TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Girls Who Are Guerrillas (NYT)
Kid Porn Bill Slogs to Court (Wired)
India's Homosexual Divide (Wired)
An Alternative Voice: How the Tech-Poor Can Still Be Software-Rich
(IHT)
INTERNET
Government Plans Expanded Use of .US (WP)
AOL Begins to Explore IM Sharing (WP)
TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
GIRLS WHO ARE GUERRILLA
Issue: Arts
A veteran group of arts activists has a new digital arts wing. The Guerrilla
Girls, founded in 1985 to increase the visibility of women and minorities in
the art world, have recently launched Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, a new
politically oriented Web site. The site's goal is bring the group's feminist
mission from the art world into the workplace via the Internet. The
Guerrilla Girls' focus on audience participation is accomplished through an
e-mail feature that allows visitors to anonymously send messages to bad
employers. Peggy Phelan, a professor of performance studies, expects to see
more examples of this kind of online theater. "What these electronic
performances realize is a successful fusion of performance and politics,"
she said, "one that will transform both in ways that we are just beginning
to imagine."
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Matthew Mirapaul]
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/technology/23ARTS.html)
(requires registration)
KID PORN BILL SLOGS TO COURT
Issue: Filtering
The Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 to withhold federal funds
from libraries and schools that refuse to install porn filters on computers
is being challenged by free speech advocates in a lawsuit. According to a
U.S. appellate judge overseeing the case, the case may be brought to trial
next February because the lawsuit raises many complex, constitutional
questions, despite calls for dismissal of the case as meritless from the
Justice Department, representing the Federal Communications Commission and
the Institute of Museum and Library Services. "This case is unquestionably
destined for the United States Supreme Court, is it not? ... Wouldn't this
court and the Supreme Court be much better equipped to deal with this after
discovery and after trial?" asked Chief Judge Edward Becker of the 3rd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals during a hearing on Monday. The 36 plaintiffs, led
by the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union,
allege that the Children's Internet Protection Act constrains the ability of
adults to access lawful information and violates their Constitutional right
to free speech. They also warn that the law would require librarians to
police what adults are allowed to access online. "We say the traditional
role of libraries is to provide material that the patrons want, not material
that libraries and librarians believe are correct," asserted ACLU senior
staff counsel Chris Hansen.
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Reuters]
(http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45483,00.html)
INDIA'S HOMOSEXUAL DIVIDE
Issue: Digital Divide
Gay Indian men, traditionally ostracized and closeted in their own society,
are finding an accepting community in last five years - over the Internet.
However, the Internet in India is primarily accessible to the urban and
well-off - those who are within proximity of a connection, can afford to use
it, and are familiar with the English language. "The Net does isolate groups
as far as connectivity goes," Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, founder of the
Dharani Trust in Bangalore, said. For gay men who have access, they are
using what they learn from communicating with organizations around the world
to help manage nonprofits in India. Swabhaya, a nonprofit providing online,
phone, and personal therapy to sexual minorities, was founded by Vinay
Chandran in 1999. Chandran is raising support and building networks with
similar nonprofits in India to revoke the criminalization of sodomy. "But
the Net has helped us bring about some sort of change," said Chandran. "Like
when I go to a debate about gay rights, there is so much more information
available now that it gives us an idea of the bigger picture -- about what
groups in the West are lobbying for, and on what they are basing their
arguments."
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Swaroopa Iyengar]
(http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45206,00.html)
AN ALTERNATIVE VOICE: HOW THE TECH-POOR CAN STILL BE SOFTWARE-RICH
Issue: Digital Divide
Open source software is a sensible alternative for developing countries to
make computer technologies available to its citizens and businesses where
proprietary software is often unaffordable and copyright-protected. The
Chinese government lauds open-source software, as well, for demonstrating
nationalist pride. In India, where the average annual per-capita income is
$450, is known worldwide for its skilled software programmers. There, teams
of people work on modifying the free Linux, Oracle and other software and
market their services around the globe. "India is a very service-oriented
country. Most of the software development that India does is actually
delivering services to companies abroad. We have a lot of manpower which can
be channelized to do that," said Prakash Advani, chief executive of
FreeOS.com, which is in the process of "setting up a Linux support
infrastructure to address the world market." Shuvam Misra, founder of
Starcom Software, an Internet technology services firm remarked that
"Open-source software empowers communities with low purchasing power and
inexpensive technical manpower tremendously. Open-source software sometimes
needs a bit more work to get working, for which poorer countries like India
have plentiful smart, inexpensive manpower."
[SOURCE: International Herald Tribune, AUTHOR: Andrew Leonard]
(http://www.iht.com/cgi-
bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=24330)
INTERNET
GOVERNMENT PLANS EXPANDED USE OF .US
Issue:
The government is investigating the commercial uses of .us top-level domain
name (TLD). The vision the government has set forth is being squarely
opposed by a broad coalition of nonprofit and consumer groups. Under the
government vision, .us would refer still to Arlington schools
(www.arlington.k12.va.us) and also to for profit businesses -
www.xyzcompany.us. Opponents to the plan argue that the .us TLD is a public
resource and should be used as such. Harold Feld, associate director of the
Media Access Project, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans last
week wrote that the .us domain "is a unique public resource, created with
American tax dollars... If this were [airwave] spectrum, we'd auction it off
for hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Or we'd set some
aside, like public television, for public use. The Commerce Department plan
does neither." In a separate letter, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), said
that he endorses "management of the .us domain in the public interest,
serving all Americans in a non-commercial context."
[SOURCE: Washington Post (D01), AUTHOR: Jonathan Krim]
(http://www.washtech.com/news/regulation/11366-1.html)
AOL BEGINS TO EXPLORE IM SHARING
Issue: Internet
AOL Time Warner said Monday that it is testing means to open its Instant
Messenger Network to rivals. It intends to launch a trial with another firm
later this summer. Currently AOL's Instant Messaging Network is closed to
rivals. With the largest amount of subscribers (100 million), an open AOL
system would have a tremendous impact on the shape of the Instant Messaging
landscape. A condition of the FCC's approval of AOL's merger with Time
Warner, required the company to submit a progress report on
instant-messaging interoperability 180 days after the federal agency issued
an order approving the acquisition. The 11-page report, however, was short
on details of the trial and did not say when AOL would actually open its
system to rivals; instead, the company devoted much of the report to why
interoperability is technically difficult to achieve and fraught with risk
to users' privacy and security.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Alec Klein]
(http://www.washtech.com/news/media/11362-1.html)
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