Uncle Sam Knows Best February 7, 1996 The U.S. Congress has decided to put on a sick parody of the sitcom "Father Knows Best" with regards to Internet regulation. In a paradoxical move typical of modern government, the new laws regarding "decency" on the Internet were lumped in with the massive telecommunications reform bill that was designed to deregulate the cable and telephony industries. As everyone reading this already knows, the nuts and bolts of this bill decree that Internet Service Providers are liable for indecent content that is found on or accessed using their service. The impact of this bill is clear; the federal government has granted itself a license to root through the Internet and abuse, harrass, or arrest any number of innocent parties under an ambiguous and ill-conceived piece of legislation. The good news is that the Communications Decency Act is so blatantly unconstitutional that there is little or no chance that it will pass the test of judicial scrutiny. The sitting members of the Supreme Court have shown in the past to be strict interpreters of the constitution, and this law clearly collides head on with the First Amendment, a fact that Senator Exon and his Capitol Hill cronies seem to have overlooked. It doesn't strike me as shocking that in their efforts to protect our youngest generation, politicians have chosen the Internet as the point where they choose to draw their line in the sand. The 'net is a big ticket item, always in the news and virtually unknown to the masses. Along with the help of the sensationalistic TV magazines that clutter the airwaves these days, the government has painted an ugly picture of the so-called Information Superhighway. The now-infamous blue book of Internet pornography and extremely flawed and now discredited Martin Rimm study further served to cast the 'net in an ugly light. I can't figure out whether our benevolent politicians are so stupid that they actually bought into the hype, or whether they think everyone else is so stupid that they can turn the hype into some timely election-year demagoguery. Unfortunately, until this law is relegated to the Judicial Out Box by the Supreme Court, we're going to have to deal with its effects. Due to its guileless wording, it's going to cast long shadows over a lot more of the Internet than just cyber-porn. It's also going to create a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt among service providers who have to worry about their liability every time a new user puts up a homepage. Since there are no infallible controls on the Internet as far as who can look at what, and since everyone defines "decency" differently, a lot of people and pages are going to get caught in the enormous gill net being trawled through the net by the government. This, of course, means that even more federal law enforcement agencies are going to be invading the private lives of formerly law abiding Americans. I don't think you have to ask Randy Weaver, Steve Jackson Games, or any hacker who's been busted what this means. Friendly fascism courtesy of the FBI, Secret Service and who knows who else. Fortunately, I believe that the Internet will survive this attack, and hopefully it will further polarize the online community to resist the future assaults on our civil liberties that I'm sure will occur.
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