At 05:01 PM 11/12/97 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Just when you thought the Internet was safe from government censorship, Sen. Dan Coats has introduced a sequel to the notorious Communications Decency Act.
The bill punishes commercial distributors of material that's "harmful to minors" with six months in jail and a $50,000 fine. Unlike the original CDA, it applies only to web sites -- not to chatrooms, newsgroups, or email.
On the legal side this narrowing has a modest merit in that the government has established (rightly or wrongly) the power to control publishers. It is difficult to find a reference to a website that does not make a reference to publishing. Thus it falls under a reasonable interpretation of existing law and precident (and distinguished from, the internet is a telephone as the frozen brains would have it.) The critical problem is obvious, harmful to minors. Tooth decay is harmful to minors, all product advertising that can be construed as increasing the incidence of tooth decay is harmful to children. It also brings up the German "I can trump your arguement and invent a new one" excuse for banning Zundelsite, that it was "ethically disorienting to children." If one presumes ethical disorientation is a harm then one has to hold all forms of education that promote independent thinking are harmful to children. It would therefore make huge numbers of academic sites criminal including the Gutenberg Project for carrying materials that resulted in the prosecution of Socrates for essentially the same crime. It is not a viable concept without a definition of harm to children. Given current events, any mention of air bags is not merely harmful to children but lethal to children. -=-=- I have contacted the owner with a problem. It still sends to me but does not receive. Until the mailing list problem is corrected I will try to continue participation this way. Let me know if you have a problem with this method.