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Sent from: editor@eff.org (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
[ mod's note: excerpted from... ]
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EFFector Online Volume 09 No. 03 Mar. 6, 1996 editors@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
* See http://www.eff.org/Alerts/ or ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/ for more
information on current EFF activities and online activism alerts! *
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* AOL Against Government Censorship, For User Empowerment
According to an AP newswire, America Online chairman Steve Case said
Tues. that Internet censorship "is a very difficult, very sensitive issue
which requires a dialogue...for what the right balance is going to
be...this is a new medium and it does require a different perspective,
and we're going to be calling for a new framework that recognizes [that]."
Case said online content filtration, that would allow parents to block
child access to inappropriate materials, is the right solution, rather than
censorship.
* US Customs Decides Internet is Not a Place - Fines Those Who Claim Otherwise
A "virtual" software corporation, ACD, with software engineers in both
California and Hungary, but no real physical business infrastructure, was
recently slapped with an $85 fine by US Customs.
ACD's product, EPublisher for the Web, was developed over the Internet
with no physical meetings or other contact between the developers. When
Hungarian developers sent versions of the software on diskette to their
US counterparts, the shipment was stopped by Customs at LAX (the major
Los Angeles airport) for "mark violation". The Hungarians had marked
"Country of Origin" on the forms as "Internet", as the product was not
decidably made in Hungary or the US, and the owners of the intellectual
property rights to the product are in no single physical location.
ACD's Laslo Chaki says, "We had to pay an $85 fine for mark violation.
Virtual company, in virtual city with $85 real fine!"
Though the intent of the "Country" section on customs forms is to ascertain
where a particular package was shipped from, and the listing of the country
of origin as "Internet" is somewhat silly in this context, the lack of any
sense of humor on the part of Customs is not particularly encouraging.
You might want to be careful with those RSA t-shirts - Customs just might
handle them as munitions after all, and regard you as an unlicensed
international arms dealer, at this rate.