Last updated 08:30 15 April 1997
After many, many moons of apparent inactivity, the OCAF has finally created its home page. It's not the magnificent tour de force that we were all hoping for, but it's not a pathetic mess, either. Looks like Paul Cardin finally figured out the concept of a "link", after all these years of creating link-free web pages. Attaboy Paul! We'll get you to use the Internet yet!
Those who remember that about six months ago, Paul and friends stole a HTMLized version of his manifesto and put it on his then-web site. It would appear that HTML scares Paul to death, because he's now using a product called "Deltapoint QuickSite". I should have known he couldn't learn HTML, poor fellow. I do think it's a bit pathetic that he's not even willing to learn the language of the web to communicate with us. It's a little like he's really done his best to put his message up on the Internet, while being squeamishly unhappy about using the net at all. I daresay that's why it's taken so long for him to create a web page.
The rest of this page is unchanged since 5 March 1996
In light of the Oklahomans for Children and Families manifesto, I have decided to write a responsible critique of the document, and further develop my thoughts on the issue of online pornography.
If you want to know what we're up against, here's the bottom line as expressed by Paul Cardin, author of the manifesto, otherwise known as "The Agincourt Project". Do you think we're in a cheesy Science Fiction novel, or perhaps one of those sagas of sea and square-riggers going out on the bounding main?
For more about the OCAF, check out this OCAF timeline, revealing some of their previous activities.
Check out For the Sake of the Children, Homer Wilson Smith's commentary on the situation.
David Fenton has a home page that includes an easier to read HTMLized version of the Noporn document, together with his footnotes. I must say that this is one strange world when a nasty group puts their stuff up and one of their sworn enemies goes to the effort of HTMLizing it! I think it makes them look a lot more clueful than they are (which is why I didn't do it to my version). So note: Paul Cardin has not yet learned HTML, even in the bastardized Microsoft way. Strange.
Warning: Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer. This document contains my analysis of the OCAF and its ideas and legal position, but obviously since I'm not an attorney you cannot rely on this for solid, responsible advice. It's basically informed speculation on the situation and what will happen next. I hope you'll find it useful and enjoyable.
When I first read it, I was appalled that these people used exerpts from my ISP FAQ without permission, and without telling people where the full document could be found. I had thought that they are more than happy to flaunt the law when it suits them.
Accordingly, I called them and talked to a fellow named Paul Cardin. Their phone number, given out cheerfully by a Norman, OK information operator, is (405) 340-3769. It's cleverly disguised; I asked information for the number of "Oklahomans for Children and Families", and they couldn't find it. I was searching through my email for clues, when suddenly the operator said, "Oh! Here it is! Oklahomans 4 Children and Families". That slight disguise almost got them off the hook.
He apologised most genially for exerpting the FAQ without my permission, and he told me that proper credit had been given at the end of the document. Well, I'll be darned if he wasn't correct. I requested that he add the credit in a place where it could be found, and he agreed with remarkable civility. I also took a statement from him:
One misconception: When this happens, we're not going to go after the largest provider we can find. We're going to go after every law-breaking provider in every community where there's a prosecutor willing to prosecute. We're looking for small and big providers alike. We're not going to target the largest we can find and wait five years while it goes to court. Since this debate began, my daughter was raped. If we let this debate continue for a few more years, there will be more child molestations and rapes. We're not going to take this anymore.He also claimed that "We have the resources, in high places and low places" to do this, "including national contacts."- Paul Cardin of OCAF.
When I asked him about free speech and the First Amendment, he said that "the battle had been lost, Dennis" - certain types of speech is illegal, and there's nothing I could do to prevent that. He seemed to feel that the battle was over, and that all he had to do was the prosecutorial mopping up.
His intent is obviously to scare ISPs out of their wits.
In an earlier draft of this document, I had linked Karl Denninger with the movement, based on their quoting the "Operator of a major Midwestern ISP". However, that quote turns out to have been from one of Karl's public posts, and they used it without permission or attribution. Although he does believe that Kiddie Porn should be removed from the net, he doesn't approve of the organization or its tactics. I apologise to Karl for misattributing his beliefs; I should have known that they would have no more respect for his words then they did for mine.
Needless to say, the opinions expressed in this document are my own. While I certainly suspect many others share them, I don't claim to speak for anyone but myself.
You can contact the OCAF through one of two email addresses: ocaf@aol.com and ocaf@telepath.com. Paul Cardin, the author of the document cited here, can be reached at cardinpaul@mailback.com .
I would like to bring your attention to the OCAF Timeline, cited above. It would appear that OCAF is about 2,400 people, only 200-odd who bother going to the rallies and demonstrations. It certainly seems like an amazingly small group to try and push forward with this kind of change, but Pat Buchanan's Presidential campaign surely shows us that you cannot underestimate the fantaticism of a small but dedicated group of people.
In an earlier copy of this document, I put in a statement implying that religious people would be more close-minded than the average person, and that they as a whole would be interested in suppressing pornography. I have found, however, that some of the most eloquent anti-censorship messages have been written by Christians who are quite disgusted with the behaviour of fellow members of their religion. As a result, I have changed 'religious' to 'closed-minded', which I think makes a great deal more sense. I apologise to any open-minded Christian who may have read this document and felt slighted.
A kindly correspondent also pointed out a worthwhile oddity in the OCAF's document as it was quoted by me. The document I quoted says
This country now has over 20,000 outlets selling prosecutable, hard-core pornography which would be found illegal by educated citizens in most American communities.He liked the job I'd done on the community standards part of this paragraph, but was puzzled that I didn't take issue with the "educated" part. Why would one need an education to determine what was pornographic and what wasn't? he asked.
[Source: Agincourt document, line 321]
Good question. Actually, my understanding is that the people most attracted to the censorship banner are the more poorly educated, although there are scattered exceptions.
Here are some reasons:
Free speech is a cherished American tradition. These Oklahomans hate pornography because they feel it expresses dangerous ideas - the ideas that sex is good, that people can and should enjoy it outside of marriage, and that life contains a major force outside of God and Country.
Allied against them is the American tradition: That only the free expression of ideas - whether violent or pornographic or racist - is the only way to get them out of people's heads into a place where they can be discussed and considered instead of festering in the closed closets of people's minds.
Curiously enough, I think many of the pro-sex ideas expressed by pornography have echoes in feminist thought. Yes, feminists don't like the exploitation of women by pornographers, but at the same time they are for reproductive rights, for sex-positive feelings, and for sexual liberation. These are ideas supported by pornography, and when porn is under attack, those ideas are as well.
I encourage anyone who's against pornography to contribute to the dialogue, to try and rationally convince us that porn is a bad thing and that we as individuals should decide not to view it.
But once we've made that decision, it should be up to us as individuals to watch what we want and consider the ideas we want to consider. Your unpopular idea may be next.
Pornography exists due to a basic human need. From the beginning of time, man - and woman - has had a strong curiosity about sex. Some of the earliest art was sexual in nature; the first commercial video tapes were X-rated, and the first non-Microsoft CD ROMs created were adult. Why? Because everyone's interested in sex; it's perhaps one of the few things every human being has in common with every other.
In my view, expressing your sexual desires, whether it's done in print or on film, is a positive and healthy thing. If it makes you feel good, and if it's not harming others, I see nothing wrong with it.
Now, of course exploitation occurs in pornography, and that's bad and should be treated with all the contempt one would expect. Alas, though, many people working perfectly respectable jobs feel exploited all the time; perhaps the porn industry really is just like any other job! At any rate, the best pornography is fun to the participants and fun for the viewer; it expresses the joys and wonder of sex in full measure; and it deserves to be protected.
I think most people on the Internet think in the same way as I, and that's why there have been newsgroups and other resources devoted to sex since practically the beginning of Internet time. We may not want to tell our neighbors that we want pornography, but we do, and we'd miss it if it went away.
Pornography is a major contributer to our industry. We Internet Providers may not want to admit it, even to ourselves, but there are reasons we devote endless gigabytes of disk space to the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica newsgroups: Because it sells subscriptions.
If we bend and break in response to the Oklahoman assault - and to others that may follow - we're likely to seriously damage our businesses and our reputations with fellow Internet users. The user on the street doesn't want censorship; the Oklahomans want it because the material is so powerful in their eyes.
Indecent Material. This is a legal term for sexual materials that should be kept out of the hands of minors, but that are otherwise legal. As a general rule, any picture of a single naked or partially clothed person over 18 years of age would fall into this category.
By discussing this after obscene material, the document's drafters are trying to avoid the fact that it is legal, as long as reasonable steps are taken to shield it from people under 18.
It's quite obvious from the tone of the document that its drafter had a very tough time with the concept of any sexual material being legal. A conversation with him I had shortly after I first read the document made this even clearer: Pornography is Bad News, and that's that.
You can tell what's legal for adults to see from their definition of what's not legal. The Miller test, which they mention, requires that sex acts are depicted; therefore, it would appear that anything showing nudity without sex is in the clear as long as you sell accounts only to adults.
There is a curious correlary to this: At least 80% of what I see on the USENET alt.binaries.pictures.erotica groups is images of naked or partly clothed women, alone. These images are clearly legal and protected, as implied by the OCAF's own description. The dividing line between legal and illegal material is not nearly as clear as the OCAF's Paul Cardin would like us to believe. He tries to sidestep this by not even providing his own guidelines as to what should be legal and what shouldn't! He wants you to fight an expensive court case, regardless of the level of erotic material you have on your site.
For the most part, it would appear that virtually nothing written is illegal. You can write what you want on alt.sex.stories and it won't be prosecuted. The main battlefield is on the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica newsgroups and their close relations.
That, at least, was my impression until the CompuServe imbroligo, where virtually every group with the word 'sex' in its title was removed from CIS. They were eventually restored, but not without a massive fight. Apparently some people think everything's fair game. But it's definitely much easier to prove the case against pictures than words.
Unfortunately, I don't think the OCAF really cares what's legal and what's not. In some messages they've sent to the Inet-Access mailing list, Paul Cardin refers approvingly to CompuServe's broad yanking of over 200 newsgroups from the Internet as an action ISPs should seriously consider to avoid his wrath. This would mean the removal of text-based groups as well as those containing pictures, and groups such as alt.sex that focus on sex education as well as groups containing only sexual stories.
I have since talked to a lawyer, who, while giving me the usual qualification you would expect from a lawyer, told me I was essentially correct in this analysis - lawyers and judges tend to have sympathy for the written word, since they are creatures of it; they are highly unlikely to consider anything written to not have even a shred of literary value. Pictures remain as the major battleground here.
In my opinion, the broadness of Paul Cardin's efforts seriously decreases his chances of success. There is valid disagreement among ISPs at the margin, about whether groups such as alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality should be carried; there is no disagreement about whether alt.sex deserves a place.
Obscene Material. The OCAF uses the definition they dug up from Miller vs California, a major court case in their lexicon. Because I have been told that my document is too long to easily read, and since I explain the legal language in some depth below, I include the original quote in an annex. Here's what it boils down to:
Say I have a piece of hard core pornography that I picked up in USENET, and I want to see if it's obscene. Here's what I do to pass (or flunk) the Miller test:
The first condition basically amounts to: "Does it get me horny?" I would suppose that, oddly enough, some of the depictions of extreme violence I've seen, which sicken me instead of making me horny, would not be obscene! Strange, since I'm sure the Christians really wouldn't mean the ban on pornography to encourage the creation of material so violent everyone's repelled! Such is the strangeness of the law.
The third condition was meant to protect substantiative literature, such as James Joyce's works. Very little material on USENET or sexually-oriented web sites falls in this category.
The second condition is the trickiest, and that's why I've put it last. The basic question behind the legal verbiage is, "Does it offend me?" So if I see a picture of a man and woman having sex, and I find it offensive, it passes the second test. Note that this is based on local "community standards", which is the really tricky part of the law.
You see, the people who are judging cases like this have a real problem: offense is in the eye of the beholder. If I'm a typical citizen of the San Francisco Bay Area, there is virtually no depiction of sexual acts that would make me shout "Oh, this is awful! Let's send someone to jail because of it!" On the other hand, if I live in Norman, Oklahoma - home of the organization that wrote the tract under discussion - even the most tame (by Bay Area standards) pictures carry heavy fine and jail time potential.
This is why the Agincourt document attempts to get around that by saying:
This country now has over 20,000 outlets selling prosecutable, hard-core pornography which would be found illegal by educated citizens in most American communities.(Actually, this is a document they're quoting, but it amounts to the same thing).
[Source: Agincourt document, line 321]
Note the weasel word "most". This means Norman, not the Bay Area.
A particularly nasty use of Point 2 was in the Amateur Action BBS case. Someone from a prudish state ordered a CD ROM from the Amateur Action BBS, a Bay Area organization. Naturally, the CD was legal in the Bay Area, but illegal in the prudish state. This enabled the prudish state to start a criminal prosecution of the Bay Area BBS operators, which I believe ended in some jail time for them.
In the case of the Internet, the question is where the community is. If we asked a random sampling of "Netizens" what they thought should be banned, the odds are that "almost nothing" would be the result.
Because the Internet is global, laws are horribly tricky. For example, let's say a citizen of a Scandanavian country posts pictures of a 16-year old girl having sex. In most areas of the US, this is illegal. Almost nobody on the Internet would consider this a prosecutable offense. But anyone in Norman, Oklahoma would.
This, in a nutshell, is the strategy of the nice folks in Norman. And, after talking to the author of this document, I have no doubt that they are nice folks, dedicated to their children, who truly feel that pornography is a terrifying force for evil that has to be counteracted.
The traditional view of the Internet is that Internet Providers have no real control over what's sent over their systems. When I post a news article, and it gets distributed all over the Internet, nobody reviews it for accuracy, nobody considers the many copyright violations it might contain, and nobody tries to censor it for being obscene.
But, say the Oklahoman folks, the Internet providers do decide what newsgroups to carry. For example, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children is clearly a group devoted to illegal materials; therefore, the ISP carrying it is condoning illegal stuff. In a state where bondage and other relatively exotic sexual practices are illegal, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bondage and alt.sex.bondage would likewise be illegal.
People who use the common carrier defense just carry every known newsgroup, regardless of content, and that may be a good defense for this; we just don't know. I suspect that whether that argument would be looked at with sympathy depends largely on your jurisdiction.
The common carrier defense would probably hold up pretty well if you just let all new newsgroups get added automatically instead of adding them individually yourself. That way, you could claim that alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children was there because someone created it, and that was their responsibility and not yours. In the end, I don't know if that would protect you in an Oklahoma court; I'm sure it would in a San Francisco one.
Note how the Agincourt document tries to side-step this by claiming that the news administrator always adds groups individually. This is not so; INN has a feature where the admnistrator can let his news server run on autopilot, adding the new groups that come in automatically. Many administrators do this, because it makes running a news server far less time-consuming. This could be an extremely important distinction, and I would suggest that, if you retain the binaries groups, that you switch your news servers to this mode.
The Oklahomans are counting on the idea that they can get favourable rulings in prudish jurisdictions and make everyone run scared, even if they're in liberal ones. Regardless of where you are, you see, the interesting question is, "What's illegal?" Remember, in the US, illegality is based on the standards of individual local communities. So if I view a picture of a naked girl being tied up in Norman, OK, the law is being broken, while if I view the same picture in San Francisco, CA, the law is being obeyed.
Thus, a Bay Area-based ISP is not likely to be prosecutable, for what he's showing is completely legal. A Norman-based ISP, however, is showing material illegal in his community.
There is a more interesting problem with all of this, however. Most of the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica newsgroups are not categorized to sort out the hardcore porn from the universally legal stuff.
For example, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female is my favourite erotic newsgroup. It contains pictures of girls who are posing because they enjoy hearing guys' reactions; they're genuinely exhibitionistic. Some of them are partly naked, some are totally naked, and some are having sex. Those who are having sex might be illegal in Norman, but the other components are surely legal anywhere, just as Playboy and Penthouse are.
Paul Cardin, author of the document under discussion, skirts this issue by refusing to give a list of illegal newsgroups; instead, he tells the individual ISP to follow its own community standards to decide.
Here's his original message stating this.
I suspect a compromise could be made between people like me, who believe no material could be censored, and people like Paul, who believe virtually anything erotic should be torn out by its roots and removed. It would be "go by the label on the package". So, if you carried alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children, you could be prosecuted because your intent was to hold sexual pictures of children. But, if you carried alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female, and sexual pictures of children appeared there, you would not be responsible because the subject matter of the group itself was legal. Naturally, the original poster, if she or he could be found, would be responsible for the violation.
The pity of this compromise is that it flies in the face of one of the best things about USENET: You can look, or not look, as you please. If you are repulsed by pictures of bondage, or children, you can simply refrain from checking out those groups. If you want to find them, you know where they are. And this does something very good for the closed-minded viewer: She or he can avoid those topics by simply not reading the groups devoted to them.
If groups like alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality are removed, I'm sure beastiality pictures will still be posted to the net. However, they will be posted in the tamer groups, and people who don't like bestiality pictures will wind up being exposed to them. Is this what the Christian Right really wants?
At the margins, if the erotic pictures groups are completely eliminated, porn fans will find an unused newsgroup, start posting the pictures on them, and they will then distribute the group name to their friends. This will make the situation harder, not easier, to police.
I wonder what happens to an ISP like Netcom, which is based in the Bay Area, but works everywhere. Will they have to tame down their newsgroup lists, even though their core Bay Area customer base will assuredly rebel? The obvious answer, given the Agincourt strategy, is that Netcom has the least to worry, because it's too large for them to attack successfully.
The goal of the folks in Norman is to tell law enforcement all over the land about the illegal stuff on the Internet. After that, the prosecutors will supposedly drag the ISPs into court.
What's horribly insidious about this strategy is that they plan to target large numbers of small ISPs. Instead of going after the big fish, who have high-powered defense attorneys, they'll go after ma and pa companies who can't afford to defend themselves against prosecution. And, by doing large numbers of them at once, they will dull the ability of organizations like the ACLU and the EFF to act. They'll be able to help in a few cases, but not all.
It's taking a page from the Church of Scientology's Playbook. They'll start a suit, and their goals is to win by crippling their opponent, by making him struggle under the burdens of oppressive legal bills until he gives in.
It's a brilliant, if horribly mean-spirited, strategy. The only casualty will be justice -- and the freedom of people on the Internet to speak their minds about sex.
I believe that it would be a horrible tragedy if they won because of it.
So, what can we do?
David Dennis is author and maintainer of the Internet Access Provider FAQ. His voluminous web site covers topics ranging from sex to Unix, with an amiably light-hearted touch.
curious people have checked out our Internet Pornography opinions since it was created on 20:19 5 February 1996.