Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition Update No. 3 - 3/21/96
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http://www.cdt.org/ciec/
ciec-info@cdt.org
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CIEC UPDATES intended for members of the Citizens Internet
Empowerment Coalition. CIEC Updates are written and edited by the
Center for Democracy and Technology (http://www.cdt.org). This
document may be reposted as long as it remains in total.
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** 30,000 Netizens Vs. U.S. Department of Justice. **
* The Fight To Save Free Speech Online *
Contents:
o Excerpts from Declarations of CIEC witnesses
o Subscription Information
o More Information on CIEC and the Center for Democracy and Technology
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This message is being posted directly from the courtroom in a Philadelphia
Federal Court where, in just a few hours, an historic legal battle will
begin. Over the next several weeks, the court will consider the
constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act. In the process, the
fate of the Internet and the future of freedom of expression in the
Information Age will be on trial.
In order to keep you as informed as possible on the proceedings before the
court, CDT will publish periodic updates. This, the first of those updates,
outlines the testimony presented by CIEC witnesses in written declarations
filed on March 1, 1996. Several of these witnesses will be appearing live
before the court in the comming weeks.
Later today, we will post a summary of today's court proceedings.
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(1) Excerpts of Declarations from Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition
Witnesses
The following are excerpts from declarations filled in the constitutional
challenge to the Communications Decency Act. These declarations, among a
total of 37 filed, represent the factual basis of the case against the
Communications Decency Act.
INADEQUATE CONSIDERATION BY CONGRESS
"I am a United States Senator representing the State of Vermont.... [I]
have been personally involved in the congressional debate over the
government's role in controlling content on the Internet. During the year
of consideration of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), there were no
congressional hearings held on the legislation and no congressional
findings were made as to its necessity or the lack of less restrictive
alternatives." (Sen. Leahy (D-VT) Paragraph1,2)
USE OF THE INTERNET IN SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY
"Periodically, I hold electronic town meetings in which a number of
Vermonters at different sites in Vermont ask me questions and discuss
issues online. Participants in these town meetings have included college
students and may have included, or will in the future include, minors. I
have no control over the language used by the participants to express
themselves during these electronic town meetings than I would at a town
meeting where we were all physically present in one location." (Sen. Leahy
(D-VT) Paragraph5)
WEBSITE OPERATORS CANNOT RESTRICT ACCESS BY MINORS
"It is not technically or economically feasible for HotWired to pre-screen
subscribers in order to determine whether they are minors. Subscribers
apply for membership to HotWired through the Internet by providing their
names and e-mail addresses. Accordingly, HotWired does not know their
ages. Even if subscribers were asked to state their ages, there is no way
to determine the truth of their assertions." (Wolf, HotWired Online
Magazine, Paragraph6)
NO CENTRALIZED CONTROL OF THE WEB
"Running on tens of thousands of individual computers on the Internet, the
World Wide Web is what is know as a distributed system. The Web was
designed to that organizations with computers containing information can
become part of the Web simply by attaching their computers to the Internet
and running appropriate World Wide Web software. No single organization
controls any membership in the Web, nor is there any centralized point from
which individual web sites or services can be blocked from the Web. From a
user's perspective, it may appear to be a single, integrated system, but in
reality it has no centralized control point. (Berners-Lee, World Wide Web
Consortium, Paragraph11)
NO MEANS TO CHECK AGE ON THE WEB
"At present, I am not aware of any methods in the technical standards that
make up the World Wide Web which would enable a Web site operator or
publisher to establish the age of a user attempting to access a Web site.
Establishing age through credit card verification is burdensome for all Web
site operators and not practical for those Web sites which do not otherwise
have a commercial relationship with their users. I believe that
non-commercial Web sites would be forced to shut down if required to check
the ages of their users through credit card verification. Even commercial
sites will face significant burden if credit card verification is required
before all user access. The cost of each verification by a credit card
clearinghouse is , I understand, between $1 and $2. Sites which are
accessed thousands or millions of times per day, will certainly face
significant cost if such age verification is required. (Berners-Lee, World
Wide Web Consortium, Paragraph16)
CONTROLING ACCESS TO CONTENT ONLY POSSIBLE BY USERS, NOT CONTENT PROVIDERS
"...for many important methods of communication on the Internet, the
senders -- the content providers -- have no ability to ensure that their
messages are only available to adults. It is not possible for an Internet
service provider or large institutional provider of access to the Internet
(such as a university) to screen out all or even most content that could be
deemed "indecent" or "patently offensive" (to the extent that those terms
can be understood at all. (Bradner, Internet Engineering Task Force,
Paragraph10)
Screening require by the Act is impossible for Internet Service Providers
"Individual posters of newsgroup postings have no way to monitor or control
who views their postings.... Screening at the server level would require
millions of individual check of messages each day. Moreover, many of these
millions of checks would require legally informed human inspection to
assess whether a given message, particularly on containing a graphic image,
was 'indecent' or 'patently offensive'. Such a screening process would be
enormously expensive, and if required would almost certainly reduce the
viability and usefulness of newsgroups as a means of communication."
(Collet, Commercial Internet Exchange, Paragraph10,11)
Most effective means to control content is from the user end
"Based on my experience and knowledge of the Internet, I believe that the
most effective way to monitor, screen, or control the full range of
information transmitted over the Internet is to block undesired content at
the client end -- that is, by using software installed in the individual
user's computer." (Bradner, Internet Engineering Task Force, Paragraph11)
Online services allow parents to control their kids access to inappropriate
material
"Parental controls [available on America Online] enable parents to restrict
access to Internet newsgroups. The parental control provided by AOL, when
activated by a parent, can 1) block access to all newsgroups, 2) block
access to a specific newsgroups by entering a specific Internet address, 3)
block access to all Internet newsgroups not listed inthe AOL index, 4)
block access to newsgroups that have binary downloads, name photographs and
sound recordings, and 5) restrict access to newsgroups that contain a
particular string of characters, such as "sex" or "nudity" in their
Internet addresses." (Burke, America Online Paragraph12)
Affordable software provides effective protection for kids online
"SurfWatch allows parents and other concerned users to exercise meaningful
choice and control over what material their children access on the
Internet. People choose to use our product because it is a realistic
approach to Internet content filtering at a personal level. It is not
possible for anyone, including the government, to control content on a
worldwide, decentralized communications network such as the Internet. The
only effective way to protect children from objectionable material on the
Internet, while ensureing that adults can access material which is
otherwise protected by the First Amendment, is to empower individual users
and parents with tools necessary to block objectionable materials.
SurfWatch was developed to do just that." (Duvall, SurfWatch Software
Paragraph30)
PICS Standards Promote User Choice on the Internet
"The mission of the PICS working group is to give individual users control
over the content that is accessible on the Internet to themselves and their
children. PICS aims to allow families to open their homes to the Internet
while still protecting their children from material that is inconsistent
with that family's values." (Vezza, Platform for Internet Content
Selection, Paragraph5)
"The flexibility of the PICS labeling process allows parents to give older
children access to more material than younger children." (Vezza, Platform
for Internet Content Selection, Paragraph10)
CDA restrictions freedom of the press
"Historically, the First Amendment guarantee of "freedom of the press" has
protected newspapers from government-imposed content restrictions which,
like those in the Communications Decency Act, prohibit and punish the
dissemination of material considered "indecent" or "patently offensive as
measured by contemporary community standards." By its terms, however, the
Act contains no exceptions for newspapers or the news media, and can be
applied to the print press in the same manner that it can be applied to any
other person, when a newspaper published in hardcopy is also published
electronically or online." (Ketter, American Society of Newspaper Editors
(ASNE), Paragraph7)
Information legally-publishable in print is illegal online
"With such broad and imprecise terms of restriction, ASNE members believe
that the risk of prosecution under the Act will compel editors to "play it
safe" by censoring the online editions of their daily newspapers in ways
that would be wholly unnecessary with respect to hardcopy paper editions.
Editors faced with the prospect of personal criminal and/or civil liability
for the content of online editions of their newspapers will shy away from
exercising their historical prerogative under the First Amendment to foster
public awareness, interest and debate over many of the most piquant issues
of the day." (Ketter, American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE),
Paragraph10)
CDA will harm users of online services
"The Communications Decency Act of 1996 will have a direct and damaging
impact on AOL and all of its members. It is likely that AOL will be forced
o reduce access of all users, including adults, to content currently made
available if the indecency provisions remains part of the Act. Thus, the
Act woudl effectively reduce online content to a level suitable for a
child." (Burke Paragraph6)
CDA will limit library collections on the Net
"Many librarians have their own World Wide Web sites on the Internet, where
librarians post their own material or offer patrons links to other World
Wide Web sites.... Patrons could thus access the Web sites of a library
anywhere in the country.... Librarians have no clear understanding of what
materials would be considered "indecent" or "patently offensive" by some
communities.... In the last ten years, members of some communities have
sought to ban works such as the Bible and the American Heritage Dictionary
from library collections on the ground that those books contain material
inappropriate for children. It is unclear whether libraries that post such
texts or excerpts on their Web site would face criminal prosecution if a
particular community in some other part of the country found those texts to
be "indecent" or "patently offensive." (Krug, American Library
Association, Paragraph5,6,7)
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2. Subscrition Information
As CIEC members, you have been invited to join this list in order to
receive news updates and other information relevant to the CIEC challenge
to the Communications Decency Act.
If you ever want to remove yourself from this list, send email to
ciec-members-request@cdt.org
with 'unsubscribe ciec-members' in the SUBJECT LINE (w/o the 'quotes').
Leave the body of your message blank.
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3. For More Information
For more information on the CIEC challenge, including the text of the
complaint and other relevant materials:
* World Wide Web -- http://www.cdt.org/ciec/
* General Information about CIEC -- ciec-info@cdt.org
* Copy of the Complaint -- ciec-docs@cdt.org
* Specific Questions Regarding the
Coalition, incuding Press Inquiries -- ciec@cdt.org
* General information about the
Center for Democracy and Technology -- info@cdt.org
-- end ciec-update.3 3/21/96