ARTS & FARCES internet

When Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana) introduced legislation (S. 1482) that would punish commercial online distributors of material deemed harmful to minors with a US$50,000 fine and up to six months in prison, the bill was immediately labelled “Communications Decency Act (CDA) II.” When Coats attached his bill to the appropriations bill without debate, most observers called it politics as usual.

The Coats bill, together with legislation (S. 1619) sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) that would require public schools and libraries that receive federal funding to use filtering software, passed as part of the appropriations bill in late July 1998.

The CDA II legislation is intended to sidestep the constitutional problems of the original CDA statute that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. CDA II is supposed to apply only to commercial pornographic sites, but ambiguous language would affect any commercial site on the Internet.

The original Communications Decency Act rode through Congress by virtue of being attached to another bill that was virtually assured of passing. In late June 1998, the same technique was used to attempt to pass legislation that would require public schools and libraries to use filtering software on computers used to access the Internet.

The mandatory filter legislation, authored by Representative Ernest Istook, Jr. (R-Oklahoma), was attached to a House Appropriations Committee US$81.9 billion education, labor, and health and human services budget bill. All appropriations bills must pass by September first of each year to keep government funded into the new fiscal year. When Istook amended the budget bill in subcommittee, there was no opposition.

Civil liberties experts say that such political maneuvering, while common, poses a significant threat. “This is a very old tactic that’s used to insulate something that could have difficulty standing on its own,” David Sobel, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) told the New York Times. “Whenever one of these bills gets tied to something else it is cause for concern because the focus of the debate gets lost.”

In late July 1996 the G7 nations announced plans to monitor online communications as part of a concerted attempt to curtail international terrorism. A little-known provision of the Antiterrorism Bill (H.R. 2703; S.735) that became law in April 1996 requires the United States Justice Department to conduct a 180-day study of bomb information available on the Internet.

At the same time, new legislation was introduced in the United States by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would criminalize publication of bomb-making information in both electronic and print media. Companion legislation was introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Although Feinstein’s bill doesn’t draw a distinction between various media, the California senator has consistently drawn attention to what she describes as the easy availability of such information in cyberspace. In a Cable News Network (CNN) interview, Feinstein made specific reference to Internet sites that provide instructions for making pipe bombs. Some observers feel that this is an attempt to restrict certain types of speech in electronic media that are protected in print media.

On February 1, 1996, despite a flurry of protests, Congress voted to pass the Telecommunications Reform bill by a huge margin. Only 14 members of Congress voted against the legislation; the vote was 416 to 9 in the House and 91 to 5 in the Senate. The bill, as passed, contains an unchanged version of the Communications Decency Act—originally introduced on February 1, 1995—calling for jail sentences and fines for any Internet content provider who distributes “indecent materials” to minors. Anyone found guilty of knowingly transmitting indecent material over the Internet would face up to two years in prison and fines of up to US$250,000. As soon as the bill was passed, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced its intention to file a lawsuit challenging the bill as unconstitutional.

Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) added a technical amendment to the bill at the last minute that, among other things, prohibits discussion of abortion on the Internet. Hyde dug up a law from 1873, called the Comstock Act, to support his language. Even though the courts have pretty much neutered the Comstock Act, the law remains on the books.

On February 9, 1996, President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Reform bill into law, stating, “Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with the future.” The new law removes almost all regulatory barriers for telecommunications and cable television companies and opens local telephone, long-distance telephone, and cable television to new competition.