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Computer Undergroud Digest Vol. 07 Issue 24
Computer underground Digest Sun Mar 26, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 24
ISSN 1004-042X
Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Semi-retiring Shadow Archivist: Stanton McCandlish
Intelligent Agent: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Monster Editor: Loch Nesshrdlu
CONTENTS, #7.24 (Sun, Mar 26, 1995)
File 1--"Communications Decency Act" Update
File 2--EFF Statement on Gorton/Exon "Comm Decency" Amendment
File 3--Commentary on "Indecency Bill" from CDT
File 4--B. Meeks commentary on Exon Bill (From CyberWire Dispatch)
File 5--Additional Commentary on the Exon Legislation
File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Mar, 1995)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 14:45:05 -0500
From: ACLU Information <infoaclu@ACLU.ORG>
Subject: File 1--"Communications Decency Act" Update
March 23, 1995
A Cyber Liberties Alert
From the ACLU
Senate Committee Backs Cyber Censorship, and Imposes Criminal
Penalties
WHAT JUST HAPPENED
The Senate Commerce Committee adopted late this morning a modified
version of the Exon bill, the so-called "Communications Decency Act"
(originally introduced as Senate Bill 314). Senator Slade Gorton
(R-WA), who had cosponsored S. 314 with Senator James Exon (D-NE),
proposed the amendment in Exon's absence. It was adopted on voice
vote as an amendment to the Telecommunications Competition and
Deregulation Act of 1995.
The amendment would subject on-line users to scrutiny and criminal
penalties if their messages were deemed to be indecent, lewd,
lascivious or filthy -- all communications that are protected by the
Free Speech Guarantees of the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution. Although protecting children from pornography is its
most often cited rationale, this is really a "bait and switch" with
your rights at stake. Note that the amendment in fact goes way beyond
child pornorgaphy. It's like the opponents of TV violence who first
said children should be protected and then made "Murder She Wrote"
with Angela Landsbury their number one target. Or like the censors
who banned "Huckleberry Finn," "Where's Waldo?" and even Webster's
Dictionary (it has "bad" words in it, after all). The Exon/Gorton
Amendment would invite active interference in the basic speech of
everyone using any telecommunication device -- simply because some
government bureaucrat somewhere thought the speech was indecent or
lascivious.
All senators on the committee had been informed that the Exon/Gorton
amendment would violate the Constitution, assault the liberties of net
users, stifle development of new technologies (many of which offer
greater choice and control by all users -- including parents), and
spawn expensive litigation -- while not succeeding at reducing access
by children to pornography. A coalition of civil liberties
organizations -- including the ACLU -- and numerous commercial
companies warned against adopting the Exon/Gorton amendment, which
originally would also have made all online service providers (in fact,
anyone transmitting an offensive message) criminally liable.
Some commercial companies offered Exon and Gorton language exempting
themselves from liability while still letting their subscribers be
prosecuted. Today Senator Gorton said that the amendment had been
modified to exempt those merely "transmitting" the message. The
amendment would, however, still cover anyone who originates a message
deemed indecent, lascivious etc.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Contact the senators from your state, and all senators on the
Commerce Commitee expressing your disappointment with this morning's
action. Thank Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler
(R-SD) for not including the Exon/Gorton amendment in his proposed
bill, and urge him to support action on the Senate floor to remove the
anti-cyber amendment.
2. Contact your online service providers and ask them what they have
been doing about this Exon/Gorton assault on your liberties. Some
providers are still standing up for your rights; others may not
have.Urge them, not to support any legislation that protects them, but
violates your free speech rights. Urge them to oppose the modified
Exon/Gorton amendment.
3. Contact all the other senators and urge them to support deletion
of the Exon/Gorton amendment when the bill comes to the Senate floor.
4. Stay tuned for further information and action items for both House
and Senate.
The American Civil Liberties Union is a nationwide, nonpartisan
organization of over 275,000 members. Now in its 75th year, the ACLU
is devoted exclusively to protecting the civil liberties guaranteed by
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, whereever these liberties
are at risk--in a bookstore, in school, on the street, in cyberspace,
wherever. The ACLU does this through legislative action, public
education and litigation.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Send your letter by e-mail, fax, or snail mail to:
Senator Larry Pressler, S.D.
Chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
SR-254 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6125
(202) 224-5842 (phone)
(202) 224-1259 (fax of Commerce Committee)
e-mail: larry_pressler@pressler.senate.gov
To maximize the impact of your letter, you should also write to the
members of the Senate Commerce Committee and to your own Senators.
Majority Members of the Senate Commerce Committee
-------------------------------------------------
Senator Bob Packwood, Ore.
SR-259 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3702
(202) 224-5244 (phone)
(202) 228-3576 (fax)
Senator Ted Stevens, Alaska
SH-522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0201
(202) 224-3004 (phone)
(202) 224-1044 (fax)
Senator John McCain, Ariz.
SR-111 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0303
(202) 224-2235 (phone)
(202) 228-2862 (fax)
Senator Conrad Burns, Mont.
SD-183 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2603
(202) 224-2644 (phone)
(202) 224-8594 (fax)
Senator Slade Gorton, Wash.
SH-730 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4701
(202) 224-3441 (phone)
(202) 224-9393 (fax)
e-mail: senator_gorton@gorton.senate.gov
Senator Trent Lott, Miss.
SR-487 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2403
(202) 224-6253 (phone)
(202) 224-2262 (fax)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Tex.
SH-703 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4303
(202) 224-5922 (phone)
(202) 224-0776 (fax)
e-mail: senator@hutchison.senate.gov
Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Maine
SR-174 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1903
(202) 224-5344 (phone)
(202) 224-6853 (fax)
Senator John Ashcroft, Mo.
SH-705 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2504
(202) 224-6154 (phone)
(202) 224-7615
Minority Members of the Senate Commerce Committee
-------------------------------------------------
Senator Ernest F. Hollings, S.C.
SR-125 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4002
(202) 224-6121 (phone)
(202) 224-4293 (fax)
Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii
SH-772 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1102
(202) 224-3934 (phone)
(202) 224-6747 (fax)
Senator Wendell H. Ford, Ky.
SR-173A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1701
(202) 224-4343 (phone)
(202) 224-0046 (fax)
e-mail: wendell_ford@ford.senate.gov
Senator J. James Exon, Neb.
SH-528 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2702
(202) 224-4224 (phone)
(202) 224-5213 (fax)
Senator John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, W. Va.
SH-109 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4802
(202) 224-6472 (phone)
(202) 224-1689 (fax)
Senator John F. Kerry, Mass.
SR-421 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2102
(202) 224-2742 (phone)
(202) 224-8525 (fax)
Senator John B. Breaux, La
SH-516 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1803
(202) 224-4623 (phone)
(202) 224-2435 (fax)
Senator Richard H. Bryan, Nev.
SR-364 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2804
(202) 224-6244 (phone)
(202) 224-1867 (fax)
Senator Byron L. Dorgan, N.D.
SH-713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3405
(202) 224-2551 (phone)
(202) 224-1193 (fax)
You can also write or fax your own Senator at:
The Honorable ______________________
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Senate directories including fax numbers may be found at:
gopher://ftp.senate.gov:70
gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu:70/0/socsci/polscilaw/uslegi
Additional information about the ACLU's position on this issue and others
affecting civil liberties online and elsewhere may be found at:
gopher:\\aclu.org:6601
OR request our FAQ at infoaclu@aclu.org
--
ACLU Free Reading Room | American Civil Liberties Union
gopher://aclu.org:6601 | 132 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY 10036
mailto:infoaclu@aclu.org| "Eternal vigilance is the
ftp://ftp.pipeline.com | price of liberty"
------------------------------
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@EFF.ORG>
Subject: File 2--EFF Statement on Gorton/Exon "Comm Decency" Amendment
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:32:34 -0500 (EST)
Communications Decency Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee
------------------------------------------------------------
Electronic Frontier Foundation - March 25, 1995 - Distribute widely
March 23, 1995, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed telecom legislation
that included an amended version of the Communications Decency Act of
1995, commonly known as "the Exon Amendment." This draft was introduced
by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-VT). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
opposes the inclusion of the "decency" provisions in this legislation for
the following reasons:
* The bill places operators of smaller systems at risk.
While the new version of the bill seems to attempt to protect large
information service providers by including a list of available defenses,
smaller bulletin board systems (BBSs) and other information services
that cannot afford to assert these defenses in court are left without any
protection at all. Operators of smaller, local systems will be unable to
test the line where constitutional speech ends and criminal speech begins.
These small businesses of the online world are put at a competitive
disadvantage.
Also, protections such as lack of editorial control (Section 402[d][2])
may not apply to the majority of bulletin board systems and many other
online services that provide content as well as conduit, nor to systems that
present certain types of moderated forums.
The ambiguity of the coverage and defenses leaves gaps that raise
serious constitutional issues. In 1989, the Supreme Court in
_Sable_Communications_v._FCC_ established that indecent material cannot be
banned entirely, and that prohibiting indecency to protect minors
is an unconstitutional violation of the free speech rights of adults.
The prohibition of "filthy" speech has no legal authority whatsoever.
The Gorton/Exon amendment may fail to distinguish between consensual and
non-consensual activities, and between private and public communications.
A steamy love note sent privately between spouses could be a criminal
violation of this statute, and there may be a potential for system
operators to be held liable for failing to label users' private email as
"filthy".
Finally, the Communications Decency bill attempts to apply to online
media many restrictions that do not apply to printed or verbal expression.
Transmitting an online version of a "lascivious" book could subject the
sender to unreasonable fines and imprisonment, while mailing the book in
hardcopy or reading aloud from the book would be protected under the
First Amendment.
* The bill is vague and leaves system operators open to prosecution under
diverse community standards.
The bill does not define "obscene" communications, leaving individual
states to assert their own definition of community standards and to prosecute
system operators maintaining systems anywhere in the country.
_U.S._v._Thomas_, a case currently under appeal in Memphis federal
court - in which two system operators running a BBS in California were
convicted of obscenity charges after a federal officer dialed in from
Tennessee and downloaded material from the BBS - clearly illustrates the
danger of leaving terms like "obscenity" undefined in an online world.
Also, passages such as "to provide users with the means to restrict
access to communications" (Section 402[d][3][A]) are so vague that the
entire Internet is already either in violation or in compliance,
depending upon interpretation. Such failures to express clearly the
extent and nature of the defenses would allow prosecutors to claim and
"prove" virtually any lack of such means to restrict access given a
sympathetic court, leaving system operators attempting to comply with the
law little guidance on how to avoid being brought up on criminal charges.
* The bill would negate the rights of adults to choose what to read and
with whom to associate, as well as the rights of parents to decide what
is and is not appropriate for their own children.
EFF supports the ability of online communities to establish their own
standards and to self-regulate content as a more reasonable and realistic
model of dealing with potential problems of online subject matter.
Parents can direct their children to areas of age-appropriate material
online, where participants, including parents, engage in "neighborhood
watch" activities to limit possibly offensive content. "Filtering"
technologies already in development and use by online services can further
help to ensure that parents can restrict their own children's access to
electronically-distributed materials.
In general, passing restrictive laws is not the way to solve problems with
rapidly evolving technologies like telecommunications - particularly when
the laws are based on obsolete regulations of wholly different media.
It is ironic that the Gorton/Exon amendment, which would chill the
development of online services and communities, has been attached to a
bill deregulating communications infrastructure. This deregulation
has been presented as a boost to the pace of development of the very
technology to support these services and communities.
EFF believes that parents, not Congress or the FCC, have the right and
responsibility to determine what is appropriate for their children to
see, and we do not think Congress should make outlaws out of adults for
engaging in speech that may not be suitable for minors. As Supreme
Court Justice Felix Frankfurter ruled in _Butler_v._Michigan_ in 1957:
The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public
against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield
juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general
welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence
of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to
reading only what is fit for children.
For amendment text, updates and action alerts, see:
ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/
gopher.eff.org, 1/Alerts
http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/
For more information, contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation
ask@eff.org
+1 202 861 7700 (voice), +1 202 861 1258 (fax)
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:29:05 -0600
From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
Subject: File 3--Commentary on "Indecency Bill" from CDT
CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
-------------------------------------------------------------
A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online
------------------------------------------------------------
CDT POLICY POST 3/23/95 Number 5
CONTENTS: (1) Exon Indecency Bill Approved by Sen. Commerce Committee
(3) About the Center For Democracy and Technology
This document may be re-distributed freely providing it remains in
its entirety.
------------------------------------------------------------
EXON INDECENCY BILL APPROVED BY SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
The Senate Commerce Committee voted unanimously today to adopt S.
314, Senator Exon's "Communications Decency Act", as an amendment to
the Senate telecommunications reform legislation. The amendment was
introduced by Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) on behalf of himself an
Exon (D-NE). It received no significant debate and was unanimously
approved on a voice vote.
The bill was amended from its original form to limit liability for
telecommunications carriers and online service providers, but users
and content providers would still be criminally liable for any
communications that are deemed "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or
indecent". An analysis of these provisions by CDT, as well as the
full text of the bill will be posted later today.
On initial analysis, CDT still believes that the bill is an
unconstitutional violation of the free speech and privacy rights of
network users and content providers.
Although the Commerce Committee did vote to send the
Telecommunications reform legislation to the Senate floor, there are
still serious disputes about the entire package. Because of this,
there are still many opportunities to remove the "Indecency
Provision" as the bill moves to the floor.
Stay tuned for further analysis and additional information from CDT.
--------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
The Center for Democracy and Technology is a non-profit public
interest organization. The Center's mission is to develop and
advocate public policies that advance constitutional civil liberties
and democratic values in new computer and communications
technologies.
Contacting us:
General information on CDT can be obtained by sending mail to
<info@cdt.org>
www/ftp/gopher archives are currently under construction, and should
be up and running by the end of March.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:29:10 -0600
From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
Subject: File 4--B. Meeks commentary on Exon Bill (From CyberWire Dispatch)
CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1995 //
Warning: This article contains material that is potentially criminal in
nature and could be considered "indecent" under certain provisions of the
proposed Senate Telecommunications reform bill. You have been warned.
Jacking in from the "You Can't
Fool All the People All The Time" Port:
Washington -- The brain-dead, ill-named Communications Decency Act
(S.314) was, as expected, folded into the Senate's telecommunications
reform package today, which was approved on a 17-2 vote by the
Commerce Committee.
This bill, sponsored by Senator James Exon (D-Neb.), who is punching
out of the Senate after his term ends this year, would essentially
make criminals of anyone sending messages ambiguously defined as
"indecent" across the Internet.
The bill makes no distinction between consensual or nonconsensual: If
you're given to sending the occasional lusty message to that someone
special, under this bill, you're fucked. In fact, under the language
of the bill, that last sentence could land me a cozy jail cell and tap
my checkbook for a cool $100,000 in fines.
The bill has whipped up a firestorm of controversy, resulting in what
amounts to a virtual uprising among Internet users. The day before
the Senate committee vote, an Internet driven petition that garnered
more than 100,000 "signatures" was presented to Commerce Committee
Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.). The petition apparently fell on
deaf ears.
The bill, added as an amendment to the Telecommunications Competition
and Deregulation Act of 1995 was passed on a voice vote; there were
no dissenters.
The bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), gave lip service
to the concerns raised by civil liberties groups, saying that because
our "kids have access to all this junk" on the Internet, the amendment
was needed. Gorton said Exon had sufficiently addressed the
"outcries" of the Internet community by changing language in the bill
that would have held Internet service providers, commercial
information systems such as America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy and
telecommunications carriers libel by the mere fact that they were
party to the "indecent speech" because it was swept through their
electronic veins.
Apparently, only the individual sending the message is now held
criminally responsible. Well, fuck that. (Damn, that's two counts of
indecency... quick, delete this from your system or you, too, may be
held accountable...)
Just how much Exon has changed the bill isn't known; his staff didn't
circulate the amendment's new language. Regardless, the bill is bad
blood. "We absolutely still oppose this bill," said Jerry Berman,
ex-EFF director who's now heading his own policy group, the Center for
Democracy and Technology. Even if the bill has been "narrowed" to
sting only individuals, "it's still unconstitutional," Berman said.
Berman's group has floated a proposal that relies on technological
advancements that would enable parents to keep their innocents from
being virtually violated by the Internet's sometimes rough and tumble
language.
The bill is flawed from the outset. While a 12-year-old can sneak a
peek at Playboy at this local 7-11 or drool while reading the graphic
descriptions of blow jobs in a Daniel Steele novel at Crown Books, the
same type of material will land you in jail under this bill.
And now, instead of being able fight the bill as a stand alone item,
it's now wrapped into the broader telecommunications reform package, a
piece of legislation that everyone in the industry with a heart beat
has a hard on for. To defeat this beast now will require procedural
surgery when the reform bill hits the Senate floor for debate.
The moronic stance of this bill can be illustrated by taking a short
stroll to men's restroom, the one just down the all from where this
august body of lawmakers was holding forth on how to shape the future
of telecommunications. Once inside the men's room, a left turn into
any of the several stalls reveals entire walls of graffiti that looked
like they were plucked from Alt.Sex.Suck-My-Dick.
Here you'll find phone numbers with invitations to get personal with
someone's "Big 10 inch." There are anatomically correct -- if
slightly exaggerated -- sketches of homoerotic acts. And in another
stall, someone has even clipped what appears to be photos from a
sexually explicit gay men's magazines and pasted them to the walls and
toilet paper dispensers.
Exiting the restroom, a youngster, no more than 10, visiting his
"lawmakers in action" pushed passed me to the stalls, a pained, urgent
look on his face...
Leaving the restroom I turned to check for a warning sign, something,
anything that would have warned my urgent young stranger about the
experience he was about to partake of in the pursuit of a moment of
freedom. There was no warning. No sign. I made a note and dropped it
off at Exon's office. I was going to Email him, but he doesn't have
it... and I doubt he'd accept it from an "indecent message trafficker"
such as myself anyway.
Meeks out...
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:51:01 EDT
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@mindvox.phantom.com>
Subject: File 5--Additional Commentary on the Exon Legislation
The "Communication Indecency Act" has received considerable media
attention, and little of it favorable. Little wonder--there is
nothing of redemptive value in the Bill, and reasonable observers
recognize it as a threat to Constitutional speech protections
or--worse--a potential mechanism for over-zealous moral entrepreneurs
to engage in witch hunts for "objectionable" or offensive material not
to their liking.
One of the greatest dangers in the legislation is that it risks making
the lowest threshold of tolerance the national standard. Speech
content that one jurisdiction finds "offensive," even if not legally
obscene, risks felony prosecutionn. Successful passage of the law could
make it a felony to transmit public federal documents across the Nets.
Who, for example, could not cringe when reading the Jacob Baker
"snuff" extracts from his public federal indictment? Who would want
their 12 year old to read the prosecutor's vivid descriptions of the
Amateur Action BBS indictment?
More complicates is what counts as offensive or objectionable? There
is no historical justification to believe that prosecutors would not
expand the wording of the law to include a wide range of expressions
that were either socially unproper or that or of value as political
currency to ambitious politicians and prosecutors.
Fortunately, the legislation has not escaped media attention. For
example, Peter Lewis, writing in the March 26, 1995 (CYBERSEX STAYS
HOT, DESPITE A PLAN FOR COOLING IT OFF) notes:
"My major concern is to make the new Internet and
information superhighway as safe as possible for kids to
travel," said Sen. Jim Exon, D-Neb., author of the proposed
Communications Decency Act of 1995, in a telephone interview
on Saturday.
The proposal, which cleared the Senate Commerce Committee on
Thursday without dissent, would impose fines of as much as
$100,000 and two-year prison terms on anyone who knowingly
transmits any "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or
indecent" communications on the nation's telecommunications
networks. The law would apply to telephone systems, cable,
and broadcast television systems, and public and private
computer networks, including the global Internet.
.......................
"The potential danger here is that material that most
rational and reasonable people would interpret as
pornography and smut is falling into the hands of minors,"
Exon said. "The information superhighway is in my opinion a
revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers,
radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I
think this is the time to put some restrictions or
guidelines on it."
The proposals for restrictions have been met with
incredulity and outrage by Internet users, legal experts,
and civil libertarians, who contend that efforts to halt the
flow of information in cyberspace - where, in effect, every
computer is both a bookstore and a printing press - are
futile on both technical and legal grounds.
.......................
So attempting to filter out sex-related material from the
torrent of digital bits passing through tens of thousands of
computer networks "is like shooting an ICBM at a gnat," said
David Banisar, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, a lobbying group in Washington. "It
can't be done without the absolutely most Draconian methods
being used."
Dan L. Burk, visiting assistant professor of law at George
Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., noted that courts had
required earlier attempts to protect minors from
objectionable information, as in telephone "dial-a-porn"
cases, to use the "least restrictive means" to accomplish
the goal. A comprehensive ban on such material on computer
networks, he said, could restrict material that courts have
ruled legal to disseminate to adults through more
conventional outlets.
"If the burden becomes too high for protected adult speech,
then the statute clearly is not going to pass muster" in the
federal courts, Burk said.
Stephen Chapman, an editorialist for the Chicago Tribune (March 26,
1995: Sect. 4, p. 3) argued that the proposed legislation uses a
"scattershot approach" to ban the transmission of not only anything
that is legally obscene, "a very narrow category, but anything that is
'indecent,' an exceedingly broad term that could implicate even
G-rated fare. He identifies two major problems with Exon's proposal:
The first is that it may expose on-line services to criminal
liability just for letting adults willingly converse, or
exchange material, on sexual subjects of interest to both of
them."
............
The second problem is that the measure curtails not only the
access of children to adult fare, but the freedom of adults
to see and read what they choose. Most of us have no
interest in participating in a discussion of weird sexual
practices, but that's no reason to gag the people who do.
We don't restrict such voluntary, private communications if
they take place on the phone or face-to-face; why should the
Internet be treated differently?
Coincidentally, the Chicago Tribune also began on Sunday a
substantial four part series on the Internet, extolling its
virtues. If the legislation proposed by Exon survives, the
chilling effect of either direct or indirect censorship will
subvert some of the most significant virtues--namely, the
freedom to express ideas, even outrageous and offensive ones.
Few would argue that children should be given unrestricted access to
some of the excesses of Internet expressivity. The battle is over how
to implement safeguards. The primary flaw with the Exon proposal is
that it confuses restricting access with restricting speech, pursuing
the latter and ignoring the former. Legislators are not known for
their techno-literacy. But, there is some irony in the fact that a
Congress that advocates "getting government off our backs" seems so
willing to invoke government power to suppress speech rather than find
ways to accommodate to the freedom of expression while restricting
access to some forms of expression to minors.
Stephen Chapman, hardly known for liberalism has it right:
Freedom can be a scary thing for lawmakers who think they
have a right to police our thoughts, but freedom has been
the lifeblood of computer communications. Sacrificing that
freedom is likely to stifle communications, and progress,
without appreciably improving our morals.
The Exon proposal, the text of which I have received via E-mail from a
federal source, is truly offensive. If the legislation passes, the
authors and purveyors are the CuD candidates for the first prosecutions.
------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 22:51:01 CDT
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Mar, 1995)
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LAWSIG, and DL1 of TELECOM; on GEnie in the PF*NPC RT
libraries and in the VIRUS/SECURITY library; from America Online in
the PC Telecom forum under "computing newsletters;"
On Delphi in the General Discussion database of the Internet SIG;
on RIPCO BBS (312) 528-5020 (and via Ripco on internet);
and on Rune Stone BBS (IIRGWHQ) (203) 832-8441.
CuD is also available via Fidonet File Request from
1:11/70; unlisted nodes and points welcome.
EUROPE: In BELGIUM: Virtual Access BBS: +32-69-844-019 (ringdown)
In ITALY: Bits against the Empire BBS: +39-464-435189
In LUXEMBOURG: ComNet BBS: +352-466893
UNITED STATES: etext.archive.umich.edu (192.131.22.8) in /pub/CuD/
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/
aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/
world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
uceng.uc.edu in /pub/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
EUROPE: nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/cud/ (Finland)
ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom)
JAPAN: ftp.glocom.ac.jp /mirror/ftp.eff.org/Publications/CuD
ftp://www.rcac.tdi.co.jp/pub/mirror/CuD
The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the
Cu Digest WWW site at:
URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu:80/~cudigest
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End of Computer Underground Digest #7.24
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