EDITORIAL: BIG BROTHER
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
-- First Amendment of the United States Constitution
Enter the 104th Congress of the United States of America.
Exit the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 that President William J. Clinton signed into law last Thursday is, for all intents and purposes, a very good bill, but Section 502 of the act, commonly referred to as the Communications Decency Act, is, quite frankly, a farce and an outright breach of the First Amendment.
After the bill was signed, a mass movement swept the country where individuals as well as corporations (Netscape for one) turned their pages black and their text white in protest. The Thresher was a proud member of that movement. The Thresher may in fact have a more vested interest in the act than most journalistic publications due to the unique nature of the Backpage.
For you see, the bill says that the laws which have governed print journalism for so many years do not govern Internet publications and material. While the Internet is definitely a hybrid of television and print media, publications on the Internet should be governed by the same laws as their printed version.
To say that an organization is liable for anything that could be called indecent that is readily accessible to children under the age of 18 is just flat wrong. The laws governing obscene materials in print media have been backed up by so many court decisions that you can't even count them easily. But apparently, this history and precendence has been lost on the 104th Congress.
Almost anything can be argued to be indecent since no guidelines exist for the determination of indecent materials. In that respect, everything from discussing abortion to the "We hate Barney" newsgroup to a publication with one curse word could be held liable.
Luckily, someone in Congress actually has the brains to realize that Congress overstepped its bounds. If they hadn't, the CDA would have been the biggest blight on the United States' record of freedom and democracy in the modern era. Ninety-five percent of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 truly is good, but without the line item veto, President Clinton had to sign the bill into law in order to get the good legislation moving.
Fortunately for Clinton and the congressmen who passed the bill 505-21, two senators have stepped forward to battle the constitutional violations presented by the bill. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced an amendment into the Senate that would repeal Section 502, a section of the bill encouraged and introduced by Senator James Exon (D-Neb.), and reinstate the previous section which appeared in the Telecommunications Act of 1934. If the amendment is not passed or if Chief Justice William Rehnquist and his fellow Supreme Court justices don't declare the law unconstitutional, it will be a sad day for freedom. A sad day indeed.
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the February 16, 1996 issue.
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