Re: CDA: The Sequel -- introduced in the U.S. Senate

[Mikhael Frieden <mikhaelf@mindspring.com>]

At 05:01 PM 11/12/97 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>Just when you thought the Internet was safe from government
>censorship, Sen. Dan Coats has introduced a sequel to the
>notorious Communications Decency Act.

>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.

        On the legal side this narrowing has a modest merit in that the
government has established (rightly or wrongly) the power to control
publishers. It is difficult to find a reference to a website that does not
make a reference to publishing. Thus it falls under a reasonable
interpretation of existing law and precident (and distinguished from, the
internet is a telephone as the frozen brains would have it.) 

        The critical problem is obvious, harmful to minors. Tooth decay is
harmful to minors, all product advertising that can be construed as
increasing the incidence of tooth decay is harmful to children. 

        It also brings up the German "I can trump your arguement and invent
a new one" excuse for banning Zundelsite, that it was "ethically
disorienting to children." If one presumes ethical disorientation is a harm
then one has to hold all forms of education that promote independent
thinking are harmful to children. It would therefore make huge numbers of
academic sites criminal including the Gutenberg Project for carrying
materials that resulted in the prosecution of Socrates for essentially the
same crime. 

        It is not a viable concept without a definition of harm to
children. Given current events, any mention of air bags is not merely
harmful to children but lethal to children. 

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