Cyberspace, the final frontier for government regulation. Enjoy your freedom to cruise the information superhighway while it lasts. There is legislation under construction which will cause cyber cruisers some serious roadblocks in the name of protecting innocent children. The pending legislation which poses under the guise of protection attacks not only the internet and its users, but our First Amendment rights.
The internet is one of the greatest technological advances in human history. It offers one information on everything from apples to zoology and everything in between. However , it’s the in-between that is thwarting conservatives and causing turmoil among the so-called moral majority. At the same time, it is making activists out of the silent majority who frequent the superhighways byways. For nearly three years legislators and rights activists have been battling over regulating the internet.
In July 1994, a Dateline NBC expose featured online pedophiles who "harass and prey upon children". This broadcast prompted Senator James Exon (D-Nebraska) to launch a campaign to regulate online communications. The result: Exon’s proposal to amend the 1934 Telecommunications Reform Act. The amendment became known as the Communications Decency Act (CDA). In February of 1995, Exon returned to the Senate floor with the proposal and a binder full of "disgusting material" which he downloaded from the internet. The material consisted of several images depicting sexual acts involving children, sado-masochism, homosexuality, and bestiality among other things.
Exon presented the Senate with several examples of why he believed in absolutely necessary to regulate the internet. Exon’s concentration centered around protecting family values. In his address to the Senate he stated the regulation "...Is the matter of trying to clean up the internet-- or the information superhighway, as it is frequently called-- to make that superhighway a safe place for our children and our families to travel on." In the same address Senator Exon asserted, "...We who are charged with the responsibilities to pass laws that are reasonable and proper should emphasize a little in our thinking of what is proper and not proper." He went on to say, "It is my intention to point out to the U.S. Senate some of what I think is highly improper, what I think is eroding the society and will continue to erode the society of America, unless we have the courage to stand up and do something about it, despite the minority of naysayers in the United States of America who do not want to change anything."
Exactly who are the naysayers in this whole situation? The people who want to regulate the internet or the people who want it to remain unhindered by artificial forces that condemn its freedom?
The internet relies on telecommunication devices (phone lines) to transfer the information stored on the internet. Because the information travels over the phone lines, Exon discovered a way to pass the amendment through a legislative loophole via the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1934. In his address he said, "Telecommunication devices should not be used to distribute obscenity, indecency to minors, or used to harass the innocent." He also boasted the integrity of such a regulation by saying, "I am very confident that this legislation will withstand a constitutional challenge."
One of Exon’s major complaints was, "It is not an exaggeration to say the worst, most vile, most perverse pornography is only a few click-click-clicks away from any child on the internet." Click-click-clicking can lead internet users to sexually explicit images, but to bulletin boards on the internet whose content may be sexual in nature. The same clicking can lead an internet user to sites housing valuable information about almost any topic.
Exon developed the CDA to criminalize sites containing "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" language on the internet intending to annoy or harass. One could receive fines up to $250,000 and imprisonment for up to two years for producing and maintaining such sites.
Section 502 of the amendment states, "Whoever uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measure by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs shall be fined under Title 1, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than two years." The act also gave the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) power to regulate the internet and hold internet service providers liable for illegal use by their users.
Opposition resulted immediately. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) fought Exon’s efforts to criminalize free speech on the internet by offering a moderate alternative to the CDA. Leahy’s alternative amendment sought to commission the Department of Justice to study the issue and determine whether legislation was necessary. However, on June 14, 1995, the Senate passed Exon’s bill by a vote of 84 to 16.
Senator and Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) called the amendment "unconstitutional". Gingrich became an outspoken proponent for free speech on the internet. After the amendment was passed Gingrich stated, "My position was frankly a position of greater First Amendment rights. But we lost because John Coyners and Pat Shroeder voted with people who wanted to have censorship".
On February 8, 1996, the amendment was signed into law by President Clinton who could've chosen to veto the act. The same day, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a legal challenge to the CDA. The ACLU declared the amendment unconstitutional because it would criminalize expression protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU also argued that the terms "indecency" and "patently offensive" were unconstitutionally over broad and vague. Several weeks later, the amendment was legally challenged again. This time by a group of nearly 30 plaintiffs (including the ACLU, the National Writers Union, The Safer Sex Web Page, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America) who filed suit to overturn the act. A third challenge to the CDA was filed in a federal district court in New York in April. Joseph Shea, editor of an online newspaper, The American Reporter, argued that the law would subject his newspaper to constraints that print publications didn't have to fight against. He also asserted the amendment posed a threat to the freedom of the press. On July 29, three New York judges unanimously found internet censorship unconstitutional.
February 1, 1996, became known as "Black Thursday" among citizens of the internet after Congress passed the Telecommunication Reform Bill and its attached Communications Decency Act into legislation. The day Clinton signed the bill into law was known as the "Day of Protest". That's the day when the lights went out on the internet as thousands of people simultaneously programmed their sites to be black.
A Blue Ribbon Campaign ensued which made activists out of thousands with sites on the internet. The blue ribbon was chosen as a symbol for the "preservation of civil rights in the electronic world". The campaign was created to raise awareness and display support of our essential human right to free speech locally and globally. In an introduction to the campaign, it is stated, "The voice of reason knows that free speech doesn't equate to sexual harassment, abuse of children, or the breeding of hatred or intolerance."
A petition protesting the CDA on the internet attained 115,000 signatures in less than 5 months backing Senator Leahy in his fight against the CDA. Each signature to the petition agreed that the CDA would severely restrict rights of freedom of speech and privacy guaranteed by the Constitution and that the government should have no role in regulating the content of constitutionally protected speech on the internet. The signers also implored legislators to halt consideration of the CDA and reconsider Senator Leahy’s "Child Protection, User Empowerment, and Free Expression in Interactive Media Study Bill".
The question opponents to the CDA raise is who is the government to dictate to its citizens, no matter what age, what is decent and indecent? Some members of Congress may think homosexual acts and relationships are indecent, but is it constitutional to forbid homosexuality? Some may find Michel Angelo’s David indecent, but are we to turn the heads of children away from one of the world's greatest works of art? Some may think images of various sexual acts indecent, but are we to stand idly by as the government bans the existence of such images? Where will they point the legislative finger next? The standard of one's morality rests upon the individual not a governing body. The government is here to protect our rights not to hinder them. People are standing up to the pious and narrow-minded arbiters who force their idea decency upon others.
In this puritanical society our government seeks to sustain, the citizens of the United States are finding themselves subject to a grip growing ever tighter around their throats. This morality is slowly strangles the innocence it seeks to protect. Innocence is not lost when a child becomes curious during sexual development, but when this innocence is repressed. It’s as though so many adults forget the period in their lives when they too, were curious. This curiosity is essential to the natural sexual development of all human beings. A child’s sexual development should be nurtured and not swept under a rug of repression. An open forum for discussion among adults and children concerning these issues is overdue.
The issue of censoring material deemed unfit for the eyes of children places the rights of adults on the line. Why should millions of citizens over the age of 18 be subjected to the parenting of government? Regardless of age, the government sees its citizens as irresponsible. The idea of censoring the exchange of thoughts and entertainment is unthinkable and unacceptable for the citizens of this country. Historically, we have a government which fears what it cannot control. It feared the increasing power the industrialists and regulated big business by passing the Anti-trust laws at the turn of century. It feared the radical literary works of dozens of courageous writers and censored their works in public schools and libraries. Today it fears the man or woman, girl or boy who can sit down in front of a computer and access unfathomable numbers of websites containing information and images of nearly everything in existence.
The only people responsible for the welfare of children are parents and primary caregivers, not the government. The technology to monitor the access to the internet is available to anyone. Using software such as Net Nanny can disable individuals from accessing sites containing "indecent" and "obscene" material. Clearly, the CDA takes an unconstitutional step to ban speech protected in the First Amendment in a medium where the user has not only technology, but most importantly volition to receive or not receive specific sources information. The only way to resolve the conflict between absolute free speech and protection from offensive material is to devise and utilize the technology that would make government intervention obsolete.
The technology could use
some help. The internet has millions upon millions of websites. One way
to identify all sites which may contain nudity, violence, and profanity
would be to tack a specific tag to such sites. Website owners could voluntarily
submit to identifying the site. For example something portraying sexually
explicit acts could be http:www.sexualacts/xxx/html. This would make it
simple for browsers to eliminate sites containing xxx in the address. It
would also keep our First Amendment rights intact.
The internet has become a global stage for the radical as well as the
conservative, the exciting and the mundane, controversy and neutrality,
intelligence and ignorance. The internet is a macrocosm of knowledge springing
forth from every corner of the world. It is noble in its unity and tragic
in its suffocation. Its reach is growing exponentially everyday and influences
millions of curious minds seeking the solace of knowledge in a society
which seeks to force its view of the decency or indecency of such knowledge.
There is no justification for regulation and censorship of a technology
which thrives on freedom, liberty, and innovation. A government which seeks
to dictate the actions of its citizens is a dictatorship!
In June 1997 the US
Supreme Court ruled the CDA unconstitutional! This judgment has become
known as one of the strongest defenses of freedom of expression and press
ever issued by a court of law. However, the fight is still on. Despite
the ruling, legislators are currently devising and submitting new
bills for approval by Congress. Activists continue to rally support of
free speech on the internet. Most recently, legislation which seeks to
regulate the internet is advancing in both houses. On March 12, 1998,
proposed federal mandates restricting access to sexually explicit sites
by introducing the CDA II. CDA supporter Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana)
penned CDA II which will soon reach the Senate floor for a full vote. This
legislation is aimed at commercial sites allowing those underage from browsing
material deemed as "harmful". The previous protest to sites deemed as "indecent"
has been changed to harmful to connote a drastic urgency inciting action
in the minds of Senators and Congressmen. The wording of the proposal has
changed, but the principle behind it hasn’t.
There is still time to voice your opinion. If you would like to become involved on either end of this proposal, write your Senator and Congressmen or even the President! Almost every government official has email. Yours could make a difference.
Senators
with constituent email addresses