From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
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Message ID: <199511082002.PAA13786@pipe9.nyc.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1995-11-09 00:23:57 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 08:23:57 +0800
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 08:23:57 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Return of the Cyber-Censors
Message-ID: <199511082002.PAA13786@pipe9.nyc.pipeline.com>
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The Washington Post, November 8, 1995.
Return of the Cyber-Censors [Editorial]
When the Senate passed its ill-advised "Exon amendment" to
the telecommunications bill last spring, which would
criminalize the transmission of obscene, pornographic or
"indecent" material on the Internet, the measure got an
overwhelming 84 votes, many of them from senators who
didn't understand the implications of the move. Only a few
weeks later, the House went even more overwhelmingly the
other way, voting 420 to 4 for an amendment (co-sponsored
by Reps. Ron Wyden and Christopher Cox) that would bar the
Federal Communications Commission from regulating
cyberspace and would instead make it legally easier for
commercial Internet providers to use their own technical
tools to regulate questionable material.
The contrast was the result of a burst of public discussion
in which more technologically astute members, including
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, caught on to the disturbing
fact that the kinds of far-reaching liability imposed by
Sen. James Exon's formulation -- hastily adapted from an
existing measure on telephone transmission -- would cripple
practically any commercial Internet provider and
effectively lame the new medium as a venue for moneymaking
activity.
Now these vastly different measures are in conference
committee along with the rest of the telecommunications
bill (in other areas of which, we remind readers once
again, The Washington Post Co. has some interests). But the
seeming clarity afforded by the House response to the Exon
amendment and by Mr. Gingrich's appreciation of the need
for untrammeled development of the new medium is nowhere to
be seen. A letter from Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed,
Phyllis Schlafly and other prominent spokesmen for the
religious right is urging the conferees toward an
Exon-style approach that's as destructive now as it ever
was. The House bill also could end up including an
amendment sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde that adds some
criminal liability to the transmission of obscene (but not
"indecent") images via the new technologies.
The argument against "criminalizing" the transmission of
"indecent" images via the Internet remains stark and
simple, and it goes not to the awfulness of child
pornography or even to the ability of parents to control
what their children do on the computer (a wide variety of
off-the-shelf technological filters now exist that let
parents do this themselves) but to the impossibility of
regulation by the electronic middleman industries that are
developing.
Commercial providers such as America Online continue to
pass along millions of messages a day, the interactive
"newsgroups" unfold quickly and internationally, and the
kind of central filtering envisioned by would-be regulators
erases the very quality that makes the Internet a live and
promising medium -- its inexpensive accessibility. If the
Internet were like a telephone system, there would at least
be the possibility of identifying a specific "sender" and
"recipient." On the Internet it's "receivers" who do the
selecting of what to look at and where. Giving those
recipients the tools they need remains the way to go. The
conferees should resist the urge to censor cyberspace.
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