[83174] in Cypherpunks
Re: The Censorware Summit: A Preview, from The Netly News
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doug Peterson)
Wed Jul 16 17:31:31 1997
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 13:31:12 -0600
From: Doug Peterson <fnorky@geocities.com>
To: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Doug Peterson <fnorky@geocities.com>
Lucky Green wrote:
>
> At 07:44 AM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> > Stephen Balkam, the head of RSACi, now says he has a solution. He
> > calls it RSACnews and says that legitimate news sites can use it to
> > rate just their home pages without having to review each article. Now,
> > what's a legitimate news site? The Netly News might qualify, but what
> > about the NAMBLA News Journal? "People who generate firsthand reports
> > that have been in some ways verified or structured in a way that gives
> > clear and objective information as possible about events," Balkam
> > says. "We will be working with the news industry to help us develop a
> > criteria." (This, presumably, means groups that have signed on as
> > supporters, including MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Well, CNET
> > and Ziff-Davis. I'm told that the White House wants to qualify as a
> > "news site" -- even though the information there is rarely clear and
> > certainly not objective.)
>
> I can't remember how RSACi authenticates the tags. I assume they are either
> signed by a CA or not authenticated.
>
> 1) If the tags are signed by a CA.
> Who operates the root CA? Who will operate the CA that issues RSACnews
> tags, also knows as Online Publishing Licenses.?
>
> 2) If the tags are not signed by a CA.
> What is someone to prevent from labeling the NAMBLA monthly site,
> "government authorized news site, suitable for all ages"? Just as the
> various GAK proposals do not make sense unless GAK is mandatory, online
> rating systems do not make sense unless "misslabeling" sites will become a
> felony.
Ok, lets say it becomes a US felony to "misslabel" a web site. How does
that prevent a person in the US from setting up a misslabeled or unlabed
site on a server in another country? Also, what about person who sets
up
a site that is misslabeled on a server in the US. Do the feds try to
extridite the person?
I think that we will find that labeling web sites is less workable than
GAK.
Doug
