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The Center for Democracy and Technology /____/ Volume 4, Number 2
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A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online
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CDT POLICY POST Volume 4, Number 2 February 11, 1998
CONTENTS: (1) Congress Rushes to Censor the Net. Again.
(2) How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe
(3) About CDT, Contacting us
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(1) CONGRESS RUSHES TO CENSOR THE NET. HERE WE GO AGAIN.
Congress is back in session and rushing to censor the Net again, this time
in the name of saving school children and library users from material that
is 'harmful to minors.' Yesterday Sen. John McCain introduced a bill that
would force schools and libraries with federally-subsidized Internet access
to use software filters. Last November Sen. Dan Coats sponsored a bill
that would criminalize the publication of material 'harmful to minors'
on the Internet. Together these two bills would take Congress down the
same wrong-headed path it followed when it passed the Communications Decency
Act. The Internet community saw what happened to the CDA--the Supreme Court
overturned it, and told Congress in no uncertain terms that the Internet
deserved "the highest First Amendment protections." But this
is a new year, and a new session, and Congress is poised to make the same
mistake all over again. [For a copy of the McCain bill, see http://www.cdt.org/speech/980210_mccain.html.
CDT believes that the McCain and Coats proposals violate the First Amendment and are no more likely than the CDA was to offer any real protection for kids who use the Net. But the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee didn't see things that way when it held a hearing yesterday on "Indecency on the Internet," where Members of Congress examined, according to a committee press release, 'concerns about widespread availability and easy access to obscene material on the Internet.'
Throughout the hearing most of the committee insisted that Congress
MUST act quickly, and do *something* to regulate the Internet and stop
the proliferation of questionable online materials. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson
and Olympia Snowe, for example, said they supported the McCain and Coats
bills because indecent material online is 'a serious problem' and Congress
'must protect children' from it. Sen. Coats warned the committee that 'parents
do not want to send their children to school in a red light district' and
that until the Internet 'is made safe for children' it won't reach its
full potential. He read to the committee a letter from teachers at South
Knox High School in southern Indiana saying that they have seen 'pictures
on the Internet in our school library' of people engaged in oral sex. 'The
ironic result of the [Supreme] Court's ruling in the CDA is that our government
is racing to wire every child in America to the electronic equivalent of
a hard-core porn shop with no legal protections from indecent material,'
Coats exhorted his fellow Senators.
Fortunately, a few committee members said they were concerned about Congress
rushing to legislative judgement about the Internet before it has heard
about alternatives to imposing the heavy hand of the federal government
on the Net community. 'While this is a very emotional and controversial
issue, we must approach it calmly and rationally,' Sen. Conrad Burns said.
'Those in the best position to determine the correct policy [for] protecting
kids from harmful material are the educators in contact with those kids
every day of the week.' Sen. Byron Dorgon noted that while he's concerned
about the problem of unsolicited pornographic email, or "porn spam,"
that Congress must find 'an effective solution' rather than a quick one.
'This hearing is a good start,' Byron added. Sen. Spencer Abraham also
raised questions about how effective the McCain and Coats bills would be
in shielding children from questionable materials generated by sites not
located within U.S. borders.
We believe the McCain bill (known as the 'Internet School Filtering Act') and the Coats bill are unconstitutional because they both attempt to impose a single national standard controlling what everyone online can see, think and say. We believe this approach is inconsistent with not only with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU, the case that overturned the CDA, but with the Supreme Court's rulings on the regulation of obscenity and material that is 'harmful to minors.' In 1973, the Supreme Court made 'contemporary community standards' the law of the land on the regulation of obscenity and material that is harmful to minors. But the McCain and Coats bills ignore--as the CDA ignored--the diversity of moral principles that hold sway in communities across the nation--and among the thousands of communities that exist on the Internet. Both bills also ignore the right of parents to teach their children responsibility and judgment as they see fit.
It IS possible to find ways to protect children online without sacrificing the free speech values of the First Amendment. Nonprofit organizations and Internet industry members have been working for many months on solutions that will help keep children safe on the Internet. For information on a series of initiatives developed in the aftermath of a major summit meeting in early December for the entire Internet community -- including Internet/online service providers, online publishers, software companies, librarians, educators, children's advocates and civil libertarians -- see http://www.kidsonline.org . Congress simply shouldn't make a rush to legislative judgment until it has heard from all of these people.
(3) ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY/CONTACTING US
The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public interest organization based in Washington, DC. The Center's mission is to develop and advocate public policies that advance democratic values and constitutional civil liberties in new computer and communications technologies.
Contacting us:
General information: info@cdt.org
World Wide Web: http://www.cdt.org/