Dialogue: Do we need to be protected from the internet? (Fall 1996)
Does the Communications Decency Act violate First Amendment rights by restricting the Internet more than bookstores and newspapers? Or does it provide necessary protection for children who might accidentally find graphic materials while exploring the internet? In the following interviews, professors John Bittner and Mary Ruth Coleman present their opinions.
On February 8, President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which includes the Communications Decency Act, designed to limit the "obscene, harassing, and wrongful utilization of telecommunications facilities," including television and the Internet. On June 12, a panel of federal judges blocked enforcement of the law. Endeavors invited John Bittner, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the author of several books, including "Law and Regulation of Electronic Media," and Mary Ruth Coleman, a clinical associate professor of special education and co-director of the Statewide Technical Assistance for Gifted Education project at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, to comment.
The act is a "pit filled with fog"
by John Bittner
This law strips the average citizen of many of his or her First Amendment rights and attacks the most basic level of freedom of expression.
The limitations on the Internet introduced by this legislation are more restrictive than the controls on the local bookstore or newspaper. The same literary or artistic material which is found in the public library could be interpreted as indecent, obscene, pornographic, and illegal if furnished on the Internet. It is also dangerous because the line between censorship of art and literature and the censorship of politics is very, very thin.
To attempt censorship over indecent material is a bottomless pit filled with fog. Who determines what is indecent and pornographic? That has been a problem since the Republic was founded. The same nebulous definitions plague this law's provisions to protect information providers. For example, one cannot be prosecuted if one take reasonable measures to prevent minors from accessing the information. Who defines reasonable?
In fact, this law exacerbates the problem by opening the door for state and local governments to enact and to enforce their own "complementary" restrictions. It creates a society where neighbors can surf the Internet, spy on each other, and report what they deem inappropriate or illegal artistic, literary, or political content to local enforcers.
Whenever sender and receiver consent to exchange information and are blocked by the law, then the legal foundation has been built to censor our personal telephone calls. It is important to realize that the Internet is a personal, as well as a mass, form of communication.
The Internet is new technology, which is always socially disruptive. Radio was socially disruptive. So were films and television. But the key is to learn to use them responsibly, not to let the government become involved in censorship.
There needs to be a new emphasis on the role of video technology in the home. Parents will need to assume responsibility for the Internet, as they have assumed responsibility for the books their children read.
I'm not quarreling with the fact that young children need guidance in what they are exposed to during their adolescent years. In fact, as a society, we have become tremendously lax in monitoring the impact of television on our children. I'm not talking exclusively about children aggressively imitating the sex and violence they see on television; I'm talking about the general decline in educational levels, knowledge acquisition, and analytical skills caused by the amount of time television takes away from other intellectual activities.
The Internet has a tremendous potential to reverse that trend. If a parent is able to walk a child through all of the intellectual and cultural options available, then there is an opportunity to enhance the child's education and at the same time engage in responsible parental intervention.
I support the ability of a parent to limit what comes into the home, whether through direct supervision or through the use of a device like the V-chip. I'm not opposed to technology and software that permit parents to enforce their own decisions.
However, there is a difference between a choice at the family level and one made by the government. Restricting the information that can be placed on the Internet may seem like a convenience or an aide for parents who can't be home to supervise their children. However, if we allow the government to make the decisions about what our children can be exposed to, then we also open the door for prosecution of parents who aren't there to monitor the controls.
We have important social problems, such as teen pregnancy, drugs, and violence, to deal with. But the censorship in this bill, the direct attack on individual free expression, is not the solution to those problems; it's simply killing the messenger.
Protecting the safety of children
by Mary Ruth Coleman
This law is about protecting the children's right to feel safe. This sense of safety is based on trust in the environment around them and in the adults whom they encounter. The bill deals with the irresponsible use of the Internet or television to depict graphic and disturbing acts of violence and sex directed at children.
Since the early '70s, studies have shown that children who watch violence on television incorporate more violence into their own play. Children who view sexually pornographic material may be traumatized severely by the images. When children encounter images depicting children in abusive and pornographic situations, it can be very damaging because it erodes their trust in adults, which is the basis for their sense of safety.
The problem is not--and the law does not prohibit--normal, healthy depictions of the body or sexual encounters. The law specifically addresses aggressive, offensive, or abusive images directed at children. As adults, we can make the distinction. We can pick and choose what we will view, and if we encounter pornographic material, we can cope with shocking and disturbing images.
But children are more vulnerable, and the children who are surfing the Internet these days may be quite young. It's common for seven-year-olds to be using computers to access on-line services. If these images are available, with no restrictions or controls to limit access, children may find them inadvertently.
This law addresses the problem by requiring people who provide pornographic material to limit access to it by using subscription listservers or credit card numbers, for example. Such measures would provide a level of protection for children. And the law goes further; it gives us legal recourse, which we don't have now, to deal with the perpetrator if the material is intentionally directed toward children.
In addition, the law requires and encourages new technologies to screen violence and pornography, and these advances will give parents more control over what comes into their home. The V-chip will allow parents to block violent or sexually explicit television programs based on a rating code. Though not required by the law, companies already are producing software to do something similar; a program called SurfWatch maintains a list of Web sites containing pornography and blocks access to them.
It's very difficult for parents to have control over the Internet, unless safeguards are built the system itself, because the Internet is not tangible. If a parent doesn't want his child to read a particular book, he can decide not to buy the book and can remove the book from his home. The parent has a tangible level of control over the book, but the Internet is not the same, at least not yet. The Communications Decency Act provides tangible ways to control what children are exposed to.
This legislation is not a blanket statement that says, "You can't put anything that might be moderately offensive on the Internet." It targets indecent or obscene comments or images that are supplied " knowing that the recipient of the communication is 18 or under ." This law protects people who are intermediate distributors of information and may not know the content. It protects people who make a good-faith effort to restrict access by minors. These defenses and others have been provided.
While the law is not fail-safe, and does limit freedom of speech, we need to decide what the trade-offs are, and this law begins the dialogue. The courts will have to decide how far these rules and exceptions should extend. In our country, that's the way legislation works: it is defined as it emerges. Our civil rights legislation worked the same way. It's impossible for the legislators to anticipate and to account for every possible interpretation of the law.
Interview by Elizabeth Zubritsky