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Issue no. 110 - 3 March 1999

• Universities Grapple With Computer Use Policies (New York Times)
  A detailed investigation of the incident where a student was kicked out of the school's computer lab for breaching the policy on objectionable content.

Issue no. 109 - 25 February 1999

• USA - First-Hand Lesson in Censorship (Wired)
  A student researching a sociology paper on censorship of offensive words and images who followed links to a Hitler Was A Pagan site was accused of violating the university's rules on computer use. The university says neither faculty members nor students may use computers to "acquire, store, or display" material that is "racially offensive" or "objectionable."

• USA - Virginia Law Could Hamper Educators at State Schools (New York Times)
  In a unanimous decision last week, a three-judge federal appeals court panel dropped a bomb on some faculty members at public universities and colleges in Virginia. Overturning a lower court decision, the judges upheld a 1996 law requiring state employees, including professors at state institutions, to get permission from their supervisors before using state computer equipment to access sexually explicit material.

Issue no. 108 - 16 February 1999

• Internet Action Plan decision published in Official Journal (Official Journal)
  Decision No 276/1999/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 January 1999 adopting a multiannual Community action plan on promoting safer use of the Internet by combating illegal and harmful content on global networks. OJ L 33 6 February 1999 p.1

• USA - Virginia cracks down on sexual content (CNET News.com)
  State employees in Virginia do not have a First Amendment right to access "sexually explicit communication" on the Net, even if the research is job-related. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a law that prohibits any state employee from using Virginia-owned computer equipment to access or store sexually explicit content, unless a person gets written permission from a supervisor to obtain the prohibited material. ACLU Press Release Court's Decision see also New York Times

Issue no. 107 - 8 February 1999

• China - Internet Forum shut down (Reuters)
  Beijing has shut down China's most famous Internet forum where sensitive issues including the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown were discussed.

• China - Rights Group: Ministry To Step Up Online Supervision (Reuters)
  China plans to step up supervision of on-line communications as part of a nationwide effort to limit free speech. A Hong Kong-based human rights group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, said the Ministry of Public Security has ordered a 24-hour watch on popular on-line chat rooms.

• USA - Anti-abortion Web site loses in court (MSNBC)
  A federal jury ordered operators of an anti-abortion Web site to pay $107 million in damages to abortion clinics and doctors in a landmark case testing the limits of free speech. The jury ruled that the Web site through its "wanted" posters with the names and addresses of abortion doctors amounted to threats.

• USA - Provider Pulls Plug On Anti-Abortion Web Site (Reuters)
  An anti-abortion web site that displays fetal body parts was yanked from the Internet after its creator said he would add live video of women entering abortion clinics in England, Japan and the United States.

• Worries About Big Brother at America Online (New York Times)
  Discussion of America Online's policy on content submitted to its message boards.

Issue no. 106 - 29 January 1999

• Germany - Self-regulatory body to pass on complaints to authorities where danger to life, limb or liberty (ots)
  Die Mitglieder der Freiwilligen Selbstkontrolle Multimedia (FSM) beschlossen, das Beschwerdeverfahren in einem wichtigen Punkt zu ändern: In Zukunft wird die FSM die zuständigen Behörden über den Inhalt von Beschwerden über Online-Inhalte informieren, wenn sich bei der Prüfung der Verdacht einer konkreten Gefahr für Leib, Leben oder Freiheit von Personen ergibt.

• Iran - Top Cleric Warns Of Internet, Satellite Threat (Reuters)
  A top Iranian cleric warned against the "threat" of the Internet and satellite television to Iranian society and called for counteracting such influence with films on the history of Islam. Under Iranian law, satellite television receivers are banned. Internet users - mostly government organizations and professionals such as journalists - have to get an official permit and promise not to connect to "immoral" sites or those "against national security."

• USA - CDA II witness: Credit cards useless (ZDNet)
  Dan Farmer, the head of computer security at Internet service provider EarthLink, testified that there is no technologically-foolproof way to check the ages of Web site visitors, including the credit card verification scheme promoted by the U.S. Department of Justice in the lawsuit over enforcement of the COPA law. The law, passed in October as part of an omnibus federal spending bill, would make it a crime for commercial Web sites to publish material deemed "harmful to minors" without first verifying site visitors' ages.

Issue no. 105 - 22 January 1999

• USA - Internet Smut Law Enters Court, With a Snag (New York Times)
  Hearings in a case challenging a federal law against online pornography opened, only to be derailed by a side issue: a dispute over whether certain parts of the hearings should be closed to the public.

• USA - COPA Judge No Newbie (Wired)
  Lowell A. Reed, Jr. is one wired judge. This is heartening news for ACLU attorneys, who hope to persuade Reed that COPA, a new federal law restricting sexually explicit Web sites, violates free speech rights. see also CDAII: Tempest in a D-Cup.

• USA - Journalist's email subpoenaed (CNET News.com)
  A computer game maker has subpoenaed a Texas reporter, demanding she turn over emails used in reporting a story that was critical of the company.

Issue no. 104 - 17 January 1999

• Canada - Judge rules kiddy porn possession protected (Reuters)
  A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has ruled Canadians have a constitutional right to possess child pornography if it is for private use and not for distribution, according to a decision made public on Friday. The judge dismissed two counts of simple possession against a Vancouver man, ruling the threat to privacy and freedom of expression rights posed by that section of the Criminal Code outweighed its limited benefits to society.

• Guyana - Government lifts ban on sex-related Internet content (Nando Media - AP)
  Guyana is lifting Internet restrictions that have blocked online information about sex, racism and explosives from users based in this South American country. Programmers will begin removing software filters as early as Monday, Information Minister Moses Nagamootoo was quoted as saying in Sunday newspapers. "The government is committed to freedom of expression and access to information," Nagamootoo said. "We felt that the lifting of the restriction is the way to go."

Issue no. 103 - 8 January 1999

• Syria Plans E-Mail Service Under Official Control (Reuters)
  Syria will introduce a public e-mail service next month but it will be subject to official control. Technicians said a special server at the state telecommunications center would allow control of incoming and outgoing services, including the ability to block contact with destinations regarded as undesirable.

• Nations strive to limit freedom of the Internet (Boston Globe)
  As promised, the Internet is turning into an unstoppable geyser of information, a source of data, news and opinions that flow freely around the world. Except in China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Cuba... The more information that becomes available, the more governments try to stanch the flow with new filtering technologies or strict limits on who can use computers.

Issue no. 102 - 4 January 1999

• LookSmart looks away from porn ads (Inter@ctive Week Online)
  LookSmart said it will stop accepting advertising that it considers pornographic. Not only is it banning pornographic ads, it also is eliminating links to adult sites featured within its directory of 800,000 site listings.

• USA - Court strikes down law on porn cable TV (Reuters)
  A three-judge panel in a federal court in Delaware ruled that a law requiring sexually explicit cable television channels to completely block their signals to non-subscribing households was unconstitutional.

• USA - School Dazed by Speech Ruling (Wired)
  A Missouri high school cannot punish a student for criticizing a teacher on a personal Web page, a federal judge ruled, saying the school violated free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. see also Associated Press

Issue no. 101 - 17 December 1998

• Chinese Net warriors gain support (ZDNet)
  The Digital Freedom Network has joined a coalition of other human rights organizations to launch an e-mail protest campaign against the imprisonment of two Chinese scientists who used the Internet to foment that nation's pro-democracy movement.

• USA - A Case of Spam and Free Speech at Intel (New York Times)
  A California State judge issued a preliminary injunction barring Kenneth Hamidi, a former Intel employee from sending bulk e-mail to any addresses on the company's internal network.

Issue no. 100 - 11 December 1998

• Sweden - Net Group to Government: Hands Off (InternetNews.com)
  BitoS, a trade organization composed of online content providers and distributors, recently formed "Do Not Touch My Internet". The campaign is a result of Swedish law recently passed that prohibits the mention of someone's name on a Web site without permission.

Issue no. 99 - 5 December 1998

• Vietnam government to tighten control on Internet (The AP)
  A special committee will be created in Ho Chi Minh City to inspect the use of Internet services and possibly place restrictions on them. The committee will direct the use of Internet services according to the government's guidelines.

• Austria - ISPA Österreich führt Zensur für Newsgroups ein (Telepolis)
  [Austrian ISPA plans for combating illegal content in newsgroups through targeted technical measures spark controversy] In der Newsgroup at.usenet und anderen schlagen die Wellen der Proteste hoch, seitdem die österreichische Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) ihre Pläne bezüglich der Bekämpfung illegaler Inhalte im Internet bekanntgegeben hat. Was die ISPA vor hat, geht über die blosse Einrichtung einer Hotline , die heute, am 1.12. ihren Betrieb aufgenommen hat, weit hinaus. Erklärtermassen will man gemeldete und für "illegal" befundene Inhalte mittels des sogenannten NoCeM-Modus ("No See Message") zensurieren, wodurch nur österreichische Newsserver von der Massnahme betroffen sind.

• China - Cyber trial closes (BBC)
  A businessman accused of trying to overthrow the Chinese state using the Internet has been tried in Shanghai. No verdict was announced after a reported 4-hour trial behind closed doors. Lin Hai was the first person in China charged with using the Internet for the purposes of political subversion. A defence lawyer told the Associated Press news agency that the court would probably take a week to rule.

• Switzerland - Swiss propose conference on Internet racism (Reuters)
  Switzerland is offering to organize an international conference on how to stop racists using the Internet to spread their views.

Issue no. 98 - 30 November 1998

• The Internet and free markets: Will regulation strangle Net freedoms? (ZDNet)
  In the free-market love-fest that is The Cato Institute's Washington, D.C. vs. Silicon Valley Conference on Technology and Society, one thing that everybody agrees on is that the Internet is changing the economy forever. But that's about where the consensus ends.

Issue no. 97 - 20 November 1998

• Australische Neonazi-Site vor Schliessung (Heise)
  Ob das sogenannte Adelaide Institute gegen ein Gesetz zum Verbot der Rassendiskriminierung (Racial Discrimination Act) verstösst, untersucht seit der vergangenen Woche die australische "Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission."

• Trial will test China's grip on Internet (New York Times)
  The trial of a 30-year-old computer executive, soon to begin in Shanghai, heralds a new electronic battleground for China's political dissidents and security forces determined to preserve Communist Party control. Lin Hai, the defendant, is charged with "inciting subversion of state power." Prosecutors say that from September 1997 until his arrest in March, Lin gave tens of thousands of Chinese e-mail addresses to "hostile foreign publications."

• China - China and the Internet (Economist)
  For all its cutting-edge newness, the Internet poses what is for China a very familiar problem: how to benefit from spectacular new technology without being transformed by it.

• USA - Court suspends Child Online Protection Act (Full text)
  In the first constitutional test of a new Internet censorship law, a federal judge today issued a temporary restraining order, until the issues in the lawsuit can be further litigated, against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act, which imposes criminal penalties against any "commercial" website that makes material that is "harmful to minors" available to anyone under 17 years of age.

Issue no. 94 - 7 November 1998

• Australia - Case tests Net laws (USA Today)
  In the first test of Australia's anti-discrimination laws involving the Internet, a government commission heard arguments Monday over a Web site that claims the Holocaust never happened. The case was brought by the Executive Council of Australia Jewry against a private organization called the Adelaide Institute.

• UK - Net watchdog under review (Internet Magazine)
  KPMG and solicitors Denton Hall are undertaking a review of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK Net watchdog. The two companies are inviting public comment on the IWF and on illegal content on the Net through a confidential Web site with the aim of producing a report for the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) in December.

Issue no. 93 - 29 October 1998

• USA - ACLU files suit against Net porn law (MSNBC)
  The American Civil Liberties Union and several other groups filed suit Thursday seeking to stop enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act. Unlike the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which the Supreme Court struck down unanimously, the new law regulates only commercial Web sites. The new law applies only to data given away free of charge on the commercial sites. It exempts information that is sold.

Issue no. 92 - 22 October 1998

• USA - Library filtering suit dismissed (CNET News.com)
  In what the ACLU is calling a victory for free speech, a California superior court judge today threw out a lawsuit that called for mandatory filters to be installed on library computers used to surf the Internet.

• USA - Neo-Nazi Group Sued For Online Threats (TechWeb)
  The Pennsylvania state attorney general filed suit Tuesday against a White supremacist group whose Web page allegedly contained threats against several state government employees.

Issue no. 91 - 16 October 1998

• USA - New laws won't stop hate (New York Times)
  The author, James B. Jacobs, a professor of law at New York University and co-author of "Hate Crime: Criminal Law and Identity Politics", argues against special laws dealing with hate crime.

Issue no. 90 - 13 October 1998

• China - China 'blocks' BBC Website (BBC)
  The main state-controlled Internet service provider in Beijing, China Net, is believed to be blocking access to the BBC's Webpage server at www.bbc.co.uk. The blocking appears to have begun within the last month and applies to all pages on that server. The BBC's English Language news provided on the server news.bbc.co.uk is not affected.

• Germany - Nazis im Web aggressiver (Focus)
  Seit der Bundestagswahl haben Rechtsextremisten ihre Propaganda im Internet forciert. Laut Verfassungsschutz verfünfachte sich in den vergangenen zwei Jahren die Zahl der Homepages deutscher Neonazis. Das volksverhetzende und antisemitische Gedankengut werde vor allem über amerikanische Provider und Server verbreitet.

• USA - Papers' names link to racist material (The AP)
  Internet surfers attempting to see the Web site of The Philadelphia Inquirer got racist material instead this week if they used the logical but incorrect Web address "philadelphiainquirer.com". At least nine other newspapers suffered the same headache. Someone registered Internet addresses that included part or all of the newspapers' names, then linked those addresses to the "Stormfront" Internet site. That site features the words "White Pride World Wide" and includes racist articles and links to other racist sites.

Issue no. 89 - 8 October 1998

• CDA II stalled? Legislators may not get to it this session (Reuters)
  Lawmakers supporting controversial new restrictions on Internet pornography scrambled Wednesday to find a legislative strategy for enacting their proposals before time runs out. Congress is scheduled to adjourn Friday but may run a few days late. Congress pushes Net issues

• Steinhardt Says EFF Will Sue If CDA Passes (TechWeb)
  The EFF, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is helping prepare a lawsuit they will file against the proposed restriction on Internet content harmful to minors if it is signed.

• Malaysia - Net patrol (BBC)
  Police in Malaysia have set up an Internet unit to monitor sites and newsgroups which have been organising protests against the jailing of the former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. The national Bernama news agency reported that the unit was set up on the instructions of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Its mission was to watch for information and messages which could affect public security.

Issue no. 88 - 5 October 1998

• EU - Council Common Position on the Internet Action Plan (European Commission)
  The Council Common Position on the Action Plan on promoting safer use of the Internet was adopted on 24 September 1998. It now returns to the European Parliament for second reading under the co-decision procedure.

Issue no. 87 - 1 October 1998

• Malaysia - Four Charged with Spreading Riot Rumors over Internet (Asia BizTech)
  Four people were charged in a Malaysian court on Sept. 24 with spreading rumors of riots in the capital city over the Internet. In another incident, service provider Mimos announced on Sept. 28 that it had tracked down a person for allegedly inciting racial disharmony through the Internet. The person's particulars have been handed over to the police upon their request.

• UK - Government Explores Content Filters (TechWeb)
  The British government renewed its pledge to protect its citizens from harmful content on the Internet by announcing proposals for a government-led effort to develop easy-to-use content filters. Converging Technologies: the consequences for the new knowledge-driven economy

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