News Blog

Someone hacked into a California library's dial-a-story phone service and replaced a fairy tale with a pornographic, profanity-laced message, according to The Associated Press.

The director of the public library in Benicia, which is about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco, says a four-digit passcode is required to change the recording. The offensive message was immediately removed after it was reported last week.

I know you're probably wondering what the message was. It reportedly involved a dog and a pig. Enough said.

Our daughter was rummaging through a box of memorabilia and found an evelope of photos taken in early 2001, about the time I'd purchased a cool new macro lens. One minute she was flipping through a series of cute puppy pictures and the next minute she's face to face with a set of full-frontal nude photographs depicting...a wolf spider. In fact, the spider was so exposed, the close-up so extreme, that Amy could not bring herself to even handle the photos so as to put them back into the envelope from which they came.

So when I got home I did the manly thing and, judging their scientific value to be near zero, tossed the spider pictures into the trash. When our daughter threw something away later that evening, and then needed to retrieve it, she shrieked again at the vile images that she could not unsee (and I was chastised for merely disposing of them instead of using our new commercial-grade shredder). Is there any possible way to prevent our children from accessing images or content that is disturbing to them or to us as parents? And should that be our sole criteria for judging whether or not we have won the war on porn?

A new Red Hat employee queried an internal e-mail list as to methods of protecting their children from accessing pornography, and through the responses I learned a few things I thought I'd share...

Perhaps the first question to answer is "what is to be protected?" We live in a media-saturated culture where some of the raciest material is to be found in all its pixelated glory of some of the most conservative TV programs (see Fox News Porn). Between the catalogs, newpaper ads, billboards, etc., there's plenty of disturbing material to go around. Indeed, when traveling through the airport with my daughter last year, she had quite a laugh when she came face-to-face with the image of a woman barely dressed on the cover of Cosmopolitan. (She called her "naked-bottom girl" for the rest of the day.) Deciding where to begin has become difficult indeed.

One popular approach is taken by OpenDNS. (Disclaimer: OpenDNS was funded by the former CEO of CNET.) The Domain Name Service (DNS) is the service that translates a URL (such as wikipedia.org) into an actual IP address (such as 208.80.152.2). By using OpenDNS instead of regular DNS, you give them permission to help you with the translation:

• wikipedia.org -> 208.80.152.2
• wikipedia.og -> 208.80.152.2 (it corrects your "spelling mistake")
• playboy.org -> BLOCKED! (if you want to filter out Web sites that serve "pornography" or "nudity")

But they also log every site you visit (part of the bargain of being between you and a "real" DNS server) and there is vigorous debate as to whether OpenDNS should be doing application-level rewrites of network-level requests. People think it is wrong (evil, even) that Google's toolbar does this. And they raised holy hell when VeriSign did this back in 2003. But if you are not bothered by the idea that whatever you type into your browser goes first to OpenDNS.com, and secondly, that when you request Site A, it could transparently and silently take you to Site B as if it were Site A, then it may be an interesting solution. As with any service that collects and interprets such sensitive personal information as your browsing habits, I suggest you read their privacy policy carefully. And you should be aware that OpenDNS is not open source.

If you want a content filtering solution that is open source (because you want to independently verify what is being logged, and you want to independently verify how the blocking choices are being made), you might be interested in DansGuardian. They have an impressive list of users as well as a blacklist you can review, adopt, or ignore. Several of my colleagues said that they use DansGuardian and that it works well.

An even more interesting suggestion was to use a firewall to force all Internet access through a proxy that can log every connection from every client computer. One family reported:

The proxy doesn't have a filter on it, but it does mail my wife and I a daily summary of what each computer asked for and when, so we know what the kids are doing online. And we make sure the kids know that we know.

I must admit that at first I was taken aback by the idea of having this type of access to somebody else's surfing history. But then I asked myself: if I am at all bothered by the idea of parents having such access to their children's surfing habits, how happy am I to be trusting that data with some third party, their supercomputer, and who knows what federal agencies?

Back to the topic of open source. One parent raised the issue that they are quite confident of the security and configuration of their own computer network, but what about the neighbor with the open wireless access point? A little education goes a long way. First, if you see a neighbor has an open wireless connection, suggest that they may wish to close it, as it represents a security problem for you. Second, if they are concerned about being a gateway to inappropriate content, suggest a mechanism whereby they, too, can play a role in filtering the content. OpenDNS might not be the right solution if your neighbor does not agree with their business model, but DansGuardian could be a good alternative. Third, use this as a positive opportunity to discuss with your children the "rules of the road" of Internet use. Those rules could range from accepting real-time oversight (how we do things at our house) to requesting specific permission to access the Internet (the parent turns on the sole wireless router the child's computer is configured to access) to accepting arbitrary monitoring and reporting. Or, do none of the above and study hard for what you plan to do when your child inevitably does access something you find disturbing and inappropriate, not to mention the disturbing and inappropriate things that porn-serving companies like to do to your computers. Worse than spiders, for sure.

Earlier this week, we reported that LiveJournal set off a new round of criticism from its tightly knit user base after it permanently suspended two accounts housing fan art of Harry Potter and friends in sexual situations.

After days of silence, the site's staffers on Tuesday evening published an entry on their business journal in an attempt to clarify the online-journaling server's policy on "illegal and harmful content."

In short, the staffers said they don't review content unless it is reported to them, and when policy violations aren't "clear," they congregate members of the site's Abuse Prevention Team members, LiveJournal staff and parent company Six Apart's management to make a decision.

In an effort to comply with federal and California child pornography laws, the staffers said they have opted to treat any "graphic visual depiction of a minor...engaged in sexually explicit conduct," apparently fictional or not, as a policy violation. "Any stated age of the individuals present, the apparent age of the people or characters present in an image, and outside knowledge of the person or character's age are all taken into consideration," the staffers wrote.

They also said that besides a "limited number of exceptions," they're sticking to a line in their Terms of Service that stipulates that paid LiveJournal accounts aren't refundable. And as for some user gripes that the offending account holders weren't warned to remove the violating content before their accounts were suspended, LiveJournal said it cannot continue to host content that would likely violate child pornography laws but said users can appeal their suspensions.

The post quickly sparked thousands of new comments and questions, ranging from "I believe that your stance on how to tell if characters are of a certain age is still rather vague" to "Thank you. Hopefully this will silence Generation Whine a bit more."

My recent posting about child abuse concerns inherent in "$100 laptop" distribution in the developing world elicited strong responses both in favor and against my position. A new report about the ties between a live Webcam chat site, Stickam.com, and a large online pornography conglomerate underlines the seriousness of these risks, hitting us close to home here in the United States.

There has always been plenty of bitterness between copyright holders and the file-sharing community, but some now contend hostilities have sunk to a new low.

Swedish authorities last week were preparing to shut down The Pirate Bay, according to Peter Sunde, one of the site's founders. Was the site facing closure for helping users find bootlegged music or video files, as the film and music industries have long alleged? No, The Pirate Bay was being accused of distributing child pornography, Sunde said.

The accusation was nothing more than a backdoor attempt to kill off The Pirate Bay since both Sweden and the United States have failed to close the site for allegedly violating copyright law, Sunde claimed in a phone interview with CNET News.com on Monday. Following a wave of media attention over the weekend, Sweden's government has apparently backed down. Sunde quoted from an e-mail sent by a government official that notified the site's operators they would not be accused of distributing porn.

"The government is angry at us because they can't shut us down," Sunde said. "Now they are trying to ruin our reputations."

Sunde called the allegations against the site "unsettling." He worries that the incident might signal a new willingness by the forces warring against copyright infringement to use smear tactics. Swedish authorities could not be reached for comment.

Regardless of whether Sweden was actually trying to close The Pirate Bay, the incident illustrates just how much the file-sharing community distrusts and fears the lobbying groups that represent the film and music industries. A torrent site can't be slow to load anymore without users suspecting Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sabotage.

Some of the paranoia may be exacerbated by the entertainment industry's string of recent victories over file sharing.

TorrentSpy, a U.S.-based BitTorrent search engine is fighting a court order to turn over user information to the MPAA. The site's owners have indicated that they would cease operating in the U.S. rather than hand over the data. In what was seen by many as a capitulation to the MPAA, TorrentSpy and competitor IsoHunt both agreed last month to filter copyright material.

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the U.S. government's efforts to convince Russia to close AllofMP3.com, a music site that sold unprotected music files without the authorization of record labels, appears to have worked. The site went dark last week, although the operators have apparently reopened under a new name, according to reports.

Another factor is the allegation made by TorrentSpy in a lawsuit filed against the MPAA last year. TorrentSpy claims that the group hired a hacker to crack the company's servers and steal TorrentSpy's trade secrets. The MPAA has denied the accusation.

These are the kind of things that keeps file sharers and some site operators looking over their shoulders.

"I'm very concerned about the (child porn accusations)," Sunde said. "But I'm not frightened. People know this is only a tactic on their part to hurt us.

"I don't think it stops here," he added. "I think it's only going to be worse. We have a fight coming."

Reuters is reporting that Sweden's Justice Ministry proposed legislation on Monday that if passed would give copyright holders the right to demand that Internet Service Providers turn over names of suspected file sharers.