TNA-GOLD 1/TNA-GOLD - Volume 1.iso/24hours/essay1.txt

Text File | 1996-03-11 | 7KB | 107 lines

                             [Citizen's Arrest]
                         For 24 Hours of Democracy

Approximately two years ago, there had barely been talk of government
regulation of the Internet; most, including me, considered it unthinkable.
Now, it is a reality. There have been rants about it all over USENET; many
people, including myself, are unhappy that this is being forced upon them.
I thought that the communications decency act didn't have a chance of even
being considered before congress. I thought that those words written down
centuries ago still meant something to someone in our capital, but I
suppose I should have seen it coming as everyone else did: The sixth
amendment, the fourth amendment, the second amendment, and most recently,
the first amendment have all been taken away. We signed all the petitions
against it; not one congressman looked. We all put the blue ribbon on our
pages; not one saw. We all turned our pages black; it didn't matter. The
students at EDU sites and web authors are furious. The USENET groups are in
almost complete consensus about this bill. The rest of the population,
while somewhat concerned, are for the most part simply being led without
questioning, as the led are wont to do.

The problems are already being encountered less than a day after it is
being signed into law. The ACLU is fighting the government, as they always
do, attempting to get the law repealed as being unconstitutional. Many
sites on the web are being forced off because content is illegal, a very
frightening concept, including the content of several nonprofit
organizations, most interestingly a site bringing the attention to prison
rape.

I loved the Internet before the Communications Decency Act. On my favorite
USENET newsgroups, I enjoyed the privilege of knowing that I could say
whatever I want whenever I wanted, and I used that privilege quite often.
Conversation was spontaneous. Conversation was sincere. I could post a list
of words that the AOL Terms of Service staff scans for in material without
worrying about the consequences. I could tell people in the flame groups
that I frequent what I really thought of them and their opinions, and
similarly they told me what they thought of me and mine. It was great fun
for all involved. I could post material on my web page unadulterated from
outside sources, even if they had "naughty words" in them, since they were
often key to the context.

Now the Internet is regulated. I compile info for my web page; people's
furious rants which I would previously leave unadulterated I now leave a
[...] in place of banned words to signify that there was some text being
skipped; I often have to write in parenthesis my own words to protect the
context. I write a post to USENET; I scan it over to make sure that people
that disagree with me wouldn't have grounds for prosecuting because I dared
mention abortion or quoted activist Lenny Bruce. Why? So that the Internet
can be safe for children. How does this bill accomplish that? Do these new
rules solve any of the problems, either real or imagined, that regulation
supporters say we have? How does making it illegal to say "fuck" stop
underground child porn trade? How does making it illegal to say "ass" do
anything but make a mockery of public discussion and information provision?
Is a law that merely services as the silencing and constraint of public
debate really the answer? This is not security, this is enforced reticence!
This law is merely symbolic, solving none of the problems but giving the
illusion of doing so; I don't like having to be a fake in my writings or
clip quotations to comply with a token law, and I don't think that anyone
else does either. They're words that the congress is banning. Whether a
person uses these words effectively or abusively is that person's decision,
but not giving the people the choice is harm done far worse than if a child
knows the meaning of the word "asshole."

There are, inevitably and rightly, a small group of people that support
this law. As someone that has a web page that is anti censorship in nature,
I seem to be one of their favorite targets. One of them talked to me,
saying that the CDA was not as bad as it was made out to be. He argued
semantics of legal clauses (my, we are a society in love with such things,
aren't we?), citing specifically the bill and the bill alone, loosing sight
of the situation overall. I didn't try to argue with him, since it is
useless to argue with one that has already made up his mind if the conflict
will not serve some other purpose. What this person didn't seem to realize
(or actively supports, perhaps) is the government's inclination and
willingness to run our lives. These are all small steps in a long staircase
that we're making, yet there are so many, and no one knows if we're
climbing upward into heaven, or downwards into hell; whenever we do reach
wherever we're going, most humans will no longer have the intelligence or
will to truly know the difference. Some say that the dog was the first
animal domesticated by man. It was rather the humans. Unfortunately, as
humans, sometimes once we get started we never know where to stop. I think
we're about a few thousand years too late of finally crossing the line and
saying "no more."

My concern is, of course, not primarily that we can't say "dumbass" anymore
without being subject to fine and imprisonment, but rather the spirit of
the people behind the desks of the congress houses making these decisions
and passing this new law with only five of them opposing it. My concern is
rather a concern over the indifferent attitude of the US government towards
the constitution and the attitude towards the rights that that document is
supposed to protect... the attitude of a government that passed a law that
is clearly antithetical with everything that the first amendment of the
constitution is supposed to stand for. Are they truly representative if
they can pass a law with overwhelming majority which the millions that the
law will effect vehemently oppose? They know nothing of the Internet aside
from what the newspapers tell them, and what the newspapers tell them about
the problems are either exaggerated, made up, or misrepresented by
ambitious journalists, who, finding a rather uninteresting story, blow it
out of proportion. How can our congress truly make an informed decision?
Let those that the law effects decide, not the ignorant. Do not
misunderstand; I call upon our leaders in this way not to criticize them,
but rather to help them remember what they have forgotten. It is far past
time for us as citizens to remind government unknowing acting as criminals
of what they're supposed to stand for, and even more importantly, why.

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Copyright ⌐ 1996, Tom Finley ([e-mail]), all rights reserved.