News from the States
This online newsletter is a product of NCSL's Communications
and Information Policy Committee.
Spring/Summer 2000
CONTENTS
NCSL Annual Meeting - July 15-20,
2000
Computer Crime Enactments
Inmate Access to the Internet
FTC Panel Issues Report on Online Privacy
Telephone Advertising Guidelines Issued by the
FCC and FTC
Wyoming Wires Its Public Schools
Laying the Groundwork for Electronic Transactions and
Information
Digital Music Discord
Telecommunications and Information Policy
Last update: 6/2/00
NCSL Annual Meeting - July 15-20, 2000
Digital Divide, E-Government, Connecting on the Net and Telecommunications
in the 21st Century are among the programs NCSL will hold on information
policy, technology and telecommunications issues during the 26th Annual
Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, July 15- 20, 2000. See the following agendas
for more information:
For general information about the meeting, see http://www.ncsl.org/am00/index.htm
Computer Crime Enactments
Continuing the trend from 1999, the significant areas for computer crime
legislation in 2000 continue to be electronic harassment, identity theft,
and obscene or pornographic materials.
Iowa, Oklahoma, and Virginia expanded the definitions and penalties
relating to electronic harassment, while South Dakota enacted legislation
creating the crime of identity theft, including theft of computer user
names and identification information.
Oklahoma and South Dakota also addressed the issue of pornographic materials
relating to minors. Oklahoma prohibited the use of a computer to make lewd
proposals to a child and authorized the seizure and forfeiture of computer
equipment used to produce obscene materials. And, South Dakota expanded
the prohibitions against possessing computer-related child pornography.
See the NCSL
Computer Crime web page for links to the full text of the legislation
mentioned.
- submitted by Heather Morton
Inmate Access to the Internet
A Minnesota state prisoner, serving 23 years for molesting teenage girls,
had unsupervised access to the Internet through his work for a nonprofit
work and education program inside the prison. The prisoner had used his
Internet access to trade child pornography over the Internet. To prevent
this kind of abuse from happening again, the Minnesota Legislature in 1997
passed legislation limiting access by inmates
and parolees
and probationers.
After the Minnesota incident, Congress passed the Protection of Children
from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, Title VIII
of which prohibits unsupervised access to the Internet by federal prisoners.
The act also provided for 50-state survey to determine the extent to which
each state allows prisoners access to any interactive computer service.
The survey, Prisoner
Access to Interactive Computer Systems: Report to the U.S. Attorney General
reviews state statutes and corrections agency policies, and includes samples
of policies from several states.
Since the report was issued, at least three additional states — Nevada,
North
Dakota, and Ohio
— have passed legislation limiting prisoners' access to the Internet.
- submitted by Pam Greenberg
FTC Panel Issues Report on Online Privacy
The Federal Trade Commission's
Advisory Committee on Online Access and Security in May released its
final report examining online consumer privacy issues. The report focuses
on consumers' access to personal information collected from and about them
and looks at how to maintain adequate security for that information. The
report sets the stage by exploring basic questions about access, such as:
What is personal information? What is the source of that information and
who collects it? And how easy should access be for consumers—for example,
should websites charge a fee to cover the costs of providing access to
information and can they impose limits on multiple or duplicative requests
for access?
Next, the report describes four options for parameters on reasonable
access to personal information, ranging from the broadest option which
would give consumers "total access" — access to any information a commercial
Web site may have about them, to the narrowest option — access only to
information used to grant or deny a significant benefit to the consumer.
The report also discusses security issues, and makes a single recommendation
regarding security—that each commercial Web site that collects personal
information be required to develop and maintain (but not necessarily post)
a security program for protecting customers' personal data.
- submitted by Pam Greenberg
Telephone Advertising Guidelines Issued by
the FCC and FTC
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued
a joint
policy statement in March that may make it easier for consumers to
compare charges for long-distance and dial-around telephone services. Both
the FTC and FCC have jurisdiction to take action concerning misleading
advertisements. The purpose of the statement is to clarify what type of
advertisements will result in enforcement action. The statement does not
preempt existing state laws.
Under the guidelines, advertisements for long-distance and dial-around
services (the 10-10 numbers that enable customers to bypass their regular
long-distance companies to make calls) must clearly disclose all costs
and conditions. For example, if the advertisement states that long-distance
calls cost 10 cents per minute but there is a $5.95 monthly fee, that information
must be clear and conspicuous. In television advertisements, companies
are encouraged to make verbal disclosures rather than relying on printed
"superscript" on the bottom of the screen, and to show qualifying information
for as long as the lead information appears.
The FCC toll-free hotline for information and complaints against telephone
companies is (888) 225-5322.
- submitted by Bob Boerner
Wyoming Wires Its Public Schools
America's smallest state in population (479,602), Wyoming, has become the
first state to provide access to the Internet in all of its public schools.
State officials recognized sometime ago that Internet connectivity is a
critical element in providing educational opportunities and developing
job skills for students. The project cost is estimated at $25 million for
the first five years. And, the state Legislature has approved of the addition
of a two-way interactive video system. By June, all of the state's
78 high schools will be connected to this system. This allows a teacher
to address students in one classroom and those at distant locations at
the same time.
Governor Jim Gerringer, a former state senator, began the drive for
statewide Internet access in schools over five years ago. In a recent interview,
he stated "Every child in Wyoming now has the opportunity to develop to
his or her own potential. By finding a way to touch every school, the next
great leader from business or government could come from that one place."
- submitted by Bob Boerner
Laying the Groundwork for Electronic Transactions and
Information
Two new uniform acts governing electronic transactions and information
are under consideration in state legislatures. The Uniform Electronic Transactions
Act (UETA) and the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act
(UCITA) were adopted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform
State Laws in July 1999.
UETA, which was designed to put electronic transactions and signatures
on a par with paper transactions and manual signatures, has become law
in 13 states. In 1999, Pennsylvania passed UETA and so did California,
although the California legislation included a number of restrictions on
the its application. So far this year, UETA has passed in Arizona, Idaho,
Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota,
Utah, and Virginia. See the NCSL
UETA web page for links to the full text of these new laws. To find
the text of UETA and additional supporting information about it, see the
web page of the National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The
Consumers Union web site provides information about the adequacy of
consumer protection provided by UETA and a list of the UETA restrictions
outlined in the California law.
UCITA, which has been criticized by some consumer groups who claim it
does not adequately protect purchasers, was introduced in a handful of
states this year. So far, only Virginia and Maryland have passed it. See
the NCSL UCITA
web page for links to the full text of these new laws. To find the
text of UCITA and additional supporting information about it, see the web
page of the National Conference of Commissioners
on Uniform State Laws.
- submitted by Jo Anne Bourquard
Digital Music Discord
The Internet has spawned many trends, and the latest rage is digital music.
Young people from around the globe have started downloading music files
at a phenomenal rate, crashing servers and breaking bandwidth.
The most popular form of digital music is the MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3)
format, which creates CD-quality sound files at about one-twelfth of the
original size. Converting CD music to MP3 ("ripping" and "encoding") has
caught on like wildfire, and audiophiles have begun swapping these files
with sharing software—Napster being
the most prolific.
This practice is not without consequence, however. The Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) has accused MP3 and Napster
of piracy and filed a lawsuit against the Internet company MP3.Com.
In late April, the RIAA claimed victory as a Federal Court ruled the website
violated copyright law with its database of music files, and MP3.Com could
face damages amounting in billions. Later in May, a U.S. District court
judge rejected Napster's request to dismiss the lawsuits from the RIAA.
The rock group Metallica and rapper Dr. Dre have both lashed out against
Napster, alleging it encouraged users to trade songs and recordings without
the artists' permission. The software start-up asserted that the "safe
harbor" provision in the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 limits liability for companies
indirectly involved with illegally transmitted material. Metallica and
Dr. Dre have sued Napster for copyright infringement nonetheless, stating
the act specifies online services are liable if they are warned that a
user is infringing a copyright and fail to act. In response to Metallica's
complaint, Napster blocked over 300,000 users from the software in early
May.
Schools and universities around the country are also feeling the squeeze
of digital music as massive downloading has clogged systems, consumed bandwidth
and overwhelmed campus connections. While Yale, USC and Indiana University
have banned Napster outright, other schools have blocked ports utilized
by the software. Over one hundred schools have implemented some form of
prohibition against MP3 sharing.
Users of Napster claim these anti-MP3 action as censorship. And with
new software (such as Gnutella and Freenet) echoing Napster's ability springing
up every day and the popularity of MP3 increasing, a compromise may be
needed soon. Disgruntled individuals have already posted fixes for banned
Napster users, causing the company to black out its message board where
the hack was posted. And while MP3.Com claimed a small victory with its
licensing agreement with Broadcast Music Inc., and Napster's latest beta model adds piracy-proof Windows Media Audio,
the war is far from over.
- submitted by Janna Goodwin
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