We first talked with David Sobel, the legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). In an article in Wired's issue 4.01 he explained how government organizations such as the FBI are vilifying some new technologies in an effort to gain increased access to private information.

For example, by assuming that files encrypted with programs such as PGP are somehow suspect just because they are encrypted, the FBI is able to seize and search encrypted information that passes through a commercial service, just because it's encrypted. Follow? If I send an encrypted (private) message to you, the FBI wants to read it just because it's private.

Mr. Sobel argues that the current fight against child pornographers is just the latest in a long line of attempts (remember commies, terrorists, drug dealers?) to scare Americans into giving up their constitutional rights in order to make law enforcement's job easier.

We followed up by talking with Jim Warren about how Congress is allowing the religious right (and others) to set the current agenda for the Internet, based on the absolute worst that is out there, ignoring the 99.9% that is good.

We were also visited via the telephone by Winston Steward. He offered us some of his picks for computer software gifts to give this year for the holidays.

We also mentioned new legislation in Congress, battles between Netscape & Microsoft for control of the net and politcal contributions to the campaign of Anne Bingaman's husband.

We spoke with SafeSurf's President, Wendy Simpson, who hopes parents will use their Internet Rating Standard, Kid's Wave and Internet Lifeguard to help steer their children past the parts of cyberspace where they shouldn't be.

Wendy promises to hold the hand of any newbie parent who needs some guidance. If you know a Net-challenged parent who needs to learn about getting on-line, they can e-mail Wendy or call SafeSurf at (818) 902-9390.

Another good Web page on the subject is the Cranmer's Child Safety on the Internet page. It has many links to other like-minded pages.

Another good place to find out more about these things is the Voters Telecommunications Watch.

Our "Site of the Week" is devoted to John Gage's NetDay96. On March 9, 1996, thousands of volunteers will descend upon all of California's schools and wire them for computers. You can help make it happen by becoming one of those volunteers. Check out the site for more information about signing up.

With some 600 unsigned artists and bands (growing at about 2 a day), and over 300,000 hits a day (up 300% in the last 6 months!), IUMA is working hard on more efficient ways of distributing huge amounts of data. We talked about issues of bandwidth and how technologies such as MPEG and ISDN are increasing the data pipe to your home.

In addition to the above link, you can find out more from IUMA by calling (408) 426-4862, or by e-mail at support@iuma.com.

Callers expressed concerns about backwards compatibility. Also, it was pointed out that other operating systems, such as OS/2 Warp (or the Macintosh, for that matter), offer many of the same features as Win95 in a much more mature platform. We didn't get a chance to discuss increased hardware requirments, questionable marketing strategies or The Microsoft Network. This is obviously a topic that we will have to return to soon, after the computer-using public has had a chance to road test the product for a while.

Plugged In currently serves approximatly 200 individuals each week. In addition to classes, they gives access to computers and the Internet to the entire community with drop-in time for children, teens and adults with staff available to help with tasks or special "drop-in projects" which are one-hour activities designed to teach a skill.

In addition to the work in their own community, they also make resources such as curriculum ideas and organizational information available to community workers and educators nation-wide. If you are interested in finding out about starting a program in your communitiy, email them at info@pluggedin.org or call them at (415) 322-1134.

Lots of terrific phone calls too, including Scott Young (or was it Jung?), who formed his own users group, MAGIC (Mac Access Group In California). They meet in Buena Park, once a month. For more information, call Scott at (310) 944-0023.

While our community colleges have had Internet access for some time, it hasn't been available to the students. That's changing now thanks to Tom Oliver, the Dean of Academic Affairs at LAVC and all those people in their Computer Lab. Now they even have a Web Site! The phone number at LAVC is (818) 781-1200.

At the beginning of the show, Doran gave out the URL for Audioweb since the audio/video show which airs before Digital Village, In Fidelity, had been talking about audio resources available online.

After Ric's interviews, Doran also gave out the URL for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility & the email address of theVoter's Telecommunications Watch.