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The World-Wide Market: Living with the Realities of Censorship on the
Internet
1. Introduction
Michael BJORN
Institute of Socio-Economic Planning, Doctoral Program
University of Tsukuba, JAPAN
E-mail: michael@wiz.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Yin Yue CHEN
Institute of Socio-Economic Planning, Doctoral Program
University of Tsukuba, JAPAN
E-mail: chen@wiz.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Abstract: With the passing of the Telecom Bill containing the Communications Decency
Act (CDA) on February 8th, 1996 in the USA, the openness of communication on the
Internet was put into question. Even though the CDA was later deemed unconstitutional
by a federal court, the question remains open, and other countries may take similar
action.
For this reason we have implemented a system built on a classified ads structure which
is safe for the provider who is faced with the problems of responsibility for on-line
material, decisions regarding what kind of material is unsuitable, and multiple language
monitoring -- while at the same time providing a sufficient degree of communicative
freedom and perceived value-of-service to the user.
When U.S. President Clinton signed the Telecom Bill containing the Communications Decency Act (CDA) on
February 8th, 1996, many home pages on the WWW turned black and were accompanied by a link, asking: Why
is this page black? The answer is simple: Fear that banning "indecent" material, would also hamper the unpreceded
possibilities for masscomunication on the Internet. Traditional mass-communication takes the form of a one to
many relationship; one radio or TV-station broadcasting to millions of people, one newspaper or magazine with
millions of subscribers, etc. The Internet, on the other hand, allows for all imaginable relationships between
senders and receivers of messages: one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many.
This multitude of communication possibilities makes it very difficult to make laws that are effective or have
the intended effect. Another complicating fact is that the Internet is a truly global system, and since there is no
globally binding legal system, lawmakers on the national level might feel pressed to take more drastic action.
Companies naturally fear that they will be struck by new laws in ways that they could not foresee and may for
this reason hesitate to create new Internet-services. In this paper, we take the stand of a prospective service
provider, and ask ourselves if it is possible to build services for the World-Wide Web that will not cause the
provider of the service legal problems, while at the same time having potential to generate income and be of value
to users.
We believe that we have found one possible framework that satisfies our requirements. We here present a
system which:
--> Preserves all communication relationships mentioned above. This implies that the owners of the service and
the creators of information on the service are not necessarily the same.
--> Lets the manager of the service clearly decide how responsibility of what is published should be divided
between the service provider and the users of the service.
--> Gives the manager full control of what is published on the service.
--> Does not have to be moderated for "indecency" or otherwise unsuitable material.