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>From oregon.democrats(a)digibbs.com Thu Feb 8 18:26:34 1996
From: oregon.democrats(a)digibbs.com
Message-Id: <199602082312.PAA27828(a)desiree.teleport.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 15:18:40 +0500
Subject: American Reporter on CDA 2/8/96
To: stop314(a)vtw.org
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THE X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
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by Steve Russell
American Reporter Correspondent
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped over the
edge of the earth this time. I understand that very few of the swarm of
high dollar lobbyists around the Telecommunications Bill had any interest
in content regulation -- they were just trying to get their clients an
opportunity to dip their buckets in the money stream that cyberspace may
become -- but the public interest sometimes needs a little attention.
Keeping your eyes on what big money wants, you have sold out the First
Amendment.
First, some basics. If your children walked by a public park and heard
some angry sumbitches referring to Congress as "the sorriest bunch of
cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
"the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists'
dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," no law would be violated
(assuming no violation of noise ordinances or incitement to breach the
peace). If your children did not wish to hear that language, they could
only walk away. Thanks to your heads-up-your-ass dereliction of duty,
if they read the same words in cyberspace, they could call the FBI!
Cyberspace is the village green for the whole world. It is the same as the
village green our Founders knew as the place to rouse the rabble who became
Americans, but it is also different. Your blind acceptance of the dubious -
- make that dogass dumb --idea that children are harmed by hearing so-called
dirty words has created some pretty stupid regulations without shutting down
public debate, but those stupid regulations will not import to cyberspace
without consequences that even the public relations whores in Congress
should find unacceptable.
In cyberspace, there is no time. A posted message stays posted until it is
wiped. Therefore, there is no way to indulge the fiction that children do
not stay up late or cannot program a VCR. In cyberspace, there is no place.
The "community standards" are those of the whole world. An upload from
Amsterdam can become a download in Idaho. By trying to regulate obscenity
and indecency on the Internet, you have reduced the level of expression
allowed consenting adults to that of the most anal retentive blueballed
fuckhead U.S. attorney in the country. The Internet is everywhere you can
plug in a modem. Call Senator Exon an "ignorant motherfucker" in Lincoln,
Nebraska and find yourself prosecuted in Bibleburg, Mississippi.
In cyberspace, you cannot require the convenience store to sell Hustler in
a white sleeve. The functional equivalent is gatekeeper software, to which
no civil libertarian has voiced any objection. Gatekeeper software cannot be
made foolproof, but can you pandering pissants not see that any kid smart
enough to hack into a Website is also smart enough to get his hands on a
hard copy of Hustler if he really wants one?
In cyberspace, there is the illusion of anonymity but no real privacy.
It is theoretically possible for any Internet server to seine through all
messages for key words (although it seems likely the resulting slowdown
would be noticeable). Perhaps some of you read about America On Line's
attempt to keep children from reading the word "breast?" An apparently
unforeseen consequence was the shutdown of a discussion group of breast
cancer survivors. Don't you think more kids are aware of "teat"
(pronounced "tit") than of "breast?" Can skirts on piano legs, er, limbs
be far behind?
But silly shit like this is just a pimple on the ass of the long-term
consequences for politics, art and education. You have passed a law that
will get less respect than the 55 m.p.h. speed limit dead bang in the middle
of the First Amendment. Indecency is nothing but a matter of fashion;
obscenity is the same but on a longer timeline. This generation freely
reads James Joyce and Henry Miller and the Republic still stands.
The home of the late alleged pornographer D. H. Lawrence is now a beautiful
writers' retreat in the mountains above Taos, managed by the University of
New Mexico.
Universities all have Internet servers, and every English Department has at
least one scholar who can read Chaucer's English -- but not on the Internet
anymore. Comparative literature classes might read Boccaccio --but not on
the Internet anymore. What if some U. S. Attorney hears about Othello and
Desdemona "making the beast with two backs" -- is interracial sex no longer
indecent anywhere in the country, or is Shakespeare off the Internet?
Did you know you can download video and sound from the Internet?
Yes, that means you can watch other people having sex if that is interesting
to you, live or on tape. Technology can make such things hard to retrieve,
but probably not impossible. And since you have swept right past obscenity
and into indecency, the baby boomers had better keep their old rock 'n roll
tapes off the Internet.
When the Jefferson Airplane sang "her heels rise for me," they were not
referring to a dance step. And if some Brit explains the line about
"finger pie" in Penny Lane, the Beatles will be gone. All of those school
boards that used to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" over cussing and spreading
the foul lie that kids masturbate can now go to federal court and get that
nasty book kept out of cyberspace.
But enough about the past. What about rap music? No, I do not care much
for it either -- any more than I care for the language you shitheads have
forced me to use in this essay -- but can you not see the immediate
differential impact of this law by class and race? What is your defense -
-that there are no African-Americans on the Internet, since they are too
busy pimping and dealing crack? If our educational establishment has any
sense at all, they will be trying to see more teens of all colors on the
Internet, because there is a lot to be learned in cyberspace that has
nothing to do with sex.
There are plenty of young people in this country who have legitimate
political complaints. When you dickheads get done with Social Security,
they will be lucky if the retirement age is still in double digits.
But thanks to the wonderful job the public schools have done keeping sex
and violence out, we have a lot of intelligent kids who cannot express
themselves without indecent language. I have watched lawyers in open court
digging their young clients in the ribs every time the word "fuck" slipped
out.
Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit. Joe Shea, my
editor, does not want it in his newspaper, and I respect that position.
He might even be almost as upset about publishing this as I am about
writing it. I do use salty language in my writing, but sparingly, only
as a big hammer. Use the fucking shit too fucking much and it loses its
fucking impact --see what I mean? Fiction follows different rules, and if
you confine your fiction writing to how the swell people want to see
themselves using language, you not only preclude literary depiction of
most people but you are probably false to the people you purport to depict.
Do you remember how real language used by real people got on the air and in
the newspapers? Richard Nixon, while he was president, speaking in the
White House about official matters. A law professor and a nominee for
Supreme Court Justice arguing about pubic hairs and porno movies during
Senate hearings. Are these matters now too indecent for the Internet?
How much cleansing will be required of the online news services?
Answer: Enough cleansing to meet the standard of what is appropriate
for a child in the most restrictive federal judicial district.
This is bullshit -- unconstitutional bullshit and also bad policy bullshit.
To violate your ban on indecency, I have been forced to use and overuse
so-called indecent language. But if I called you a bunch of goddam
motherfucking cocksucking cunt-eating blue-balled bastards with the morals
of muggers and the intelligence of pond scum, that would be nothing compared
to this indictment, to wit: you have sold the First Amendment,
your birthright and that of your children. The Founders turn in their
graves. You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought under the
Stars and Stripes.
And what mess of pottage have you acquired in exchange for the rights of a
free people? Have you cleansed the Internet of even the rawest pornography?
No, because it is a worldwide system. You have, however, handed the
government a powerful new tool to harass its critics: a prosecution for
indecent commentary in any district in the country.
Have you protected one child from reading dirty words? Probably not, if you
understand what the economists call "substitution" -- but you have leveled
the standards of political debate to a point where a history buff would not
dare to upload some of the Federalist v. Anti-Federalist election rhetoric
to a Website.
Since the lobby reporting requirements were not law when the censorship
discussion was happening, I hope you got some substantial reward for what
you gave up. Thirty pieces of silver doesn't go far these days.
# # #
(Steve Russell, retired after 16 years as a trial judge in Texas, is
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at
San Antonio.)
This article may be reproduced free forever.
* * *
* Chair * Online Activism *
********** Fifth Congressional District Democrats **********
* Lincoln * Benton * Marion * Polk * Clackamas * Tillamook *
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