Hundreds More Internet Sites Go Dark In Protest ‘Thousand Points Of Darkness’ Promised If Clinton Signs Telecom Bill
Hundreds of Internet sites were turned black Wednesday as protests mounted against legislation that civil libertarians say will make it a felony to transmit information on abortion, breast cancer, bawdy folk tales and other material deemed too indecent for children.
Many more sites on the Internet’s World Wide Web are expected to join the 48-hour “Thousand Points of Darkness” campaign if President Clinton signs the historic Telecommunications Act today as promised.
The protests are centered on the Communications Decency Act, a small part of the telecommuications bill, which bans transmission of obscene and “indecent” material to children over the Internet. Transmitting such material will subject violators to five years in jail and up to $250,000 in fines.
“The definition of indecent is so vague and the content of material on the Net will be dumbed down to only that which is acceptable to children,” said Shabbir Safdar, a board member of Voters Telecommunications Watch, an Internet users group that helped organize the protest.
“What we are already seeing, because of fear, is the transformation of what was becoming the world’s greatest library into a children’s reading room.”
A tour of the Internet Wednesday found hundreds of blackened sites on subjects ranging from breast cancer support groups, to gay and lesbian organizations, ethnic historical sites, music pages and museums.
Where pages had once contained colorful graphics and background, there was little more than stark black, often inscribed with simple statements in white letters, such as: “This is what the World Wide Web is going to look like under the Communications Decency Act.”
Opponents have called the law unnecessary because it is already illegal to transmit obscenity. But the new law, because it targets “indecent” material, casts a far broader legal net.
“Obscenity is well-defined in case law, but ‘indecent’ is so ambiguous that it could include almost anything that someone finds offensive,” said Danny Whitesner, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, another protest organizer.
The law’s advocates, including the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., argue that censorship fears are exaggerated.
“Adults with common sense do not confuse art and literature with patently offensive materials which degrade women, corrupt children, and ruin men,” said Cathy Cleaver, the council’s legal studies director.
Supporters and opponents agreed on one thing Wednesday: After the bill becomes law, a court challenge is certain.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and at least one abortion rights group are expected to take legal action to invalidate the law.
Though it had not officially started Wednesday, large sections of the World Wide Web had already joined history’s first mass cyber-protest.
The operator of one page, the Community Breast Health Project in Palo Alto, said materials carried on their site and others they link to could easily fall into someone’s definition of “indecent” “Women who are going through this often want to know what it is going to look like for them if they have surgery,” said Laurn Dieguez Langford, who designed the group’s web site. “That means they need to see pictures.
“I’ll tell you what. I’m not removing anything. I hope they do come after me. I’d love to see how they’d prosecute a breast-cancer support group.”