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TBTF for 1/22/96: Free-speech farrago; junk-mail viruses
``` [I disagree with some of Keith's views on free speech, but he does plug RRE and I do want to support other newsletters, so here's a sample copy.]
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Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 23:49:12 -0500 From: dawson@world.std.com (Keith Dawson) Subject: TBTF for 1/22/96: Free-speech farrago; junk-mail viruses
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||| Do hate groups deserve free speech? |||
If you thought the debate over cyberporn was rough, just wait. Last week the Simon Wiesenthal Center -- a large and well-respected Jewish human rights organization -- called for Internet service provider (ISPs) volun- tarily to refuse service to groups promulgating messages of hate. ISPs have reacted coolly to the call. The president of Community ConneXion in Berkeley, CA, Sameer Parekh, said "The answer to hateful speech is more speech." Banning hate groups from the Net "[promotes] the idea that they might actually have something valuable to say," Parekh said.
Time Magazine ran a story about Internet hate groups in its issue dated Jan-
uary 22. The URL of one such group is visible in a photo showing their home
page:
> This account was pulled because of concerns over overwhelming un- > anticipated volume of traffic. We reserve the right to pull any > material that may bring down our system. Put up your own server. > Put up a freenet if you want. You and your buddies get together > and do what you want. I'll do what I want with my server.
This explanation is disengenuous. ISPs who wish to regulate the traffic on a
suddenly popular page have recourse to both pricing and technical solutions.
McCullagh invited Jef Poskanzer
> I spent a few months last summer writing a new web server from scratch.
> It's extremely efficient, extremely fast, and it implements throttling.
> Pages which exceed the traffic limit specified by the sysadmin are
> actually slowed down. It doesn't just put up a "try again later" note,
> which is really obnoxious for images; it delivers the bytes slower...
> Anyone with a page shut down supposedly for traffic reasons should point
> their ISP at
(Those unfamiliar with Jef Poskanzer's works might want to scrutinize
Further undermining Trend I's explanation of its action, the ISP posted an advertisement for its services at the address formerly occupied by the now nationally publicized hate group. Correspondents characterized this move as adding opportunism to first-amendment affront.
In my view free speech must prevail on the Net or it can't remain a viable place to conduct the people's business. The Net is not being ruined by child pornography, nor by Scientologists, nor by skinheads. In a free medium they throw the sand against the wind and the wind blows it back again. The Net will indeed be ruined if well-intentioned people push governments and cor- porations into de facto and de jure limits on free speech.
||| Microsoft acquires Vermeer Technologies |||
On 1/16 the news broke that Microsoft has acquired Vermeer Technologies, the
startup company based in Cambridge, MA that arguably won the race to develop
an industrial-strength Web-site editing environment. Its FrontPage applica-
tion, running under Windows NT and Windows 95, makes the design of Web pages
and of entire sites simpler for non-expert users -- see TBTF for 11/29/95
||| What good is the Net? |||
Phil Agre, author of The Network Observer and proprietor of the Red Rock Eater
News Service, recently asked RRE subscribers to write about the difference the
Net has made in their lives. You can browse 32 responses to this question (98K
in total) at
||| Followup: Scientology wins one for a change |||
TBTF for 12/18/95,
The same federal judge who handed the Church of Scientology two defeats in December (see TBTF for 12/10/95) has ruled in their favor in the case against Arnaldo Lerma of Arlington, VA. Mr. Lerma obtained formerly secret church doc- uments from public records in another court case and published them on the In- ternet. When he refused the church's demands to desist, Federal marshalls and church officials raided his home and seized his computer equipment. The judge ruled that the documents' public availability in a court proceeding did not void the church's rights as copyright holder.
||| A new planet swims into Sun's ken |||
Sun Microsystems announced the formation of a new business unit (a "planet" in Sunspeak) called JavaSoft to consolidate the ongoing development and mar- keting of the Java programming language. JavaSoft's new president is Alan Baratz, who comes from Delphi Internet Services.
>>From Edupage (1/18/96):
> IBM TO PROVIDE GOVERNMENT WITH ENCRYPTION KEY FOR NOTES > IBM has agreed to provide the U.S. government with a special key that > would enable government agents to more easily decode electronic mes- > sages, in exchange for permission to export a version of Lotus Notes > that includes 64-bit security. The arrangement provides government > officials with a key to the first 24 bits of security code, meaning > that they only have to crack the remaining 40 bits to decrypt a mes- > sage. U.S. Notes customers already use a 64-bit system. "We were > desperate enough to try to negotiate a short-term, pragmatic solu- > tion," says Notes developer Ray Ozzie. "But we do not believe this is > the right long-term solution... Our customers have been telling us > that, unless we did something about the security, we could no longer > call it a secure system." (Wall Street Journal 18 Jan 96 B7)
As an indication both of how secure a 40-bit key is, and of the power of
the words "Netscape security" to grab headline attention, consider a press
release from Integrated Computing Engines of Waltham, MA. ICE makes a com-
puter it calls the Desktop RealTime Engine, "a briefcase-size graphics
computer that connects to a PC host to deliver performance of 6.3 Gflops
(billions of floating point instructions per second)." How to demonstrate
the awesome power of such a device? Why, get an MIT student to crack Net-
scape's 40-bit encryption with it, using the same algorithm that Damien
Doligez used to crack the code in eight days using 112 workstations (see
TBTF for 8/21/95
> MIT Student Uses ICE Graphics Computer > To Break Netscape Security in Less Than 8 Days > Cost to crack Netscape security falls from $10,000 to $584
||| Junk-mail viruses |||
The flood of new users to the Internet provides fertile ground for the spread
of an annoying kind of virus, one that uses people as the vector for infect-
ing new systems. Charles Hymes
> There are enough myths, legends, and hoaxes on the net to fill a book; in
> fact one is growing. Check out the alt.folklore.urban Frequently Asked
> Questions list
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>>Sources:
>>Edupage -- mail listproc@educom.edu without subject
> and with message: subscribe edupage
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TBTF alerts you twice a week to bellwethers in computer and communications
technology, with special attention to commerce on the Internet. See the
archive at
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Keith Dawson dawson@world.std.com dawson@atria.com Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk.
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