[24 hrs] Prev| Next| Index Freedom Day: February 22, 1996 Lori Will, West Seattle, Washington, USA More "Filthy" Words [T]he first time I heard about the Communications Decency Act, I laughed smugly, thinking, "We already went though all that decades ago, it will never pass," and patted my fat, self-satisfied, American independence. When I found out that Clinton had signed the bill I thought I was still asleep, then I woke up and find out my worst nightmare had come true. I'm still in shock. I've been a writer, journalist and editor for over twenty years and I realize now that I have been raped of my basic American right: Freedom of Speech. the introduction of the Communications Decency Act the right to speak out will be obliterated. Nowhere, in no other medium are such strict limitations put on expression as on our most profound new mode of communication, the World Wide Web, the network that will tie together every public and personal forum. The potential for gutsy literary journalism, ground-breaking philosophical discussions and never-before-seen artistic expression has all been thrown off a cliff. No other media, not print, not television, not radio, not film has ever been subjected to such intense and prudish restrictions. Now, all of that will change -- because all of those media will be tied explicitly together very soon, meaning that the decision to bar certain forms of expression will involve every aspect of public and personal communication if the Communication Decency Act stays in house. Did we go through it before? Yeah, sure: Book banning, "decency" in visual art, ridiculous film and record ratings, but there were always enough of us to support the original constitutional rights that those smart young pups wrote when our country was founded, reason being that they'd had enough of being tongue-tied back in the old country. But never has an act cut through every aspect of the established communications network like this one. If this act stays, we could be inextricably bound forever, prisoners of a simpering collective, where the voice is theirs, and not ours. The old country... I've been there. I lived in Saudi Arabia back in the Sixties and Seventies, when the magazines and newspapers came to us with big black magic marker Xs and pages torn out. I visited Eastern bloc countries where everyone tried to buy my passport and Levi's. I was caught in war-torn lands, like Lebanon and the Basque country, where even the wrong utterance could leave you in an unmarked grave. I tried to thrive in America's inner cities where the only code of understanding was scrawled on walls, or spilled in gutters. [I'lI never forget the day my grandmother got a television. I was transfixed. 'If only I could just talk back to it,' I thought. Now I can.] grew up in a little coal mining town of 3,000 in southern Utah, another very controlled environment, where the one television station in town was on the air just a few hours in the evening. It wasn't much, but it was all we had besides the town paper. I'll never forget the day my grandmother got a color set, I was transfixed, the Wonderful World of Disney In Color, and of course later it would be the bloody horror of Vietnam. "If only I could just talk back to it," I thought. "If only I could do something more than just sit here and watch it. I want to get inside and then outside, I want it to talk back, answer my questions, take me to a different part of the world, get me away from from here, listen to me, let me talk to that person." Now I can. The Internet gives we the people, for the first time in history, the chance to get inside and go outside -- and any of us who stand by and let the old guard tell us what we can and cannot do are doing a great disservice to humanity. If we stand by and let a bunch of people who just don't understand the ramifications of this new world tell us what is "decent" on-line, we should forever hold our peace... I'm not talking about promoting crude porn: bestiality and snuff snippets on-line. I'm talking journalism, art, personal communication. The act should at least be amended. I live in a great country with the potential to hinder or harm human communication for the entire world. I've lived overseas long enough to know that America set trends and that the world watches. I am publishing an on-line novel, "The White Pages," which true to most literary forms, will include passages that probably will be considered indecent. As a writer and publisher I find this bill intolerable. I could publish this novel on paper because it's considered literature, but on-line, it will be considered "filthy, indecent, lewd and lascivious." As a publisher and writer, I intend to do much more, as I'm sure many others are. [Without American Free Speech, the rest of the world might as well be gagged.] I will fight along with the rest of you to ensure expression on the web doesn't fall in the same trench as works by D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce or J.D. Salinger, just to name a few. Let's stick together and remember that Freedom of Speech is what makes this country work. Without it, we've lost all our power as individuals and without our rights as individuals, we've lost America -- and believe me, without American Free Speech, the rest of the world might as well be gagged. World-wide peace negotiations? More "filthy" words. -- Lori Will, February 22, 1996 [The White Pages] [Eclipse] ----------------------------------------------------------------- [Bulldog Beach Interactive] [Weber's Net Today] [ ]