Just when you thought the Internet was safe from government censorship, Sen. Dan Coats has introduced a sequel to the notorious Communications Decency Act.

Oh joy.

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. ^^^^^^^^^

What defines a "web site?" "The World Wide Web" originally meant "material accessible using the HyperText Transfer Protocol." The media and Klintonkov distorted the term into something else, but that's what the term still means. USENET newsgroups do not become "Internet chat groups" just because the clueless sheeple start calling them that. Of course this is how the government thinks. If I make a posting to USENET did I post the material on a "web site?" If I make the material accessible via ftp is it posted on a "web site?" What if it's available using FSP? How about IRC? What about a Bob's Proprietary Pornography Transfer Protocol? How are they going to track this? What happens when I post this material on an Eternity server outside of the U.S.? What if I just keep posting my porn through the remailer network? What if the porn site is in Amsterdam? What if I just get tired of the totalitarians and double-blind the entire process using the remailer network and while I'm at it I accept anonymous payment? What if I bring my porn into a public computer lab and upload it somewhere without any identification or with a psuedonym? Is the P.Q.R.T. (Pornography Quick Response Team) going to bust through the door before I've done this, which takes all of about 30 seconds? What happens when people start posting such porn to sci.chem? What about sci.crypt or alt.christnet? What about misc.legal? comp.org.eff.talk? news.groups?

Like the original CDA, it's certain to be controversial. Sen. Coats (R-Indiana), chief GOP sponsor of the original CDA, said his bill takes into account the Supreme Court's unanimous vote in June that struck down his first try. "I have studied the opinion of the Court and come before my colleagues today to introduce legislation that reflects the parameters laid out by the Court's opinion," he said on the Senate floor. (ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c105/s1482.is.txt)

Is this bill available on the "World Wide Web?" I would argue that reading this bill is "harmful to minors" because it completely ignores the Constitution of the United States. Further, it encourages people to lie, cheat, violate oaths of office, and generally abuse power. Senator Coats, what an example for America's youth!

Coats' brainchild is strikingly similar to (and in fact not as broad as) an ill-fated version of the first CDA that Rep. Rick White (R-Wash.) and the Center for Democracy and Technology embraced as a "compromise" in December 1995. Like Coats' bill, the White-CDT measure restricted material that was "harmful to minors." (http://www.epic.org/cda/hyde_letter.html)

A Coats staffer said the measure requires adult pornographers to place images behind a firewall. "If you're involved in the commercial distribution of material that's harmful to minors, you have to take the bad stuff and put it on the other side of a credit card or PIN number," David Crane said.

What happens when they say "this material must be put behind a firewall?" Do I comply with the letter of the law if I firewall some random port like 49554? What if I firewall everything except port 80? What if I use a dedicated box as a network router and firewall? These things are all "firewalls." Who determines what is a "valid firewall?" Microsoft? A Coats staffer? A credit card company? What happens when these credit card numbers are sent all over the network in the clear? As it stands now you usually send a credit card number when you want to buy something. What they want here is for everybody to go send credit card numbers all over the net just to view free previews and get to text-based information. And, of course, since we have to protect society from the Four Horsemen, these credit card numbers will likely be sent in the clear or using encryption which can be cracked by a college student running a distributed cracker at idle priority on each of the several hundred machines in a lab. And getting even *one* credit card number is worth a lot. What prevents me from setting up a bogus site which asks for credit card numbers to view some nudie pictures I pulled off USENET or other sites and just storing the credit card numbers? How many of these people access just one porn site so it would be that easy to track? How can anybody prove that's what I did? Once handing credit card numbers out is as second nature as SSNs, all bets are off. And what happens when Little Johnny goes and gets Daddy's credit card and uses the number as ID? If they aren't charging, this probably won't be showing up on an invoice. And Little Johnny has plausible deniability anyway. What about stolen credit card numbers? Who determines what is "material harmful to minors?" Coats? The Supreme Court? Psychologists? Scientologists? Klitonkov? The United Nations? My hamster? Duncan McLeod of the Clan McLeod? Who? Well, I guess this outlaws any meaningful political discussions, discussions of abortions, any meaningful social discussions, any meaningful discussions about sex or romance, any discussions about the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, any discussions of firearms, any discussions of hand-to-hand combat, any discussions of self defense, any discussions of guerilla warfare, any discussions of pyrotechnics, any discussions about chemistry, lists like BUGTRAQ where exploits are posted, et cetera ad nauseum. All of those things might be considered "harmful to minors." Damn the Constitution and freedom! If it saves the life of one innocent yet incredibly stupid child then just forget about that pesky freedom thing. After all, that's only the domain of "far right-wing nazi gun nuts and radicals," right?

But the bill applies to more than just visual pornography. Its definition of material that could hurt minors includes any offensive sexual "communication" or "writing" without redeeming value. It applies to text-only web pages -- or bookstores that place sample chapters on the web.

Yeah! Go Senate! Go ahead and ban any digital copies of books like 1984 (oh the irony!), digital versions of the Christian Bible, the Torah, et cetera ad nauseum.

Since it covers anyone who "through the World Wide Web is engaged in the business of the commercial distribution of material that is harmful to minors," it could apply to Internet providers and online services as well.

How are they going to enforce this one? Mandate that sites only serve "government certified safe" or "independantly certified safe" sites? Turn off all phone and network access, jam all radio and sattelite communications, and legislate that anybody caught with a laser capable of communications or floppy disks with files on them which might contain stegoed data will be summarily executed?

The FCC and the Department of Justice would be required to publish on their web sites "such information as is necessary to inform the public of the meaning of the term `material that is harmful to minors.'" Solveig Singleton, a lawyer at the Cato Institute, says: "The Supreme Court struggled for years to come up with a national defintion of obscenity. They failed. Harmful to minors is obscenity-lite. The FCC and Department of Justice won't have any luck coming up with a definition of obscenity-lite."

Not a problem, predicts former porn-prosecutor Bruce Taylor, now the head of the National Law Center for Children and Families. "This bill will ensure that the hardcore pornographers don't get off the hook," he says.

"This bill will ensure that our freedoms are further eroded."

Next step for Coats is to attract co-sponsors and to forward his bill to the Senate Commerce committee. Some judges criticized Congress for holding no hearings on the original CDA; Coats isn't going to make that mistake again. "There will be a concerted effort to build a substantial legislative history," says David Crane.

This bill won't be the end of Congressional interest in cyberporn. "You'll probably see other legislation come forward. Introducing this is not abandoning our other concerns," Crane says.

-Declan

My fellow Cypherpunks, what we have here is best explained by an analogy like this: The government decides that the youth of America is corrupting themselves and harming their health by drinking soft drinks. The Congress introduces legislation to outlaw softdrinks. Everyone except the National Law Center for Fruit and Vegetables and some other far flung totalitarians think that this legislation is rediculous and an unreasonable restriction of rights. It passes anyway. It goes to the Supreme Court and the Court shoots it down. Two years later Congress again tries to outlaw soft drinks. Since outlawing of soft drinks en masse was not allowed by the Supreme Court, they just outlaw Coke. This passes. People start drinking Mountain Dew and JOLT instead. The Justice Department brings charges against these drinkers, the people who manufactured it, the people who sold it to them, and the truck drivers who shipped it. It goes to court and the defendants claim that the law wasn't broken. The State says that the law was indeed broken because "everybody refers to soft drinks as Coke." This, of course, begs the question of why, if "Coke" is a synonym for "soft drinks" they passed a law after the Supreme Court clearly stated that they couldn't do such. If "Coke" is not a synonym for "soft drink" then they have no charge against these people. Welcome to the Land of the Freeh.