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1996-06-16
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Computer underground Digest Sun Jun 16, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 46
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #8.46 (Sun, Jun 16, 1996)
File 1--CDA lawsuit the Pentagon Papers of cyberspace, sez Reuters
File 2--ACLU Press Conference on CDA
File 3--Exon Press Release/Statement on CDA Decision
File 4--Dalzell on broadcast v. net metaphor
File 5--President Clinton's Statement on the CDA Decision
File 6--ALA applauds CDA victory, "a historic case"
File 7--OPPOSITION: FRC on CDA Decision
File 8--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 7 Apr, 1996)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 18:33:38 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: File 1--CDA lawsuit the Pentagon Papers of cyberspace, sez Reuters
I think it was Marc Rotenberg from EPIC who said at Wednesday's CDA press
conference in DC that this was the Times v. Sullivan of cyberspace. The
attached Reuters article now compares our lawsuit to the Pentagon Papers
case...
-Declan
---------- Forwarded message ----------
NEW YORK (Reuter) - As official Washington from President
Clinton on down attacked a court ruling blocking censorship in
cyberspace, the 25th anniversary of a momentous clash on press
freedom passed almost unnoticed Thursday.
It was on June 13, 1971 that the New York Times began
publishing details of the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page secret
official history of the U.S. role in the Vietnam War that many
said proved that successive presidents misled the American
people on the course of the war.
For two days, President Richard Nixon let the Times print
embarrassing disclosures about the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy
and Johnson administrations. Then he sent his lawyers to court
to stop further stories, saying they would cause ``irreparable
injury to the defense interests of the United States.''
It was the first time in U.S. history that a president tried
to exercise prior restraint on a newspaper and a New York judge
issued a restraining order on the Times. Within days, the
Washington Post obtained a copy of the papers and began
publishing. When a court stopped it as well, newspapers in
Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and St. Louis began publishing. The
issue went to the Supreme Court, which sided with press freedom.
A quarter of a century later, while historians, press
critics and participants still argue over the Pentagon Papers, a
new freedom of speech issue is expected to head to the Supreme
Court -- whether it is constitutional for the government to slap
curbs on indecent material on the Internet.
[...]
David Rudenstine, a New York law professor and author of
''The Day the Presses Stopped,'' a new account of the Pentagon
Papers, says the battle between the Times and other newspapers
and the government became a high water mark for democracy. At
the same time it laid the foundation for the destruction of the
Nixon administration.
[...]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:01:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mark Mangan <mmangan@pencom.com>
Subject: File 2--ACLU Press Conference on CDA
ACLU Press Conference
June 12
=================================
The Conference
NEW YORK CITY-- The ACLU held a press conference this morning to
announce the victory in its suit contesting the constitutionality
of the CDA. The win is embodied in a 216 page decision which reflects
the three-judge panel's 3-0 thumbs down to a half-baked ban on indecency.
Chris Hansen, lead counsel for the ACLU, described the decision as a
"resounding victory," calling the CDA "an unconstitutionally bad idea."
Statements were also made by ACLU attorney Marjorie Heins and ACLU
Executive Director Ira Glasser, as well as several of the plantiffs
in the case. When the press asked about children and how to protect
them from looking at all the smut, Hansen pointed to the service providers
such as AOL and Prodigy, as well as the existing blocking software such
as Surfwatch. He essentially stressed that the freedom and responsibility
associated with this powerful medium should be placed with the parents.
Glasser offered an interesting world view, as he declared this
a "bogus issue." He said he has four kids and "the question of
how to raise children is a parental problem which no law should address."
In response to a worrisome assertion that kids having a better understanding
of computers, he pointed out that "kids who are sophisticated today will
be parents tomorrow." When asked about the problem of rogues stirring
up problems with anonymous postings, Glasser said "this is not a new
issue," recalling the pamphlets in colonial America and such anonymously
penned works as the Federalist Papers. Anonymous, free speech is valued
in the American tradition, he argued--it's not a new problem served up by
the Internet
The government lawyers have 20 days to file an appeal. If the Supreme
court doesn't laugh in their face and tell them to piss-off, the
case would presumably reach the highest court in the land sometime
next fall.
================================
Some Good Quotes
The decision of the court includes 80 pages of Findings of Fact,
as well as a lengthy opinion from each of the judges.
The ACLU press release, written by Emily Whitfield, picked out
some of the best quotes.
Judge Dalzell: "Cutting through the acronyms and argot that littered
hearing testimony, the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending
worldwide conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt
that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet
developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental
intrusion."
Judge Buckwalter: "I continue to believe that the word 'indecent' is
unconstitutionally vague, and I find that the terms 'in context' and
'patently offensive' are also so vague as to violate the First and Fifth
Amendments."
Judge Sloviter: "The bottom line is that the First Amendment should not
be interpreted to require us to entrust the protection it affords to the
judgement of prosecutors. Prosectors come and go ... the First Amendment
remains to give protection to future generations as well."
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:29:59 -0400
From: Bob Palacios <bobpal@cdt.org>
Subject: File 3--Exon Press Release/Statement on CDA Decision
For Release, Wednesday, June 12, 1996
EXON ISSUES STATEMENT ON COURT RULING ON DECENCY ACT
Washington, D.C. -- U.S. SENATOR JIM EXON (D-NE), issued the following
statement today after the court ruling in Philadelphia on the Exon-Coats
Communications Decency Act:
"The Communications Decency Act makes it illegal to transmit or make
available indecent material to children. From the beginning, we felt that
the best chance for a considered opinion would be in the U.S. Supreme Court
and that's where the final decision will be made. We are still a land of
laws and courts and while I do not agree with the judges' decision today, I
respect their right to make it. The court has taken the ACLU line that
anything goes on the Internet, even though that overlooks well-established
laws protecting children from pornography
in other areas. The Decency Act stands for the premise that it is wrong to
provide pornography to children on computers just as it is wrong to do it
on a street corner or anywhere else. Hopefully, reason and common sense
will prevail in t