Indecent act
Cyberspace censors leave trail of anger and confusion
by Dan Kennedy
by Dan Kennedy
It was the signing ceremony for the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and Gore -- the Clinton Administration's point man on information technology -- was clearly in a celebratory mood as he exchanged quips with Tomlin.
But just before Ernestine faded to black, Tomlin dropped this acidic line: "Call me back when you deregulate the Internet."
Indeed, to anyone concerned about the future of cyberspace, the sweeping new law represents not the deregulatory free-for-all it's been portrayed as, but rather a regulatory nightmare unimaginable just last summer. That's when House Speaker Newt Gingrich stopped the efforts of Senator James Exon to transform the Net into a G-rated wasteland.
As it turned out, Gingrich's victory was only temporary. The bill signed by Clinton last week contains a provision known as the Communications Decency Act, which outlaws the transmission of "indecent" material over computer networks to minors. Violators face a $250,000 fine and a prison term as long as five years.
More than 500 Web sites turned their screens to black for 48 hours last week to protest the Christian Coalition-backed provision. Cyberlibertarian organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation warn that everything from the discussion of abortion to the dissemination of art, literature, and even medical information could be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit to overturn the vague provision. Already, thousands of Web sites have put up a blue-ribbon graphic, linked to the EFF, to support the EFF's "Blue Ribbon Campaign" for free speech. (The Boston Phoenix's Web site is among the participants.)
Locally, members of the on-line community are watching and waiting.
Take Amelia Copeland, publisher of Paramour, a Cambridge-based magazine devoted to "literary and artistic erotica." For the past year or so, Paramour has published a Web page that features sexually explicit photographs and fiction. She took the page down in protest last week. (It's back now.)
Paramour's electronic counterpart, like many sex-oriented Web pages, requires viewers to click on an icon stating that they are 21 or older. Copeland is optimistic that that will be enough to keep the indecency police away. If not, she'll probably restrict her erotic fantasies to the printed page.
"I really enjoy the Web site, but I don't make any money off of it," she says. "I'd like to fight it [the indecency ban]. It sucks. But I just don't think it's practical."
The law appears to include some protections for Internet-service providers, putting the onus on those who actually transmit "indecent" material. Critics say that's how Exon and his allies bought the quiet acquiescence of large services such as America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy.
Yet it's not entirely clear whether providers have been absolved of all liability. Nor is it clear whether providers could be held liable for failing to remove services they offer that include "indecent" material.
Barry Shein, who runs Software Tool & Die, a regional Internet provider based in Brookline, points out that it would be "absurd" to hold companies such as his liable for "indecent" Web sites, since providers currently have no way of blocking out individual sites. (Shein says he does prohibit certain material from Software Tool & Die's own Web server.)
But a provider can control which Usenet groups it offers to its subscribers. And despite Shein's assertion that he has removed groups that are "fundamentally illegal," he, like most providers, continues to carry several with explicit sexual content, including photographs.
Then there's the question of whether Web-page publishers could be held liable for building in links to other people's pages that contain "indecent" material.
On a small scale, Adam Gaffin, who publishes the funky guide "Boston Online", says he's not planning on doing anything differently. "I believe in the First Amendment and can't believe the censorship provisions will stand up in court," he says. "I'll continue to provide links to what I consider interesting Boston-area resources, not what Senator Exon might think are good and clean."
On a considerably larger scale, boston.com , the Boston Globe's Web page, allows anyone to build in links. Says Dave Margulius, the director of boston.com: "We're sifting through the fine print and figuring out what our policy is going to be and should be."
One of the more vivid examples of the absurdity of the indecency standard was offered several months ago in the New York Times, which reported that such a provision "raises the incongruous possibility that newspapers would be able to print a word like `penis' on paper but not in their on-line editions distributed over the Internet."
The Times finally unveiled its own Web edition on January 22, which means it must now contend with that problem itself. Times spokeswoman Nancy Nielsen says the issue is being studied.
What's sad about this is that it's so unnecessary. It's always been illegal to transmit obscene material (although the courts have trouble defining it) on the Internet, just as it's illegal to send it through the mail or sell it to minors at the local dirty bookstore. There has never been any legal impediment to going after people who upload child pornography to, say, alt.sex.pedophilia.
Yet now, in the name of protecting children, the religious right has rammed through a hazy "indecency" standard that could, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it, "turn the Internet from one of the greatest resources of cultural, social and scientific information into the on-line equivalent of the children's reading room."
No wonder Ernestine was pissed.