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filthywo.txt
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1996-03-11
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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]
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