Censorware and Memetic Warfare

I'm halfway through Susan Blackmore's book "The Meme Machine," and it's rekindled my interest in meme dispersal. In a memetic sense, the battle over filters in the Holland library is just one of implanting the right ideas in enough people's minds by the day of the vote. Here's a look at one of the more annoying memes the opposition is using: a lie about the results of my very own organization. Click for more.

Everyone's familiar with the term "meme" by now, so I don't have to explain that it's the unit of idea transmission. The struggle over Internet filters, or any other conflict where ideas, facts, opinions, and outlooks collide, is memetic in nature: it's memetic warfare.

All's fair in war, supposedly, but I'm someone who has been infected by the meme that we should all fight fair, even - especially - in the war of ideas.

Will the "fight fair" meme become popular in the long run? I hope so. But the way I see it, that will only happen if it is more successful at reproducing than its alternative: "fight dirty." In the long run, it doesn't matter what's right, or what's good, or what benefits us humans the most. The memes just spread because they're good at spreading.

In early 1999, my friend (now Slashdot writer) Michael Sims started a long process to obtain some Web logs from the state of Utah. Internet access for schools and libraries across the state was provided by a single network, and all their Web traffic went through proxies that had the same blocking software running. Their Web logs were a gold mine of data, showing both blocked and unblocked accesses. When users were blocked from something, the logs showed what category it was blocked in.

Our group, the Censorware Project, had been looking for a real-world test case of this software. Michael did a tremendous amount of work to file the papers, get permission to get the logs, have them delivered, gather them, and analyze them. He then wrote a brilliant report (the rest of us helped too).

What this let us do was see how blocking software's errors show up in the real world. We had known for years that the software has many mistakes in its blacklists, in every product we'd studied. But we had no data on how that affected users.

When all the data was crunched, two numbers surprised us. First, the amount of material blocked was quite small: about 0.6%. People were interested in things besides pornography on the internet. Who would have thought.

Second, just looking at the wrong blocks that we were able to find, the proportion was quite high: about one block in every 20 was Constitutionally protected material. That's a minimum - the minimum we were able to confirm. All in all, we identified over 5,000 occasions when people were blocked from reading protected material (totalling 300 unique Web sites).

Most measures of blocking software effectiveness focus on how much pornography it blocks. We weren't able to test that because we couldn't look through the 99.4% of unblocked material - over 53million URLs. Just too much data. But we did learn that, in Utah, 5% of the time, when the software said "you can't look at that," it was just plain wrong.

Ninety-five percent accuracy might sound like a nice high figure to base a good meme around. Who could argue with a number like 95%? But consider what this means for the 300 Web sites in question: each of them was blocked from being read by a great many public institutions in the state of Utah.

And the First Amendment protects publishers, not readers: it's freedom of the press, not freedom to read the press. When you're blocked from reading your favorite author, you might be annoyed, but if the censor were taken to court, the injured party would be the author.

This is exactly what we fought against the Communications Decency Act for. Except, in many ways, censorware is worse. If your site is one of the 5% that's wrongly blocked, you won't know it. Our government will stop people from reading what you have to say even if your site is completely innocent (like the Candy Land website), and nobody will bother to notify you. You won't ever know.

At least with the CDA, you'd have gotten a letter from the prosecutor telling you your site was censored - and nobody, but nobody, would ever have been censored for publishing the Bible.

(Yes, the Bible was one of the banned books we found in Utah, along with the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, etc. That kind of thing makes good memes.)

Michael put a lot of work into our report, and I even contributed a little, so I'm a little protective of that 5% meme. Which is why it was so jarring to open up a press kit distributed by the Family Research Council, last week, and find our work, cited in black and white, as support for the figure: "one in a million."

That's right, the exact same report which found one bad block in every twenty is now being cited as proving that Web sites are misblocked "one time in a million."

Now that's a good meme. "One in a million" sticks with you. It isn't backed up by any of the facts, but despite that handicap - or perhaps partly because of it - it has thrived.

It was first invented by a fellow named David Burt, who read our report not very carefully, and then decided he was going to do a little numerology of his own.

The first thing he did was ignore all the bad blocks we'd found that he thought were perfectly appropriate. For example, we'd found that the homepage of the band "The Offspring" was wrongly blocked - you may remember their songs from the fall of 1998. "I'm just a sucker with no self-esteem," and so on. (You're humming it now. Catchymeme.)

David Burt decided that The Offspring deserved to be blocked, and to illustrate why, quoted nine words from their Web site:

"These songs have ideas PLUS drugs, sex and ass-kicking"

He also decided it was OK to block BaywatchTV.com, BirthControl.com, the Starr Report, the Yahoo category "Society and Culture: Romance," and Glamour magazine. It was OK to block a page on the NASA Web site about a crackdown on hackers, because it "discusses hacking techniques." Both takedown.com and 2600.com should be blocked, he says, for the same reason. A fellow whose homepage includes a link to a PGP FAQ - no code or binaries - should be blocked for containing "cryptographic software."

Did I mention this man is a librarian?

After trimming out all the fat from our list, he got it down from over 300 sites to just 64. Of course, this was the list of unique sites. If he'd had all our numbers, he would have known that his changes affected our 5% figure by about 0.1% - this because the large majority of blocked sites are blocked few times.

There's some other nonsense he tried, like saying that we were deceitful to ignore blocked banner ads because they were surely all pornographic. In fact, four of the five top blocked ad sites were perfectly ordinary, and counting ads would have made our numbers more impressive, not less.

But his main meme was the number. Armed with his new figure "64", he performed a division by the largest number in our report, which was 54,000,000. Kind of like dividing apples by hydrogen. Of the 54,000,000 URLs, only 29% were page views; only 0.56% of those were blocked; and the previously-mentioned 5% of those were blocked incorrectly. From there he switched from blocks to unique blocks, cutting the actual figure of 5,000 down to his list of 64.

Then, dividing 64 by the original 54,000,000, he got 1 in 1.18... well, for the meme's sake he got one in a million.

Publishing this in April of 1999, David Burt ignored our corrections. Despite our offering all the raw data on CD-ROM, for the cost of the media, he just accused us of lying.

You can't say anything to that, without getting into a yes-you-are no-we're-not. We'd put out two press releases about this already. We told him to order the CD-ROMs and check for himself. Then we moved on.

But his meme began to spread. In June, the company that made the blocking software pulled the same trick, reported the results to Sen. John McCain - and then issued a press release about it. Our group was now cited as supporting their software by proving its accuracy. Since the numbers were so big anyway, they just used the 300 figure and called it an "accuracy rate of 99.9994%."

A group I've never heard of, the American Decency Association, now points to our study and says: "Filters Work!" They source is another group I've never heard of, the Michigan Decency Action Council. Word gets around.

So when I opened up the report "Internet Filtering and Blocking Technology," published by the Family Research Council and distributed at their Holland presentations, I was not surprised when I found the same meme on pages 9 and 14. (I was surprised to see them divide 64 into 54,000,000 and get 6 parts per million. But as long as they've blown the numbers so badly, a little botched division doesn't make any difference.)

I talked to two of the FRC techies about this and tried to explain what was wrong with the numbers. I got some mild interest. Will the FRC correct and reprint this report? Of course not. Admitting that DavidBurt fudges numbers might be a bad tactical move. The concluding two sections of the report have 31 footnotes, 28 of which reference no one but Mr.Burt.

I choose to be an optimist about the marketplace of ideas. I believe that truthful memes will proliferate in the long run, because enough people's brains select for truth.

But in the meantime, it's frustrating when my team takes below-the-belt punches from the guys who don't care about what's true.

I don't expect everyone reading this to share my memeplex on this issue. I know from reading the comments that many Slashdot readers think censorware in libraries is a good thing, and that's fine. In fact, I'll bet many of you are grinding your teeth that I keep using the word "meme" so damn much. That's fine too.

All I ask is that, when your memes start arguing with my memes, you make them fight fair. It's only right.

Similarly...

Reminds me of the little section in Neal Stephenson's Zodiac (What? You still haven't read it?) where Sangamon mentions pH differences and calls it "More than twice what they're licensed for" when he knows that it's really more than 100,000 times what the guilty party is licensed for (pH scale is exponential). Why? People think about it if you say "more than twice" but dismiss you as a flake if you say "over 100,000 times more". There's a point where any discussion of quantities becomes fuzzy because we don't quite have a good picture of what the numbers mean. Even if a million dollars doesn't go as far as it used to, it still has that mystique attached to it of being a 'millionaire'.
In the same vein, I suppose, one can dismiss 'one in a million' but one has to think about 'one in twenty'. To quote The Tick, "I just can't get my mind around it!"
--

Turnabout, fairplay, etc.

Is it possible to tack an EULA onto a published study, along the lines of:

The results and data of this research may only be published with the written permission of the author...

I mean, we all agree that these sort of licenses are detestable. However, there seems to be a sizeable overlap between the group of people who think that those agreements are just fine and the group of people who think that blocking software is peachy keen. In other words, the idiots who would want to misuse the data would be the same ones most likely to follow the "contract" not to.

I just don't wanna be controlled - that's all I want. - The Offspring

Very telling....

What really, _really_ gets me pissed off is that when the report was released, the censors censored out the report, filing it into every category: sex, hate speech, etc.

If you're incapable of tolerating *criticism* this immediately indicates that there is something seriously wrong.

While I don't support censorship of any sort (quite different from forcing people to read everything) I would at least be more accepting of censors who welcomed input as to what is and is not acceptable, and who corrected their errors in a responsible fashion.

Re:Quand meme, ce n'est meme pas une meme...

Just Some Guy dun said:

Why, oh why, is everything ludicrous attributed to right-wingers? I am just about as far-right-wing as you can get, and I assure that my core beliefs do not condone censorship in any form. I mean, remember the PMRC (record labeling)? That was Tipper Gore, not Pat Buchanan.

Hate to have to bring some things up to dash the illusion there, but there are some things I do need to bring up in light of your venting...

1). The vast majority of groups pushing censorship, and for that matter a lot of flatly ludicrous stuff, are right-wing--specifically, members of various political groups which are basically run by fundamentalist "Christians" in the US. (For that matter, Israel sees the same thing with ultraorthodox "Jews", and darn near every country with a signifigant Islamic population deals with fundamentalist "Moslems" of the two main denominations of their religion. For THAT matter, as I understand it, India's having the same damn problem with fundamentalist "Sikhs" and fundamentalist "Hindus".)

2). For all intents and purposes, there is no functioning left-wing in the United States. The US has literally gone so far to the right (largely because of influence of fundamentalist "Christian" groups, which at one point had pretty much taken over the entire Republican Party apparatus in thirty-four states; they have apparently led to the self-destruction now of a second party [the Reform Party]. It's not all the GOP's fault, though--I'll note that in a minute) that were Richard Nixon to run today on his present political platform, he would be considered a liberal. The most "liberal" parties in the US with any large percentage of voters (the Democratic and Libertarian parties) would be considered right-moderate in most political systems in the industralised world (yes, that includes Canada, too); the largest "conservative" party (the GOP) would be hard-right in nearly any other country's political system, and the second or third-largest "conservative" political party in the US (the US Taxpayer's Party) is, for all intents and purposes, run by extreme far-righters in the US and in fact promotes theocracy as a platform. (The Reform Party, before it basically started destroying itself when Pat Buchanan got considered for nomination, probably fell in between the Republicans and Libertarians; now, for all intents and purposes, the Reform Party will probably end up as two parties, one beign slightly more left-leaning but both still firmly on the right.) One newspaper, which started in the 1800's as a "moderate conservative" paper of the times and has had pretty much the same political bent ever since it started, is now considered one of the hardest-left papers in the US. It would also probably be considered moderate or moderate-left in political spectrums in most industralised countries.

Sad to say, but the political spectrum in the US today is less like other industrialised countries and more like those in which a fair amount of corruption occurs (such as in many "third-world" nations) or which are having very serious problems with fundamentalists trying to subvert the very structure of the government itself (this is certainly true in the US, and in a lot of other places you hear about in the news--like Israel, or Pakistan and India (basically a pissing contest between Muslim fundies and Hindu fundies which could well end up in a nuclear war before it's over with) or Sudan (which is having a rather nasty civil war between Muslim fundies and Christian fundies)).

2a). On a related note, and this is very important to note with anything related to fundy movements in general--most fundy groups, especially so in the US, are basically run by power-hungry individuals. In the US at least (and probably elsewhere--there's real signs of it at least in some ultra-Orthodox communities, and among nations like Iran and Afghanistan especially), many of the people who are members of the various fundy PACs here--and especially the more decidedly active ones--are members of churches that can be described as coercive groups much as Scientology can be described as a coercive group. Many of these groups use various mind-control techniques on their members to not only have them basically allow their minister to think for them, but to specifically "block out" anything that could be averse to what the minister says (these include basically teaching that the people in the church or group are the only ones who are "saved" and that anyone who isn't "saved" is in direct league with Satan; teaching that any doubt is the result of either demonic oppression or (if someone else says it) outright possession and one needs to "pray the doubts out" or have exorcisms performed (often involuntarily); forced confession of "sins" (which have included the involuntary outing of gays in church; most Religious Right groups are homophobic at best and some (like Fred Phelps, or Donald Wildmon, or Kentucky's own Frank Simon) are downright infamous for it); telling members to only do business with "members of like faith" (including printing special directories, like the "Christian Yellow Pages") and to only watch media that is affiliated with the church because all other media sources are "worldly" at best and outright "Satanic" at worst, not to mention businesses; "shepherding" programs and "cell churches" (in most programs, the people are divided into groups of five which, in essence, play "Big Brother" on each other--if someone has doubts, the other members try to work them more into the group, in extreme cases by methods like involuntary exorcisms), and so-called "divine lies" (basically, lying about your goals or at the least being dishonest about them to lure folks in to "win more souls for Christ"--this encompasses everything from "hell house" haunted-houses which are marketed as regular haunted houses for "educational purposes" which in fact are used to make people listen to fundy preaching (and yes, sometimes the doors ARE locked and the people not allowed to leave, so yes, they are in essence forced to listen) to "pep talks" run in high schools by groups that have fundy athletes come in to prosyletise, often on the premise that these are "anti-drug" or "self-esteem" talks (most of the time, these assemblies are mandatory to attend for kids, and often the groups will take innocuous-sounding names like "Athletes Against Drugs" or suchlike to hide their fundy links) to "free pizza parties" held by fundy groups who then hold the kids for hours, not allowing them to leave (it is almost never revealed that the "pizza party" is in fact being run by a fundy group) to "stealth candidates" for political offices (which don't reveal their fundy links till elected)...). Basically, because a lot of these groups ARE essentially Bible-based cults, they can feed their members an amazing amount of horsesheisse and (because they literally have nothing else to "error-check" it with) their followers will swallow it. If anything, most folks involved are to be pitied (the only ones that really deserve hate are probably the leaders who outright manipulate their followers).

There has not been a terrible amount of info on how "Bible-based cults" do manipulate their followers until fairly recently, largely because most folks associate "cults" with "new religions" and most folk haven't wanted to believe that "Christian" groups can and sadly do turn into coercive groups preaching far more of a god of Fear, Hate and Loathing (both of self and others) than a god of love, acceptance, and respect (which is what, at least with those folks whom I've met who I sense actually "get" what Yshua was saying, feel it's supposed to be about anyways). I also expect this is a big reason why most mainstream churches in the US haven't spoken out about "Bible-based cults" except in cases where they've been really extreme (part of this, too, might be because--sadly--coercive tactics are getting into larger and larger denominations; one of the largest fundy denominations in the US, which is in essence a Bible-based cult, was the major source of TV preachers for years and has well over one million members...a recent expose of the "Brownsville Movement" (which is centered at one of the larger churches in the US for this denomination in Pensacola, Florida) using coercive tactics is one of the major exceptions; the Southern Baptists, which have had their entire church head and seminary taken over by the fundamentalist wing of the denomination, are starting to dance close to using coercive tactics though they aren't as bad as the "traditionally" fundy denominations yet); part of that, though, may be because most fundy denominations (and especially those which are basically Bible-based cults) don't have anything to do with most major ecumenical conventions, holding their own separate worldwide conferences because they feel mainstrean Christianity is "lukewarm" at best and outright perverted by Satan at worst).

I'll also note (this is a personal aside, based on my own observations of having grown up in a family of raving fundies and having seen far more than I like of the internals of the Religious Right and fundamentalist groups in the US) that--probably because many of these folks have literally been in these groups for generations (I know of three-generation households in the group I walked away from; also, many of the younger especially are literally isolated from the outside world from birth all the way through college (fundies push homeschooling in large part so that kids CAN be isolated and not see anything that could spur them to walk away; there is now even a college being set up specifically for fundy-homeschooled kids to train them to be "political leaders for Christians", homeschooled kids being perfect fodder because they have literally been raised and brainwashed in Bible-based cults from birth), partly because walkaways from groups one has been raised in are EXTREMELY rare (pretty much most kids walk away when their parents do, or if they are forced out of their homes due to "irreconcilable differences" like the kid discovering he's gay; there are literally no statistics on kids walking away on their own (with no help from parents or exit counselors) from groups they were raised in because it is so rare), and partly because this is all they know as a result...a large percentage of those involved in Bible-based cults and in groups like the FRC are, to put none too fine a term on it, control-freaks. This is probably because the only real model they have IS the preacher, who basically uses coercive tactics (and a hell of a lot of FUD) to keep his flock "in line" and not questioning the preacher--this is especially true of folks who have been raised in such groups for generations--and so they basically take the whole "coercive-tactics"/"control-freak" thing to ALL walks of life. Literally everything from politics (a big part of why fundies want a theocracy here has to do with Control and Power over others; again, this is probably an extension of how their own ministers and deacons use Power and Control to keep the flock in line, along with the major "us versus them" mindset in such groups) to parenting (a lot of fundy parents will homeschool kids specifically to keep a maximum amount of Control and Power over them--this is also why they push so much for censorship initiatives to "protect the children", and a lot of fundies won't allow their kids to attend non-Christian colleges or allow them to attend schools with coed dorms or alcohol on campus [yes, I've had experience with this; the fact Beloit College had coed dorms and alcohol on campus pretty much shot all hell out of any chance I had of going there, even without money concerns]). Basically, to put a fine point on it, many of them are control-freaks by basis of being in groups that are run by control-freaks who use coercive tactics, and they have no other model to use (either by model of literally not knowing any better, or by model of literally being so brainwashed that pretty much they have nothing else to go by).

A good starter for exploring the mindset of which I'm talking on is here [ifas.org]. It's a page for walkaways, specifically from Bible-based cults, run by a person who was formerly involved in one (he walked away, and now actually runs a "fight-the-right" group largely because of his experiences in the coercive group); it gives you a lot of perspective on where they're coming from, if you've never been misfortunate enough to have experienced Fundie Hell for yourself. (I honestly don't recommend the latter for anyone, especially not kids and other living things. It can screw you up for life, seriously. Look at me. ;)

2b). As another aside--this is probably not widely known by folks, but there are a lot of businesses in the US--many of them Fortune 500 companies, yet--that not only are affiliated with the Right Wing in the US, but are in fact members and actually supportive of it. An enlightening--and scary page--for starters is here [ifas.org]--this is a page featuring info on the Coalition for National Policy, which is essentially a secretive, invite-only think-tank for the Religious Right in the United States. It features a membership list [ifas.org] that includes, among others, many members of the Coors family, a (former) Presidential candidate, and a number of representatives to US and state legislatures. There's also a good link here [sjcdc.org] that talks about the CNP and a lot more of the big names in the Religious Right...

For more starters...both the Coors family (yep, as in Coors Breweries) and the Waltons (yep, as in Sam's Wholesale/Wal-Mart--as in, before Sam Walton died, one of the single richest individuals on the planet, worth more than Bill Gates, and only surpassed by the Sultan of Brunei; the Waltons collectively are still in the top 100 of the richest people on the planet) are heavily involved with the Religious Right, outright subsidizing them and being sympathetic to concerns (to give examples--the Coors family supported Amendment 2 in Colorado, which would have rescinded civil-rights laws that included sexual orientation; the Waltons have made it a policy not to carry albums with "Tipper-stickers", refused to carry heavy-metal magazines for a long time, and refuse to provide "morning-after" contraceptives even though they will provide Viagra). Needless to say, these are two of the biggest companies in the US. Another interesting one is AmWay--AmWay in and of itself has been accused of using coercive tactics with its sales representatives, but is also run by fundamentalists with links to the CNP and AmWay has been known to bankroll fundy groups in past. Not even home shopping is immune--as it turns out, the person who owns Home Shopping Club, Home Shopping Network (the off-hours version of HSC that shows up on a lot of "Christian" TV stations and also used to show up on the "Family Channel") and PAX TV is a major bankroller of the Religious Right (more on that below).

For even more shockers...a lot of times, Religious Right groups deal in a fair bit of "cloaking". The Arthur S. DeMoss foundation (a Religious Right group that pushes "Christian Reconstructionism", has actually endorsed Christian Identity groups on occasion, and pretty much is a major funding source for the Religious Right; it was founded by the widow of a Religious Right supporter who happened to be a multi-millionaire) hides most of its nastier stuff by not only doing innocuous-sounding adverts for adoption and "Power for Living" (basically a book which hawks fundamentalist Christianity), but has sympathetic multi-million-dollar stars like the woman from "Children of a Lesser God" and Jeff Gordon (great...have NASCAR drivers hawking fundamentalism to the kiddies...Jeff Gordon, probably more than anyone in NASCAR short of the Pettys, is seen as particularly "kid-friendly" and as a general, All-American "Wheaties"-box boy) and NFL stars hawking for them. (Knowing that group, I'm almost willing to bet that either a) they might not have been too forthcoming with these folks other than that they were a group promoting a book about "Christian living", or b) a hell of a lot of people in show-business need a good expose like there has been with Scientologists in Hollywood...more info on the Arthur S. Demoss Foundation here [au.org] and here [google.com] [thank you Google...it seems that Pathfinder is not wanting to behave well].) The Family Channel, until recently, was owned by the same folks who brought you Pat Robertson and the 700 Club--it was renamed from the "Christian Broadcasting Network" to make it sound like it offered "family-friendly" programming and to hide its links to the Religious Right (as Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition had started to get a rather bad name). In fact, the Family Channel was sold to FOX, which does have some links to the right in the US (though not as bad as, say, Coors).

PAX TV, which is a TV network set up by a fundamentalist (again, using the exact same canard that the "Family Channel" did in its Pat Robertson days--as a purveyor of "family-friendly entertainment" which conveniently neglects to mention its links to the Religious Right) and which is largely carried on "Christian" TV stations, is heavily bankrolled by Home Shopping Club and Home Shopping Network (which--not exactly coincidentially--also showed on the Family Channel on off-hours and shows on a lot of "Christian" TV stations in off-hours) and--even worse--is also owned 20 percent by CBS and NBC was planning to buy 32 percent in PAX TV (this would be over 400 million dollars). More info here [onlinejournal.com], and more info on PAX here [salon.com]...for that matter, the very head of Focus on the Family (which spawned off Family Research Council as a lobbying wing), James Dobson, makes a rather healthy living selling parenting books promoting "tough love" and "discipline".

Even besides all THAT, a lot of the major Religious Right groups get a lot of funding from members, and many of them can actually get it tax-free (by either setting up separate "political" wings when the heat from the IRS gets too much, or by setting it up with roughly the same tax exemptions a church would get). There are also local businesses...as one guide has advised, if you want to boycott teh Religious Right you almost have to look through one of the directories made for the Religious Right or avoid every business with an ichthus-fish on it...and besides all THAT, Religious Right groups are increasingly going stealth or relying on certain "code words" within the community like "Family", "Heritage", or names confusingly similar to existing groups (one anti-abortion "counseling center" actually named themselves "PPC, Inc." and based themselves in the same building as the local Planned Parenthood office; a legal group that bankrolls and supports lawsuits friendly to Religious Right causes is named "American Center for Law and Justice"; a really amazing number of Religious Right groups use "Family" or "Heritage" or "Christian Life Center" (in the case of churches) because these are actual code words in the fundamentalist community for fundy-friendly causes).

Needless to say, unfortunately, the Religious Right isn't exactly hurting for money and, short of ALL of their members walking away combined with a massive economic crash that disrupts nearly the entire worldwide financial system to the point that it forces us to go back to barter or most of their members walking away combined with a massive boycott of ANYTHING the Religious Right has their fingers in, they aren't going to be hurting for money anytime soon. :P

2c). Media that isn't tied with the Religious Right somehow is often basically bullied into submission. As noted above, a lot of folks in fundy groups have a very "us versus them" viewpoint to begin with--they literally believe they are fighting Satan and all of us not in a fundy group are practicing Satanists as a direct result. :P If ANYTHING is reported whatsoever that is in the LEAST critical of the Religious Right, they will protest (even if they don't read the paper or watch non-"Christian" TV because it might be "Satanically influenced") because, in essence, they will be informed about it and told to raise forty kinds of hell over it. And they will. In droves. (A Pensacola paper found this out when they basically exposed the "Brownsville Movement" as a Bible-based cult; "20/20" did an expose of the "Brownsville Movement" and likewise were damn near pilloried (of course, most fundies were already boycotting anything relating to Disney because {horror!} they dared give equal rights to gay couples for benefits and had a "gay Day" there, but that's beside the point)...my family raged for days about the expose because "Oh god, they make us all out to be cultists or something" (I hate to inform them, but, well, if the shoe fits...I'd think instead of ranting at ABC maybe you should do some serious soul-searching on whether the chuch is doing the Right Thing or not, but then again, I walked away and I dare to be sensible about the whole thing instead of getting my panties in a wad)...read your newspaper's editorials everytime someone dares suggest that the Religious Right and theocracy or even putting the Ten Commandments in schools might possibly not be the be-all, end-all to the world's problems to get an idea of just WHAT kinds of cain they do raise.) Burger King and Pepsi, among others, have literally been bullied out of running certain adverts or sponsoring programs because of letter-writing campaigns by the American Family Association (a hard-line Religious Right lobbying group which has some decidedly homophobic tendencies); many ABC affiliates were likewise bullied into not carrying "NYPD Blue" during its first two seasons for the same reason.

3). Now, to a direct point I was going to mention--hate to break it to you, but the PMRC is by no bloody means liberal. Tipper Gore (and Al Gore) are (as noted above) right-moderate AT MOST; the other co-founder, oddly enough, just happens to be Elizabeth Dole, wifey of Bob Dole and onetime candidate for the 2000 GOP nomination for President. One of the founding members was Susan Baker (wife of Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (R)).

More to the point, though, the PMRC has many a link to Religious Right groups. First off, they have carried advertising in PMRC literature for "Back In Control Training Center" and other "training centers"; Back In Control was basically an inpatient program run by two former LAPD officers which was advertised to "de-metal" or "de-punk" kids, which was in effect a brainwashing center with links to the Religious Right and which has claimed, among other things, that Wiccans are Satanists and that the Magen David (the Jewish star) is a Satanic symbol and that if kids are wearing "gothy" or "metal" clothing this is a sure sign of Satan-worship. Back In Control has also worked with a lot of police departments and schools, and (ObSlashdot) is one of the groups that is directly responsible for kids being harassed and worse after Columbine for wearing "goth" clothing. (More info here [purdue.edu],here [addict.com] (in passing, but in direct relation to how Back In Control Training Center has been heavily promoted by the PMRC), and here [theroc.org].)

Also, they've promoted and used material from Bob Larson Ministries; for those who aren't aware, Bob Larson is a "foamin' fundy" radio preacher who, among other things, promotes censorship and the whole Religious Right agenda. Among other things, he's called peace symbols and the Nike swoosh Satanic symbols (no, I'm not making this up) as well as the good old canard about the Magen David supposedly being a Satanic symbol. More info here [washington.edu] (or the newer version here [freespeech.org]--the "Bob Larson Fan Site"--trust me, the kinds of horsesheisse Larson spews is the kind that must be seen for itself to be believed), and a lovely expose in a British Columbia Christian mag here [bcchristiannews.org]. Yes, the PMRC actually promoted material from this nut :P

Incidentially, you can confirm all the info above by getting a copy of the book "50 Ways To Fight Censorship" by Dave Marsh (head of Rock and Rap Confidential, and the guy who coined the phrase "rock and roll" incidentially). It's out of print, but most better libraries do have a copy, and if you can't find it there, there are all manner of online bookstores who could probably scare up a copy for you.

Oh, and if you wondered whether the PMRC still has links to the Religious Right...the answer, darling, is an emphatic yes. The present head, one Barbara Wyatt, just happens (ironically) to also sit on the board of Focus on the Family (!)...more info here (again, thank you Google; the more recent version is [google.com]here [tylwythteg.com], btw), and here [ultranet.com].

And BTW, just for the record--I don't have an agenda, other than being a walkaway from a Bible-based cult who really does not the US to descend into a theocracy (I lived under one for all intents and purposes for 25 years of my life; trust me, it sucks, and it will suck twenty times worse if they can get their theocracy nationwide) and who knows all too well both the mindset these folks operate under and the real danger (to freedom and, ultimately, to the psyches of both their memberships and those who are family to them) these groups ultimately present. In essence, I don't want the rest of y'all on Slashdot to have to put up with what I had to put up with for 25 years of my life, and an especially hellish thirteen years after I walked away and I had to live in a household of which the majority of people were raving fundies (and the rest of my family was, slowly but steadily, being assimilated by the Bible-Based Cult Of Borg). It sucks. Bigtime. :P (I note this because, when I made a little post exposing the agenda of the Family Research Council, I was accused of having an agenda. Sorry, I've got no more of an agenda than a kid who's been abused has in getting the abuse to stop. :P)

Misunderstanding of morality

What I do have a problem with is groups that point their fingers at my family and say, "All right, now we'll set your moral standards for you.")

I'm afraid that's exactly what has to happen - that is the *meaning* of the word morality. Just read any philosohical book on ethics. There's no such thing as morality that only applies to a small group of people - it applies to everyone (under morally similar conditions), or it's not morality at all. Just think about it for one second - take some commonly accepted moral rules:

1. It's wrong to kill someone for fun
2. It's wrong to steal from a baby
3. It's wrong to eat people

Obviously these apply to everyone. Saying "It would be wrong for me to kill someone for fun, but not if you did it" is just ridiculous. The same goes for any other moral principle. I believe that it would be morally wrong for me to choose to eat meat, because of the animal suffering and violence involved. That *automatically* implies, by definition of morality, that it is wrong for everyone else to choose to eat meat. For people for whom it doesn't, they must be confusing morality with something less strong, like just personal taste. There's no getting away from it.

I don't agree with compulsory censorware, but your argument is completely illogical - unfortunately it's quite a common mistake.

Your moral principle is that "You shouldn't impose your moral principles on other people." But don't you see - imposing that moral principle on others is totally hypocritical!!

Tailor the meme to the audience!!!

In an unrelated thread, someone wrote:
> Besides, "Censorware allows your children to see porn!" is a much catchier headline then "Censorware keeps
your children from seeing 'The offspring'". It'll make the evening news much more often.

I've quoted it here because to me, this is all about propagability of memes. Some people evaluate memes based on truth values, but most don't. Truth is not a predictor of propagability of memes, and in order to win this battle, we need memes that can propagate as well among the fundie crowd as they do among the Slashdot crowd. .

Let's consider the memeset of our "enemy" here, and that Offspring lyric that got posted. Our enemy probably knows "The Offspring" as "that band that sings about beating people up and being a rowdy teenager". Blocking Offspring isn't a bug to these people, it's an accidental feature.

Those Offspring lyrics - put yourself in the brain of a stereotypical fundie and read the lyrics: "When will the world listen to reason / I have a feeling it'll be a long time / When will the truth come into season / I have a feeling it'll be a long time.."

Now, since you're a fundie, and you know that Offspring isn't "Christian Rock", you can only assume that they're not talking about "the world waking up to the realization that Christ is the One True Savior". In fact, you probably suspect that they're trying to get your kids to "wake up" and snap out of their fundie-raised upbringing. What we /.ers think of as "think for yourself" is - in the hardcore fundie mentality, "the sin of pride", a rebellion against God's divine authority that puts man at the center of their universe, not God - oh, the horror!

Do I agree with that logic? Not on your life. But $10 worth of hot grits down Jerry Falwell's pants says that the people who want blocking software do. And THEY'RE the ones propagating the memes right now, which is why we're losing this war.

We need to stop pretending that our opposition cares about the First Amendment. We know damn well they don't. Stop pretending that our audience cares about the First Amendment. They're too ignorant to care about things when the meme of "saving the chiiilllldrun is worthwhile at any cost" shows up. From a memetic warfare standpoint, the logical alternative is to take the battle to a level the sheeple can understand, and that means to start scaring them into submission the same way our opponents have been doing, and that means a memeset that propagates among fundies.

An audience of people who stand up and say "I used your filtering software last year and read about donkeys fucking little girls! You said you made your filters better, but I can still see that goddamn link!" is an audience ready to get my proposed meme:

Filterware isn't about protecting the children. It's a scam that can never work. The companies that write it and sell it are lying to you.

Unlike "You're blocking good sites too", where our idea of "good" is just as bad as pr0n to our enemies, this is a useful meme.

Consider: It appeals on the gut level - to paranoia, by accusing "big business" of running a scam on "the little guy", and describes a world in which Godless Amoral Corporations are trying to pull the wool over Your Preshus Chilldrun's eyes by hawking snake oil that can never work. They're not really for Jesus, they're just trying to make a buck in His name. (The fact that this is true isn't relevant -- it's that it's easily believed to be true that counts.)

More importantly - this meme gives its holder a sense of superiority. "I know censorware doesn't work. I know it's a crock. I know something other people don't know, which makes me better than other people!".

Finally - it doesn't conflict with their existing memeset. Our whining about the First Amendment makes us feel superior, because most of us realize that there are principles at stake beyond religious bickering. But it conflicts directly with the "God Uber Alles" meme that so heavily infects the fundie set. To these people, a theocracy is a Good Thing, and the First Amendment is a threat. But even the most diehard theocrat can see that "Being a Sucker" is a bad thing.

To summarize -- if you wanna do memetic warfare, pick memes that are easily reproduced. Pick memes that make their holders happy by reinforcing their propagators' self-esteem. And make sure you pick a meme that doesn't require modification to the existing memes held by your target audience.

It's what they've done to us so successfully with "We're for God, the children, and apple pie. They're for porn and using the first amendment as a lame excuse." When we whine about the First Amendment - it's taken for whining, because our argument says "there are things more important than your religious beliefs" - our meme conflicts with theirs and gets thrown out.

My proposed "You're being sold snake oil. Don't be a sucker" meme is every bit as true as our arguement about the First Amendment, but unlike the constitutional argument, it doesn't conflict with their existing complex of religious memes. You can go on thumping the bible and beatin' up faggutz and lezzbein' femminizt radikulz or whatever the hell else it is that hardcore fundies get off on - but you can do it without censorware.

Because You're Not A Sucker. And Censorware is for Suckers. Because it doesn't work. Because it never will work. And because it's all a scam being run by people who are invoking the name of God to make a quick buck. May they burn in hell, Amen.

This does not bode well for freedom of press

Jamie and his group seem caught up on technicalities and words which most people don't understand. That is not a good way to sway the public to one's viewpoint.

Many parents believe the internet contains threats to their children. These parents feel the library should be a safe place. They will vote to protect their children. The instinct to protect one's offspring is far more powerful than the love of liberty (short sighted as that may be).

The only way the anti-censoreware movement will succeed is to address the fears of these parents/voters. They can scream censorhip until they are blue in the face. It seems they will.

Jamie needs to stop mocking the voters in his town and start listening to them. They will vote and they will make the decision, unless Jamie persuades them to do otherwise.

Meme warfare

Memes are terribly hard to shove back in the wrapper after someone takes them out exposes them to the meme collecting sheeple who get sucked in by the meme de jour.
Memes that tend to corkscrew into the brain of J.Random Citizen faster than anything usually include references to children, family, religion, morals (not ethics), sex and violence.
Actual numbers are inconsequential as long as the writer can show that they are in the majority and on the same side of the issue as the readers (or rather convincing the reader that they would be a foul beast for disagreeing with the author.) What kind of monster would allow harm to befall children? These memes are replicated in churches, schools, television, newspaper and anywhere that two or more people get together to try and shock each other with horror stories from the trenches.
J.Random Public doesn't want to be confused by the facts. They don't want someone telling them that politicians trying to peddle their own agenda duped them. They want to feel good about their actions and this only serve to reinforce the meme. The more the spread it and get approval and agreement from other citizens, the more justified they feel in holding this meme, nurturing it, cuddling it, stroking its fur, naming it George. They'll only discard it if enough people whom they respect laugh at them and tell them what fools they were for buying the meme in the first place.
The only answer I can think of is for us to go out and laugh at anyone we hear propagating these inaccuracies. Memes don't just die, they must be terminated with extreme prejudice.

-chaosgrrl

Re:information

I say we throw in the towel on the concept of promoting change from within the system and focus on civil disobedience. The hacker ethic is antitheical to this New World Order of information control... this is the real war - it's not one of politics or mimes.. it's about the right to the truth.. the freedom of information, and the right to be left alone.

I agree with you on this, however it goes even deeper than that. It's about free thought, and freewill. The first thing each of us needs to focus on is achieving personal awareness, free thought, and free will - i.e. liberty - the ability to get up each morning (or night), do what you believe in all day (or night), and go to bed at night (or morning) knowing you did what you believed in.

The second thing to do is to help other people do what they believe in. Of course this is a personal thing, and if you try to change people's views too much from the direction they are naturally inclined, what you get is divided loyalties. The last thing you want in a tense situation is people questioning their loyalties. So with five billion people on the earth, and the mass of communications, the goal should be to connect people who naturally believe in freewill and liberty. After this happens, the "system" will never be able to get these people back on their side, so the only option they'll have is to try to keep our ideas from spreading to the sheep.

This is the information age. The greatest tool of the status quo is ignorance of any other way of going about things. So they will continue to try to keep their ideas flowing to those people who they think they can control. But awareness is usually a one way journey - once you've seen it, you won't just give in to ignorance.

But anyhow.....

Why do we need this word "meme"?

What's wrong with the word that has meant the same thing since English began: idea?

Is it just to be extra l33t, or is there some hidden meaning that has escaped me?

--

Re:Misunderstanding of morality

Morality is entirely subjective -- unless you accept the existence of an absolute moral lawgiver like God (which I don't), then the only morality that means anything to you is the one that you follow. If I have a set of morals and I am the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD WITH THOSE MORALS, that does NOT mean that they are not morals. Obviously if I have morals I think everyone should have the same morals -- but I also think it's wrong for me to FORCE them to follow my morals. These are not mutually exclusive ideas; what you're saying is that if someone has morals, they are morally obligated (!) to force their morals on everyone else, which is not the case. What if my morals preclude me from telling anyone about my morals?

information

Sounds to me like if you open the communications channels to the masses, you lose that control.. and the war never happens.

This is not about the internet. This is not about pornography, it is not about copyright, it is not about piracy, it is not about cryptography. It's about information control.

Information is power. The internet has an unfettered flow of information. Therefore the internet is the ultimate powerbase. The people who control it effectively do what they've been doing for the past two thousand years: they control you, your reality, your neighbors, everything. The worst part is, because you don't know what is and is not truly going on, you don't even know this is occuring.

We got a fleeting glance of the empowerment this medium can provide when the ISP boom occurred alittle over a year ago - and before the letters "AUP" came into being. This was a time when everybody was getting online and seeing that the world is very different depending on who you talk to...

As a result, cultural barriers collapsed, people started judging by ideas instead of the color of your skin or your age, and a private revolution took off in the homes of the average joe.

This is going to come to a screeching halt. It MUST come to a halt for society to preserve it's integrity - the RIAA, the DMCA, piracy, privacy and democracy are all intertwined. This is the ultimate battle, and right now they have 40 frags, and the home team is -1.

I say we throw in the towel on the concept of promoting change from within the system and focus on civil disobedience. The hacker ethic is antitheical to this New World Order of information control... this is the real war - it's not one of politics or mimes.. it's about the right to the truth.. the freedom of information, and the right to be left alone.

American Decency Association?

Is it just me, or is the number of self-appointed groups crusading to promote "decency" on the rise? "American Decency Association?" Some would claim that title is a joke. Still others would claim it's an oxymoron. It's hard to tell. Their home page [americandecency.org] is pretty typical; Bible verses mixed with warnings about pornography addiction and the other evils of the Internet. Yawn. (No, I have no problem with the Bible, and I have no problem with people and/or families basing their morality on it. What I do have a problem with is groups that point their fingers at my family and say, "All right, now we'll set your moral standards for you.")

Why isn't there more vocal opposition to groups like this? Sure, on Slashdot, they get raked over the coals, but you would expect it: the average Slashdot reader is a little bit more concerned about his or her freedom than the average person on the street. But this ought to be bigger than Slashdot and a few other forums. I don't care if you're the most rabid of the rabid religious fundamentalists or the most die-hard of the die-hard atheists. If you value personal freedom, then you must be morally opposed to a single group attempting to establish their moral standard as the compulsory baseline for everyone! This certainly includes filtering; by definition filtering consists of a single person or group of people unilaterally deciding that a particular site is inappropriate for everybody.

So start letting people know that you're not going to accept this. Start letting people know that you are more than capable of deciding what you and your children can and cannot see. Start letting people know that it is you, not some fundamentalist group with a three-letter acronym name, that is ultimately responsible for raising your children. Because I'll tell you what folks: what we really need to be protected from are the folks who think they know better than anybody else what's best for us. So to the ADA, the FRC, the CC, and any other "moral watchdog" organization, I say "Thanks, but no thanks." This is something that families can handle by themselves.

Re:Why do we need this word "meme"?

What's wrong with the word that has meant the same thing since English began: idea? Is it just to be extra l33t, or is there some hidden meaning that has escaped me?

I actually had to look this one up, but the definition prooves rather intresting, and imo, quite different from just "idea": (from our friends at www.dictionary.com [dictionary.com])

meme

/meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator [dictionary.com], especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.

Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.

The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex".

Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.

See also memetic algorithm [dictionary.com].

(1996-08-11)

Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2000 Denis Howe [dictionary.com]