PC Magazine, March 12, 1996 v15 n5 p34(1)

                       Do you believe everything you download? Disinformation and urban
                       legends on the Net. (Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article) Jonathan Karl
                       Matzkin.

                Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company Online communications may have
                a dark side that has nothing at all to do with hackers, credit card thieves, or kiddy porn. Bulletin
                boards, online services, and the Internet provide unprecedented mobility of information, but new
                communications technologies in no way change age-old human propensities to lie, gossip, or simply
                repeat bad information.

                Recent examples of online disinformation suggest that the Internet is not only a source of new
                rumors but also a fertile new ground for older urban legends that refuse to die. The furor over
                CompuServe's decision to drop hundreds of newsgroups from its Usenet server is one example.
                Before CompuServe made a statement about the move, a rash of wildly speculative postings to
                several Usenet groups advanced the idea that CompuServe's action came in response to the passage
                of restrictive telecommunications legislation by the U.S. Congress. CompuServe flatly denied the
                claims and attributed the move to demands made by German government officials.

                While CompuServe's motives may be open to some debate, the status of the telecomm bill at the
                time of this writing is not. It has neither cleared Congress nor been signed by the President. Yet the
                idea that it has become law was accepted in some subsequent postings as the truth and became the
                premise for discussions containing heated calls to action.

                Electronic mail, too, can be a potent disinformation tool. Rumors of an attempted hostile takeover of
                Apple Computer by Sony were touched off by a bogus e-mail message recently circulated on the
                Internet. Apple became aware of the message on January 9, a spokesperson said, and the company
                received approximately 25 inquiries as to its legitimacy in the succeeding few days. Sony posted a
                statement on the Business Wire on January 12 declaring the transmission a hoax.

                Industry observer Esther Dyson, president of EDventure Holdings, notes, "Just as the Net is a
                better forum for information, so it is a better forum for disinformation." She adds that the
                conveniences of online communication help information travel faster with less effort.

                While the Internet may be "a fertile ground" for disinformation, Mike Godwin, an attorney with the
                Electronic Frontier Foundation, says, "It is wrong to say there is something inherently sinister about
                the Internet or online speech." Godwin cautions against jumping to conclusions about whether the
                Internet is a better medium for disinformation than traditional means of communication.

                Source: PC Data. Data for November. For additional lists, see http://www.ziff.com/~pcmag/topten.
 
 
                Article A17984929