THE BURLINGTON FREE PRESS

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1996

Leahy Calls For Stand Against Online Censors

Americans who want to continue using the "information highway" must make themselves heard in Congress, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy said Thursday in announcing a bid to repeal new anti-obscenity laws.

Leahy, a Democrat and computer enthusiast, said the provisions of a newly approved telecommunications law will slow the growth of the Internet and other online services if not changed or stricken by courts.

"It really is an Internet censorship law," Leahy said of the law signed last week by President Clinton amid fanfare in a high-tech ceremony at the Library of Congress. "Rather than go through the courts, why not just admit we screwed up?"

Overall, the omnibus legislation deregulates a broad sector of the economy, erasing lines between telephone and cable TV companies and the services they offer, for example. The obscenity provisions seek to protect children from the growing smorgasbord of pornography available from Internet sites by making it a crime to "knowingly" send "indecent" material across computer connections.

Those provisions already have been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups as a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment protection of free speech.

Leahy, who spoke at a news conference organized by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, said the court fight likely will prevail, but that could take years. And in the interim, he said, a cloud of uncertainty will settle over libraries, schools and online service companies fearing they could be unwitting felons by allowing any communications construed as indecent.

Already, he said, a constituent and breast cancer survivor in Vermont was barred from online distribution of information to others with breast cancer by a pre-programmed censor that disconnected the communication upon spotting the word "breast".

The new law's language is so vague that any county prosecutor could file charges against anyone in the nation if offending material were available electronically in the prosecutor's jurisdiction, said Leahy, a former county prosecutor.

Existing anti-pornography laws are putting high-tech peddlers of child pornography in jail and will continue to do so without ambiguous and unenforceable new laws, he said. Screening programs also are available to parents to ensure children cannot gain access to inappropriate sites on the Internet, he added.

With Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Leahy already has introduced legislation to repeal the cybersmut provisions of the new telecommunications law, but passage will need strong support from the millions of Amereicans already using electronic communication, he said.

Among challenges to any repeal: Few members of Congress are personally familiar with the technology; many fear that supporting a repeal will be used against them at election time.

"A lot of members have told me they agree with me," Leahy said. "But they've told me they are afraid of a 30-second sound bite in their district.

"This is going to take a lot of work."