly cut off access to several of Interet's sex groups and now no one at the university can use them. "The police have said, without question, that some of this is criminal and I agree with them," said Terry Falconer, the university's vice-president of administration. He conceded that simply because the university had cut off access did not mean that students would not be able to connect to the sex groups. "I think anybody who's got any moxie can probably get in, using our network, and get access from, say, the University of Toronto. If they do that, they do it. But we are not going to help them," Mr. Falconer said. Danishka Esterhazy, a student women's-centre worker, said many women found the material threatening, particularly at a time when there were a number of reported sexual assaults on the university campus. She said a female student could walk into a computer laboratory and find a picture of a woman being raped on the computer screen next to her, hear male students laughing as they read about a woman being tortured, or be forced to wait at a computer printer while a male student got a printout of an obscene photograph of a woman. "The universities are paying to supply this service," Ms. Esterhazy said. "So, financially, they are setting themselves up as porn distributors for their students "I don't think anyone has a problem with bulletin boards on sex issues. There are bulletin boards for incest victims, for example, and no one has any problem with any of that. "It's the material that's degrading to women. It's just a form of sexual harassment, really, because a woman goes to a university and she turns on a computer and is surrounded by images that say, very clearly, she's not welcome there and that she's threatened." Most universities, she said, have codes of behaviour that prevent anyone from placing a centrefold from ========================================= `Our main concern is keeping the little seven-year-old eyes away from that crap.' ========================================= Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler magazines on an office wall or workplace. The display of obscene materials from the Internet's sex groups is equally offensive and potentially threatening to women, she said. Everyone interviewed for this article, including people who are adamantly opposed to any kind of censorship, were critical about the behaviour of the male students at the University of Manitoba. "They were forcing it upon people who didn't want to read it or see it," said Colin Plumb, a graduate student at the University of Toronto and a contributor to alt.sex.bondage. "That's just plain rude; rude and inconsiderate enough to warrant some enforcement against doing it. I've never seen it here at U of T. At private companies, I've seen it occasionally; people calling out hey, come and look at this." The University of Manitoba decision to cut off the sex groups was quickly followed at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. "I said it was not an issue of censorship," said Lionel Tolan, Simon Fraser's director of academic computer services. "We are a publicly funded institution here. We have an outreach program through our faculty of education which provides access to our computers and to Internet to schools in the province. There is an enormous push in B.C. to get more kinds on the Internet as a training tool. They don't need access to this part of the Internet." Mr. Tolan said the decision to stop access to the sex groups of Internet "seemed timely" because of the growing protests of women's groups, the fact that public funds supported the university's computer operations, and because the university made Internet available to schools in British Columbia. "It's the same as if somebody wants Playboy or Penthouse. We don't have them in the university library. If somebody wants them they can go to a bookstore and buy them. Anybody wants access to the sex groups on the Internet, they can buy access through a local company." One commercial seller of access to Internet is Canada Remote Systems of Mississauga, Ont., which sells a year's access for as little as $99. But it carefully segregates what it calls "the largest collection of adult-related material in Canada" and sells a year's access to it for $49. Subscribers must provide the company with proof that they are 18 or older and sign an acknowledgement that they have been informed about the explicit nature of the material. "Our main concern is keeping the little seven-year-old eyes away from that crap," said Neil Fleming, president of Canada Remote Systems. "Rather than us trying to censor the material by our standards we let the users censor the material. So the users draw the line. If any complaint is received about any adult file, the offending item is removed. We won't remove it all, but we will remove a specific item." He said that there are two or three complaints a month. About a year ago, he said, Project P, a joint anti-pornography squad operated by the Ontario Provincial Police and the Metropolitan Provincial Police, asked him to remove an offensive picture from a file. Detective-Constable Patricia MacVicar, an OPP member of Project P, said that while there have been few public complaints, there is a growing concern and awareness in police circles about the sex groups. She said ===================================================== `Nobody condones the small portion that goes over the network that is really offensive and disgusting.' ===================================================== she monitors them and is consulting with the Crown attorney about the possibility of laying a criminal charge involving them for the first time in Canada. "There's no doubt there is obscenity, but it's difficult to prove," she said. Universities in both Canada and the United States shy away from censoring access to news groups that cause offence. "Some university sites in other locations," said a recent policy paper by the Iowa State University computation centre, "have already come under internal and external criticism for the use of state and federal funds to store and distribute items which are alleged either to be illegal or objectionable. "[The network's] news groups present a new form of `openness,' both in access and in collection. University computer access may extend further into the public in the immediate future with ever-expanding network access. Assumptions that access is limited to adults (students, staff or faculty) may no longer be valid. "This new medium provides users the ability to voluntarily read and submit anything they want in a relatively uncensored and anonymous atmosphere. What is posted anywhere on the worldwide network can result in Iowa State `acquiring' that posting." Iowa State decided it would not restrict access to networks, but set up a program to warn users about material they might find offensive. In 1988, the University of Waterloo became embroiled in a campus controversy when it banned access to a network humour group because of racist jokes. The university subsequently banned access to both the humour group and to alt.sex.bondage because of a few complaints. "It caused an incredible amount of commotion," said Alan George, the university's provost and vice-president, academics. A university committee subsequently decided the university should not interfere with access to any of the Internet news groups and left it to users to deal themselves with the sources of any offending material. "Nobody condones the small portion that goes over the network that is racist and really offensive and disgusting to people," Mr. George said. "But how do you deal with it without infringing on people's freedom of speech and expression? "Our view is we will place the responsibility for transmitting obscene material squarely where it belongs, namely, with the person who produces it. And to the extent that we can, we will deal with the purveyors of such material in response to objections. "It isn't that we won't do more. It's just that as a practical matter it doesn't make sense." Network lets users `say what they think' BY PETER MOON The Globe and Mail TORONTO - Evan Leibovitch considers himself a responsible and concerned member of his community. He's 36, married, and the father of two children. He's active in his synagogue and he and his wife run their own computer consulting company from their home in Brampton, Ont. He's also the founder and unpaid moderator of "rec.arts.erotica," a sex news group, or bulletin board, on Internet, an international computer network read daily by millions of people worldwide. Internet's main purpose is to exchange academic and scientific information, but in recent years its content has expanded to include groups that deal with a wide range of subjects, including non-mainstream sex and obscenity - a trend that has led to growing criticism. "Part of me understands the complaint because some of the stuff that comes over the network is truly offensive," Mr. Leibovitch said in an interview. His news group deals with sex but in a responsible way, he said. Nothing gets posted on it until it has his approval. "There is a policy of nothing non-consensual," he said. But like may avid readers of Internet, Mr., Leibovitch supports making it widely available and allowing it to continue, both the parts that are regulated for content, such as his own group, and the controversial parts that are uncensored. "In some ways it's a wonderful medium," he said "because it really, really encourages people to say what they think, no matter how awful it can be. . . .Not all the discussion is about sex. There's a neo-Nazi group, for example, trying to get a group started called Holocaust Revisionism. There's a lot of opposition. But it's a free medium. "Why does everybody complain about the sex stuff when there's homophobia, ethnic slurs and some other pretty awful stuff? What's wonderful about it is the open discussion without anyone filtering your ideas. It's better than any newspaper." Colin Plumb, 23, a graduate engineering student at the University of Toronto, is a frequent contributor to an uncensored news group called "Alt.sex.bondage." His contributions have included discussions about sex and sex censorship as well as sex fiction. Of all the material on Internet, only a small amount involves the uncensored sex groups, he said, and "of that a small fraction is stories that are extreme in some way or another. I would say they come along at a rate of one a month, maybe." Jean (Muffy) Barkocy, 26, a computer programmer who lives in San Franciso, is a frequent contributor to the uncontrolled alt.sex.bondage group. She is one of three female moderators who control what gets onto soc.feminism, a regulated Internet news group dealing with women's issues. Ms. Barocky said she is not comfortable with all the material that is posted on alt.sex.bondage, but said she does not have to read anything she finds offensive. "But I do find things that are interesting and informative," she said. "Ice, for example. The various things you can do with ice. I find it a lot of fun and so does my boy friend. You know, we just like the sensation of ice in various places. We started using it because of the news group." Stella Calvert, 43, a Sunnyvale, Calif., housewife, is another contributor to alt.sex.bondage. She writes about sado-masochism and sex issues. "The freedom of the press belongs to him as owns one, right?" she said. "With a computer network anybody who has a computer and a modem and a telephone line has as much power to put their ideas out as Rupert Murdoch." For those who want to post their ideas and fiction without identifying themselves there are free services such as Wizvax, operated by Stephanie Gilgut, a computer consultant in Methuen, Mass. A person can send an article to Wizvax by electronic mail. Ms Gilgut's computer strips it of all identifiers, provides a pseudonym, and sends it on to the news group. If readers want to communicate with the anonymous author they can send messages by E-mail to Wizvax, where Ms. Gilgut's computer forwards it to the author. "I wanted to post something in the bondage group without saying who I was and I came up with the idea of a posting service on my machine and it kind of took off," Ms. Gilgut said. "People could possibly be fired over something as controversial as the bondage news group. So it serves a good purpose. "A lot of people think they are sick when they start having bondage, sado-masochistic fantasies. Who can you talk to about that? My service gives then an opportunity to realize there are other people in the world like them, and they are not really sick, just different." === End From caf-talk Caf Jul 21 17:32:15 1992
