---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 08:43:52 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: ALA/ACLU file lawsuit challenging New York "CDA" law [Visit netlynews.com for the rest of the story. Another reason to follow the New York case is that a successful challenge to its "harmful to minors" ban could create a useful precedent in fighting a CDA 2.0, which likely will have such language. --Declan] *********** The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com A Civil (Libertarian) War by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) January 14, 1997 On a frosty winter morning last February, Shabbir Safdar and a gaggle of VTW loyalists trekked to Albany, New York, to protest a state bill that would muzzle the Net. "This was our first time doing any state-level lobbying," Safdar says. "We managed to convince them to take some stuff out of the law." But his efforts didn't stop the measure from wending its way through the legislature: In September, Governor George Pataki signed it into law. Today the ACLU sued New York State in federal court, charging that the law is unconstitutional. New York now takes its place among two dozen states battling similar local legislation that would criminalize certain forms of Net speech. In Georgia, for instance, merely having an anonymous user name could be illegal. Virginia restricts state employees' rights to view sexually explicit material -- college professors who might want to use the Net in, say, an English lit class have to exercise extreme caution. Forget the Communications Decency Act: A kind of civil war is being waged across half the U.S. The ALA v. Pataki lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, involves 14 plaintiffs including the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association Foundation for Free Expression, Panix, Echo and the ACLU. The coalition, which is asking for a permanent injunction, maintains that the law unconstitutionally stifles online speech and unduly interferes with interstate commerce. The law amends the penal code by making it a criminal offense punishable by seven years in prison to distribute pictures or text "which (are) harmful to minors." We here at The Netly News are ardent advocates of free speech, of course -- we held a joint teach-in on the New York law in the fall. So I spoke to Ann Beeson, a staff attorney at the ACLU, who's spent the last year attacking other state laws and the CDA in court. Why should netizens care about this law if they don't live in New York? I asked her. "Because New York can extradite you," she replied. But what if it's not a crime where I live? "It doesn't make a difference," Beeson said. "There's no question that New York could try to extradite you if you put up a web site that has material harmful to minors on it." [...]