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- Path: newshost.gu.edu.au!aissande
- From: aissande@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (George Sanderson)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
- Subject: EFF to challenge Telecom Bill in Court
- Date: 9 Feb 1996 12:33:22 GMT
- Organization: Groom Lake Testing Facility
- Message-ID: <4ffeui$bbr@ngriffin.itc.gu.edu.au>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: kraken.itc.gu.edu.au
-
-
- while trying to get to some web pages, all i got was a black screen and a
- link to http://www.eff.org
-
- i found this on their server:
-
- EFF to Challenge Censorship Provisions of the Telecom Bill in Court
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- CONTACTS
-
- Lori Fena, Exec. Dir.
- 415/ 436-933
- lori@eff.org
-
- Mike Godwin, Staff Counsel Shari Steele, Staff Counsel
- 510/ 548-3290 301/ 375-8856
- mnemonic@eff.org ssteele@eff.org
-
-
-
- SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 7, 1996 -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation
- (EFF) today joins the American Civil Liberties Union and several other
- plaintiffs in challenging the censorship provisions of the 1996
- Telecommunications Act. The challenge is based upon the belief that the
- Act contains overly broad and vague restrictions on constitutionally
- protected speech on the Internet.
-
- "I see no Constitutional authority at all for this kind of comprehensive
- legislation," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel at EFF. "Proponents of the
- legislation argue that it is necessary to combat pornography on the
- Internet. However the language in the bill goes far beyond this purpose."
-
- The Act overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress last week and is
- expected to be signed into law Thursday by President Clinton. EFF will be
- both plaintiff and counsel in the complaint to be filed in Pennsylvania
- immediately after the bill is signed.
-
- The complaint will be grounded primarily in what Godwin terms "three
- affronts to the First Amendment." The three basic arguments are as follows:
-
- * Unconstitutional Expansion of Federal Authority. It is inappropriate
- for the Federal Communications Commission or any other federal agency to
- dictate standards for content in a medium where there is no independent
- Constitutional justification for federal regulation, as there has been in
- the broadcast arena and in certain narrow areas of voice telephone
- service. Like newspapers and bookstores, the Internet is fully protected
- by the First Amendment.
-
- * Vagueness and Overbreadth. The terms the act relies on -- "indecency"
- and "patently offensive" -- have never been positively defined by the
- Supreme Court or the Congress, and so create uncertainty as to the scope of
- the restrictions, necessarily resulting in a "chilling effect" on
- protected speech. Moreover, these terms criminalize broad classes of
- speech that are understood to be protected by the First Amendment,
- including material that has serious scientific, literary, artistic,
- political, and cultural value.
-
- * Failure to Use the "Least Restrictive Means" to Regulate Speech. Even
- if there were Constitutional authority for this legislation and even if
- its terms were neither overly broad nor vague, the censorship
- prescriptions built into this legislation cannot survive the Supreme
- Court's "least restrictive means" test. That is, if otherwise-legal
- government regulation of speech content does not minimize its restriction
- of lawful speech, it fails to qualify as the "least restrictive means" of
- implementing the government's goal. Our Bill or Rights requires that such
- regulations be struck down. In addition to these traditional First
- Amendment challenges, the lawsuit also challenges a provision that may
- infringe on speech concerning abortion when that speech takes place online.
-
- In the case of the Internet, the censorship provisions of the
- Telecommunications Reform Act are not the least restrictive means, since
- filtering, rating and labeling technologies and services are already
- available. There already are software tools to help parents shield their
- children from inappropriate material and these tools are vastly more
- flexible and effective than this ill-considered legislation. Unlike the
- censorship provisions, these tools prevent harm to children before it
- happens.
-
- EFF is committed to work to ensure that First Amendment freedoms that
- apply to traditional speech and publication are understood to apply to
- communications in the online world. The organization deplores the fact
- that taxpayer and industry time, money and energy will be consumed by
- this effort, but it is an effort that is essential to preserving the
- Constitutional rights of every American.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
-
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a civil liberties organization
- founded to ensure that individual rights are not abridged in the online
- world. Headquartered in San Francisco, the organization seeks to educate
- the public, industry and government on the issues surrounding online
- communications and to shape policies that protect indicidual rights and
- promote individual responsibility. To learn more about the organization
- and today's issues, visit EFF at http://www.eff.org
-
-