Anonymous remailers mentioned in CDA decision

[Raph Levien <raph@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu>]

Here's a paragraph from the findings in this morning's CDA decision.
I'm happy to see that we're considered an integral part of the
Internet, rather than as a fringe cyber-terrorism threat.

Overall, I found the decision to be balanced, well written, and
extremely thoughtful.

Raph

[ excerpted from http://www.vtw.org/speech/decision.html ]

[ from the undisputed findings of fact ]

           Obstacles to Age Verification on the Internet

          90.  There is no effective way to determine the
identity or the age of a user who is accessing material through
e-mail, mail exploders, newsgroups or chat rooms.  An e-mail
address provides no authoritative information about the
addressee, who may use an e-mail "alias" or an anonymous
remailer.  There is also no universal or reliable listing of e-
mail addresses and corresponding names or telephone numbers, and
any such listing would be or rapidly become incomplete.  For
these reasons, there is no reliable way in many instances for a
sender to know if the e-mail recipient is an adult or a minor.
The difficulty of e-mail age verification is compounded for mail
exploders such as listservs, which automatically send information
to all e-mail addresses on a sender's list.  Government expert
Dr. Olsen agreed that no current technology could give a speaker
assurance that only adults were listed in a particular mail
exploder's mailing list.

[ ... ]

                             Anonymity
          121. Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek
to access sensitive information, such as users of the Critical
Path AIDS Project's Web site, the users, particularly gay youth,
of Queer Resources Directory, and users of Stop Prisoner Rape
(SPR).  Many members of SPR's mailing list have asked to remain
anonymous due to the stigma of prisoner rape.

[ from views submitted by the parties in response to Order dated March
13, 1996 ]

22. Arguably, a valid CDA would create an incentive for overseas
pornographers not to label their speech. If we upheld the CDA,
foreign pornographers could reap the benefit of unfettered access
to American audiences.  A valid CDA might also encourage American
pornographers to relocate in foreign countries or at least use
anonymous remailers from foreign servers.