Should We Police Cyberspace? No: There Is A Need For Oversight, But This Bill Isn’t The Right Vehicle. It’s A Bad Law That Puts The Onus On The Provider; Not The Person Who Is Causing The Problem
A nasty bill is lurking in the Senate, like a flasher hiding in a doorway waiting for the opportunity to throw open his trenchcoat.
The bill, S. 314, was introduced by Sens. J. James Exon, D-Neb., and Slade Gorton, R-Wash. It’s called the “Communications Decency Act of 1995.”
Don’t let that fool you, there’s nothing decent about it. The bill would force those who allow others access to the Information Superhighway to monitor their customers’ communications.
If the provisions of the bill are violated, those who allow access to the information highway face potential federal criminal prosecution that could lead to $100,000 fines and/or two years in prison.
On the Information Superhighway, there is no way to monitor a moving message. It’s broken into digital packets that scoot over telephone wires across the world.
If you looked at one packet, it would be indecipherable. It’s only a small bit of the information sent - not unlike putting a normal letter into a shredder and then sending each strip to the recipient in separate envelopes.
Messages in transit are impossible to monitor. That means the organization that provides access to Internet must monitor the information flow from the source or at the receiver’s end.
That is possible. But it makes the access provider a Big Brother agent of the federal government who leans over your computer.
The bill doesn’t define what would be legally “indecent.” The vague term could apply to lovers or married couples who are e-mailing one another sweet murmurs about the night before.
It could apply, by some subjective standards, to a photo of a child lying bloody in a street, killed by a drive-by shooter.
It could apply to a photo rendition of one of Auguste Rodin’s most famous sculptures, “The Kiss.” Or any of the classical paintings of nudes that museums have put on the Internet.
Apparently, the intent is to protect children who might stumble on something too adult for them on the information highway. It’s a wrongheaded approach - the atom bomb solution. It would blow away the free flow of information. The information highway is an interactive medium. Consumers can control their own access. Parents can control the access of their children. America Online already gives parents control over what chat sessions are available to their children.
More can be done, and is being done, so that parents can select and control their children’s access to the vast variety of information offered on the electronic highway.
As this indecent bill is written, it would apply to public and university libraries that offer their patrons the use of online computers, according to Daniel Weitzner, deputy director of the Center of Democracy and Technology.
Libraries could be fined; librarians jailed. Think of it, a librarian imprisoned because some patron found his way through Internet byways to the Penthouse calendar nude of the month.
It’s bad law. It places criminal liability, not on the actor, but on the provider.
And, worse, a broad range of content would be actionable under this bill.
Less discussed by critics of this bill, are ramifications for newspapers and news organizations who use the information highway.
Newspapers who go online with their product do not necessarily have their own access to the Internet.
By this bill, the provider could be liable for criminal prosecution for something the newspaper put on Internet; therefore, it might want to monitor what news goes online.
What happens to freedom of the press then? News decisions could be taken away from the editors, or newspapers might keep their product off the information highway.
Either way the public suffers. More and more newspapers are making portions of their dailies available through the information highway. This intersection of the press with telecommunications will cause headaches for First Amendment experts for decades to come.
The electronic media has never enjoyed the liberties guaranteed by the freedom of the press clause of the First Amendment. Now there is a convergence of the two and Americans must either opt for greater freedom for the electronic media or less for the press.
This issue needs a great deal more thought than either Sen. Exon or Sen. Gorton have given to it. Keep liberty a priority. There are better ways to protect our children than sacrificing the free exchange of information and ideas.
xxxx James Levendosky is editorial page editor of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune. His columns recently won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and The Baltimore Sun’s H.L. Mencken Award.
For opposing view see headline: Should we police Cyberspace?; Byline; Sen. Slade Gorton