for gay priests... A judge has ordered a cracker to quit publicizing how to stop Cyber Patrol from filtering porn and other "undesirable" Web sites from kids... A third state has joined in the fun probing whether Net advertisers DoubleClick broke the law by tracking your online shopping habits secretly... and Britain is warning children against Internet cyberpals who might be pornographers or pedophiles. The Web Roundup just keeps on spinning...
PORTLAND, ME - The accused mastermind behind a sexually-explicit Web site for gay priests has been sent to an out-of-state program to decide if he wants to remain a Roman Catholic priest. The Web site, said to have been started last summer by Rev. John Harris, featured sexually explicit images and audio recordings. He and two other Maine priests are also accused of joining an e-mail discussion group which included sexually explicit language and subjects. One, retired Rev. Antonin Caron, is now barred from conducting church functions in public. Portland Diocese Bishop Joseph Gerry ordered the Web site shut down two months ago. The diocese tells Nando Times there's no decision yet on Harris's fate when he returns to Maine.
BOSTON - A federal judge has ordered a stop to distribution of a program letting children bypass Cyber Patrol's filtering blocks of Web porn and other "questionable" sites, just a short time after Mattel subsidiary Microsystems Software sued the two computer experts who created the cphack program. The program also discloses a list of sites blocked by Cyber Patrol.
Federal judge Edward Harrington ordered Matthew Skala of Canada and Eddy Jansson of Sweden to stop spreading the program, and also blocked cphack distribution by anyone working with them. Another hearing in the suit is set for March 27. Microsystems says cphack would cause it irreparable harm because it aims at destroying the market for Cyber Patrol by making it useless.
A University of Cleveland law professor, Peter Junger, says Microsystems' suit is a "rather horrifying challenge to people's right to write" or reverse-engineer software - even though Cyber Patrol's licensing agreement includes an agreement not to reverse engineer it. And the American Civil Liberties Union says publicizing the Cyber Patrol blocked sites list should be allowed, adding parents can't decide on blocking software intelligently "if the product won't tell you what they're blocking."
COLUMBIA, SC - The state attorney general here says he plans to probe whether DoubleClick broke South Carolina law by tracking consumer online shopping habits without their knowledge. This makes South Carolina the third state plus the Federal Trade Commission to probe DoubleClick, the online advertising company which uses cookies to build consumer profiles.
LONDON - British parents and children are being pressed to follow new guidelines aimed at protecting children from pornographers and pedophiles in cyberspace. The consumer body European Research Into Consumer Affairs, in hand with the NCH Action for Children, says children in Internet chat rooms risk unwitting contact with such people, and that the problem of pornographers and pedophiles exploiting children they meet online is rising in the United Kingdom. The two groups urge children never to give out their address, real name, telephone number, or school name to other Netizens, keep their passwords secret, not send photographs to chat room friends, or arrange to meet chat room strangers who might misrepresent themselves. They also urge children to tell their parents or teachers if they receive suggestive or offensive messages online.
--- Compiled By Humphrey Pennyworth
