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

[Anonymous <nobody@REPLAY.COM>]

>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.