Bruce Taylor vs. John Perry Barlow, in HotWired's Brain Tennis

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 08:17:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Bruce Taylor vs. John Perry Barlow, in HotWired's Brain Tennis

Taylor and Barlow have been battling it out in a HotWired Brain Tennis
match for the last week. Check out some excerpts lobbed across the, um,
neural nets...

-Declan

**********

   Linkname: Wired Online: Brain Tennis            
        URL: http://www.hotwired.com/braintennis/
	
---
	
   Bruce Taylor, president of the National Law Center for Children and
   Families and a leading advocate of the Communications Decency Act, was
   also formerly a US Department of Justice and city of Cleveland       
   prosecutor.
   
   John Perry Barlow is an Electronic Frontiers Foundation co-founder,
   member of The Well's board of directors, author, retired Wyoming  
   cattle rancher, and lyricist for the Grateful Dead. 

---

   Friday, 27 September 1996
   Post No. 5 of 8
   by Bruce Taylor
   
   I got you now, John Perry. You say "First Amendment!" However, not all
   detrimental speech is protected - treason, false advertising,
   defamation, obscenity, child porn, and incitement to violence.
   Indecent speech that's not obscene is protected among adults, but
   there's no constitutional right to provide it to minors. If you call
   up the rule of law ("This is a Nation of laws, not of men"), you are
   bound by its limits.
   
   The Supreme Court recognizes limits for indecent mass communications.
   The Court didn't say "less" restrictive (as the ACLU does - no law,
   less law, parent's problem), but asked whether the method chosen by
   Congress is the "least" restrictive means that is still effective in
   achieving its purpose. Big difference.
   
   State display laws don't say parents keep kids from stores, it says
   stores put porn out of reach. Dial-a-porn laws don't deny phones to   
   kids or say warnings are enough, but require credit cards or PINs for
   adults to access sex messages. Responsible adults should take good
   faith steps that are effective for all but "the most enterprising and
   disobedient young people." Can adults obtain adult speech while
   shielding it from most kids? That is all the law and Supreme Court
   ask.               

   Why ask adult society to help protect our children? Why not just leave
   it up to each parent? Why not rejoice in the public profanities your
   children hear on the subway? Because children have rights to a "decent
   society." Your child may hear cursing on subways, but New York's   
   display law keeps Hustler centerfolds off walls and news racks. So
   you, too, benefit from what other adults must do in deference to your
   children. The Internet should not remain an "adult" bookstore for kids
   any more than Times Squares' should be open to kids.
   
   I also got you on philosophy, dear John. Our "'60s humanitarianism"
   was for social commitment, working together, selfless love for all the
   peoples of the world. Remember? Your refusal to hide your precious
   porn from the public Web seems like callous indifference to what kids
   will endure. To me, your position is appositive to true "liberalism."
   You sound like an elitist technohippie who can take care of his own,
   but doesn't care what kids would see, seek, suffer, or be seduced by.
   You're probably richer than I, maybe even smarter, but your protest  
   has a bit of a whine. The CDA only asks Internet users to shield kids
   so kids can use it, too, and asks industry to give us the means of   
   doing online what we do everywhere else. Use your brain and heart to
   help find the ways, to pressure the techno-industrial complex, to help
   make the Internet safe for kids. Try it, you'll like it.

************
   
   On Friday, Bruce Taylor said "children have rights to a 'decent
   society.'" Today, Barlow replies "You will not be happy until you have
   imposed your moral code on the rest of humanity." Can we expect the 
   world to share the same concept of "decency"? Discuss in Threads....

   Monday, 30 September 1996
   Post No. 6 of 8
   by John Perry Barlow

   Bruce, remember what I said in my first post about shadowboxing? We're
   there, pal. You and I are not talking about the same "place." You're
   talking about physical, walking-around reality within a quaint conceit
   called the United States of America, and I'm talking the seamless and
   global continuity that is cyberspace.    
     
   Now I will confess I misdirected the flow myself by referring to the
   First Amendment. I never should have done that, but I was strangely
   drawn into your reality-distortion field by all that talk about what
   "no one has the right to say." Utterly knee-jerk of me. I apologize.
   
   But here's the terrible truth of it: These obscenity statutes you
   cite, along with the First Amendment itself, are all local ordinances.
   Even the treaty to which you apparently refer offers spotty coverage
   as it has only six official signatories, as far as I can tell. There
   is not a single government on this Earth that has the right to
   regulate the rest of it. For better or worse.
                      
   There are days when I wish there were. Certainly I would be delighted
   if I thought the protections in the Bill of Rights could be afforded
   to all God's children, just as you would no doubt be delighted if the
   sexual-conduct laws of Saudi Arabia could be applied to all
   "enterprising and disobedient young people," wherever their dirty 
   minds be housed. But they can't. And unless the United Nations becomes
   a lot more effective, there will never be a world government
   sufficient to convey such rights or restrictions.
   
   So, should either of us wish to restrict or maintain liberty on the
   Internet, we can't turn to government to assist us. We are stuck with
   governance, which is to say, the order that arises from social
   etiquette, cultural ethics, practicality, and technological        
   architecture.
   
   There is, in fact, plenty of comfort both of us can take from these.
   Since I am, as you charge, a technohippie, I'm convinced that as long
   as the Internet remains a packet-switched network, it will be very
   difficult to control the content of the whole.
   
   On the other hand, as long as there are folks like yourself who wish
   to construct sanitized zones within it, that same technical
   characteristic makes it fairly easy to filter out most of the tainted
   packets and to observe very carefully, as they do at both my
   daughter's high school and in Singapore, who is attempting to get
   what.
   
   We are looking at opportunities for global liberty and local        
   authoritarianism, and that should make us both happy. But you and the
   rest of your kind in the US Congress wish to think locally and act
   globally. You will not be happy until you have imposed your moral code
   on the rest of humanity. And I can imagine few aspirations more
   elitist than that, Bruce.

###