Police PR Mendacity

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

Financial Times, 2 Feb 1996

Governments around the world are taking action to police
computer networks

By Our Foreign Staff

The US Congress last night passed legislation that
imposes stiff penalties for the distribution of
"indecent" material on the Internet, a global web of
computer networks that can be reached by an estimated 30m
computer users.

The action echoes moves by other leading industrial
countries to bring the Internet under some form of
control. It coincides with a call by French officials for
an international law on communications to deal with
regulation of electronic publishing on the Net.

In Japan, meanwhile, Tokyo police have made what are
believed to be the first arrests in a crackdown on the
distribution of pornography via computer networks.

The rapid growth of the Internet has created widespread
concerns about its use to distribute pornography, racial
hate messages and other offensive materials. However the
vast bulk of material published on the global computer
network is commercial or technical in nature.

The measures passed in the US Congress, which were
attached to a broad Telecommunications Bill, for the
first time place legal limits on the types of materials
that can be distributed via computer networks.

Government intervention is strongly opposed by Internet
pioneers, and by many within the computer industry, who
believe that rapid growth of the Internet and electronic
commerce will be stunted by regulation. Moreover, legal
experts say that the regulation of cyberspace raises
complex issues about jurisdiction because the Internet
carries information across national borders.

In France, the issue has been brought to a head by the
recent publication, on the Internet, of "Le Grand Secret"
(The Big Secret), a book about Francois Mitterrand's
battle with cancer written by Dr Claude Gubler, the late
president's personal physician, which has been banned by
the French courts. Mr Francois Fillon, post and telecoms
minister, said in the French Senate yesterday that he was
to propose to a March meeting of EU culture and telecoms
ministers an international conference to debate a law.

He said the government was creating a working group with
representatives from the ministries of justice, culture
and telecoms, and stressed that his concerns included the
problem of dealing with regulation outside national
boundaries and the difficulty of pursuing those who
abused the system.

He also suggested the possibility of introducing ethical
codes for Internet operators along the lines of those
already in place for the country's Minitel telephone-
based information system.

In Japan, where use of the Internet is growing rapidly,
the legality of publishing pornography on computer
networks is about to be tested in the courts following
the first arrests for allegedly criminal use of the
Internet.

Tokyo police announced that they had arrested a
28-year-old businessman, Mr Hiroshi Kamekura, on
suspicion of distributing pornographic pictures. He is
alleged to have produced the images at home and
distributed them on his home page since last month, said
police. According to Mr Kamekura, the service was popular
and he was asked by other Internet users to produce more
provocative pictures.

Police also arrested a high school student, accused of
distributing pornographic pictures over the Internet
since last September. The arrests may raise eyebrows in
a country where graphic, frequently sadistic pornography,
moderated only by a ban on depictions of pubic hair, is
openly sold on book stalls everywhere.

A German court has already acted to prevent users in that
country from accessing sexually explicit Internet
discussion groups. The court forced Compuserve, a
US-based online information service, to block access to
about 200 of the thousands of "Usenet" groups to be found
on the Internet.

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