* Arts Censorship * The Internet * Pornography * Prostitution

The Free Speech Pamphlet Series: The Internet
The Internet is a global, cooperative linking of computer networks inexpensively connecting millions of users in more than 150 countries. These networks transmit technical information, business and personal mail, software programs, and images (as well as interactive discussions). No company or country owns the Internet; no company or country controls it. This free and free-wheeling exchange of information has raised questions of control -- who should determine, and how, what is allowed on this powerful communication? As a result, bills have been proposed in Congress to ban such disparate things as information about explosives, "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent" messages, "politically incorrect" speech, and anonymous messages intended to "annoy." Some of these, such as obscenity, would be illegal in print or broadcasting. Others, such as messages that annoy, are clearly illegal. As of July, 1995, six states passed laws restricting online speech and similar laws were being considered in nine other states.

1. Don't we need some laws to protect children from obscenity and child pornography on the Internet?

• The Supreme Court has held that neither obscenity nor child pornography is legal, protected by the First Amendment. Both are targeted by federal criminal law, from which the Internet is not exempt.
  
  
• The vast majority of the material on the Internet is not obscene. It is legally and ethically inconsistent to hold Internet users criminally responsible for displaying words or ideas that are not illegal in print. Sexual discussion and images represent less than 1% of Internet traffic. Most of this material is commercial sexual bulletin boards that charge fees and require proof of age (usually a driver's license), are not easy to find, and need fairly knowledgeable operators to download their images. It is not possible for children -- or their parents -- to access them accidentally.
  
  
• These technical characteristics of the Internet raise questions about how to apply obscenity law. For example, the Court has said that to be obscene (and therefore illegal), sexual material must violate "contemporary community standards." On the Internet, what is the community? Is it the geographical community in which a particular computer is situated? Or is it the community of subscribers to a sexually explicit bulletin board? In another case, the Supreme Court ruled that it is not illegal to have obscene material in the privacy of one's home.
  
  
• Only the public distribution of physical objects like books and videos, said the Court, can be regulated by the body politic. But the Internet material is transmitted in the form of zeroes and ones, and only become text or images in the privacy of an individual computer. There is therefore no clear analogy to print or video and the laws that govern their public distribution. Does the Supreme Court protection of privacy apply to computer use, even of obscene material? If the nation decides to censor the Internet, we will be giving the state broader powers here than it has over other media.

2. Don't we need to have "indecency" restrictions on the Internet to bring this new technology into line with other technologies that abide by Federal standards?

• Unlike obscenity, "indecency" has no specific legal definition, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restricts a wide range of broadcast material because it is considered to be inappropriate for minors -- including swear words used by most American youngsters. The rationale for this is that, once turned on, the audio track of radio and TV "come into the home" in a steady stream, some of which may be inappropriate for children and unintentionally reach them. However, Internet material does not flow into the home. Each forum must be requested and read, making it more like a book. Books are not regulated by the FCC.
  
  
• Secondly, a large part of the Internet is interactive conversations, taking place through e-mail messages, for example. This makes it as absurd to impose "indecency" standards as it would be to impose them on conversations in the local pub or on the contents of the mail. It has been suggested that the FCC should regulate the Internet -- but in this new medium, indecency standards would be an impossible violation of "the right of adults to communicate with each other," as House Speaker Newt Gingrich put it.
  
  
• The Internet also provides non-conversational access to a wide range of archival and research documents that parents might want to keep from their children, including raunchy literary classics, harrowing accounts of atrocities, and psychological case studies. We can't restrict the access of adults to such important documents for fear that children might find them, any more than we would want to remove them from libraries.

3. But suppose that Congress decides that the Internet, like broadcasting, should restrict certain materials from minors?

Censorship could not realistically be enforced without turning technology backward. Since the Internet is international, U.S. law would have no effect on material originating in Sweden or Hong Kong. A requirement that Internet files and communication be purged of indecent words would be almost impossible to implement and, if successful, would unconstitutionally restrict adults. For instance, book and periodical publishers print legal non-obscene material that the FCC would call indecent, and more and more of these publishers routinely transmit all their text and graphics through the Internet from editorial to production sites. Banning them from the Internet would significantly restrict the material that is published in print and available to adults. Additionally, if one computer in the network does not transmit a message because it violates indecency guidelines, the Internet automatically searches worldwide to find another that will transmit it. This mean that, in the words of John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Efforts to restrict material from all computers in one country are technologically for naught.

4. If it is technically so difficult to regulate the Internet, how can we protect our children from objectionable material?

The only sure way of doing it is through parental guidance, helped by rapidly proliferating new technology. The major commercial online providers offer (or are developing) various blocking features that parents can use to keep children out of sites that may contain material they think inappropriate. There are many blocking programs available elsewhere, with features such as a log of what sites the computer has visited, screening of outgoing material, blocking access to files in the computer itself (such as the parents' financial records), and lists of potentially objectionable sites that can then be blocked. Two of the best known programs are Net Nanny and SurfWatch, both selling for under $50.00. In addition, there are programs available for schools and other institutions to restrict access to a variety of targeted materials including information on games, sports, drugs, or gambling. Some of these will also scan all incoming and outgoing student e-mail for certain words or subjects.

5. Some parents refuse to let their children access the Internet at all, for fear they will be deluged with pornography. Is this the best option we have?

• FFE not only supports, but encourages parents to guide the reading, viewing, and listening of their children, and to discuss with their children the many ideas they encounter -- not only about sex and violence, and not only in the arts and media, but ideas from other children and adults. FFE believes most Americans would prefer to do this themselves rather than let a government committee decide what their children read, watch, and think. Parents who neglect this aspect of their kids' lives may neglect them in other ways. It is this neglect that needs addressing.
  
  
• Refusing to allow children to use the Internet is like refusing to allow children to learn to read because they may be given objectionable material. The choice isn't keeping children from the Internet or giving them unlimited access to everything there. The choice is parental guidance and control, not government censorship.

6. Isn't the sexual material on the Internet particularly kinky and degrading to women?

• Although most of the calls for censorship of the Internet have been in the name of protecting children, some have come in the name of protecting women from "harmful" sexual imagery. Yet, not all women find the same material offensive, and offensiveness is no reason for censorship. Indeed, many people have found feminist ideas to be offensive. In 1994, one online provider closed a feminist discussion group because of the group's provocative ideas. The best protection for women's ideas and voices is complete constitutional protection of free speech. Historically, censorship in the name of "decency" has hurt women by restricting access to information about reproduction and sexuality. It has never reduced sexism and violence. Previous centuries have seen much more censorship than we have today and yet much more discrimination against women. The best counter to speech some women may find offensive is not restriction, but adding more women's voices to the mix.
  
  
• Today women buy or rent almost half of adult videos. The proportion of women to men online, however, is still low, and the consumption of Internet sexual material by women is small (1.1%). But, as more and more women join the Internet, this will change. There are two keys to the Internet -- anything you see has to be sought out, and everyone can be a producer. So if women find the sexual material online offensive, women can -- and should -- disagree with it, analyze, criticize, or just simply avoid it and produce the material they want.

© FFE This publication was developed for FFE by Joan Kennedy Taylor