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The Cartoon Decency Act? from the Netly News
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 08:05:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: The Cartoon Decency Act? from the Netly News
***********
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1055,00.html
The Netly News Network
June 13, 1997
The Cartoon Decency Act?
by Declan McCullagh ([email protected])
We all know what threats confront our children today: War.
Hunger. Poverty. Ignorance. But animated cartoon characters on the
Net?
Actually, the Center for Media Education and its allies ignored
the others and just zeroed in on the looming menace of Net-toons
yesterday during the Federal Trade Commission's interminable privacy
hearings. CME's Shelley Pasnik warned, "Animated product
spokescharacters are coming into our childrens' computers... Parents
are deeply troubled by the intrusive nature of the online [world]
coming into our homes." Hadn't she read Kurt Anderson's editorial in
The New Yorker this week, that the onslaught of 'toons signals a
cultural renaissance in the U.S.? Doh!
The Center for Media's alarums sound familiar. Supporters of the
notorious Communications Decency Act cried that "pornography is coming
into our home computers" and used the same excuse of "protecting
children" to justify passing the law.
[...]