Cyberspace Community To Demonstrate

By LINDA DAILEY PAULSON

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- In the first off-line protest organized exclusively through cyberspace -- e-mail and Internet communications -- the normally faceless online community on Monday plans to demonstrate against pending legislation that would place limits on free speech in cyberspace.

The so-called "netizens," or citizens of the electronic community, fear legislation endorsed Wednesday by House caucus of the conference committee on telecommunications reform would censor free speech in cyberspace.

If the measures proposed by the House conferees or those spearheaded by Sen. J. James Exon, D-Neb., are enacted, online media would become the most heavily regulated media in the United States, they say.

The House conferees' vote Wednesday removed the best chance that a telecommunications bill would not contain an Internet censorship provision, said protest organizers.

The legislation's decency code would make a home page on the World Wide Web meet standards similar to those imposed on Saturday morning cartoons -- standards much stricter than the First Amendment freedoms afforded to print media.

Violators of the decency standard would be subjected to fines of up to $100,000 and prison terms of up to five years.

"They would be adopting an indecency standard that would be very broadly defined, that would preclude publishing a book like Catcher in the Rye  online or make indecent posting something similar to Michelangelo's nudes," said Todd Lappin, one of the organizers of the protest and a section editor at Wired magazine. "They are taking an entire medium and dumbing it down to the least common denominator."

He said "filtering" software currently on the market enables parents to block objectionable or inappropriate information from the Internet and that the technology exists to create an online version of the "V chip," used to block violent cable programs.

"There is no need for the government to be involved in this," Lappin said. In response to the caucus vote, business owners and employees of firms that provide multimedia, online, Internet and new media services, as well as allied companies, are circulating information on Monday's event through the Internet. They say the issue directly affects their livelihoods.

Nathan Shedroff, creative director and founder of vivid studios, a web design firm located in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch neighborhood, said his company's 32 employees will be taking a vocal part in the protest. Shedroff's workers also will document the event with audio and video clips on the company's web site.

Shedroff said this free speech issue is crucial for the survival of many small companies like his.

"These are people seeking to use fear to manipulate," he said of the proposed legislation. "It's classic propaganda, classic censorship, completely unenforceable. It's gone on way too long. We thought this issue would be dead by now, but it doesn't seem to have died."

If passed, the bill could be the death knell for electronic publishing, Lappin said. "All of us are in this together trying to create a media that serves the public interest," he says. "They're going to kill this industry before it has a chance to even get off the ground."

Shedroff agreed, saying, "Small businesses and entreprenuerism are driving our economy," he says. "This could squash what's happening in the economy if small businesses can't protect themselves. It is truly dangerous."

The American Civil Liberties Union said it would challenge the censorship proposals in court.

"All of Congress' proposals violate the First Amendment and privacy rights of adults to communicate freely in the online environment," said Barry Steinhardt, ACLU associate director, in a statement issued shortly after the committee vote was announced. "Congress is making it ever more clear that we will have to turn to the courts to uphold free speech in the promising new medium of cyberspace."

The ACLU said some of the groups that would join a suit if the bill passes include online political columnists, distributors of gay and lesbian resources, human rights groups, academic researchers of human sexuality, AIDS education groups, prisoners' rights groups, and student groups with controversial web pages. These groups fear prosecution because they use online services to post, exchange, or distribute material that could be deemed "indecent" under the proposed law.

"The people trying to propagate this are being sensationalistic," Shedroff said. The problem is intensified because the vast majority of the public doesn't understand the medium or the issues, he said.

The protest is scheduled for Monday at noon in San Francisco's South Park. Mike Godwin, legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is among the roster of scheduled speakers.

Copyright 1995 The United Press International

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