Re: [Bug-gne]the problem of illegal content vs. freedom

[Christopher Mahan]

I think it would be a pain in the neck to find out what is legal or illegal 
in each country.

However, GNE could take proactive action and specifically ask the agencies 
or departments in various countries to "check" the articles for legality. 
These government-controlled agencies could then decide, based on the article 
content:
 -illegal/legal to host in servers located in this country.
 -illegal/legal to display on browser viewed by a citizen of this country.

For the hosting, the back end mirroring system would be able to keep track 
of what is hosted where.

For the displaying in browser, there would be a notice, in english, and in 
that country's official language, in an intersticial page:
 It is illegal to view/store/print this article in:
   France (Agence Nationale des Cons)
   Germany (National Broadcasting Agency)
   Italy
   Poland...

so on and so forth.

The system I don't think should prohibit the physical downloading of the 
file, as long as it is very _VERY_ clear that the content is illegal.

Also, this information should reside in or near the file, and be included in 
any classification. (a classifier might choose to "forget" the restriction 
on an article).

It could be in a separate file, like the signature.

This information, unlike the content rating (PG-13, subjective to a 
particular culture), should be made available for the back-end system so 
that the back-end system will automatically apply these restrictions when 
"mirroring" or "displaying".


----

On a different note, a code could be issued to the author of the article 
when the author posts this article, and when used in conjunction or 
independently of the email (for anonymous articles) could be used to 
modify/delete the article. This could be a 20 (or so) digit mix of numerics 
and alphas, and be broken into groups of five, or something.
If the author loses the code, tough.

Also, if someone was to attempt to "crack the code" the server would treat 
this as a denial of service attack and respond in the appropriate way (call 
the FBI and deny access to that IP) so I don't think the code could be 
easily aquired.

Let's say the author lived in a repressive country, typed the article on the 
browser, logged off without including email, name, or any identifying 
information (in fear of his/her life), this article should be kept by GNE.


Chris






> From: address@hidden
> Reply-To: address@hidden
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Bug-gne]the problem of illegal content vs. freedom
> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 07:25:01 +0800
>
> Tom wrote:
> > Alex,
> >
> > I see your point about mirroring. Some people would
> > say "Oh simply keep contentious articles in countries
> > where they aren't illegal!". The problem with that is
> > linking to them... what if that one mirror goes down
> > for instance, or moves? We would need some very well
> > designed tracking systems to ensure that we don't face
> > many potential problems with each mirror holding
> > different information.
>
> Actually, it doesn't help the issue at all. In many countries it's the
> *possession* of illegal material which constitutes the offense, and, in the
> UK for example, there have already been instances of successful prosecution
> based on the individual displaying images on their PC when the images
> originated on a web server in another country. Saying that US law isn't
> like that isn't helpful here.  GNE is designed to be a truely international
> resource and the difficulties experienced by users in countries other than
> the US have to be taken seriously. Perhaps some general warning "some
> content in this archive may be illegal in your country" is a first step.
>
> > Yes ideologies will be very important, but we have to
> > work out some way of allowing every view possible. To
> > start with GNE will be hosted with GNU, so in the US I
> > assume, so we should get away with many contentious
> > issues but not all of them. The only thing I can
> > suggest is that some people get down to writing some
> > sort of perl script that would manage the problem of
> > mirrors holding different info, and of perhaps an
> > article only being held on one mirror. We'd then have
> > to hope we always had a mirror on which articles could
> > be stored. We'd also have to ask author's to tell us
> > if they think their article could be illegal in some
> > places, so we could store it with care and avoid any
> > future problems.
> >
> > As nice as it would be to blatantly refuse not to obey
> > US Law, I think we might get more than we bargained
> > for if we did!
>
> And people in other countries will have similar issues if *they* ignore
> their own laws.
>
> It's an area where GNE has to tread very carefully (IMHO of course), and
> should come up with an approach which is practical, and for which we get
> general agreement from the people on this mailing list in the first
> instance.
>
> You know the *real* difficulty here?  Keeping track of what's illegal
> where, and associating this with a growing set of articles.  For the sake
> of the users of GNE, the project has to make a serious attempt to do this
> properly.
>
> Paul
>
>
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