Re: S.652 (H.R. 1555)

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

At 10:32 AM 1/9/96 -0500, Don Gaffney wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, Harry Bartholomew wrote:
>
>> 
>>     http://www.cdt.org/policy/freespeech/12_21.cda.html
>> 
>>     This title may be cited as the "Communications Decency Act of 1995".
>> 
>>     Perhaps some of our more lawyerly types can decipher whether
>>     it is getting better or worse as the conference committee chews.
>>     Not I.
>> 
>
>I'm not a lawyer,

No kidding.

> but from what I've read from the WWW site above, it
>seems that only providing "indecent" materials to minors is prohibited.
>I think this is already illegal.

No.  For example, the San Francisco Chronicle can be sold or given to minors
without restriction and yet it has published the word "fuck" on several
occasions.  This is considered "indecent" but not obscene.  Likewise other
newspapers, magazines, and books.  The Supremes have upheld time, place, and
manner restrictions on over-the-air broadcast of indecent material (The
Seven Words You Can't Say on Television), but these restrictions do not
apply to cable or even to broadcast later at night.   

>Broadcasting or sending unsolicited "indecent" materials is also 
>prohibited, but that seems to have always been the case (except that 
>objectionable materials have been called "obscence" rather than "indecent").

Obscene is different from indecent.  What Congress is attempting to do is
apply conventional broadcast TV and radio regulation to the Internet and
other computer networks in spite of the fact that they are not like those
systems and in any case those systems are supposed to be in the process of
being deregulated themselves. 

>There are provisions, as I read it, that protect electronic 
>intermediaries from the acts of the actual publishers of the materials 
>(i.e. an ISP is not responsible for the material of other internet sites
>not under their control).

But the protections are phony because ISPs have to bend over backwards to
block their systems from being used to transmit indecent material.  It just
deputizes them as cops.

DCF

"Frankly, my Dear.  I don't give a damn." -- Indecency, 1939 style.