Wall Street Journal, 8 Dec 1995 On-Line Society Angered by Plan to Curb Content By Jared Sandberg The latest move in Congress to curb "indecent" material on the Internet triggered outrage and scorn in cyberspace, as on-line users decried it as censorship and plotted ways to overturn it. "Welcome to the age of electronic book burning," said Craig Johnson, a consultant who worries that the term "indecent" could be applied to literary works, publichealth and medical exchanges, and serious discussion of AIDS and sexual behavior. "It's not only ridiculous - it's unfair, un-American and unconstitutional," said Eileen Kent, vice president of new media at Playboy Enterprises Inc. She finds it "incomprehensible" that the on-line version of Playboy could be deemed illegal while the printed magazine isn't. "Are they going to send me to jail and fine me a hundred grand because I put a Playmate on the Net?" she asked. If so, "then I'm quitting." House conferees hammering out a sweeping telecommunciations bill voted 17-16 on Wednesday to make it illegal for anyone to knowingly display indecent material that can be viewed by a minor, punishable by a $100,000 fine and up to two years in prison. Yesterday, critics tried to counter punch. The American Civil Liberties Union is preparing a court challenge on First Amendment grounds. The Center for Democracy and Technology, a cyberspace civil-liberties group, vows to do the same. On-line services drafted a letter of protest to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has opposed earlier attempts to impose restrictions on Internet fare. On-line advocates also are pushing for a new vote by the House conferees to define just what "indecency" means. They are hoping the 17-16 balance of the first vote is tenuous enough to allow them to ease the restrictions in defining the terms. Backed by the hectic lobbying efforts, Rep. Rick White of Washington state, who favors a less-restrictive approach, and allies have begun laboring to devise a limited definition of indecency that would be acceptable to civil libertarians and smut-fighters alike. Without a clearer, limited definition, the "indecency" standard faces the almost certain prospect of being struck down by the courts as unconstitutional, the White forces contend. On-line experts, moreover, argue the latest measure could create big problems and unintended consequences. If one 16- year-old zaps lewd fare to another, could the sender be imprisoned? If an adult makes a racy observation on an electronic bulletin board and a minor tracks it down and reads it, should the adult be punished? Last week, America Online Inc., in an effort to strike vulgarity from members' personal on-line "profiles," decided to strike all uses of the word "breast" - and thereby erased the biographies of scores of women who had breast cancer. AOL "responded to the climate of fear created by Congress," Mike Godwin, legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. An AOL spokeswoman said the deletions were "a mistake on our part." Robert L. Smith, executive director of the Interactive Services Association, said such snafus could occur more and more as Internet access providers fret about whether their so-called content might be deemed indecent. "It's going to cause confusion, industry uncertainty and years of litigation, which will result in Congress not solving the problems they wanted to solve," Mr. Smith said. The crackdown effort, moreover, may be fruitless in a global computer network that reaches more than 150 countries. "Those American laws don't apply to me," said Patrick Groeneveld, a professor at Delft University in the Netherlands. Mr. Groeneveld, who once ran a popular Internet archive that included pornographic material, said Congress's efforts amount to U.S. "imperialism." "I didn't vote for America's congressmen," he said. "Legislators and some consumers don't understand the Internet," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "So, it becomes an easy target for political posturing." -- Albert R. Karr contributed to this article.