April Greenbeck, an Iowa State junior in journalism, knew little about the Internet. She peered at the large computer monitor on her desk, randomly pushing buttons, trying to get a World Wide Web browsing program to work.

“I think this could be an invaluable source if you will take the time to learn how to use it,” the professor told April’s class as he showed his students how to explore the Web.

After a few minutes of getting acquainted with the Web browsing program, April decided to explore one of her friend’s homepages. April’s ex-boyfriend, Mike, a computer science major, had given her the address needed to access his homepage and encouraged her to check it out.

As Mike’s homepage screen appeared and the resolution sharpened, April’s eyes widened in disbelief. About half-way down her computer screen, a picture of a nude woman began to appear. “Candy,” the nude woman on Mike’s homepage, was an introduction to a number of hypertext links, connecting Mike’s page to hundreds of pornographic pictures and stories.

“Oh my God,” April said under her breath. Her heart sank with the sudden realization of how easy it would be for anyone, anywhere, of any age, to tap into the material Mike had on his homepage.

Easy access

Despite attempts by the university to shield minors from inappropriate material on the Internet, university officials admit that it is still easy for any motivated student to find means to access it.

ISU’s Usenet policy, restricting about 15 newsgroups available on the university’s news reader, was established by the ISU Computation Center as an attempt to protect the university from liability for distributing pornographic material to minors, a violation of Iowa law.

“All we can really do is restrict what we feed off the news service we run at the Iowa State Computation Center, but if a student knows of a news server that isn’t restricted, they can easily gain access to any material they wish,” said Michael Bowman, assistant director for administrator and user services at the Computation Center.

Iowa State’s news service carries nearly 3,220 newsgroups, lists of thousands of messages dealing with topics from gardening to sports statistics to the latest computer technology, Bowman said.

“The newsgroup administration at the Computation Center decides which newsgroups might be in violation of the Iowa Code by examining a week’s worth of posted material on the newsgroup and checking it against its purpose statement,” Bowman said.

“If we don’t take some steps to restrict the material accessed by minors, the university might be in violation of Iowa Code, Chapter 728,” he added.

The Iowa State news service, a reader service provided by the university for the viewing of Internet newsgroups, is one of the few mediums on the Internet that the university can control. Still, Bowman admits that questionable material can be accessed through many other Internet services available to students.

Born from complaints

The Usenet news policy was established in 1991 by the Computation Center after it received complaints about questionable material being accessed by students on some newsgroups. The university, under the Usenet news policy, offers three variations of newsgroup listings: focused, standard and full news lists.

The policy says the purpose of the focused news list is to “provide an alternative to those who want to only access newsgroups which appear to be focused directly on academic information rather than hobby or recreational areas.”

The standard news list, the default list on most campus computers, provides access to most newsgroups, with the exception of the 15 restricted by the university.

The full news list offers complete access to all newsgroups for those in the ISU community who request it.

Bowman said if a student or staff member wants to see the full scope of the newsgroups available, including the restricted newsgroups, he or she must sign a restriction waiver available in the Computation Center, accepting responsibility for the appropriate use of the material.

Bowman said the penalty for re-posting material found on the full news list is a temporary suspension of the offender’s account until he or she agrees to comply with the policy.

“We have been very fortunate in general, having good cooperation from the user community. Once they’ve been made aware they are violating student conduct codes, they usually stop,” he said.

“The one thing that is affecting us is that the reach of people to do things they shouldn’t is getting larger,” added George Covert, the Computation Center’s associate director for technical services.

But since the Usenet policy was first implemented, few major problems have arisen. In fact, the number of policy offenders has actually gone down over the years, Covert said.

Covert attributes the decline in problems to the culturalization of what is a relatively new means of communication.

“We are now building up a sort of cultural response that’s passed on from college student to college student about how to use the system that didn’t exist in the beginning,” he said. “It’s just another channel of communication, and when most people realize that it can be a helpful tool, they don’t abuse their privileges.”

Bowman said the Computation Center deals with the problem of users sending harassing and offensive e-mail more often than it deals with violations of the Usenet policy. Abuse of e-mail is dealt with only after complaints are made, because the Computation Center doesn’t monitor the messages, Bowman said.

Abuse of e-mail privileges is covered under the ISU Code of Computer Ethics, published in the student handbook and results in a temporary suspension of the abuser’s account.

“People are adjusting to using a new medium of communication and are not aware of the fact that, like all other mediums of communications, it has a set of rules and proprieties,” Covert said. “Part of this is just a civilization learning that at the other end of the message is a person who will receive that message and react to the words and phrasing.”

Officials have few options

Doug Houghton, ISU’s student advocate assistant dean, said some students may feel that university policies governing the Internet are a violation of their First Amendment rights. But, he said, officials have few options.

“The university possesses no other good controls to protect themselves from the Iowa statute of distribution of porn material to minors,” Houghton said. “It’s the dean of students’ job to impose sanctions for conduct violations, but no cases have really gone this far yet.”

Houghton said there were more problems enforcing the Usenet policy when it was first implemented in 1991 because of opposition from a campus activist group, Students for Electronic Freedom.

The group of about 15 students, with some staff support, felt that denying students access to certain newsgroups was an unnecessary violation of their First Amendment rights.

“They opposed it on philosophical grounds. It was the issue of concept, not content,” Houghton said. “The Computation Center takes freedom of expression and confidentiality very seriously.

“They have done everything they can do to meet the intent of the Iowa law as well as protect students from harassment via the Internet,” he added.

Houghton said the reason the university implemented Internet policies was to protect the university from lawsuits and to protect students’ rights.

ISU setting precedent

Although tougher Internet policies exist at other universities, ISU is one of the institutions setting the precedent for Internet law in Iowa, Houghton said.

And nationally, pending federal Internet legislation — supported by lawmakers such as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. James Exxon (D-Neb.) — appears to be in the same realm as Iowa’s Internet laws, Bowman said.

“The question really is to what extreme the government tries to put the responsibility on those who provide network access,” he said. “If they go as far as holding the university responsible or even prosecute us for anything a student could access here or even half-way across the world, that’s going to raise some very interesting questions.”

Bowman said the only solution to a federal law that would hold those supplying the network service — like ISU — liable, would be shutting down access completely.

“If that would be the case, then all of the good that has been developing through the use of the networks is going to be lost just to solve that one problem. We’ve got to come up with some other solution,” he said.

Bowman, Covert and Houghton all agree that part of the problem with regulating the Internet is defining what is considered offensive material.

“Part of the process of regulating material is defining what is pornographic and what is offensive, and what isn’t,” Covert said. “Nobody wants to have to make those kinds of decisions.”

Another problem with laws regulating the Internet — on the university, state or federal level — is the global scope of the network and its growth rate.

“Part of the problem is that while we can control what we provide through our news server, we have no way of putting controls on somebody else on the other side of the world,” Bowman said.

With a reported 23,470 active Project Vincent IDs, and 18,755 student user IDs at ISU, network use here is growing at a mind-boggling pace, Bowman said.

The last week of July alone produced 71,000 articles on Usenet, 2,141 posts and 184,000 articles were served up by the ISU news service, Covert said.

“ISU is doing the best they can to control what little they can control,” Covert said.

“It’s no accident that Internet ethics issues are getting the amount of media attention they have over the past few months. This is just the tip of an iceberg that is only in its beginning stages of formation.”