CWD--From the Front Lines

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

Date: Fri, 9 Jun 1995 14:36:34 -0700
From: "Brock N. Meeks" <brock () well com>




CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1995 //


Jacking in from the "Senatorial Battleground" Port:


Snapshots from a Dirty Little War
==============================


Senate Chamber, Capitol Hill --  With billions of dollars in profits at
stake for the telephone and cable industry, the Senate is now embroiled in
an effort to rewrite the battlescared Communications Act of 1934.


Beneath the warp and woof of the political rhetoric, a more nefarious
battle is taking place:  The First Amendment, insanely enough, is "in
play."


This afternoon (June 9), Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) rose to amend his
Communications Decency Act of 1995, which was originally amended to the
telecom reform bill now being debated.  Citing anecdotes of pornographic
horror stories drawn from the Net -- which included a reading of file names
from various Alt.Sex.Binaries.* news groups -- Exon pleaded with his
colleagues to "protect the children."


"All the people that have called in opposition to this bill are
uninformed," Exon droned before a virtually empty Senate chamber.  His
amended language was added by unanimous consent, no vote taken.


Just a few hours earlier, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had taken the floor to
make his opening remarks.  Leahy put his colleagues on notice that he would
be introducing his own amendment that would strike the Exon language,
replacing that Senator's repressive and unconstitutional (my word)
amendment with a more sane approach:  A Justice Department study of the
issue, which also would recommend technical fixes to the problem of keeping
porn from innocent eyes.


Leahy then reached down and hefted a two and half foot high stack of print
outs, noting that "these are some 25,000 petitions that have flowed in from
the Internet" supporting his approach.  And rightly so.


How ironic, it seems, that in a debate on a bill that seeks to *deregulate*
the telecommunications industry, the Exon amendment would heavily
*regulate* a sector of that industry that is currently unregulated.


Exon told of a call he received from a 12-year-old boy that, having found
porn on the Net, pleaded with him to press on with the good fight to help
protect other kids like himself from such evils.


I wonder, however, what solution Exon might proffer to "protect" that same
12-year-old from being subjected to the pornography that is pasted to and
scribbled on the walls of the bathrooms in the very buildings where these
Senators have their offices?


Back channel negotiations continue to beef up support for Leahy's bill.
"It's going to be an uphill fight," a Leahy staffer told me.  In an arena
where political debates are more often than not merely window dressing for
the official written record -- the deals are cut (your vote for mine) and
votes counted in the halls and backrooms, all well before any debate is
actually taken -- this issue is still live.  "This will all come down to
the debate," Leahy's aide said.  "Tell people to call and write their
Senators.   They need to know.  Now."


How much support has Leahy mustered for his amendment?  "I don't know... I
guess we'll find out soon enough," he told me, stepping onto an elevator.
He looked grim.  Leahy sent out a "Dear Colleague" letter to help educate
other Senators about the issue.  However, it's going to be tough to get
people to vote against something called the "Communications Decency Act,"
his aide said.


One of the back channel negotiations now happening well off the radar
screen is a move by the "Christian Right" (whatever that's supposed to
mean) to tweak the Leahy language.  This group is opposing Exon's amendment
because of the "defenses" provisions in there that essentially let online
services off the hook if porn is discovered on their systems.  How
pervasive is that problem?  Big enough, apparently.  An excellent article
by Simson Garfinkel recently in the Boston Globe chronicled the wide-spread
availability of pornographic material on various commercial online systems,
including Prodigy and America Online.  The article also showed just how
apathetic some of these systems are to the issue.


The Christian Right, apparently, knows this and wants a hammer to swing at
online services.  The Exon amendment doesn't give them that hammer.  And in
opposing Exon, they find themselves "in bed with" the ACLU, as Exon has
noted.


However, this group also is opposed to Leahy's amendment because it gives
the Justice Department the led in making recommendations to address the
issue.  And because this group sees the Janet Reno Justice Department as a
foe, they are in opposition, forgetting, it seems, that Leahy also has
written in a participatory role for the Commerce Department.


In an attempt to court this political faction to support the Leahy
approach, certain third party negotiators have floated the idea that Leahy
might add a role for Congress in taking up the study.  A Leahy staffer said
no formal proposal has been offered, but that talks have taken place
"through a middle man," on the subject.  The thinking being, that Reno and
her crowd wouldn't be allowed to drive the process and be moderated by the
GOP led Congress.


This proposal was just given a lot more currency this afternoon.  Reason:
An amendment from Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), which would have stricken all
the defenses that Exon provides to commercial services, will not be
introduced.  When asked, Lott offered no explanation.  "Nope, we're not
going to do that [offer the amendment]," was as detailed as he got.


And so they battle on.  When Leahy gets to offer his amendment and start
the debate is anyone's guess right now.  But the later it gets, the more
weary the war horses of the Senate become.  And there are still huge
battles to be fought on other issues besides maintaining any further
erosion of the First Amendment.


How sad, then, that one of the bedrocks of our Constitution, of our
society, may be whittled away with merely a whimper because the Senate was
simply to tired to fight it out, having spent all their political capital
bucking up to the big money boys in tasseled shoes, sporting bulging PAC
checkbooks.


Meeks out...