Students Protest 'Net Censorship Proposal

The Communications Decency Act (CDA), passed by Congress last Thursday, has drawn fire from Harvard students for being vague, unenforceable and an infringement upon free speech.

Under the new law, which President Clinton has pledged to sign into law, transmission of "obscene" or "indecent" material to minors would be illegal.

The legislation would apply to publicly available material, including World Wide Web pages, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) archives, Usenet newsgroup posts and possibly even forwarded e-mail.

But many Harvard Internet users have criticized the bill.

"People look at the 'Net and see this nasty, filthy stuff. [But] any 12-year-old reasonably bright kid could round up porn for you in 30 seconds or less [off the 'Net]," said former Harvard Computer Society president John E. Stafford '96. "And as the people in Congress are...trying to apply old tools to new problems."

The law potentially forbids not only obscene language and pornographic pictures but the text of such works as The Catcher in the Rye and electronic images of works of art featuring nudes.

Many concerned Internet users agree the law will place greater restrictions on the Internet than on any other medium of communication.

"On the whole it's disturbingly ambiguous and seems to have been written by people with absolutely no clue about how electronic communication actually works," David M. Krinsky '99 said.

Some Harvard students have also questioned the law's viability.

"My personal opinion is that it's a well-intentioned but technologically illiterate piece of legislation that will either be ignored or become so unworkable that it will be modified within the next couple of years," Stafford said.

He said the exchange of information can not be regulated as easily as that of other, more tangible commodities.

"The thing with the Internet is that a lot of stuff can easily move out of U.S. jurisdiction," he said. "There's very little anyone can do to stop it. There are no customs guards on the Internet."

Many Harvard students have called the bill a work of censorship.

"It essentially criminalizes a lot of the everyday traffic on the Internet," said Marco B. Simons '97. "I find it especially disturbing that it [applies to] speech which is otherwise constitutionally protected."

Protests against the bill have appeared on Harvard newsgroups. Posts in alt.fan.karl-malden.nose have made prominent use of profanities deemed illegal under the CDA.

Other students have added the "seven dirty words" of George Carlin's comedy sketch to the signatures included at the end of their messages, following an off-the-cuff suggestion made some months ago by Simons as a way of combating Internet censorship.

"I might finally break down and make my own [signature] with it since it's so popular," Simons said. "If we all do it, it would pose a substantial [censorship] enforcement problem.

"My personal opinion is that it's a well-intentioned but technologically illiterate piece of legislation that will either be ignored or become so unworkable that it will be modified within the next couple of years," Stafford said.

He said the exchange of information can not be regulated as easily as that of other, more tangible commodities.

"The thing with the Internet is that a lot of stuff can easily move out of U.S. jurisdiction," he said. "There's very little anyone can do to stop it. There are no customs guards on the Internet."

Many Harvard students have called the bill a work of censorship.

"It essentially criminalizes a lot of the everyday traffic on the Internet," said Marco B. Simons '97. "I find it especially disturbing that it [applies to] speech which is otherwise constitutionally protected."

Protests against the bill have appeared on Harvard newsgroups. Posts in alt.fan.karl-malden.nose have made prominent use of profanities deemed illegal under the CDA.

Other students have added the "seven dirty words" of George Carlin's comedy sketch to the signatures included at the end of their messages, following an off-the-cuff suggestion made some months ago by Simons as a way of combating Internet censorship.

"I might finally break down and make my own [signature] with it since it's so popular," Simons said. "If we all do it, it would pose a substantial [censorship] enforcement problem.