(Begin> Campaign-2-Against-S-314) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 19:03:08 -0400 Reply-To: shabbir@panix.com From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" To: vtw-announce@panix.com Subject: ALERT: Get VP Gore involved, stop the Decency bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE US COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT (S. 314/H.R. 1004) Apr. 4, 1995 Update: - You *must* help get the White House involved The bill could be voted on as early as this week and we could lose this fight on the Senate floor (fight #2 in a series of about 6 of them) - Sen. Leahy states concern about the Decency Act - State volunteers are needed - Provider opposition to the bill is needed - "Morality in the Media" comes out *against* the bill PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE AFTER May 1, 1995 DO NOT REPRODUCE THIS ALERT IN NON-POLITICAL FORUMS Distributed by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS Quick update What you can do (in only two minutes) Chronology of the 1995 Communications Decency Act Background Where can I learn more about the bill? (URL & Fidonet/FTN included) Where will I learn about updates to this alert? Current list of participating organizations Fidonet mailing directions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUICK UPDATE [4/4/95 Our schedules were delayed about a week because of the Computers, Freedom, & Privacy conference. We're glad to be back though; our mailbox is stuffed! The White House has also come out in favor of slowing down the Decency Act because the issue deserves "thoughtful discussion". Here's the excerpt (which is also in our WWW page): From the Washington Post, Friday March 24, 1995, Page A1 & A24 The Clinton administration last night issued a slow-go request to the Senate. "The president thinks that this issue deserves thoughtful discussion, " White House sopkeswoman Ginny Terzano said. "The administration abhors obscenity, in whatever form it is transmitted, " Terzano said, but feel that "there are important First Amendment issues that need to be addressed before legislation is rushed through. We ought to have a serious approach -- such as hearings -- to find the best solution." This is encouraging but you'll need to act now. It's not impossible for this to be voted out of the Senate as early as this week. Please take a moment to contact Vice President Gore. Congratulate him on his insight and encourage Gore to continue his efforts. In a speech on the Senate floor, Thursday, March 30th, Sen. Leahy (D-VT) called for serious consideration of the privacy, security, and first amendment issues raised by the Exon Amendment. " Remember all the books that are banned in libraries and schools in one place or another in this country, including The Adventures of Huck Finn, and The Wizard of Oz. In cyberspace, what is indecent anywhere becomes indecent everywhere. According to the Senator, "Under this Exon Amendment, those of us who are users of computer e-mail and other network systems would have to speak as if we were in Sunday School every time we went on-line." Leahy concluded, "This amendment would chill free speech and the free flow of information over the Internet and computer networks, and undo important privacy protections for computer communications." Also, we need to do some networking. We're looking for people that could help organize their communities in each state. Please take a moment to read our call for assistance below. We are also encouraged to hear that on-line providers, large and small, are increasing their active opposition. Their voices need to be loud and clear that this bill will still hurt them. Finally, the Morality In Media group, which concentrates on issues of indecency and obscenity in all forms of media, came out *against* the Exon bill, citing fatal flaws in the design of the legislation. A copy can be found on our WWW and gopher sites. -Shabbir] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT YOU CAN DO (IN ONLY TWO MINUTES) [Note these are arranged in the order of importance to the campaign -Shabbir] 1. Call the Vice President and ask him to remove the Exon provisions The Communications Decency Act has been attached to the telecommunications reform bill, a piece of legislation that's moving very quickly through Congress. We need to slow down this part of the bill *now*. Recently the White House urged Congress to "slow down" and examine the bill more closely, for the damaging effect it might have on free speech and the budding industry associated with online services. It's encouraging to see the White House on the right track, and they need to hear that they have support. Please take a moment to communicate your thoughts to the Vice President through Phone/Fax (preferred), US Mail (less preferred), or via email (last resort). Because of the short time frame, phone calls and faxes are preferred. The Vice President can be reached at: Vice President Gore 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC 20500 (202) 456-1111 (ph) (202) 456-2461 (fax) vice-president@whitehouse.gov The White House phone and fax lines are open Monday through Friday 9-5 (EST). Voice comments are transcribed by the staff so please be brief and direct to ensure your message gets heard. Feel free to use this sample written communique as a basis for your own: Dear Vice President Gore, I noticed that recently the White House advocated hearings on Sen. Exon's Communications Decency Act because of the grave First Amendment implications. Thank you for speaking up for the First Amendment. However, your help is urgently needed to save online systems such as the Internet. We should all be concerned with obscene material, but it can be dealt with without giving up free speech. Please urge the Senate to *remove* the Exon provision from the telecomm reform bill and hold hearings on it. Thanks, ______________ And here's a sample phone call: Thanks for urging Congress to hold hearings on Exon's Communications Decency Act. Please urge the Senate to *remove* the Exon provision from the telecomm reform bill and schedule hearings on it. 2. Drop a note to vtw@vtw.org (Fidonet directions below) saying you contacted the White House. Because you won't get any feedback from the White House switchboard, we'll primarily be counting your letters more than checking them for that crucial legislator feedback. Please put "vp ack" in the subject line, like this: To: vtw@vtw.org Subject: vp ack I wrote to Vice President Gore, thought you'd like to know. I'm from Nebraska, and expressed my unhappiness with the Exon Decency bill. Continue to be proud of yourself. Know that you are participating in saving free speech on the Internet for your entire country, if not the rest of the net-connected planet. Take a moment to reproduce this alert in appropriate ways, forwarding it to other appropriate political lists, or to any friends that might be interested in these topics. 3. Help organize your state VTW doesn't have a national infrastructure in place to work on issues on a state-by-state basis. This was never more apparent than in the Commerce Committee fight, when we had difficulty in rallying significant support within South Dakota to lobby Senator Pressler. We'd like to not make this mistake again. VTW is looking for people who understand Tip O'Neill's mantra, "All politics is local" and are interested in bringing a new awareness of online issues to their state. If you're interested, please take a moment to look through our gopher and WWW pages and learn about our organization. There you'll find a chronicle of our past two campaigns and our founding Mission Statement. If you're interested in being a state coordinator for the Decency Act, campaign or you would like to help out the state coordinator in your state, please contact us at vtw@vtw.org (Fidonet directions at the bottom) 4. Urge online business (service and content providers) to publicly oppose CDA Online service providers are at great risk from the (CDA) Communications Decency Act in three ways. Traditionally the interests of users and providers have coincided to grow the on-line world to the force it is today. But to satisfy Exon, providers may have to monitor and censor users in order to comply with provisions of this bill. Paradoxically, others may find themsselves abandoning all forms of legitimate moderating and filtering in order to comply. In each case, the Exon Amendment will pit users against providers. With the advent of such measures, the public will not continue to use online systems with the intensity and fervor that we've seen in recent years, and a provider's customer base will dwindle. The civil liberties interests of the public are also in the best interests of business. Second, all service providers are creators of some sort of content. This puts providers at risk for the information they create. Third, the exemptions added by Senator Exon for the online providers are still subject to FCC implementation and it is not completely clear what a carrier must do to comply to the exemptions. Therefore service providers, especially small system operators, may still be liable for the content they carry. Your service provider is a business that brings either a service and/or economic benefits to your community. They have an additional voice that can be heard by legislators. It's crucial that you convince your Internet Service Provider, your BBS, or *any online business* to weigh in on the commerce-chilling effects of the Communications Decency Act. Organize other users on your system to urge your service and content providers to oppose the bill publicly. Not only should they issue a public statement, but they should send a letter to their Senators as the bill will soon come to a vote on the Senate floor. Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) will be collecting and collating the list of service and content providers that publicly oppose the bill. When your service or content provider formally announces opposition to the bill, drop us a note at vtw@vtw.org with: The name of the provider A contact person A phone number Service and content providers must be made to understand that free speech and civil liberties is good for business. 5. Relax! You must be exhausted! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHRONOLOGY OF THE 1995 COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT No more actions have been scheduled as of April 4, 1995. Mar 23, '95 S314 amended and attached to the telecommunications reform bill by Sen. Gorton (R-WA). Language provides some provider protection, but continues to infringe upon email privacy and free speech. Feb 21, '95 HR1004 referred to the House Commerce and Judiciary committees Feb 21, '95 HR1004 introduced by Rep. Johnson (D-SD) Feb 1, '95 S314 referred to the Senate Commerce committee Feb 1, '95 S314 introduced by Sen. Exon (D-NE) and Gorton (R-WA). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACKGROUND [The following analysis of the bill pales in comparison to those done by attorneys from many organizations. We provide this only as a starting point to get your feet wet. You can find a plethora of information on the bill at our sites listed in the URL below. This analysis was done based upon the work done by many other organizations, such as CDT and the EMA.] Recently Sen. Gorton introduced an altered version of the Exon amendment to the Commerce committee claiming it addressed the concerns of Internet users and providers. This is in fact not true. It addresses some concerns by selected commercial service providers, but does not protect privacy or the rights to free expression. The amended CDA criminalizes "obscene, lewd, indecent, filthy, and lascivious" speech both in public messages and *private email*. The bill also gives online users second-class speech rights. Some speech which is acceptable in print would be made illegal under the CDA. It would also give the Federal Communications Commission jurisdiction over online speech. The bill takes a wrong turn in the following ways: o It equivocates broadcast media with online media. Online media is essentially a privately-browsable medium, with significant facilities for the user to select that which he or she wishes to see (or filter that which he or she does not want to see). From time immemorium, newsreaders, mail readers, and interactive browsers (gopher, Mosaic, etc) have allowed users to select specific types of content and pick and choose between them. The authors of the CDA mistakenly assume that users are "assaulted" by obscene material online. This is obviously untrue, as anyone who has used online services can tell you. o The bill is unnecessary. Currently there are existing statutes that prohibit the transportation of obscenity, child pornography, as well as, in many instances threats, stalking and harassment. As of today, the Department of Justice has not yet requested new legislation to assist in prosecuting such cases. o The bill covers both private email and public messages. The bill criminalizes speech in private the same as speech in public. This includes the reading of private email. Please take a moment to examine the background of the bill in the archives below. The mention above is just the beginning. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BILL? (URL INCLUDED) The Voters Telecommunications Watch has set up a gopher page where you can get a copy of the bill (including analyses by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Messaging Association, and others). Here's the URL: WWW URL: http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/exon.html Gopher command : gopher -p 1/vtw/exon gopher.panix.com If you have difficulty getting to this gopher page, or if you don't have access to Mosaic/gopher, drop a note to: vtw@vtw.org BBS Network Users: You can FREQ the files from the EFF BBS, 1:109/1108, 1-202-861-1224. The "magicword" for a list of relevant files is S314. You do NOT have to be nodelisted to get the files, or in any particular network. Just create a dummy nodelist entry with our phone number if you need to do so. Those in QWK nets or otherwise not able to File REQuest can download the files manually from the BBS, in the ALERTS file area. Feel free to login as ANONYMOUS, password GUEST to bypass newuser questionnaires. To send mail to vtw@vtw.org from FidoNet or other FTN systems, create a netmail message to your local UUCP host. Search the nodelist for the GUUCP flag, and use the address of that system: To: UUCP, [GUUCP system's address here. "To:" name MUST be set to UUCP] From: [you] Subject: S.314 --------------------------------------------------------------- To: vtw@vtw.org [Message starts here on 3rd line. The second "To:" line with the internet email address MUST be the first line of the message body, and the blank line following that is REQUIRED. Mail will not be delivered by the gateways without it.] To email one of the Senators in the list above, just put the Senator's email address in place of "vtw@vtw.org" in the above example. If you are unsure whether your FTN has an Internet gateway, or suspect it may use something other than a GUUCP nodelist flag, ask your network coordinators. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHERE WILL I LEARN ABOUT UPDATES TO THIS ALERT? We will post updates to this alert in three places: -On the account vtw@panix.com (finger vtw@panix.com) -On our Web site (URL: http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/exon.html) -On our gopher site (URL: gopher://gopher.panix.com/11/vtw/exon) -On Usenet (comp.org.eff.talk, comp.org.cpsr.talk, and alt.privacy) -Through our announcements mailing list, vtw-announce@vtw.org. To subscribe, simply send a message to listproc@vtw.org with the following in the message body: subscribe vtw-announce Firstname Lastname -If you don't have any net access, but you have a modem, you can call (212) 741-4444 or (212) 741-4545 and login as "vtw" enter a blank password. You'll receive the latest version of the alert. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CURRENT LIST OF PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS In order to use the net more effectively, the several organizations have joined forces on a single Congressional net campaign to stop the Communications Decency Act. These organizations are using the Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) as a conduit for legislative feedback. When you contact Congress about the Communications Decency Act and send your feedback to vtw@vtw.org, that information is being fed back to all participating organizations. If your organization would like to sign on to this campaign and receive legislative feedback, contact vtw@vtw.org. (Note the Fidonet and FTN mailing directions below) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), infoaclu@aclu.org American Communication Association (ACA), comminfo@cavern.uark.edu Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), ask@cdt.org Centre for Democratic Communications (CDC), cshariff@aztec.co.za Center for Public Representation (CPR), mgpritch@facstaff.wisc.edu Computer Communicators Association (CCA), community@pigpen.demon.co.uk Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), cpsr@cpsr.org CyberQueer Lounge, tomh@cyberzine.org (Note that the DC-based EFF has no local chapters) Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ask@eff.org EFF-Austin, eff-austin@tic.com Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), efa-info@efa.org.au Electronic Frontiers Houston (EFH), efh@efh.org Electronic Frontiers New Hampshire (EFNH), efnh@mv.com Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), info@epic.org Feminists for Free Expression (FFE), ffe@aol.com Florida Coalition Against Censorship (FCAC), PIPKING@mail.firn.edu Hands Off! the Net petition drive, slowdog@wookie.net Human Rights Watch (HRW), infohrw@hrw.org National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), ncac@netcom.com Libertarian Party (national) (LP), lphq@access.digex.net National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), info@nptn.org National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981 AFL-CIO), kip@world.std.com People for the American Way (PFAW), jlessern@reach.com Rock Out Censorship (ROC), TWieseROC@aol.com Society for Electronic Access (SEA), sea@sea.org Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW), vtw@vtw.org Note that the Voters Telecommunications Watch does not speak for these organizations. Any opinions contained herein are those of the author, and not necessarily endorsed by participating organizations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ (End> Campaign-2-Against-S-314) ======================================================================== Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) CAMPAIGN FOR CYBER RIGHTS cyber-rights@cpsr.org World Wide Web: http://uvacs.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/cyber-rights.html http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/cyber-rights/cyber-rights.html FTP: ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore ftp://jasper.ora.com/pub/andyo/cyber-rights This file may be forwarded for non-commercial use, in its entirety, including this signature. ========================================================================