IP: Op-Ed: Letter to the President

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

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic () well com>


Feb. 2, 1996


A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT: VETO THE TELECOM BILL
By Mike Godwin
Staff Counsel
Electronic Frontier Foundation


Phone numbers:
510-548-2976 or
510-548-3290




Dear Mr. President,


I know you've been awfully busy for the last four years. But if you'd had
time, and the inclination to surf the Internet, you might have come across
some of the things I've written about you there.


You see, I've been one of your boosters and defenders on the Net ever
since I watched your campaign from close up, back in 1992 when I lived in
Nashua, New Hampshire. I even attended the rally in a high school gym
where you spoke, powerfully, of your commitment to lead the United States
into the next century. I shook your hand there.


And when I got back home, I wrote to my friends on the Internet and on the
WELL about how I thought you were the candidate who had the most to say
about the future. I certainly hoped it was true, because even then I spent
a large part of every day worrying about one special part of the future --
the Internet.


On the Net, you see, the First Amendment's promise of freedom of the press
is not limited to Time Warner or Gannett or the New York Times. Suddenly,
every American citizen is potentially a publisher who can reach a large
audience and take full part in the public and private colloquies of
American life.


Which is why I work for an organization dedicated to ensuring that the
First Amendment protections apply as strongly to digital discourse as they
do to words printed in ink on the pulp of dead trees. The Internet levels
the First Amendment playing field -- it makes Justice Holmes's
"marketplace of ideas" something more than a metaphor. I'm excited about
the Internet, because it could mean a Golden Age of American democracy.


But not everyone is as excited as I am. Lobbyists for some religious-right
groups have managed to persuade the Congress, and a significant segment of
the American public, that the Internet is rife with pornography, not to
mention other "dangers." They see in the Internet a future in which it
will be a lot harder to impose a fundamentalist cultural agenda because
when everyone is a publisher you need a lot more thought police.


So they want to nip freedom of speech on the Net in the bud. And their
tactic has been to add language to the Telecommunications Reform Act, now
passed by both houses of Congress, that would restrict "indecent" or
"patently offensive" speech on the Net.


They like to say this is about pornography, Mr. President, but it's not.
As you know, it's already illegal under state and federal law to
distribute obscene materials either on the Net or off. And there are
already laws protecting children from exposure to obscene materials or
other materials deemed "harmful to minors."


Their real agenda is not to protect children -- it's to silence adults.
Their goal is to take the great library of the Internet and restrict us
all to the children's room of that library. They've forgotten that the
First Amendment was crafted precisely to protect disturbing,
controversial, "offensive" speech -- after all, no one ever tries to ban
any other kind.


And tactically they have been very effective -- they got their restriction
on "indecency" (a term the Supreme Court has never defined, despite what
they say about FCC v. Pacifica) added to the very telecommunications bill
that you and Vice President Gore were so eager to pass. The bill passed
the House and the Senate by huge majorities on Thursday.


Which is why I think you must veto it, Mr. President, on the grounds that
its "indecency" restrictions violate the First Amendment. You were a
professor of Constitutional Law once -- you know that "indecency" can't be
constitutionally banned from any medium, and that there's no
constitutional authority for Congress to have this degree of control over
the content on the Internet. 


If you take this stand on principle, you won't have killed the
telecommunications bill -- it's clear that Congress truly wants to pass
it, and they'll surely pass some version of it shortly. And you won't win
the support of the anti-"indecency" crowd -- they hate you and they're
already working toward your defeat in November.


But here's what you will do. First, you'll give Congress a chance to
reconsider whether it truly wants to cripple freedom of speech on the
Internet with ill-crafted, ill-considered, ill-justified restrictions on
constitutionally protected speech. Second, and more important to me
personally, you'll have proved that I was right to talk you up on the
Internet in 1992. And you'll have proved to millions of Internet users
that you're worth voting for again.