News on Congressional Debate on Exon

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

I just heard (12:15 EST) that the House has adopted language similar to the
original Exon-Coates language in the Senate (as opposed to the White
language, which was less restrictive in that it dealt with material that
was "harmful" to children, interpreted to mean child porn).

It looks like Internet Service Providers will soon be held liable for
"indecent material" passed by their systems. I would expect most ISPs will
drop the alt.binaries.* newsgroups as a first step, and maybe other groups
as well.

(Controlling Web page accesses is a much tougher problem, of course. so I
wouldn't expect much action on this at first.)

By the way, I recently discovered a new twist on "age credentials": the use
of credit cards to prove age. One image site is asking for a "valid credit
card number" to be given...not to use for charges, but just to do a quick
verification (they claim a few minutes or less) that the card is valid and
in the name of the person accessing their site.

Some obvious security issue. An interesting twist, though.

If the Exon Bill really does go into effect, and age limits on access are
imposed, I'll be looking for what we've always joked about: the
"Information Superhighway Driver's License."

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."