David Hipschman Cyberland Column this week

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Thought you might enjoy reading my Cyberland column this week. Feel free to
email it to anyone you like.


For Release Week of 12/11/95


Cyberland


By David Hipschman


Congress' absurd actions last week made me finally take a look at sex on the
Internet - just to prove that our legislators are fools as well as
money-wasters.


In case you missed the news, House conferees working on the
telecommunications bill voted for an "indecency" standard.  The vote was a
defeat for a compromise from Rep. Rick White (R-Wash.), which would have
used the language, "harmful to minors."


The House vote was a victory for Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.), author of similar
language in the Senate version of the bill. Congress may act on the entire
issue in the next few days, and if it passes with the indecency language
intact, violators - citizens posting or reading "indecent" material - will
be faced with stiff penalties.


The conferees' "indecency" standard is vague and unconstitutional. If it
became law, publishers could use the word "nipples" in print, but not in
Internet versions. The House language also defies three recent court
decisions, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Shari
Steele. In the New York Times Op-Ed section last week, she explained that
the first decision, by a federal judge in California, held that Internet
service providers are not liable for copyright infringement when they don't
know the content of their users' messages. That's important, she says,
because if they were liable for content, they'd be likely to censor any that
might get them in trouble.


The second and third decisions, by a federal judge in Virginia, she wrote,
admonished the Church of Scientology for using lawsuits to silence its
on-line critics. After former members posted criticism of Scientology on the
Net, the church sued them, their Internet service providers and the
Washington Post. The judge dismissed the suit.


If the courts seem to be upholding freedom of speech, even concerning the
Internet, why is Congress in such an uproar to spend your money trying to
find ways to censor the Net? Is it really about pornography or protecting
children?


No, it's just business as usual, and there's an election in November. Here's
what Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)  had to say: It's "a game, to see who
can be the most against pornography and obscenity. It's a political exercise." 


Beside urging you to vote against any legislator that backs censorship, I
decided to look for sex on the Net, using three standards: 1. How do I feel
about it? 2. Can my kids get to it? and 3. How would I feel if they did? I
easily found hundreds of sites listed under the search for "sex."


I didn't view the 95 percent that cost money, figuring my kids - who don't
have credit cards or ecash accounts - couldn't either. (Their accessible
promos do show bare-breasts, which doesn't bother me and I think could be
explained to my kids.)


I found none of the  remaining Web sites particularly objectionable, which
is not to say that I approved of the most graphic on other than First
Amendment grounds. But applying the existing U.S. Supreme Court's rule of
community standards, since by definition the community is one of Internet
users, the sites were clearly not obscene.


Usenet postings are stickier, but not sticky enough to concern Congress, at
least considering that we pay their salary and that they surely have better
things to do. Newsgroups do contain "erotic" stories. I admit to having
enjoyed reading some of them. I was appalled by those concerning rape,
incest or sex with children, but think the Net community should decide on
its own standards. My kids could get to the newsgroup erotica, and most of
it would be hard to explain to them; but monitoring and teaching my kids is
my job and I'd rather do it that than have Congress try.


The real point here is that nothing to do with sex on the Net is any
different that what you'd find in various print publications - the kind many
kids eventually come across hidden in their parents' bedrooms. Those
publications have a clear constitutional right to publish and you have a
clear constitutional right to read them, if you choose.


Why should Congress waste time establishing a different standard for the
Internet, which will almost certainly be ruled unconstitutional? Why should
you put up with this example of your tax dollars at work?


For more information on this important debate, try the American Civil
Liberties Union (ftp://ftp.aclu.org/aclu/); the Center for Democracy and
Technology (http://www.cdt.org); Electronic Frontier Foundation
(http://www.eff.org/); Electronic Privacy Information Center
(http://www.epic.org/) and Voters Telecommunications Watch
(http://www.vtw.org/).


Comments? Send email to dochip () netrix net


Copyright 1995 David Hipschman


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David Hipschman (dochip () netrix net)
Whitefish, Montana * phone: 406-862-6523
Author of Cyberland, the Internet newspaper column
(http://www.netrix.net/enter/)
Contributing Editor - Web Review (http://gnn.com/wr/)
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