While it is perfectly fine to ask divine guidance in choosing a legislative course, that is no substitute for making an effort to understand what you’re voting on. Last Wednesday the United States Senate did not do so, and instead voted 86 to 14 in favor of Exon’s amendment, cleverly entitled the Communications Decency Act. Thus did the Senate take a sledgehammer to our single most promising new medium. The Congress that pledged to keep government off our backs now vows to install censors on the shoulder of anyone who taps a message onto a network. John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, neatly describes their blunder: “They are a government of the completely clueless, trying to impose their will on a place they do not understand, using a means they do not possess.”
The intent of the bill is laudatory–to protect children from materials best left to adults. A clear consensus believes this should be done, and Exon can rightly claim some credit for kick-starting some serious activity in that direction. For example, there is the SurfWatch program; when installed on a system, it blocks access to electronic locations that offer sexually explicit material. And last week Progressive Networks, Microsoft and Netscape formed the Information Highway Parental Empowerment Group, also devoted to voluntary adoption of technology that prevents minors from accessing material their parents do not want them to see.
This approach was also the basis of Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy’s alternative, mandating a Justice Department study to examine such technological means. But the senators never voted on the Leahy amendment, and didn’t even hold a hearing. Instead they smiled for the C-Span cameras and voted for a law that the Justice Department has deemed possibly unconstitutional and in any case is virtually unenforceable.
Why? The Exon amendment goes way beyond banning porn, dictating that all communications available to minors-in effect, everything on the Internet and most online services–should be conducted on the level of “Barney and Friends.” The standard of permissibility is the definition of “indecent” used in the broadcast world, meaning that the famous “seven dirty words” are forever banned. Also criminalized are communications deemed “annoying.” (So much for most of my mail.) If you employ a single four-letter word in an electronic news conference, computer bulletin board or Web site, you can be fined and jailed. While Exon says that result is not his intent, many interpreters, including his co-sponsor, Republican Sen. Daniel Coats of Indiana. understand this to be a mandate of the bill. “I certainly think you’re capable of expressing yourself without using language like that,” explains Coats. If not, you can learn some synonyms at Leavenworth. Ironically, the Exon bill would probably be ineffectual in eliminating the nasty stuff in his blue binder. Since information sent across the global Internet does not respect borders, distributors of hardcore materials can set up shop offshore.
Exon himself admits his bill is no panacea. But the more criticism he receives from Net-heads and “intellectuals,” the firmer he gets in his belief that his bill is crucial for the children of America. “I’m no prude,” he told me. “I’m a grown adult male who believes that society is going astray.” But he doesn’t really understand the Internet. He seems to believe that simply logging on results in an instant flood of hard-core porn invading your home–that kiddie porn and bestiality are “only a few clicks away from any child with a computer.” This is simply not true. Finding smut on the Net is nothing like flicking a remote control at a cable box –you have to know where to look. In any case, those really familiar with the Net realize that the issue of sexual content has been blown far out of proportion.
U.S. senators, of course, have only the foggiest idea of this. “It’s obvious there are only a half dozen who have used the Internet,” says Patrick Leahy. “I think they should at least attempt to understand what it is before they attempt to legislate it.”
It is instructive to view the passage of the Exon amendment in light of the entire telecommunications bill, legislation loaded with goodies and windfalls for the likes of cable companies, phone companies, movie studios and television networks. The Internet, at least as currently organized, is a rogue element to those special interests. There is no need to deregulate it because it is virtually without regulations. Yet somehow the Internet works. The best thing the government can do is get off its case–or at the least not criminalize its users because they don’t mind their manners in midflame.
Let’s hope that the House of Representatives, led by a man who fancies himself an Information Age avatar, refuses to ratify James Exon’s misguided and destructive potshot at our communications future. If not, maybe we could get that chaplain to write a prayer for the rest of us.
