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IP: EFF Announces Court Challenge
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 15:33:50 -0500
CONTACTS: Lori Fena, Exec. Dir. 415/ 436-933 lori () eff org Mike Godwin, Staff Counsel 510/ 548-3290 mnemonic () eff org Shari Steele, Staff Counsel 301/ 375-8856 ssteele () eff org EFF TO CHALLENGE CENSORSHIP PROVISIONS OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS BILL IN COURT SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 7, 1996 -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today joins the American Civil Liberties Union and several other plaintiffs in challenging the censorship provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The challenge is based upon the belief that the Act contains overly broad and vague restrictions on constitutionally protected speech on the Internet. "I see no Constitutional authority at all for this kind of comprehensive legislation," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel at EFF. "Proponents of the legislation argue that it is necessary to combat poronography on the Internet, however the language in the bill goes far beyond this purpose." The Act overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress last week and is expected to be signed into law Thursday by President Clinton. EFF will be both plaintiff and counsel in the complaint to be filed in Pennsylvania immediately after the bill is signed. The complaint will be grounded primarily in what Godwin terms "three affronts to the First Amendment." The three basic arguments are as follows: * Unconstitutional Expansion of Federal Authority. It is inappropriate for the Federal Communications Commission or any other federal agency to dictate standards for content in a medium where there is no independent Constitutional justification for federal regulation, as there has been in the broadcast arena and in certain narrow areas of voice telephone service. Like newspapers and bookstores, the Internet is fully protected by the First Amendment. * Vagueness and Overbreadth. The terms the act relies on -- "indecency" and "patently offensive" -- have never been positively defined by the Supreme Court or the Congress, and so create uncertainty as to the scope of the restrictions, necessarily resulting in a "chilling effect" on protected speech. Moreover, these terms criminalize broad classes of speech that are understood to be protected by the First Amendment, including material that has serious scientific, literary, artistic, political, and cultural value. * Failure to Use the "Least Restrictive Means" to Regulate Speech. Even if there were Constitutional authority for this legislation and even if its terms were neither overly broad nor vague, the censorship prescriptions built into this legislation cannot survive the Supreme Court's "least restrictive means" test. That is, if otherwise-legal government regulation of speech content does not minimize its restriction of lawful speech, it fails to qualify as the "least restrictive means" of implementing the government's goal. Our Bill or Rights requires that such regulations be struck down. In addition to these traditional First Amendment challenges, the lawsuit also challenges a provision that may infringe on speech concerning abortion when that speech takes place online. In the case of the Internet, the censorship provisions of the Telecommunications Reform Act are not the least restrictive means, since filtering, rating and labeling technologies and services are already available. There already are software tools to help parents shield their children from inappropriate material and these tools are vastly more flexible and effective than this ill-considered legislation. Unlike the censorship provisions, these tools prevent harm to children before it happens. EFF is committed to work to ensure that First Amendment freedoms that apply to traditional speech and publication are understood to apply to communications in the online world. The organization deplores the fact that taxpayer and industry time, money and energy will be consumed by this effort, but it is an effort that is essential to preserving the Constitutional rights of every American. Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a civil liberties organization founded to ensure that individual rights are not abridged in the online world. Headquartered in San Francisco, the organization seeks to educate the public, industry and government on the issues surrounding online communications and to shape policies that protect indicidual rights and promote individual responsibility. To learn more about the organization and today's issues, visit EFF at http://www.eff.org ###
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- IP: EFF Announces Court Challenge Dave Farber (Feb 07)