
“…Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive… it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…” (“Declaration” 1). When the founding fathers of the United States wrote these words they must have been looking through a crystal ball into the future - into today. As the United States fumbles into the twenty-first century it is faced with many political dilemmas. The limitations of the First Amendment, and if it applies to the Internet, is one of the most heated controversies facing politics today. As society becomes more dependent on the Internet for communication, it has becomes a virtual war zone for politicians and political agendas. The debate over freedom on the Internet has been intense since the passing and then overturning of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996. Since then, there have been several other laws enacted to make the Internet safer for the general population. Two of the biggest and most noted of these laws were the Child Protection Act of 1998 (COPA) and the Safe Schools Act of 1999. All three of these acts have been contested on the grounds that they infringe on the Right to Free Speech accorded to all United States citizens by the Constitution. Still the government does not give up. As the government attempts to protect children on the Internet, they are inhibiting the Right of Free Speech to the adults of the United States.
The Right to Free Speech is given to American citizens under the pretense that they can be somewhat regulated by the government . Provisions within the Constitution allow laws to be passed which impede the Rights of the First Amendment. In order for these laws to be passed they must meet Content Neutral conditions. Content Neutral restrictions can only be put on the “time, place, and manner of speech, not on the content therein (Jasper 7)”. This standard is important to the fight for Internet freedoms. Most laws being passed regarding the Internet are against content, not against the time, place, or manner in which it is done. This does not meet Content Neutral restrictions, and, therefore, makes restricting the Internet illegal by First Amendment standards.
The current debate in the courts regards how the Internet should be restricted, if at all. In many places, the Internet is winning the battle for Free Speech. In 1997 the Supreme Court ruled that even though the Web is a ²¢unique and wholly new medium,’ in the end … its functions are not so different from the kind of the communications that led to the First Amendment in the first place”(Biskupic 2). The driving force behind all legislation regarding the Internet is being pushed on the platform that the Government is trying to assure the safety of young children, not the fundamental right that is guaranteed to American citizens. As these acts overlook the fundamental rights of the American public, they trample on one of the building blocks of modern society.
The safety of children is a concern of every generation, and every generation takes the duty of protecting the youth to the extreme. In the overreaction to the evil’s of the Internet parents and politicians have pushed the regulation of the Internet to the point of being “the constitutional and practical equivalent of book burning”. (Jewell 2) Prior to World War II, the idea of book burning became a very harsh reality because Hitler felt that “UN-German” ideas were going to poison the mind of the pure Aryan people. (“Nazi” 1) The burning of books in Germany was a travesty. Some of the worlds greatest writers’ works’ were burned, because they did not match the beliefs of the Nazi Party. This same principle applies to the censorship of the Internet. As people find things in literature, or on the net, that is seen as inappropriate it becomes their duty to take away the offensive material to make the world safe for everyone once again. This principal has been seen in history over and over again. From the Nazi’s burning books to the American government banning books. In the mid 1990’s it became the Internet’s turn to fight for the right to be heard.
The debate over freedom of speech on the Internet began in 1996, with the Communications Decency Act. Supporters of the CDA said that the Internet was a free-for-all of indecent material, that it was too readily available to minors, and that all forms of indecent speech on the Internet must be abolished (Godwin 263). For the sake of legal pursuits a minor is considered someone under the age of eighteen; this is an issue unto itself. Karen R. Bassett, a Clinical Social Worker from Indiana, says “It is difficult to set an arbitrary age and say that a person who is 17 and 364 days old is somehow exploited by something that would magically not be considered exploitation the next day.” The idea that laws are being made to protect children is fine, but there really is nothing to say if someone is a child or not. In criminal law, ten year olds have been tried as adults for crimes because of the malice behind it. The same kind of blurred line is apparent in this segment of law.
The published goal of the CDA was to make the Internet a safer place for children and families. In trying to prove that the Internet is evil and responsible for the corruption of young minds, supporters of the CDA noted all the information on the Internet they deemed “indecent” (Barbour 128). This became the biggest problem which faced the CDA because there is no lawful definition of what is considered indecent material. Certain interest groups were getting involved and pushing the lines of indecent material further and further. Due to interference from these groups, the term indecent was expanded to cover everything from erotic email to safe sex web sites to online copies of Catcher In The Rye (Epstein 2). This broad definition of indecent gave the American Civil Liberties Union the fuel needed to jump in and easily overturn the act. . The CDA was declared unconstitutional, by a Supreme Court judge in the court case American Civil Liberties Union vs. Reno in 1996.
Professor Nadine Strossen, head of the ACLU starting in 1991, later explained that the ACLU “is not pursuing an expansion of First Amendment Rights,” but they are trying to, “stop the government from going beyond what would be perfectly legal if it were printed material”. (Jewell 2) The ruling of ACLU v. Reno did just that. The ruling of this case “basically gave the Internet the same protection accorded to books and other printed materials”.(Jasper 57). The overturning of the CDA was a great triumph for the Free Speech on the Internet. It set up the standards by which other Internet freedom cases would be tried.
The CDA is not the only act which has been passed in order to help protect children from the evils of the Internet. Since then, there have been two major acts passed into law which have been based on the same principles as the CDA. The first of these two acts is the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), which has been dubbed by the media to be the CDA, part two (Jasper 57). Title I of this act says that all material which is found to be harmful to minors on any commercial site is prohibited. The second part of this act says that it is illegal for the operators of web sites, or of online services which are geared toward children under thirteen years of age, to attempt to collect any personal information from a child (“Child” 3). The premise of this law would inhibit adult use of many public Internet servers because most are geared towards people under the age of thirteen. The Child Online Protection Act was attacked on the same premise as the Communications Decency Act, and as of November 4, 1999 the case was still in court.
The basic premise that there is no legal definition of inappropriate or harmful was the Achilles heel of both the CDA and COPA. Had the choice of words been different it is doubtful that either of these acts would have been attacked by the ACLU and other First Amendment Rights associations. While both acts were geared towards the protection of children, it still hindered the ability of law abiding adults to use the Internet for personal use. Under the provisions of the CDA or COPA any web site which makes reference to sex, or sexuality is considered illegal. These provisions would include web sites on safe sex, women’s health issues and even sites some psychological sites that deal with victims of rape, or domestic abuse. Both of these acts were too broad in the scope of the Internet and danced all over the First Amendment.
In 1999 yet another act was passed to assist in protecting children who use the Internet. This was The Safe Schools Internet Act of 1999. This act requires all school and library computer which have Internet access to have software which filters or blocks material which is deemed appropriate for minors. It also required all schools and libraries to inform the Federal Communications Commission before changing or removing the software from their systems (Jasper 58). This act set up the concept of the Internet baby-sitter. Now there are several commercial software companies which work in filtering and blocking software for home use, as well as for business use. These software programs affect not only the children who use the computers in public school and libraries, but also the teachers and other adults who need to make use of the technology in both of these places.
One common source of Internet filtering is that one pays a subscription fee to a service which maintains a file of “indecent” web sites. The company then sets up your software to deny sites which are deemed inappropriate. This software will only deny sites which have already been seen and noted by advisors to the company regulating the system. This system is generally used by school systems. School computer systems need to keep the children using them safe, there is no doubt about this, but it also needs to allow for their teachers to use the Internet as the tool it is. Many educational web sites would be considered indecent because of the material it shows. Web sites about the German concentration camps during World War II might come to be blocked cause there are pictures of camp inmates who are female and not wearing a shirt. The text on the web page could have been very useful, but because of one picture someone, somewhere may have decided it was inappropriate and so the education of an entire student body suffers.
Not only do these systems affect the Internet usage of adults, blocking software is usually ineffective. John-Michael Basset, Senior Network Consultant for Angus-Hamer Networking, Inc., says, “There are ways around any method of Internet regulation … with some software you are depending on the site to say ‘HEY!, I’m a dirty web site,’…and with other software it only looks for words, not graphics.” J.M. Basset later explained, “If I was to throw up a handful of X-rated pictures onto the web without any text it would pass right by any of the filtering software now currently in use.” Most forms of filtering software are “about 99% affective in keeping unwanted material from reaching a the computer screen of an eight year old, ” according to J.M. Basset. The only way to keep inappropriate web sites away from children is to supervise them while using the World Wide Web; no software can substitute good old fashioned adult supervision.
Due to these Internet blocking laws, the Internet is being hindered as a research tool to those who cannot gain access at home. The restrictions of the Internet are not limited to the public schools, but can also be seen in the library systems. Librarians were finding people were not using the Internet as a purely educational resource and so laws were passed in several places requiring libraries to filter “inappropriate” material. In Denver, Colorado, the Denver area library systems are enforcing regulations on inappropriate computer use by restricting access to chat rooms and e-mail. In Weld County the public library is considering installing more extensive software on their computers due to one patron’s book marking obscene web sites on a public terminal. James LaRue, the library director from Douglas County said, “I envision a hopeless role of a librarian going though sites looking for pornography to stamp it all out … In the name of decency, people are asking librarians to cripple the Internet as a resource tool” (Wheeler 2). Some people may argue that any site which may be deemed inappropriate is not a resource for educational purposes. In higher education, this is not always the case.
On the college level, many people who are taking medical or psychological courses may be required to do research on human sexuality. If restrictions are allowed on the computers in libraries, students may find web sites which had been helpful previously are no longer available because they have been deemed “inappropriate” by some unseen force. The loss of precious resources would inhibit many students ability to perform well on long term projects and papers. J.M. Basset says one of his customers, Gavlin College: “The college has actively resisted deploying any filtering technology because at a college level it is up to course teachers to decide what is or is not appropriate for the information being covered.” He later commented that in college there are times when, “playboy.com would be perfectly acceptable, whereas espn.com would not be.” Restricting the information available to the older parts of a generation is just wrong. The government should not be able to dictate what information is acceptable for viewing by adults.
Although the main reason for the attempted
censorship is the protection of children, law makers seem to be overlooking the
fact that there are many responsible adults who also use the Internet. The
assumption that all people who are on the Internet are looking at pornography,
or are plotting a government conspiracy is preposterous. Many people use the
Internet for respectable reasons, and the government should not punish these
individuals because of the asinine behaviors of certain groups. Free Speech and
the First Amendment will never truly be safe until the government realizes that
“at the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental
importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest
and concern” (Harrison 150).
Works Cited
Bassett, John-Michael. Email Interview. 6 March 2000.
Bassett, Karen. Email Interview. 12 March 2000.
Barbour, Scott . Free Speech. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc. 2000.
Biskupic, Joan. “In shaping of Internet Law, First Amendment Is Winning.” Washington Post.
12 September 1999:A2.
“Child Online Protection Act”. Electronic Privacy Information Center. 2 March 2000
<http://www.epic.org/free_speech/censorship/copa.html>.
“The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives and Records Administration.
16 March 2000 <http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/declaration.html>.
Epstein, Aaron. “Federal panel strikes down Communications Decency Act.” Philadelphia
Inquirer 12 June 1996.
Godwin, Mike. Cyber Rights - Defending Free Speech on the Digital Age. New York: Times
Books 1998.
Harrison, Maureen and Steve Gilbert. Landmark Decisions of the United States Supreme Court II.
California: Excellent Books 1992.
Jasper, Margaret C. The Law of Speech and the First Amendment. New York: Oceana
Publication, Inc.1999.
Jewell, Tim. “ACLU president offers challenge to “Cyber censorship.” The Blade 26 February 1999.
Nazi Book Burning A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust 1 January 2000. 27 March 2000.
<http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/Holocaust/gallery/01622.htm>.
Wheeler, Sheba R. “Internet addicts pose library dilemma. Restrictions weighed as porn appears.” The Denver Post 13 March 1997: A-01.