Or read it as one large file.
-- More (100%) --
On Thu, 17 Sep 1998 20:25:50 -0400 "Joseph M. Reagle Jr."
<reagle@RPCP.MIT.EDU>
wrote:
By way of background, for Linkers unfamiliar with the PICS debate, Joseph is
W3C's Public Policy Analyst. He and I have discussed PICS on prior occasions.
>At 09:27 PM 9/17/98 +1000, Colin Richardson wrote:
> >Caroline Kruger. Censoring the Internet with PICS: An Australian
> >stakeholder
> >analysis (Research Report No 5)
>
>Interesting report. Its unfortunate that it is in PDF format (Will it be in
>HTML at some point?)!
Perhaps they don't want it to be able to be rated and blocked by
PICS-facilitated systems. Afaik, although HTML documents can be PICS-labelled,
PDF documents cannot be. Is that correct? If it is not correct, where may I find
information on how to label PDF documents, please. I've never seen anything
about that on the PICS site.
> Otherwise, its a balanced treatment of the topic but
>it does not include a reference to the following,
True, it doesn't. Hardly surprising given that most of the research for the
report had apparently been done prior to June 98. Unless one kept checking the
W3C PICS site to see if the PICS folk had decided to make any more
statements/announcements, *after* they'd stated that development of PICS had
ceased (approx Dec 97), one would not know about this June 98 statement. If the
PICS developers want the world to know what they are subsequently claiming, I'd
recommend they distribute their statements to appropriate lists and newsgroups.
Of all the relevant lists etc I'm on, and that various signatories to the "Note"
are aware of and/or on, not a word has been mentioned about this Note. One could
surmise that they didn't seriously want it to become widely known.
>particularly in the context of Roger's comments.
>
>Statement on the Intent and Use of PICS:
>Using PICS Well
>W3C NOTE 01-June-1998
>http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-PICS-Statement
What comments of Roger's, precisely, are you referring to Joseph? Perhaps this:
"A major problem with this technology is that PICS enables censorship
regimes to be put in place, an attractive proposition for an authoritarian
government. Mr. Clarke says that despite repeated requests from him, W3C had
refused to distance themselves from this, preferring instead to offer this
technology as value neutral, without taking into account its effects."
While you draw attention to a W3C Note, that does not address the point Roger
raised. W3C Notes are *not* W3C recommendations or policy. In fact, the
particular Note you refer to explicitly states:
"This document describes the intent of PICS development and recommends
guidelines regarding the responsible use of PICS technology...It has no official
W3C standing."
Repeat: No official W3 standing. Even if it was a W3C recommendation, those are
unenforcable. W3C developed a technology that makes the Web censor friendly, and
the best they can now do is claim that that's not what they intended to do.
However, W3C isn't even prepared to say that. We merely see a "Note" signed by
some of those involved in the development of PICS, attempting to distance
themselves from increasing, world-wide, criticism of PICS; to disclaim
responsibility for developing a system which enables censorship regimes to be
put in place, on the ground that they didn't intend it to be used in that way.
It's too late. The technology exists, and neither the PICS developers nor W3C
have control over how it's used.
The Note emphasises that the re-statement of principles therein is that of the
"original 22+ organizations that proposed the PICS Specifications" in late 1995.
However, as anyone who's followed the PICS debate knows, as far back as 11
September 1995, the PICS Technical Charter stated:
"Our schemes will permit filtering either at an end-user's PC, or
somewhere in the network."
"Somewhere in the network" does not suggest that the PICS scheme was originally
intended to solely empower end users of the Internet to control what they
themselves access and this became particularly evident with the approval by W3C
of the PICSRules specification in Dec 97.
Furthermore by mid 1996, if not before, Jim Miller, Co-Chair of PICS at W3C from
the outset, was being quoted as follows:
-"The 'veiled threat' of the US Communications Decency Act and similar
laws in Australia and other countries would force Web page creators to
rate their own content, he said. 'It's going to happen and the
publishers are going to resist it as long as they can, but they'll have
to realise that they must rate their content or face prosecution.' "
(Aust. Financial Review, 28/6/96)
So much for voluntary rating.
-" 'It's sort of my nightmare that every country would adopt PICS but
each would decide to have its own rating system,' he said."
(Aust. Financial Review, 8/7/96)
So much for a multiplicity of rating systems.
- " '...the thrilling thing about PICS is that it changes the whole
debate,' he said. In the past the debate was about censorship and
turning the whole thing off - now we can talk about how to regulate a
fully operational Internet, and the whole landscape has changed."
(Aust. Financial Review, 23/7/96)
Indeed it has. Thanks to W3C and the PICS developers.
By October 1996, Jim Miller and Paul Resnick had amended their original article
"PICS: Internet Access Controls Without Censorship" to include additional uses
of PICS:
"Governments may want to restrict reception of materials that are legal
in other countries but not in their own."
"Governments may also mandate country-specific vocabularies."
Original article: http://www.w3.org/PICS/iacwc.htm
Revised article: http://www.w3.org/PICS/iacwcv2.htm
It is far far too late for the developers of PICS to now expect that re-stating
their alleged original intent will make the slightest bit of difference to how
PICS can and may be used.
The W3C Note is notable for its lack of signatories over 4 months after its
release. A mere ten. Furthermore, two of them represent a company that sells
PICS-compatible proxy servers and promotes them as being able to filter material
at the proxy instead of the browser stating that "This provides a consistent and
focused filtering capability and removes it from the user's control." (according
to an announcement of 9/12/97). Another signatory represents a company that
distinguished itself in July 97 by proposing (US) legislation that would enable
any parent who felt their child was harmed by "negligent" publishing to sue
publishers who fail to rate or mis-rate material. Parents would not be required
to prove actual harm, only that the material could "reasonably" be required to
have had a warning label or a more restrictive label.
At least some of the signatories of the recent W3C Note are not, in my view,
credible.
For those unfamiliar with the PICS debate, further background is available at:
The Net Labelling Delusion
http://rene.efa.org.au/liberty/label.html
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC) submission to W3C re PICSRules (12/97)
http://www.gilc.org/speech/ratings/gilc-pics-submission.html
Irene
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Irene Graham, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. PGP key on h/page.
Burning Issues: <http://www.pobox.com/~rene/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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At 01:13 AM 9/19/98 +1000, Irene Graham wrote:
>On Thu, 17 Sep 1998 20:25:50 -0400 "Joseph M. Reagle Jr."
<reagle@RPCP.MIT.EDU>
>wrote:
>By way of background, for Linkers unfamiliar with the PICS debate, Joseph is
>W3C's Public Policy Analyst. He and I have discussed PICS on prior occasions.
But I haven't really participated in that "official" capacity on this list, more
as an academic. Also, by way of background, I'm actually on sabbatical from MIT; I'm
currently a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Law School [1], so I am definitely not speaking
in any W3C capacity here.
[1] http://cyber.harvard.edu
>Perhaps they don't want it to be able to be rated and blocked by
>PICS-facilitated systems. Afaik, although HTML documents can be PICS-labelled,
>PDF documents cannot be. Is that correct? If it is not correct, where may I find
>information on how to label PDF documents, please. I've never seen anything
>about that on the PICS site.
This is rather hostile!? I'm not asking that it be in an open (nonproprietary and smaller)
format to extend the PICS architecture! <lol> Wow.
Regardless, of course PICS can apply to PDF. Any meta-data system worth its salt must be
able to specify a referent, which in PICS case is anything identified by a URL. PICS, by
way of protocol slight of hand, can be embedded in HTML where the implicit referent is
that document. But it is supposed to be served in the HTTP stream, or at a label bureau.
The PICS slight of hand is to include it in the HTML as http-equiv, which means,
"pretend this is in the HTTP header."
Otherwise, to respond to your points in brief. The people that worked on PICS have made
_some_ effort to distance themselves from poor uses of the PICS protocol. That was my
point.
From an organizational point of view, I'd posit that the W3C standards are not enforceable
beyond the good will of those wishing to extend such work on their technical merits.
Furthermore, the W3C as a body has no strong mechanism of issuing policy statements, a
NOTE with signatories is the best they have at the moment. Yes, I (when I worked on this
in a W3C capacity) did not widely publicize this, nor did I push to get many signatories.
I had been interested in doing something like this for a long time, but by the beginning
of the year had my hands quite full with P3P, so I only cast it as far as the
PICS-interest group and moved on.
Finally, I'm not responsible nor accountable for the statements of Jim Miller or Paul
Resnick in the press or other venue. I may agree with some of their statements, their
views (and my own) may have changed over time, and I even disagree with some of their
statements -- this is not an uncommon position to be in with respect to one's colleagues.
I understand that as a Staff (Jim) and as co-creators (Jim and Paul) their statements
strongly reflect upon PICS and the W3C. However, the most "official" (though
generic) voicing of the W3C's statement on public policy is [2]. I believe the W3C is
accountable for this statement. I think the most cogent exposition of views on how PICS is
used -- and one I feel responsbility for -- is in the statement [3]. Including:
- No single rating system and service can perfectly meet the needs
of all the communities on the web.
- The decision to self-label should be at the discretion of content
creators and publishers.
[2] http://www.w3.org/Policy/statement.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-PICS-Statement
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At 12:53 AM 9/22/98 +1000, Irene Graham wrote:
I am on leave from any "W3C spokesperson" role -- my point was, I never played
that role in this forum regardless. You should speak to Danny Weitzner <djw@w3.org>
if you wish to speak to someone in that position.
>Yes I realise this. I should have made it clear that I was referring to it being
>able to be voluntary-mandatory PICS rated by the content provider (eg. coerced
>by ISPs coerced by government). While there are no tools enabling content
>providers to PICS label their PDF documents, such coercion is not possible,
>unless of course PDF format is outlawed. :-)
I believe there is label bureau software out there.
>Interesting. Self labelling enabled by a sleight of hand.
I was using that in a technical sense. <smile> HTTP-equiv is a technical sleight of
hand in a sense, telling the HTML client, "pretend this was in the HTTP."
>of thing a number of times now, from reasonably reliable sources, that PICS
>labels were/are primarily intended to be served in the HTTP stream, or at a
>label bureau, i.e. beyond the control of most content provider to specify the
>rating label applicable to their content. Unsurprising actually.
The spec. is very clear where they may reside, in the content (through HTTP-equiv), the
HTTP headers, or a label bureau.
>In short, PICS was designed and optimised for third party censorship, and by a
>sleight of hand, the developers ensured they could attempt to sell it to the Net
>community as something benign. To date, three years later, the vast majority of
>Net content providers have shown themselves not to be so easily conned.
I believe meta-data often works best when it is not embedded in the content. Through
http-equiv, one can also stick it in the HTML file itself. Though they are related, there
are distinctions between meta-data transport and the case: "self-labeling" vs.
"3rd party labeling." The one is "how I learn," the other is "who
is speaking."
>In my view, PICS has failed in one of its key design goals - that of
>enabling/encouraging third party groups to set up rating systems and labelling
>bureaus suitable for their needs.
The technology enabled self rating and 3rd party rating. Self rating was seen as rather
nice by some, and it is an instance of a technology that requires strong interoperability
requirements between clients and services. Something I've realized is that there is not a
lot of incentive for 3rd party raters to adopt PICS. For an org that is going to go out
and rate the whole Web, PICS doesn't buy you a whole lot. In fact, you probably want to
keep your ratings proprietary and closed. What the interoperability buys you in the 3rd
party scenario is the ability to switch or use multiple 3rd parties. However, people seem
fairly happy using a single proprietary selection/filtration tool, with an encrypted set
of ratings from that single source. If you are a propietary third party supplier, you may
want to "lock-in" folks from moving to another service.
>>>>
<<<<<<<<By enabling self-labelling in order to try to
>sell it to the Net community, the entire focus became centred on means of
>forcing content providers to self-rate their content - rather than on content
>providers being free to speak without pressure to self-censor and others being
>able to choose what they would or wouldn't read.
That is the strategy some governments could choose, particularly if they have precedent in
other regulatory venues. (Food labelling, blocking the naughty bits of magazines on public
display, motion picture rating, TV program ratings, etc.) In the US, some of the proposals
have been that some 3rd party system must be available to the user. I think the latter
approach is much more likely to be successful in keeping children away from content that
may be offensive and much less problematic from a free speech point of view -- though
problems do develop if they are required, or if there isn't much transparency in the
options and choices made by the 3rd party.
My current belief on how to best achieve a "family friendly" Web space is (in
order of importance)
1. 3rd party children spaces (like that offered on AOL).
2. 3rd party white lists (like that offered by the ALA, or what you could do in
PICSRules).
3. selecting appropriate content when labelled and trusted.
Note, that the trade off here, of the white list approach (and again, PICS/PICS-rules
allows you to easily change or use multiple white lists) is that you are being confined to
homogenized sets of content. It would be nice to be able to go to any content and have it
filtered only the merits of what you care about ("offensive content" in this
case), rather than other hidden criteria a creator of a white list may use. But this is
predicated on most/everything being labelled, which is fraught with difficulties. Its not
a predicate of P3P. The deployment model is a little different and scales well. The
predicate there is: it'd be nice of services to declare their privacy practices, there may
even be government pressure to do so, but the real hook is, "if you want information
from a user, you must inform them why, how, etc." There's a carrot in there.
> Basically, imo, the PICS
>developers were too focussed on the CDA and the US 1st A to see how PICS could
>be hijacked by authoritarian governments. While it would be impossible for
>government authorised entities to rate the Net (even all content in their own
>jurisdiction) as third parties, it is not impossible for them to mandate
>self-rating with penalties for misrating or failing to rate, or similarly, to
>coerce ISPs to coerce content providers to self-rate. And that, essentially, is
>the main cause of the wide-spread opposition to PICS.
I understand -- though I believe it is possible for governments to rate, to censor, to
require everyone to go through a central proxy. One of the most arbitrary and capricious
regulatory models is to pass a law and selectively enforce it with grotesque penalties. It
can be quite effective and works in Asia. That wouldn't work in Australia, so that
government is pursuing a policy more likely to appeal to its constituency. That approach
might not work in the US, and it has its own process of push-and-shove, passing
constitutional muster, and appealing to the citizenry.
>That is not to say that absent the ability to self-rate, there would be no
>opposition to PICS. If the anticipated third party rating and labelling bureaus
>had or do eventuate, the opposition would likely be on similar grounds as that
>towards the likes of Cybersitter et al.
Yep. Homogenized content with nontransparent/filtration selection.
>Precisely. They just develop and recommend technology that makes the Net censor
>friendly and then say: not our responsibility how it's used.
[forgive me for going off on a tangent here, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts on
this stuff down <smile>]
Not exactly. The blind spot in the concept of "neutral technology" is that the
policy is already set by legitimate political (hopefully democratic) processes. The
technology can then implement that policy. For instance, if Australia -- through
"legitimate" democratic processes -- chose that mandatory self labelling, and
the technology is used that way, who am I to challenge that?
However, if you were to predicate that the political process is corrupt or
non-representational, that the government is exceeding its authority and broaching
inalienable civil rights, the technology is not neutral. It is not neutral because it is
_part_ of the process which determines the eventual policy. For instance, one could take
the position that speech is an absolute and unhindered right, (no restriction regardless
of safety, obscenity, hate-speech, libel, etc.) Furthermore, one may act completely on
principle -- rather than pragmatism. In such an instance, I can hardly see PICS as being
appealing. PICS, as developed, seems to be in that fuzzy space of where some restrictions
on content seem appropriate, particularly for children. While its intent was
"self-empowering" and decentralized, the nature of the technology does not make
it immune from centralized control -- though what it offers over closed systems in such
situations is questionable. One might also be a pragmatic, and believe that in a certain
context (when the CDA was active) this path was an improvement over the present situation
or likely future course. However, in a different context, the path it provides may be more
problematic given where you stand on the spectrum. There's a lot of decision paths here by
which a person would make a decision as to whether they support PICS.
- Assumptions about society and civil rights.
- Assessment of present day situation and likely future paths.
- Preference in choosing "principle" vs. "pragmatic" strategy.
Regardless, I believe the statement is more akin to "here's some technology, with the
intent to make the world, in a given context, a better place. This organization, is
incapable of challenging the legitimacy of political processes in determining their
policies. So, we generally try to make the technology as flexible as possible w/ an
acknowledged bias towards enabling decentralized and individualistic policy setting."
An interesting thought is to posit that the Internet challenged the legitimacy of
political processes, either accidently (by designing for technical efficiency) or
purposefully. However, was this "right"? I am of the belief that a
beneficient/wise tyrant is preferable to democracy, but the likelihood of the first is
unlikely, so I'll go with the secodn. Where preference aggregation and governance have
taken place on the Net, has the process been better than that offered in the real world,
or are some of us, just happier with the result, a beneficent oligarchy?
Otherwise, where you need not deliberate or aggregate, the Internet governance mechanism
is your clickstream. Do you care about privacy? Where did you click, who did you give your
cookie to? Is child porn wrong? It is accessible on the Net and most porn sites are
orientated towards the "barely legal" context. The problem is what happens when
deliberative proccesses must aggregate preferences? In some situations society routinely
enforces norms of the majority on a minority. In a political context, we've carved out
niches where this shouldn't happen with "civil rights." The Internet, as
designed, also creates a niche of things that are difficult to do. The niche carved out on
the political side is continually being argued about and redefined. The niche on the
technology side is influencing the civil rights side -- and vice versa. The big tension
here seems to be related to:
1. The Internet governance structure does not match the political governance structure.
3. There are more than one political governing structures, each of which is constantly in
tension within itself. There only seems to be one Internet structure. Which political
structure maps to the Internet?
2. The Internet structure has the capability to influence the policy structure.
4. The political structure may also influence the Internet structure. This upsets some
because the Internet structure has been good to their position so far.
What is at issue here is the concepts of "rights" (I've had conversations with
some folks on this), political legitimacy, and deliberative processes. All of which I wish
to think further about at Harvard. But, given this complexity, my simple philosophy when I
was at the W3C was that a responsible technology should do two things:
1. Allowed other processes (hopefully democratic) the most freedom in determining which
policies should be in play. Yes, I could specify a technology which only appeal to my
sense of right -- I could be the beneficent tyrant I'm sure! However, this doesn't seem
very pluralistic or responsible. *
2. Allow multiple policies to co-exist.
* And as a pragmatic individual in the process, as far as possible, try to bias things in
a way that I'm personally happy with. In the end, on balance, to do good to my own
principles and interests.
>There's no indication that the views of those others have changed, least not as
>at Nov/Dec 1997/PICSRules, and there's been no public discussion since then,
>afaik. But then, as I've said before, most of the PICS proponents aren't willing
>to discuss the issues publicly with the Net.plebs.
Well, I try to, though I can only spend so much time to mailing list debates.
<smile>
-- More (100%) --
I'm copying the other parties to the discussion that were mentioned in the
text but not copied on your foreward, since I'd like them to see my
response as well.
Joseph M. Reagle Jr. typed:
> Here's a recent thread on PICS <
> about some of my thoughts on "neutral technoloyg" that I'd like to speak
> to some folks about and maybe formalize.
Good. I've been wanting to have something like this discussion with you
(or more accurately with someone from W3C willing to listen) for some time
(again.)
> From an organizational point of view, I'd posit that the W3C standards
> are not enforceable beyond the good will of those wishing to extend such
> work on their technical merits.
I beg to differ. They are, at least in a way that has social impact,
enforceable by the ill will of those wishing to abuse the tools for actual
censorship, as we've seen attempted in Australia, and newly in Singapore.
Ultimately, they may not work, but they do have the immediate and palpable
effect of cowing local ISPs, chilling free speech of users in those areas,
etc.
> Furthermore, the W3C as a body has no
> strong mechanism of issuing policy statements, a NOTE with signatories is
> the best they have at the moment.
That's weak. ANY mechanism would have been something, and even with NO
such mechanism W3C certainly had the capability to design PICS in a such
a way that it was difficult if not impossible to abuse as we are seeing it
abused (or seeing attempts, at any rate.) Yet W3C resisted doing so with
all of its collective might, despite a united concern from essentially
everyone with an opinion on the topic. I find this irresponsible and
reprehensible.
> Yes, I (when I worked on this in a W3C
> capacity) did not widely publicize this
That's a shame.
> Finally, I'm not responsible nor accountable for the statements of Jim
> Miller or Paul Resnick in the press or other venue.
Understood, but one needn't be an apologist for them either.
> That is the strategy some governments could choose, particularly if they
> have precedent in other regulatory venues. (Food labelling, blocking the
> naughty bits of magazines on public display, motion picture rating, TV
> program ratings, etc.)
Shooting people in the head for daring to question the government,
torturing their children in front of their eyes for speaking out
against totaliltarianism, that kind of thing. (Those are real examples
from recent media reports, no hypotheticals).
One of W3C's biggest examples of seemingly intentional myopia is what I
call the Fallacy of the Not-So-Bad Dictatorship, in which it consistently
pooh-poohs the concerns of the civil liberties and civil rights
communities by resorting to the pretense that governments with no
restrictions on what they do to their citizens aren't really all THAT bad,
that they deserve a "choice", an "option" to use PICS, as currently
instituted, wisely or evilly. By this fallacious reasoning, providing
them tools to do worse isn't such a bad thing, and certainly worth the
supposed gain for "parental empowerment" (or more honestly "government
off of industry leaders asses") in the comfy West.
PICS, like the RIAA movie ratings and the Comics Code Authority is a
text-book example of the govt. scaring the industry into instituting
"voluntary" censorship the govt. could never get away with directly
mandating.
> Not exactly. The blind spot in the concept of "neutral technology" is
> that the policy is already set by legitimate political (hopefully
> democratic) processes. The technology can then implement that policy.
> For instance, if Australia -- through "legitimate" democratic processes
> -- chose that mandatory self labelling, and the technology is used that
> way, who am I to challenge that?
>
>
> However, if you were to predicate that the political process is corrupt
> or non-representational, that the government is exceeding its authority
> and broaching inalienable civil rights, the technology is not neutral.
All of this is precisely what we and others have been telling W3C for,
what, 4 years now? If this is so clear to you, why is it not clear to
your (sometime) employer? Is this no-brainer so hard to get thru their
heads? The political process *IS* corrupt and non-represenatational over
a whole hell of a lot of the surface of this increasingly wired planet.
Every time I've asked anyone at W3C about what they were doing, I got back
an answer that can be summarized "PICS is just technology, and technology
is neutral. We aren't responsibile for what bad things people abuse our
neutral technology for." Kind of an anti-Nobel attitude that is
shockingly ignorant and irresponsible. It's almost as outdated as
Lamarckianism, for chrissakes.
> It
> is not neutral because it is _part_ of the process which determines the
> eventual policy. For instance, one could take the position that speech is
> an absolute and unhindered right, (no restriction regardless of safety,
> obscenity, hate-speech, libel, etc.)
This is essentially a staw man, though it suffers more acutely from what I
call the Fallacy of the Free Speech Absolutist. The fact is that there
*are no* free speech absolutists taking the position you prop up here
(aside from a very small handful of lunatics). Even hard-core anarchists
do not believe in this abosolute form of free speech with no
responsibility (in their case, they simply call for privacy sector
accountability, e.g. in contracting, or with the more recent idea of
reputation markets, etc. I have little favor for their viewpoint, I
simply give it as probably the most extreme example. "Regular"
libertarians, and non-libertarian anti-authoritarian free speech adherents
are far less extreme, and even "mainstream" libertarians believe in
government enforcement, when necessary, of responsibility for harms caused
by irresponsible speech and action.)
> While its intent was "self-empowering" and
> decentralized, the nature of the technology does not make it immune from
> centralized control
Well, aside from the fact that many of us consider it highly questionable
whether that was in fact the intent, the question remains, why has W3C to
date refused to publicly acknowledge that PICS DOES lend itself to
centralized control, and even vehemently denied this clear fact?
> One might also be a pragmatic, and believe
> that in a certain context (when the CDA was active) this path was an
> improvement over the present situation or likely future course.
I don't buy this argument. No one in their right mind believed the CDA
would withstand constitutional scrutiny. I don't think even Bruce Taylor
believed that. He simply wanted to cause a ruckuss (and get paid for it).
He frequently lied, blatantly, in public about what the CDA said (and I
know he knew the facts), because trying to defend what the CDA actually
did and said was impossible. Ditto for Cathy Cleaver, and the legislative
sponsors of the CDA - and their CDA-II counterparts right now.
> However,
> in a different context, the path it provides may be more problematic
> given where you stand on the spectrum. There's a lot of decision paths
> here by which a person would make a decision as to whether they support
> PICS.
>
>
> - Assumptions about society and civil rights.
>
> - Assessment of present day situation and likely future paths.
>
> - Preference in choosing "principle" vs. "pragmatic" strategy.
So why has W3C never acknowledged this (as far as I've ever seen) or
dealt with any of the concerns raised by those with somewhat or very
different viewpoints? PICS was essentially produced in a vacuum. NOTHING
was done, at all, period, to assuage the concerns raised by those with
"assumptions about society and civil rights". More often than not we were
simply told that W3C had faith that the product would be used well,
despite the clear possibility of the opposite, and plans in Australia and
the UK already afoot to abuse PICS (and RSAC-I more specifically).
> Regardless, I believe the statement is more akin to "here's some
> technology, with the intent to make the world, in a given context, a
> better place. This organization, is incapable of challenging the
> legitimacy of political processes in determining their policies.
That is not true. EFF does it all the time. It is a very simple matter
to read the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and come to an informed
decision on whether or not the govt. of, say, Burma or Singapore, adheres
to those principles. If they don't, then PICS should not have been
designed in a way that lended itself to abuse by them. You don't need to
start a revolutionary war to make the "challenge", you can do it in
pragmatic terms, by simply saying, "this government is doing wrong, and we
do not trust them with this tool, so we are going to redesign it so it
cannot be (at least cannot easily be) abused by them." That's called
social resonsibility, something W3C seems to completely lack, at least
when it comes to PICS.
> So, we
> generally try to make the technology as flexible as possible w/ an
> acknowledged bias towards enabling decentralized and individualistic
> policy setting."
I do not buy this for an instant. The "white paper" or "article" or
whatever one wants to call it that introduced PICS to the world was very
carefully and selective edited, after publication, to specifically
include, in phrasing that can be construed as quite encouraging, the
(ab)use of PICS by governments to censor their entire citizenry.
Years later this still enrages me. Not only was the initial publication
effectively a lie, it was only corrected sub rosa, and as far as I can see
it was done so that W3C could say "We hear the civil liberties concerns,
and don't care about them" rather than taking on the real work of
retooling to prevent those fears from coming true. W3C effectively didn't
even take a "our technology is neutral" position, but one of "our
technology not only can be abused, hell, we specifically designed it to be
abused because some governments expressed interest in doing so"!
> An interesting thought is to posit that the Internet
> challenged the legitimacy of political processes, either accidently (by
> designing for technical efficiency) or purposefully.
True, but of borderline relevance. In many places all over the world,
that legitimacy is, and has been for decades in many cases, already
challenged, internationally, by NGOs and other governments and coalitions
thereof. You would have had to have lived in a sealed box to not know
this. So why did W3C pretend this was not true, pretend that it had no
basis on which "challenge" the bad-acting governments by not handing them
a tool ready-made for nationwide censorship?
> However, was this
> "right"? I am of the belief that a beneficient/wise tyrant is preferable
> to democracy, but the likelihood of the first is unlikely, so I'll go
> with the secodn.
While I don't agree with you, I don't see the relevance. If as you admit
we aren't going to get the beneficent tyrant, let's stick to reality:
democracy or fascism. That's it.
> Is child porn
> wrong? It is accessible on the Net and most porn sites are orientated
> towards the "barely legal" context.
This is a fallacious argument and a non-sequitur, since what legit porn
sites provide has nothing to do with availability of content that is
generally illegal everywhere. If it's "barely legal", it's as legal
as legal gets. Something is either legal or it isn't. "Barely legal" is a
marketing phrase, nothing more. NB: The problem of child porn is a
problem of underenforcement, not of not enough laws or not enough tools.
I'm unaware of any modern country in which child porn (at least with
pre-pubescents - post-pubescent age of consent varies from jurisdiction to
jurisdiction) is legal. This really has no connection to the core
conflict, which is about content that is legal, in one place, but Damning
the Speaker to the Wrath of Allah or whatever, in another.
> The problem is what happens when
> deliberative proccesses must aggregate preferences? In some situations
> society routinely enforces norms of the majority on a minority. In a
> political context, we've carved out niches where this shouldn't happen
> with "civil rights."
Niches that W3C has conveniently "forgotten".
> The Internet, as designed, also creates a niche of
> things that are difficult to do. The niche carved out on the political
> side is continually being argued about and redefined. The niche on the
> technology side is influencing the civil rights side -- and vice versa.
> The big tension here seems to be related to:
>
>
> 1. The Internet governance structure does not match the political
> governance structure.
This point is actually subsumed by the ones below it (there is no "the"
polit. gov. struc., but many of them, and they don't map to the Net, as
you observe. But anyway...)
> 3. There are more than one political governing structures, each of which
> is constantly in tension within itself.
More to the point, with eachother. They do not map to the Net, because
they are contradictory and localized, and the Net is largely homogenous
(in the ways that are relevant here) and increasingly global.
> There only seems to be one
> Internet structure. Which political structure maps to the Internet?
This is a very simple question with a very simple answer: That meatspace
jurisdiction with the least-restrictive governing structure becomes the
default "map" for Internet governance, since even if all other countries
make it a capitol offence to post a picture of a naked boobie on the Net,
the freer jurisdiction acts as content haven for the rest of the world.
"Duh". From what I can tell that jurisdiction may be the Netherlands,
though there are some smaller island nations that might be even less
restrictive, since Holland does occasionally try to enforce some of the
wacky European "hate speech" laws, kind of half-heartedly (I haven't
really tried to discover the most-free jurisidiction, at least in freedom
of expression & publication terms, though that would be an interesting
excercise).
> 2. The Internet structure has the capability to influence the policy
> structure.
>
> 4. The political structure may also influence the Internet structure.
Right.
> This upsets some because the Internet structure has been good to their
> position so far.
It upsets many for a whole raft of other, less cynical, reasons, some of
which are that the Net actually helps breed freedom (it brings a new
avenue of free speech into a censored area, at least until the local
regime catches up), and as another example, the mapping of one censorious
jurisidictions' policies on the Net censors the rest of the world, in at
least two ways (by denying speakers outside that jurisidiction part of
their audience, and by denying recipients outside the censorious area the
right to read what those within it have to say.) It's very convenient to
fall back on bullshit "multiculturalism" arguments to gloss over this, but
that argument simply doesn't work when it comes to a global medium. The
bare fact of the matter is that either the entire world is going to simply
have to live with (at least increased availability of, if not being
subjected to others') free expression, whether they like it or not, or
most of the world is going to slip one step at a time toward increasingly
fascist modes of governance, as one jurisdiction after another takes
censorship actions, and inspires others to do the same. That won't stop
Net content of course, since as long as there is a haven, the content will
remain available. It's really quite futile in the long run. In the short
run, though, you end up with a net increase in human rights violations all
over the place, and even increased levels of censorship in juridictions
that have heretofore been at least fairly liberal on the issue (e.g.
Australia and the UK, and the US for that matter, though we get these laws
knocked down pretty quickly due to the First Amendment.)
> What is at issue here is the concepts of "rights" (I've had conversations
> with some folks on this),
I would hope so!
> political legitimacy, and deliberative
> processes. All of which I wish to think further about at Harvard.
Funny, but I have a pretty clear grasp of this stuff sitting at a desk in
San Francisco. You brain isn't at Harvard, it's in your head. I wish the
"powers that be" at W3C would realize the same about themselves and stop
pretending they don't have the necessary facts and influence to do the
right thing.
> But,
> given this complexity, my simple philosophy when I was at the W3C was
> that a responsible technology should do two things:
>
>
> 1. Allowed other processes (hopefully democratic) the most freedom in
> determining which policies should be in play. Yes, I could specify a
> technology which only appeal to my sense of right -- I could be the
> beneficent tyrant I'm sure! However, this doesn't seem very pluralistic
> or responsible. *
>
> 2. Allow multiple policies to co-exist.
>
>
> * And as a pragmatic individual in the process, as far as possible, try
> to bias things in a way that I'm personally happy with. In the end, on
> balance, to do good to my own principles and interests.
I think both of these points are sheer folly. You're falling for the
fallacious "multicultural diversity" argument, and ignoring
long-established human rights basics, such as the concept that *no*
government can legitimately take away human rights. As for multiple
policies, it's the same fallacy again, in different form. It's like
giving dictatorships a "choice" between treating their citizens as humans
or as cattle. This choice does not legitimately exist, and it is the
height of "politically correct" self-delusion to to convince oneself that
one is being pluralistic and sensitive by offering evil fascist regimes
the "choice" to obtain and abuse technology to violate the rights of their
citizens, perhaps with *fatal* results (e.g. "we catch you trying to
bypass The People's Proxy, and you will be executed"). It could happen.
Imprisonment, torture, gulaging, sneaky reprisals, and other forms of
punishment would of course be more likely, but let's just stare the horror
in the face: It is quiet conceivable that PICS is going to literally kill
people if the damned thing ever really gets airborne. The ability to
communicate online without monitoring and without censorship is already
saving lives around the world, as underground human right workers have
attested when thanking Phil Zimmermann for PGP.
[Irene Graham quoted here:]
> > afaik. But then, as I've said before, most of the PICS proponents
> > aren't willing to discuss the issues publicly with the Net.plebs.
Exactly.
> Well, I try to, though I can only spend so much time to mailing list
> debates. <
That's cute, but it's not responsive to the very serious criticism and
challenge here. Hell, you aren't even speaking on behalf of W3C here.
--
Stanton McCandlish mech@eff.org http://www.eff.org/~mech
Program Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
voice: +1 415 436 9333 x105 fax: +1 415 436 9333
PGPfone: 204.253.162.21
-- More (100%) --
On Sat, 19 Sep 1998 11:21:26 -0400 "Joseph M. Reagle Jr."
<reagle@rpcp.mit.edu>
wrote:
[...]
> >By way of background, for Linkers unfamiliar with the PICS debate, Joseph
> >is W3C's Public Policy Analyst. He and I have discussed PICS on prior
> >occasions.
>
>But I haven't really participated in that "official" capacity on this list,
>more as an academic. Also, by way of background, I'm actually on sabbatical
>from MIT; I'm currently a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Law School [1], so
>I am definitely not speaking in any W3C capacity here.
I wasn't suggesting you were, but that I think your position as W3C staff is
relevant, in that you can hardly be considered to be an independent commentator.
It is you, after all, who has responded on behalf of W3C in discussions about
PICS on other mailing lists and to GILC re their submission to W3C. I trust you
realise it's difficult for other people to know what hat you're wearing from
time to time. Insofar as your being on sabbatical from MIT is concerned, if you
are also on sabbatical from W3C (which is not part of MIT, afaik) might I
suggest you ask the relevant W3C webmaster to update the staff page to that
effect.
[...]
> >Perhaps they don't want it to be able to be rated and blocked by
> >PICS-facilitated systems. Afaik, although HTML documents can be
> >PICS-labelled, PDF documents cannot be. Is that correct? If it is not correct,
> >where may I find information on how to label PDF documents, please.
> >I've never seen anything about that on the PICS site.
>
>This is rather hostile!? I'm not asking that it be in an open
>(nonproprietary and smaller) format to extend the PICS architecture! <lol>
>Wow.
I agree. Wow. Ascribing such a motive to you would be ridiculous. I'm surprised
and sorry you'd interpret that from my remarks.
My point was that I've often thought that governmental enthusiasm for PICS and
self-rating is quite misplaced in view of the increasing popularity of PDF
documents (even PICS enthusiasts, like the ABA, are now using that format) and
given that content providers cannot self-rate such documents at present, nor as
far as I know are there any indications that they will be able to do so in the
foreseeable future, if ever. I thought you may know something more about this
than I do (and be willing to impart any such information); nothing more, nothing
less.
>Regardless, of course PICS can apply to PDF. Any meta-data system worth its
>salt must be able to specify a referent, which in PICS case is anything
>identified by a URL.
Yes I realise this. I should have made it clear that I was referring to it being
able to be voluntary-mandatory PICS rated by the content provider (eg. coerced
by ISPs coerced by government). While there are no tools enabling content
providers to PICS label their PDF documents, such coercion is not possible,
unless of course PDF format is outlawed. :-)
>PICS, by way of protocol slight of hand, can be
>embedded in HTML where the implicit referent is that document. But it is
>supposed to be served in the HTTP stream, or at a label bureau. The PICS
>slight of hand is to include it in the HTML as http-equiv, which means,
>"pretend this is in the HTTP header."
Interesting. Self labelling enabled by a sleight of hand. I've heard this kind
of thing a number of times now, from reasonably reliable sources, that PICS
labels were/are primarily intended to be served in the HTTP stream, or at a
label bureau, i.e. beyond the control of most content provider to specify the
rating label applicable to their content. Unsurprising actually.
Self-labelling was never likely to be considered reliable and effective by those
who want to control what others say and read. So, in view of the threat of CDA
1, PICS primarily had to provide a means for those people to rate, label and
censor other people's speech. However, at that time especially, PICS had to be
sold to the Net community as much as to the legislators and the masses.
Self-labelling was far more likely to appeal to the Net community than having
their speech rated and censored by others.
In short, PICS was designed and optimised for third party censorship, and by a
sleight of hand, the developers ensured they could attempt to sell it to the Net
community as something benign. To date, three years later, the vast majority of
Net content providers have shown themselves not to be so easily conned.
In my view, PICS has failed in one of its key design goals - that of
enabling/encouraging third party groups to set up rating systems and labelling
bureaus suitable for their needs. By enabling self-labelling in order to try to
sell it to the Net community, the entire focus became centred on means of
forcing content providers to self-rate their content - rather than on content
providers being free to speak without pressure to self-censor and others being
able to choose what they would or wouldn't read. Basically, imo, the PICS
developers were too focussed on the CDA and the US 1st A to see how PICS could
be hijacked by authoritarian governments. While it would be impossible for
government authorised entities to rate the Net (even all content in their own
jurisdiction) as third parties, it is not impossible for them to mandate
self-rating with penalties for misrating or failing to rate, or similarly, to
coerce ISPs to coerce content providers to self-rate. And that, essentially, is
the main cause of the wide-spread opposition to PICS.
That is not to say that absent the ability to self-rate, there would be no
opposition to PICS. If the anticipated third party rating and labelling bureaus
had or do eventuate, the opposition would likely be on similar grounds as that
towards the likes of Cybersitter et al.
>Otherwise, to respond to your points in brief. The people that worked on
>PICS have made _some_ effort to distance themselves from poor uses of the
>PICS protocol. That was my point.
Yes, and mine was that some of those who signed the Note have been involved with
developments, and/or made statements, which are not in compliance with the
"Using PICS Well" note. Imo, this detracts from its overall credibility, and
their attempting to distance themselves is far too late. The damage has been
done.
>From an organizational point of view, I'd posit that the W3C standards are
>not enforceable beyond the good will of those wishing to extend such work on
>their technical merits. Furthermore, the W3C as a body has no strong
>mechanism of issuing policy statements, a NOTE with signatories is the best
>they have at the moment.
Precisely. They just develop and recommend technology that makes the Net censor
friendly and then say: not our responsibility how it's used.
>Yes, I (when I worked on this in a W3C capacity)
>did not widely publicize this, nor did I push to get many signatories. I had
>been interested in doing something like this for a long time,
I didn't realise you had anything to do with it. The idea, in principle, was
commendable, it's just a pity it has no force, etc.
>but by the
>beginning of the year had my hands quite full with P3P, so I only cast it as
>far as the PICS-interest group and moved on.
Well, one might have hoped that would bring more signatories, but it's not a
means of telling the general public, since participation in that mailing list is
not open to the public.
>Finally, I'm not responsible nor accountable for the statements of Jim
>Miller or Paul Resnick in the press or other venue.
I've never remotely suggested you are.
>I may agree with some of
>their statements, their views (and my own) may have changed over time,
There's no indication that the views of those others have changed, least not as
at Nov/Dec 1997/PICSRules, and there's been no public discussion since then,
afaik. But then, as I've said before, most of the PICS proponents aren't willing
to discuss the issues publicly with the Net.plebs.
>and I
>even disagree with some of their statements -- this is not an uncommon
>position to be in with respect to one's colleagues. I understand that as a
>Staff (Jim) and as co-creators (Jim and Paul) their statements strongly
>reflect upon PICS and the W3C. However, the most "official" (though generic)
>voicing of the W3C's statement on public policy is [2]. I believe the W3C is
>accountable for this statement.
Hmm... that's the stuff about realising the full potential of the Web. I'd refer
you to the GILC submission and TBL's response, if you weren't already well aware
of those.
>I think the most cogent exposition of views
>on how PICS is used -- and one I feel responsbility for -- is in the
>statement [3]. Including:
>
> - No single rating system and service can perfectly meet the needs
> of all the communities on the web.
> - The decision to self-label should be at the discretion of content
> creators and publishers.
> [2] http://www.w3.org/Policy/statement.html
> [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-PICS-Statement
Yes, sounds wonderful. Trouble is, it's overridden by [2] which makes clear that
W3C is in the business of telling governments "what is technically possible; how
effectively the technology can meet policy requirements". Miller (and probably
others) has apparently done wonders in that regard in Australia.
Regards
Irene
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At 12:45 AM 9/23/98 +1000, Irene Graham wrote:
>PDF documents. If you are suggesting that most ordinary content providers could
>set up and run their own label bureau in order to self-label their PDF documents
>(and that there would be some point in their doing that) then I think you are
>being ridiculous.
This is what I believe. This is the way it should be done. Placing meta-data in content
itself can be problematic 1) if the data at the URI is likely to change or 2) in properly
discovering the meta-data. For instance, does a tree leaf have all the meta-data in its
parents roots applied to it, in which case one must always climb the tree to understand
all data associated with it? If I wish to say that the whole tree is X, except node A, its
much easier to make two entries in a database, rather than go through the whole site
embedding the meta-data in every node/leaf. In P3P there is a compromise of sorts, where
within the HTML you can provide a link to an XML/RDF file, but cannot embed it in the
content itself.
Furthermore, I believe in the future, we will move towards content (HTML/XML) and
presentation(CSS/XSS) being stored in databases. Results returned from a get to a URI will
be dynamically generated based on negotiation with the client. For instance, the client
might signal its a B&W, low bandwidth, high latency (wireless) client in Cambridge,
please send me the local movie listings. All of this happens by way of
"meta-data." We already see this implemented in many advanced sites.
>This is one of things that exasperates me about discussions with PICS advocates.
>They frequently seek to avoid addressing the issue raised, which in this
>instance was that if governments mandate self-rating and labelling now, PDF
>could become very popular amongst those not desirous of self-censoring in accord
>with someone elses' values because there are no tools now available to enable
>them to self-rate PDF documents.
I agree. Furthermore, I've made the point that PICSRules does potentially enable
governments to promulgate regulations, but not in the way most people were ranting about
[1,2].
[1] http://www.w3.org/Talks/9803-DCSB/slide15-0.htm
[2] http://www.w3.org/People/Reagle/papers/tprc98_SP_submission.html
(I had to withdraw this for a lack of time, though I may return to the topic later this
fall.)
>>I believe meta-data often works best when it is not embedded in the
>>content.
>
>How often? Justification? Please explain.
I tried to explain above.
>I really must look into how RDF / P3P / whatever is implemented. I'd assumed,
>until just now, that web sites would express their privacy policies in meta-data
>embedded in the page.
Its something I've discouraged, and we have a compromise as described above.
> However, I now wonder if it's intended that web site
>operators will input this info to some third party meta-data database (and
>perhaps have to pay to do so)? Similar with RDF enabled Dublin Core categories.
>Is this info to be embedded in the page, or is it anticipated that the meta-data
>will be distributed by third parties?
P3P -- as one of the first applications of RDF/XML -- defined its own transport
mechanisms. RDF/XML communities should specify this generically, though they haven't yet.
In WebDAV, the XML is fetched as a property of the resource at the URI.
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References: <3.0.5.32.19980921131033.00972980@rpcp.mit.edu> from "Joseph M.
Reagle Jr." at Sep 21, 98 01:10:33 pm>
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At 08:02 PM 9/21/98 -0700, Stanton McCandlish wrote:
>> From an organizational point of view, I'd posit that the W3C standards
>> are not enforceable beyond the good will of those wishing to extend such
>> work on their technical merits.
>
>I beg to differ. They are, at least in a way that has social impact,
>enforceable by the ill will of those wishing to abuse the tools for actual
>censorship, as we've seen attempted in Australia, and newly in Singapore.
>Ultimately, they may not work, but they do have the immediate and palpable
>effect of cowing local ISPs, chilling free speech of users in those areas,
>etc.
Well, be it good or ill, the way of described the adoption of such technology is that its
adoption is dependent on users', developers', and markets' desire to use the technology.
The market can/does include regulators, perhaps with ill will.
>> Furthermore, the W3C as a body has no
>> strong mechanism of issuing policy statements, a NOTE with signatories is
>> the best they have at the moment.
>
>That's weak. ANY mechanism would have been something, and even with NO
>such mechanism W3C certainly had the capability to design PICS in a such
>a way that it was difficult if not impossible to abuse as we are seeing it
>abused (or seeing attempts, at any rate.)
I would disagree with this latter part regarding its design, but perhaps. The only other
alternatives I've seen was Olsen's 18-year old IP bit (which I dislike immensely), and
Lessig's adult-cert, which I find equally problematic as PICS and worse for privacy.
>One of W3C's biggest examples of seemingly intentional myopia is what I
>call the Fallacy of the Not-So-Bad Dictatorship, in which it consistently
>pooh-poohs the concerns of the civil liberties and civil rights
>communities by resorting to the pretense that governments with no
>restrictions on what they do to their citizens aren't really all THAT bad,
>that they deserve a "choice", an "option" to use PICS, as
currently
>instituted, wisely or evilly. By this fallacious reasoning, providing
>them tools to do worse isn't such a bad thing, and certainly worth the
>supposed gain for "parental empowerment" (or more honestly "government
>off of industry leaders asses") in the comfy West.
First, I don't think anyone has tortured children with PICS. Second, I believe there is a
substantive issue -- call it moral/cultural subjectivity -- that states some cultures may
have norms that legitimately differ from others. This characteristic is reflected in the
"community standards" prong of the Miller obscenity tests for instance. In light
of differing norms, one approach is to say that technology should be able to "support
multiple" options. The questions is what options does the technology support, either
purposefully or intrinsically? (I believe meta-data systems have the properties PICS has
and there is little one can do about it. The reason I pushed the "Using PICS
Well" document was to at least outline the intentional/purposeful uses.) Regardless,
is there a deterministic/solid way of determining which poles [1] are wrong and a way to
design accordingly? You've responded yes, yes, its trivial, but I've not been able to find
any objective universal measure, particularly since nearly all political contention is
associated with differing norms regarding rights.
[1] http://www.w3.org/Talks/9803-DCSB/slide14-0.htm
Any technical artifact has external characteristics associated with its context (use):
what other resources it requires, what its impact is on its environment, which policies
are easily supported by or co-exist with its existence. Some artifacts are more closely
coupled to a specific context, others are more general -- "friction free." As
enunciated in the slide above, it seems one has two options:
a. specify one option and fight over that policy.
b. support multiple options and allow legitimate processes to resolve the policy.
Now, with respect to PICS, one could say the W3C pursued B, and unfortunately, one of
those supported options is centralized control. As I've stated elsewhere, I at least made
a pragmatic decision on the likelihood of that happening, whether it would be achieved
through other means regardless, and the context of other ills it seemed to remedy at the
time. So one of the poles out that there I'm generally uncomfortable with (but I'm still
confronted with a subjectivity issue regardless), but that didn't seem all that likely.
However, I believe this policy makes sense given the global nature of the Web, the
differing norms/regulations, and the general principle that it is better to design for
multiple options than for a single option that the particular architect wants to force on
others. I place this philosophy in a personal context in that I make a pragmatic decision,
and look at the range of poles and see that, in reality, that evil-extreme pole out there
(even accounting for cultural subjectivity) is outweighed by the other poles of its
application. But in general, I think its a good idea.
You could almost picture this as a sea saw. With a fulcrum set at a point, and various
weights based on a person's assumptions.
Now, the actual deployment and adoption of such a technology/standard is dependent:
on users', developers', and markets' desire to use the technology.
The market can/does include regulators, perhaps with ill will.
Its a very legitimate question to ask, "ok, who deployed and is using this? Are
'evil' governments running away with the ball." If the answer is yes, how would an
org. like the W3C "retract" it is hard to say.
>PICS, like the RIAA movie ratings and the Comics Code Authority is a
>text-book example of the govt. scaring the industry into instituting
>"voluntary" censorship the govt. could never get away with directly
>mandating.
Yes, its an interesting regulatory tactic (that I call "herding" [2]) that is
not restricted to the domain of content control.
[2] http://www.w3.org/Talks/980922-MIT6805-princ/slide7-0.html
>Every time I've asked anyone at W3C about what they were doing, I got back
>an answer that can be summarized "PICS is just technology, and technology
>is neutral. We aren't responsibile for what bad things people abuse our
>neutral technology for." Kind of an anti-Nobel attitude that is
>shockingly ignorant and irresponsible. It's almost as outdated as
>Lamarckianism, for chrissakes.
Any time I've used the term "neutral" its not to say that technology has no
impact on external policies, but that it should be as "policy friction free"
within the realm of policies that fall within an acceptable range given common norms -- if
possible. (What this range is, is the big political question.)
>This is essentially a staw man, though it suffers more acutely from what I
>call the Fallacy of the Free Speech Absolutist.
Its not a straw man but an extreme example to test a general principle. Consider the case
of Germany outlawing Nazi literature. I personally would find this abhorrent in my, a US
context. However, I do not feel comfortable in saying that what the German state has done
is wrong necessarily. The cool thing about the Net -- to me -- is not that its
"unregulatable," but that one can create/join one's governing mechanism of
choice. This is why I like user empowered decentralized social protocols. I can select my
choice of law and norms. I'll select bozo filter those that I don't like and the German
Privacy Law and US 1st Amendment, thank you very much. This is the "vote with your
clickstream and configuration principle." However, their are instances, where
societies have found they need to regulate the private conduct of a minority of
individuals. (Both in good ways, 1) outlawing "bad things" and 2) creating
rights to protect the minority from the majority, and in bad ways.) Now we are into the
position of determining the legitimacy of rights, deliberative processes/governance, and
such. Something -- I think -- the technology should punt on if possible.
The question is to what degree can real space governance impose itself upon cyberspace
governance using social protocols, particularly when its policies are not held by a
majority of its users? Is there any situation in which real space governments have the
right to regulate on-line conduct? While I admit PICS could be used poorly, my continued
support of it is predicated on my belief that mechanisms of
filtration/selection/recommendation/reputation are critical to on-line communities and
governance. (Aside from my beliefs on responsible design and my fuzziness on cultural
subjectivity.) I want to filter, select and block, I do every day. Governments could
co-opt these mechanisms, but I am convinced that people can still get around the mandatory
use of such technologies and that such tools are unavoidable as the Web deploys.
Consequently, you are better off building a general technology that "supports
multiple policies" intended for decentralized self-empowering use -- though it could
be detrimental to a cause in a particular situation -- than "tyrannical"
protocols.
>Well, aside from the fact that many of us consider it highly questionable
>whether that was in fact the intent, the question remains, why has W3C to
>date refused to publicly acknowledge that PICS DOES lend itself to
>centralized control, and even vehemently denied this clear fact?
As you know, I think its explicitly addressed in the PICS FAQ.
__
Could governments encourage or impose receiver-based controls? Does PICS make it easier or
harder for governments to do so?
Yes. A government could try to assume any or all of the six roles described above,
although some controls might be harder than others to enforce. As described below,
governments could assume some of these roles even without PICS, while other roles would be
harder to assume if PICS had not been introduced.
__
>So why has W3C never acknowledged this (as far as I've ever seen) or
>dealt with any of the concerns raised by those with somewhat or very
>different viewpoints? PICS was essentially produced in a vacuum. NOTHING
>was done, at all, period, to assuage the concerns raised by those with
>"assumptions about society and civil rights". More often than not we were
>simply told that W3C had faith that the product would be used well,
>despite the clear possibility of the opposite, and plans in Australia and
>the UK already afoot to abuse PICS (and RSAC-I more specifically).
I'm not speaking for the W3C. Even when I was -- on rare instances -- I was not in any
position to make any sort of statement on behalf of the W3C because its structure/process
is orientated towards the members making a technical recommendation.; not policy
statements, retractions, or arguments. It was my own personal belief that any such
representation by myself on this topic would be inappropriate. The W3C does not even have
a technical deprecation mechanism for its standards presently. (What happens to HTML3.2 10
years from now?) It certainly has no mechanism for political/policy issues and would cause
more problems than solve IMHO.
Plus, you can sort of call a spade a spade. If PICS is poorly used in Australia or the UK
in your opinion, then PICS is bad. I'm not saying a particular implementation in a given
context is necessarily. I personally would object to any mandatory self labelling
requirement. Same with P3P. I want good things to come of it, and a lot of people are
working such that it will. But if its just is a better mechanism for extracting data from
users that is ultimately harmful to them, then P3P isn't a good thing IMHO. I'm not
defending either technology really. Rather the technical philosophy that one should create
decentralized, self-empowered, multiple-option, selected community governance technology
when possible.
>> Regardless, I believe the statement is more akin to "here's some
>> technology, with the intent to make the world, in a given context, a
>> better place. This organization, is incapable of challenging the
>> legitimacy of political processes in determining their policies.
>
>That is not true. EFF does it all the time.
That is the EFF.
>to read the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and come to an informed
>decision on whether or not the govt. of, say, Burma or Singapore, adheres
>to those principles.
While you spend a great deal of time and words on this issue -- good/thoughtful words --
I'm not convinced of this case. When I read the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and based
on other folks I've spoken to given its creation, the fuzziness and country exceptions
within don't provide that objective/universal metric I'm looking for.
>designed in a way that lended itself to abuse by them. You don't need to
>start a revolutionary war to make the "challenge", you can do it in
>pragmatic terms, by simply saying, "this government is doing wrong, and we
>do not trust them with this tool, so we are going to redesign it so it
>cannot be (at least cannot easily be) abused by them." That's called
>social resonsibility, something W3C seems to completely lack, at least
>when it comes to PICS.
If someone came forward with something (much W3C work is based on Member submissions or
pre-existing work) that solved these problems (more likely to be adopted/deployed, satisfy
social concerns so we don't have to fight the CDA N battles, and less likely to be
"abused") the W3C could consider it as a work item as it may anything else. I'd
certainly push for it if I was there.
>Years later this still enrages me. Not only was the initial publication
>effectively a lie, it was only corrected sub rosa, and as far as I can see
>it was done so that W3C could say "We hear the civil liberties concerns,
>and don't care about them" rather than taking on the real work of
>retooling to prevent those fears from coming true.
I believe you have to take this up with the editor of the article.
>> The problem is what happens when
>> deliberative proccesses must aggregate preferences? In some situations
>> society routinely enforces norms of the majority on a minority. In a
>> political context, we've carved out niches where this shouldn't happen
>> with "civil rights."
>
>Niches that W3C has conveniently "forgotten".
The definition of those niches is a political process, that should be left in that venue.
>Funny, but I have a pretty clear grasp of this stuff sitting at a desk in
>San Francisco. You brain isn't at Harvard, it's in your head.
No, it means I have some more time to think about it when its at Harvard. <s>
-- More (100%) --
> At 08:02 PM 9/21/98 -0700, Stanton McCandlish wrote:
> >I beg to differ. They are, at least in a way that has social impact,
> >enforceable by the ill will of those wishing to abuse the tools for actual
> >censorship, as we've seen attempted in Australia, and newly in Singapore.
> >Ultimately, they may not work, but they do have the immediate and palpable
> >effect of cowing local ISPs, chilling free speech of users in those areas,
> >etc.
Joseph Reagle rambles:
> Well, be it good or ill, the way of described the adoption of such
> technology is that its adoption is dependent on users', developers', and
> markets' desire to use the technology. The market can/does include
> regulators, perhaps with ill will.
This rambling about markets and regulators is just euphemistic.
Singapore is making RSACi mandatory. This is a straightforward case of
state censorship. It has nothing whatsoever to do with markets.
> Plus, you can sort of call a spade a spade. If PICS is poorly used in
> Australia or the UK in your opinion, then PICS is bad. I'm not saying a
> particular implementation in a given context is necessarily.
But it's not a matter of some implementations being bad. The *only*
PICS-based system with any serious deployment is RSACi. And RSACi is a
total joke, or would be if people and countries didn't keep advocating the
damn thing. (I'm still waiting for the ABA to retract their support for
it, though that might reduce the number of conferences they get invited to
and lose them the awards from obscure German foundations.) And Safesurf
isn't much better, even if I could find any sites that actually used it.
I see nothing to suggest that other PICS-based system will ever have
any success -- and the more of them there are the more they will compete
for limited interest by web site developers, anyway.
In fact I have not seen *any* uses of PICS for anything valuable.
Surely, when you can't point to A SINGLE POSITIVE USE FOR YOUR PRODUCT,
doesn't that suggest there's something fundamentally wrong with it?
> If someone came forward with something (much W3C work is based on Member
> submissions or pre-existing work) that solved these problems (more likely to
> be adopted/deployed, satisfy social concerns so we don't have to fight the
> CDA N battles, and less likely to be "abused") the W3C could consider it as
> a work item as it may anything else. I'd certainly push for it if I was
> there.
But there are *no* problem for which PICS is a solution. There may
be problems for which it _appears_ to be a solution (especially with
the amount of misinformation that RSAC throws around), but that is a
different matter. And no, I'm not forgetting that there are people out
there who want some very weird things -- I just don't think there is
*anyone* who, if they really understood what it was doing, would want to
filter using RSACi, with a totally bizarre set of criteria applied to
less than 1% of the content on the Web. Much as I loathe them myself,
non-PICS filterware programs are a much more effective solution for
people who absolutely insist on keeping their children blinkered.
The W3C should scrap any further work on PICS. There are far more
valuable things for them to be working on.
Danny.
-- More (100%) --
On Mon, 21 Sep 1998 13:06:37 -0400 "Joseph M. Reagle Jr."
<reagle@RPCP.MIT.EDU>
wrote:
>At 12:53 AM 9/22/98 +1000, Irene Graham wrote:
>
>I am on leave from any "W3C spokesperson" role -- my point was, I never
>played that role in this forum regardless.
Understood. However, when you promulgate W3C-newspeak, in whatever role, you'll
have to forgive my remembering and drawing to attention your (past and
presumably future) role with W3C.
>You should speak to Danny
>Weitzner <
>position.
What I wish is for W3C people, and those of the PICS developers who are not W3C
staff, to come out from hiding in their hallowed halls and discuss, publicly and
in an official capacity, issues relative to this "neutral" (as defined by W3C
folk) technology, which is known as "Platform for Internet Content Selection"
but which in fact doesn't, and likely never will, enable anyone to *select*
anything. There is little likely benefit in my discussing PICS with Danny
privately - my concerns are not unknown to him, from discussion on other lists,
prior to him replacing Jim Miller at W3C. It is perhaps to the detriment of
understanding my position in regard to PICS, that I have respected the privacy
of personal email discussions with other people associated with its development
and/or associated implementations.
> >Yes I realise this. I should have made it clear that I was referring to
> >it being able to be voluntary-mandatory PICS rated by the content provider (eg.
> >coerced by ISPs coerced by government). While there are no tools enabling
> >content providers to PICS label their PDF documents, such coercion is not
> >possible, unless of course PDF format is outlawed. :-)
>
>I believe there is label bureau software out there.
What does the availability of label bureau software have to do with it? The mere
availability of software to set up and provide third party rating services/
labelling bureaus does not enable ordinary content providers to self-label their
PDF documents. If you are suggesting that most ordinary content providers could
set up and run their own label bureau in order to self-label their PDF documents
(and that there would be some point in their doing that) then I think you are
being ridiculous. The only other way I can see to interpret your remark is that
you are saying governments, ISPs or others can set up a label bureau (using
software that is somewhere out there) and then governments or ISPs can mandate
that content providers input their self-ratings to that label database.
Certainly this is possible. However, if and when it ever happens, then "tools
enabling content providers to PICS label their PDF documents" will be available.
In the meantime, they are not, which was my point.
This is one of things that exasperates me about discussions with PICS advocates.
They frequently seek to avoid addressing the issue raised, which in this
instance was that if governments mandate self-rating and labelling now, PDF
could become very popular amongst those not desirous of self-censoring in accord
with someone elses' values because there are no tools now available to enable
them to self-rate PDF documents.
> >Interesting. Self labelling enabled by a sleight of hand.
>
>I was using that in a technical sense. <
>sleight of hand in a sense, telling the HTML client, "pretend this was in
>the HTTP."
Yes, it was enabled in the HTTP. The pretend was necessary to sell it to the Net
community.
> >of thing a number of times now, from reasonably reliable sources, that
> >PICS labels were/are primarily intended to be served in the HTTP stream, or
> >at a label bureau, i.e. beyond the control of most content provider to
> >specify the rating label applicable to their content. Unsurprising actually.
>
>The spec. is very clear where they may reside, in the content (through
>HTTP-equiv), the HTTP headers, or a label bureau.
True, but the spec. was not available until long after the initial sales pitch
to the Net community. In any case, the specs do not readily lend themselves to
easy comprehension by the majority of Net content providers, nor are most
apparently interested in reading anything more than, at most, the PR propaganda.
When the PICSRules draft spec. was released, there were many people who thought
that the third party censorship ability was some new development. I grant one
thing to W3C, their PR machine is clever.
> >In short, PICS was designed and optimised for third party censorship,
> >and by a sleight of hand, the developers ensured they could attempt to sell it
> >to the Net community as something benign. To date, three years later, the vast
> >majority of Net content providers have shown themselves not to be so easily
> >conned.
>
>I believe meta-data often works best when it is not embedded in the
>content.
How often? Justification? Please explain.
>Through http-equiv, one can also stick it in the HTML file
>itself. Though they are related, there are distinctions between meta-data
>transport and the case: "self-labeling" vs. "3rd party labeling."
The one
>is "how I learn," the other is "who is speaking."
What you seem to be saying here is that it is (often, you believe)
technologically more efficient to have PICS censorship labels distributed in
HTTP headers. This may be true, but it certainly sounds like technology
controlling policy and society. Basically, if we want efficient transport of
meta-data, we apparently must accept that it's best to enable other people to
rate, label and censor our speech, because that's a technologically more
efficient means of transporting "preference" data. Cold comfort, Joseph, and I
don't for one minute believe this technical aspect had the slightest thing to do
with PICS being developed so as to provide technological assistance to third
parties desirous of censoring what others say. That was the primary intent from
the outset, before the first PR release in Sept/Oct 1995.
I really must look into how RDF / P3P / whatever is implemented. I'd assumed,
until just now, that web sites would express their privacy policies in meta-data
embedded in the page. However, I now wonder if it's intended that web site
operators will input this info to some third party meta-data database (and
perhaps have to pay to do so)? Similar with RDF enabled Dublin Core categories.
Is this info to be embedded in the page, or is it anticipated that the meta-data
will be distributed by third parties?
> >In my view, PICS has failed in one of its key design goals - that of
> >enabling/encouraging third party groups to set up rating systems and
> >labelling bureaus suitable for their needs.
>
>The technology enabled self rating and 3rd party rating. Self rating was
>seen as rather nice by some, and it is an instance of a technology that
>requires strong interoperability requirements between clients and
>services. Something I've realized is that there is not a lot of incentive
>for 3rd party raters to adopt PICS. For an org that is going to go out
>and rate the whole Web, PICS doesn't buy you a whole lot. In fact, you
>probably want to keep your ratings proprietary and closed. What the
>interoperability buys you in the 3rd party scenario is the ability to
>switch or use multiple 3rd parties. However, people seem fairly happy
>using a single proprietary selection/filtration tool, with an encrypted
>set of ratings from that single source. If you are a propietary third
>party supplier, you may want to "lock-in" folks from moving to another
>service.
Yes, pity the PICS developers didn't do some market research prior to rushing
off in a panic that the 1st A wouldn't hold up under pressure.
I'll refrain, at least for the moment, on commenting on the remainder of your
remarks. I have little of value to add to Stanton's comments.
Irene
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Irene Graham, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. PGP key on h/page.
Burning Issues: <http://www.pobox.com/~rene/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- More (100%) --
Apologies for the length of this. You know how it goes.
At 6:20 PM -0800 9/22/98, Joseph M. Reagle Jr. wrote:
> At 08:02 PM 9/21/98 -0700, Stanton McCandlish wrote:
> >> From an organizational point of view, I'd posit that the W3C standards
> >> are not enforceable beyond the good will of those wishing to extend such
> >> work on their technical merits.
> >
> >I beg to differ. They are, at least in a way that has social impact,
> >enforceable by the ill will of those wishing to abuse the tools for actual
> >censorship, as we've seen attempted in Australia, and newly in Singapore.
> >Ultimately, they may not work, but they do have the immediate and palpable
> >effect of cowing local ISPs, chilling free speech of users in those areas,
> >etc.
>
> Well, be it good or ill, the way of described the adoption of such
> technology is that its adoption is dependent on users', developers', and
> markets' desire to use the technology. The market can/does include
> regulators, perhaps with ill will.
Regulators are not a market in any useful sense. It's like calling a
sociopath who would choke people to death with a hamburger part of the
market of McDonalds. They are not part of the market per se, they are
simply people who *infiltrate* the market to obtain and then abuse the
product or service. McDonalds, if they knew that this person would do this
with their burger, would probably decline to provide them with it.
Continuing this (admittedly offbeat) analogy, PICS is like a hamburger
specifically designed to be used for choking someone to death, and W3C has
done the equivalent of publishing "how to kill someone with our burger"
instructions, and encouraged sociopaths to use it. McDonalds does not
actively market to sociopaths, but W3C is actively marketing PICS to
governments.
> >> Furthermore, the W3C as a body has no
> >> strong mechanism of issuing policy statements, a NOTE with signatories is
> >> the best they have at the moment.
> >
> >That's weak. ANY mechanism would have been something, and even with NO
> >such mechanism W3C certainly had the capability to design PICS in a such
> >a way that it was difficult if not impossible to abuse as we are seeing it
> >abused (or seeing attempts, at any rate.)
>
> I would disagree with this latter part regarding its design, but perhaps.
> The only other alternatives I've seen was Olsen's 18-year old IP bit (which
> I dislike immensely), and Lessig's adult-cert, which I find equally
> problematic as PICS and worse for privacy.
The simplest solution would be to make the technology non-scaleable above
the individual-user level, which is what we've been saying for years. I
think I even predate you in participation in this debate. One of the
coauthors of the original PICS plan was an EFF boardmember, named Rob
Glaser, now head of Progressive Networks. Back then (ca. 1994), PICS (then
called IHPEG) was *explicitly* to work only at the user level, but when the
plan was turned over to W3C, this was radically altered, pretty much behind
everyone's back.
> >One of W3C's biggest examples of seemingly intentional myopia is what I
> >call the Fallacy of the Not-So-Bad Dictatorship, in which it consistently
> >pooh-poohs the concerns of the civil liberties and civil rights
> >communities by resorting to the pretense that governments with no
> >restrictions on what they do to their citizens aren't really all THAT bad,
> >that they deserve a "choice", an "option" to use PICS, as
currently
> >instituted, wisely or evilly. By this fallacious reasoning, providing
> >them tools to do worse isn't such a bad thing, and certainly worth the
> >supposed gain for "parental empowerment" (or more honestly
"government
> >off of industry leaders asses") in the comfy West.
>
> First, I don't think anyone has tortured children with PICS.
You are totally missing the point. GOVERNMENTS DO THIS (not with PICS, but
otherwise). They do it every day, on several continents. About the only
avenues of pressure available to end extrajudicial killings, disappearings,
political imprisonment and other human rights violations are:
1) pressure from other governments (this is very spotty, and basically
bends to the whim of economic give-and-take, as per US/P.R. of China trade
agreements, etc.)
2) external news relating human rights issues to the oppressed population
in these areas (the reason behind the peacetime operations of Radio Free
Europe
and the US Information Agency, and an observed effect, more recently, of
the availablility of the Internet).
3) internal news from the oppressed areas reaching the rest of the world.
PICS in the hands of regimes in these areas will greatly harm 2, and
somewhat harm 3.
That's aside from any *direct* human rights violations (beyond censorship,
of course) that result from imposition of PICS, such as political
imprisonment for those caught net.publishing something their government
doesn't like. You say no one will be tortured with PICS. I challenge your
predition. No one will be beat over the head with a printout of PICS
documentation, but people's lives will be ruined by abuse of that tool.
> Second, I
> believe there is a substantive issue -- call it moral/cultural subjectivity
> -- that states some cultures may have norms that legitimately differ from
> others.
This is the "multiculturalism" fallacy again. One more time: However much
this may be true, it is an internationally accepted given that the "right"
of a culture to do unto its own citizens as it will is sharply limited by
human rights accords. PICS not only will, but is specifically designed to,
help bad-acting governments violate human rights.
> This characteristic is reflected in the "community standards" prong
> of the Miller obscenity tests for instance.
This is true, but has zero relevance here. If, say, Kentucky decided to
ban all pictures of nude humans, this would *not* be upheld as OK under
"community standards". There are limits, but governments that W3C is
pandering to do not respect those limits, and the tool itself actually
undermines efforts to get them to do so. PICS is a *double* blow to human
rights in oppressed areas.
> In light of differing norms, one
> approach is to say that technology should be able to "support multiple"
> options.
Not if any of those options violate human rights. Why is this so hard for
you to understand? It's like releasing a product, say for cleaning
carpets, that in the wrong hands could poison 50,000,000 people. IT JUST
DOESN'T MATTER if it's good at cleaning carpets - you don't release the
product. It would be socially irresponsible to do so.
> The questions is what options does the technology support, either
> purposefully or intrinsically? (I believe meta-data systems have the
> properties PICS has and there is little one can do about it.
Well, gosh, look who's leading the development of metadata systems - W3C!
Are we surprised? Maybe I'm just less cynical than you are. I find it
impossible to believe that a metadata system could not be devised that
would not have these negative effects, or at bare minimum would make
governmental misuse so difficult to pull off as to not be worth bothering
with. I have a lot of faith in human ingenuity. And I believe W3C is
basically collectively lazy and simply uncaring of the negative effects of
what they produce.
> The reason I
> pushed the "Using PICS Well" document was to at least outline the
> intentional/purposeful uses.)
That's like "how to use our genocidal carpet cleaning product nicely".
> Regardless, is there a deterministic/solid way
> of determining which poles [1] are wrong and a way to design accordingly?
> You've responded yes, yes, its trivial, but I've not been able to find any
> objective universal measure, particularly since nearly all political
> contention is associated with differing norms regarding rights.
Use the UN Declaration as a starting point. Let's not be silly.
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/Talks/9803-DCSB/slide14-0.htm
>
> Any technical artifact has external characteristics associated with its
> context (use): what other resources it requires, what its impact is on its
> environment, which policies are easily supported by or co-exist with its
> existence. Some artifacts are more closely coupled to a specific context,
> others are more general -- "friction free." As enunciated in the slide
> above, it seems one has two options:
>
> a. specify one option and fight over that policy.
> b. support multiple options and allow legitimate processes to resolve the
> policy.
Try c. support multiple options within limits, and front-load the system
with one policy in a way that the fight becomes moot.
The ironic thing is that exactly process c has characterized almost all
Internet development up to this point. An exception might be the DNS, but
most of the rest of it was *designed* to resist monopolization, censorship,
surveillance, physical attack, and other centralization weaknesses. W3C
is the *only* Internet standards body I've ever encountered that does not
follow process c. Given that all the rest of them that I know of are made
up of members of the general public rather than consisting of an exclusive
members-only industry good ol' boys club, this is perhaps not surprising.
If you are at a loss for an example, I draw your attention to IPNG, IPv6
and IPSec, our next-generation Internet protocols, all of which are being
front-loaded with strong end-to-end encryption, *specifically in defiance*
of US and some other government's anti-privacy and anti-security policies.
Every other Net standards body has no problem deciding that certain things
are right and wrong, and building their standards accordingly. W3C stands
alone in casting out Net specs that not only undermine human rights but
*are intended to do so*.
>
> Now, with respect to PICS, one could say the W3C pursued B, and
> unfortunately, one of those supported options is centralized control.
That's exactly what one would say, and it was clearly a bad decision from a
human rights point of view (which I would hope anyone who is not a big fan
of fascism would hold).
> As
> I've stated elsewhere, I at least made a pragmatic decision on the
> likelihood of that happening, whether it would be achieved through other
> means regardless, and the context of other ills it seemed to remedy at the
> time.
Fine, but you (and more to the real point, W3C) made this decision largely
in a vacuum, and in direct contradiction to almost all other expert opinion
(e.g. on human rights matters and the negative effect PICS could have, on
the likelihood of the CDA withstanding constitutional scrutiny, etc.)
Making a decision is fine, but such decisions need to reflect reality, and
at the very least consider prevailing informed opinion, and be grounded in
a substantive debate over any differences of opinion. That debate never
happened. W3C effectly just ignored everyone else, and did what it was
going to do, with no regard for the fallout. All I can say is that I'm
overjoyed that PICS looks to be flightless, though I'm very concerned about
the W3C metadata spec, which may have stronger wings and which includes
everything that was bad about PICS. Time will tell, I guess.
> So one of the poles out that there I'm generally uncomfortable with
> (but I'm still confronted with a subjectivity issue regardless), but that
> didn't seem all that likely. However, I believe this policy makes sense
> given the global nature of the Web, the differing norms/regulations,
It does not, because many of those norms/regulations are illegitimate in
international law (though woefully underenforced against). The 'debate'
such as it is, is almost identical to that of mandatory clitoridectomy and
other female genital mutilation. It was long tolerated as "cultural
diversity", but the UN recently condemned the practice, as have human
rights groups for years, and countries where it takes place have cracked
down on such practices. You having doubts about whether government
censorship is OK or not doesn't affect the general human rights (and UN)
view that it is not OK. The question has essentially already been settled
except in your own head.
> and the
> general principle that it is better to design for multiple options than for
> a single option that the particular architect wants to force on others.
You're contradicting yourself. You just said that PICS was only
"enforceable" inasmuch as entities willfully chose to adopt it. If this is
true, then you have a social responsibility to produce a system that
supports, or at very least does no harm, to human rights. Cf. below, you
say:
> Now, the actual deployment and adoption of such a technology/standard is
> dependent:
>
> on users', developers', and markets' desire to use the technology.
> The market can/does include regulators, perhaps with ill will.
The architect *cannot* force it on others, and you know it. All the
architect can do is refuse to offer options that architect knows are easily
abusable, e.g. for human rights violations. This is not brain surgery,
Joseph, just basic logic.
> I
> place this philosophy in a personal context in that I make a pragmatic
> decision, and look at the range of poles and see that, in reality, that
> evil-extreme pole out there (even accounting for cultural subjectivity) is
> outweighed by the other poles of its application. But in general, I think
> its a good idea.
That's an opinion that, as it has been applied by W3C, has never been
subjected to any debate or scrutiny as to its veracity. It's like K-Mart
selling a toy that people say is dangerous, but K-Mart insisting that it's
their opinion that it isn't dangerous, they're going to keep on selling it,
and that's that. There's a fundamental disconnection between W3C's policy-
and decision-making processes, and any form of reality check or other
checks-and-balances. Even public outrage has no effect whatsoever (that
is, even basic market-pressure forces don't sway W3C at all. It simply
forges ahead, willy-nilly, with whatever plan it has settled on, regardless
of concerns about and opposition to those plans. In other words, W3C is
behaving like a headstrong 5-year-old brat that MUST have its way,
regardless of whether that way is right.
You seem genuinely perplexed that people like myself and Ms. Graham are
pissed as hell at W3C. Well, this is the reason. W3C refuses steadfastly to
examine its own actions and proposals, to have a public dialog about the
proposals and their known or likely effects, or to make any changes based
on constructive criticism.
> You could almost picture this as a sea saw. With a fulcrum set at a point,
> and various weights based on a person's assumptions.
There is more to the debate than assumptions. Some of the other factors
include facts, laws and treaties, probabilities, etc.
> Now, the actual deployment and adoption of such a technology/standard is
> dependent:
>
> on users', developers', and markets' desire to use the technology.
> The market can/does include regulators, perhaps with ill will.
There is no "perhaps" about it. You are yet again falling prey to the
Fallacy of the Not-So-Bad Dictatorship.
> Its a very legitimate question to ask, "ok, who deployed and is using this?
> Are 'evil' governments running away with the ball." If the answer is yes,
> how would an org. like the W3C "retract" it is hard to say.
You've missed the boat. The question was "OK, who is likely to deploy
something like this and use it, and will evil governments run away with the
ball, before we actually release any specs." The answers were crystal clear
in 1994, when IHPEG rejected the idea of making the technology scaleable.
W3C reversed that decision *for no good reason that is not greatly
outweighed by the dangers* when it took the project over and renamed it
PICS.
At this point, yes, it is hard to see how to undo the damage, and more to
the point, undo those aspects of PICS and metadata that are likely to cause
more harm in the future when the scheme really catches on. I'm not even
trying to address this issue here, which is a big one. I'm just trying to
get you and W3C to FESS UP and stop trying to pretend you did the world a
favor. Admit some fault, accept some criticism, stop burying your head in
the sand so you can't hear.
> >PICS, like the RIAA movie ratings and the Comics Code Authority is a
> >text-book example of the govt. scaring the industry into instituting
> >"voluntary" censorship the govt. could never get away with directly
> >mandating.
>
> Yes, its an interesting regulatory tactic (that I call "herding" [2]) that
> is not restricted to the domain of content control.
I'm glad you have a name for it. Why did you (or rather W3C) decide to
participate in it, and why will W3C not admit to doing so?
> [2] http://www.w3.org/Talks/980922-MIT6805-princ/slide7-0.html
>
> >Every time I've asked anyone at W3C about what they were doing, I got back
> >an answer that can be summarized "PICS is just technology, and technology
> >is neutral. We aren't responsibile for what bad things people abuse our
> >neutral technology for." Kind of an anti-Nobel attitude that is
> >shockingly ignorant and irresponsible. It's almost as outdated as
> >Lamarckianism, for chrissakes.
>
> Any time I've used the term "neutral" its not to say that technology has no
> impact on external policies, but that it should be as "policy friction
free"
> within the realm of policies that fall within an acceptable range given
> common norms -- if possible. (What this range is, is the big political
> question.)
It's the big political question W3C has consistently tried to duck, day in
and day out. "We aren't a policy organization". "W3C as a body has no
strong mechanism of issuing policy statements..." "We are just
technologists; we leave the political issues to other organizations." I've
been told all of these things by you or other W3C people in person or in
e-mail. I've never once gotten any substantive response about any of these
issues.
> >This is essentially a staw man, though it suffers more acutely from what I
> >call the Fallacy of the Free Speech Absolutist.
>
> Its not a straw man but an extreme example to test a general principle.
It is a straw man - you have propped up an argument to attack that your
opponent is not making. That is the definition (in short form) of the
Fallacy of the Straw Man Argument.
> Consider the case of Germany outlawing Nazi literature. I personally would
> find this abhorrent in my, a US context. However, I do not feel comfortable
> in saying that what the German state has done is wrong necessarily.
That is because you have an inadequate understanding of human rights law.
Germany and several other European countries have gone WAY too far in
enforcing the anti-genocide clauses of the UN Declaration to the detriment
of the freedom of expression clauses. The problem is that it is
economically and politically infeasible for the US or any other country to
challenge them on this, and they policy makers that could possibly do so
simply do not care. It doesn't change the observable facts of the matter.
The UN Declaration does not guarantee free speech "except if you are saying
racist things". The anti-genocide and anti-racism clauses are severable,
and do not supercede the freedom of expression clause.
> The cool
> thing about the Net -- to me -- is not that its "unregulatable," but that
> one can create/join one's governing mechanism of choice.
That's fine and dandy, but not germane. If you live under a hostile
government you largely do not have this option, and will not have it at all
if PICS, PICSRules, and metadata enable them to be censored even further.
> This is why I like
> user empowered decentralized social protocols.
Me too. Unfortunately, PICS isn't one.
> I can select my choice of law
> and norms. I'll select bozo filter those that I don't like and the German
> Privacy Law and US 1st Amendment, thank you very much. This is the "vote
> with your clickstream and configuration principle." However, their are
> instances, where societies have found they need to regulate the private
> conduct of a minority of individuals. (Both in good ways, 1) outlawing "bad
> things" and 2) creating rights to protect the minority from the majority,
> and in bad ways.) Now we are into the position of determining the
> legitimacy of rights, deliberative processes/governance, and such. Something
> -- I think -- the technology should punt on if possible.
I agree, but you've missed the point again. That debate has been ongoing
for decades, and has resulted in many already-settled givens. All W3C had
to do was stick to those givens. It did not even have to get into the
debate. Instead, W3C pretended the debate did not exist or had not settled
anything at all, that all human rights issues were simply a big open
question, and ergo ignorable. This was a mistake, and W3C needs to admit
that mistake, and revise PICS and its progeny to reflect a better
understanding, to undo as much as possible what has been done that is
harmful or likely to be harmful.
> The question is to what degree can real space governance impose itself upon
> cyberspace governance using social protocols, particularly when its policies
> are not held by a majority of its users? Is there any situation in which
> real space governments have the right to regulate on-line conduct?
What PICS does is take it out of the real of rights and into
practicalities, by making it *easy* for governments to do it. If it's not
easy, most of them won't try, and the issue would simply never arise
(except in things like legal challenges to stupid unenforceable mandates,
etc.) W3C's given bad-acting governments the *means* to impose real-space
governmance upon cyberspace to a large degree, and if they do so in
violation of human rights accords, very little will ever be done about it,
because those that can do anything about it (e.g. the US Administration and
other big players in the UN), really don't give a damn.
> While I
> admit PICS could be used poorly, my continued support of it is predicated on
> my belief that mechanisms of filtration/selection/recommendation/reputation
> are critical to on-line communities and governance.
This reasoning is also fallacious. What you say may be true, and your
belief is your belief. But this belief does not mean that you have to
support any particular proposal that *claims* to acheive the goal you
believe in, nor one that might actually do so, but at the cost of other
things that matter. It's like supporting an anti-spam bill that would
criminalize a lot of non-spam, or one that would not actually solve the
spamming problem, but just is "intended" to. It's NOT the thought that
counts when it comes to public policy.
> (Aside from my beliefs
> on responsible design and my fuzziness on cultural subjectivity.) I want to
> filter, select and block, I do every day. Governments could co-opt these
> mechanisms, but I am convinced that people can still get around the
> mandatory use of such technologies
How? Lay out your "How to Subvert Your Murderous Fascist Government's
Censorship Regime in the Privacy of Your Own Bedroom" scheme. I'd really
like to see it. Who are you to be *gambling* with other people's lives and
freedoms on the off chance of making idle Western Democracy net.addicts
lives slightly more convenient?
> and that such tools are unavoidable as
> the Web deploys.
Certainly, but they *do not* have to be designed in a way that makes them
easy to use for government censorship. I repeat, it is clear from the
edited PICS "white paper" (or "article" or whatever term we want to
give
it) that PICS is *marketed directly at fascist governments for use
nation-wide censorship tools*. The line that W3C considered the possibility
of said censorship and rejected it as unlikely, not very serious a matter,
or outweighed by positive benefits is pure bullshit. The opposite is true:
W3C knows it will happen, and *wants* it to happen. W3C very clearly
*wants* fascist governments to adopt and use its PICS system, because this
will help propagate that system and make it more widely adopted. Yes, this
is a direct and serious accusation. But W3C's own documents are quite clear
on the matter:
From "PICS: Internet Access Controls Without Censorship", Paul Resnick &
James Miller of W3C. (Original version appeared in Communications of
the ACM, 1996, vol. 39(10), pp. 87-93.):
[Emphasis added by ***bracketing with asterisks***.]
[begin excerpts]
Flexible Blocking
Not everyone needs to block reception of the same materials. Parents
may not wish to expose their children to sexual or violent images.
Businesses may want to prevent their employees from visiting
recreational sites during hours of peak network usage. ***Governments
may want to restrict reception of materials that are legal in other
countries but not in their own***. The "off" button (or disconnecting
from the entire Net) is too crude: there should be some way to block
only the inappropriate material. Appropriateness, however, is neither
an objective nor a universal measure. It depends on at least three
factors:
1.The supervisor: parenting styles differ, as do philosophies of
management ***and government***.
[...]
PICS does not specify how parents or other supervisors [***including
governments***] set
configuration rules. One possibility is...for organizations
and on-line services to provide preconfigured sets of selection rules.
For example, an on-line service might team up with UNICEF to offer
"Internet for kids" and "Internet for teens" packages, containing not
only preconfigured selection rules, but also a default home page
provided by UNICEF.
[Obviously, if one govt. organization such as UNICEF could do this, so
could any, in any government.]
[...]
Labels can be retrieved in various ways. Some clients might choose to
request labels each time a user tries to access a document. Others
might cache frequently requested labels or download a large set from a
label bureau and keep a local database, to minimize delays while
labels are retrieved.
[Obviously a government agency might serve a label bureau, with use of that
bureau mandated in law.]
[...]
PICS specifies very little about how to run a labeling service, beyond
the format of the service description and the labels. Rating services
must make the following choices: 1. The labeling vocabulary. A common
set of dimensions would make publishers' self-labels more useful to
consumers but cultural divergence may make it difficult to arrive at a
single set of dimensions. ***Governments may also mandate
country-specific vocabularies.*** Third party labelers are likely to use
a wide range of other dimensions.
[...]
PICS provides a labeling infrastructure for the Internet. It is
values-neutral: it can accommodate any set of labeling dimensions, and
any criteria for assigning labels.
[Tacit admission that PICS can be used for censorship, despite the
disingenuous name of the article, and the even more disingenuous intitial
printing of it with no such references to government use. They were added
in quietly to the archived copy *after* publication. The only reason I can
think for doing this is so that the Internet community in general would
never notice, but any govt. censorship-happy regulators doing research on
how to censor the Net would find this paper and get the bright idea to use
PICS.]
[...]
Any PICS-compatible software can interpret labels from any source,
because each source provides a machine-readable description of its
labeling dimensions. ***Around the world, governments are considering
restrictions on on-line conte