roundtable: ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert - State Bills

roundtable: ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert - State Bills

ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert - State Bills

BEESONA@HRW.ORG
Fri, 19 May 95 17:14:11 EST 

From: BEESONA@HRW.ORG
Date: Fri, 19 May 95 17:14:11 EST
Message-Id: <9504198009.AA800928851@email.hrw.org>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert - State Bills


Posted by:
Ann Beeson
<beesona@hrw.org>


     **ACLU CYBER-LIBERTIES ALERT** 
     
     STOP STATE LEGISLATORS FROM CENSORING ONLINE CONTENT! 
     
     As more and more people sign on to the Internet and 
     commercial online networks, there is a growing panic that 
     online networks are being infiltrated by pedophiles and 
     peddlers of obscenity and child pornography. 
     
     Legislators are proposing severe criminal laws in an effort 
     to purge online networks of these influences.  
     
     Many of you were first made aware of this threat to your 
     civil liberties by the pending federal legislation - the 
     so-called "Communications Decency Act of 1995", proposed by 
     Senator Exon (D-NE) and approved by the Senate Commerce 
     Committee as an amendment to the massive telecommunications 
     reform act now pending in Congress.  
     
     But while online civil libertarians were distracted by their 
     laudable rally against the Exon Bill, state legislators were 
     busy crafting similar bills at home.  
     
     **These state bills, like the federal Exon Bill, raise 
     serious First Amendment and privacy concerns.** 
     
     Legislators are attempting to extend to the online context 
     criminal laws that restrict the following categories of 
     sexually expressive material and behavior:  
     
     -the distribution of "obscene" materials to adults 
     -the distribution of materials deemed "harmful to minors" 
     -the solicitation of children to engage in sexual conduct 
     -the possession and distribution of visual materials 
     produced through the sexual exploitation of children 
     
     Through a lack of understanding about how new interactive 
     technologies work, legislators have managed to craft these 
     laws to prohibit a wide range of constitutionally protected 
     material.  In addition, many of the bills would hold online 
     providers and telecommunications carriers liable for illegal 
     messages transmitted over their networks.
     
     If enacted into law, these vague and overly broad bills 
     could have the following draconian effects:  
     
     * Prohibit communications with sexual content through 
     private e-mail between consenting adults, and inhibit people 
     from making comments that might or might not be prohibited.  
     
     * Require service providers to act as private censors to 
     avoid criminal liability for prohibited material produced by 
     subscribers on their networks.  
     
     * Prevent health care providers from posting sex education 
     materials to online networks.  
     
     To date, the ACLU has located and continues to monitor bills 
     proposed this year in thirteen states:  Alabama, California, 
     Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Montana, New York, 
     Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.  
     The Oklahoma, Montana, and Virginia bills were voted into 
     law in recent weeks.  Bills in Washington, Illinois, New 
     York, and Pennsylvania are moving rapidly through state 
     legislatures.  
     
     ACT NOW: 
     
     * Contact your state legislators and urge them to oppose the 
     state bill.  
     
     * Urge legislators to hold full public hearings to identify 
     the problems and to explore technological alternatives to 
     censorship.  
     
     * Generate online discussion about the threats to civil 
     liberties posed by the state bill.  
     
     * Organize an online "grass roots" effort to stop the bill.  
     
     * Ask your online service provider to publicly oppose the 
     state bill.  
     
     * Write a letter to the editor of your local paper in 
     opposition to the state bill.  Discuss the liberating 
     potential of online technology and provide examples.  
     
     ---------------------------- 
     
     For more information on the pending state bills, visit our 
     gopher site, the ACLU Free Reading Room:  
     
     gopher://aclu.org:6601/1/issues/cyberspace/state
     
     This subdirectory contains the full text of some bills, in 
     addition to ACLU legal analyses of, and letters written to 
     oppose, particular bills.
     
     ============================================================
             "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"
     ============================================================ 
     
     ACLU Free Reading Room
     A publications and information resource of the 
     American Civil Liberties Union National Office 
     gopher://aclu.org:6601
     ftp://ftp.pipeline.com /aclu 
     mail to:infoaclu@aclu.org
     
     ============================================================

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