From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Dec 14 14:54:06 1995 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.1/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA15760; Thu, 14 Dec 1995 14:54:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 14:54:06 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199512141954.OAA15760@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: Reactions and Rebuttal to Internet Day of Protest As expected, the announced "Day of Protest" on the Internet brought a very large number of phone calls, faxes and email messages into the offices of our representatives in Congress. The protest actually continues, as netters are encouraged to continue contacting the representatives to voice their opinion all the rest of this week. In this special mailing to the TELECOM Digest subscribers, there are three items: A report on the status of the Day of Protest as of Wednesday; A challenge presented to lawmakers by an electronic publisher which was passed along to us by Gordon Jacobson; A rebuttal by Eric Florack saying in essence, 'the protestors do not speak for a lot of us here'. Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 03:06:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ALERT: The Net rocks the capitol;still time to call Begin forwarded message: Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 23:33:11 -0500 (EST) From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" Subject: ALERT: The Net rocks the capitol;still time to call CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE NET CENSORSHIP LEGISLATION IN CONGRESS THE NET ROCKS AMERICA'S CAPITOL - NEARLY 20,000 PARTICIPANTS THURSDAY DECEMBER 14, 1995 SENATE CONFEREES COULD STILL VOTE THIS WEEK RALLIES HAPPENING IN AUSTIN, NEW YORK, SF, & SEATTLE PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY UNTIL December 25, 1995 RECAP: INTERNET DAY OF PROTEST: TUESDAY DECEMBER 12, 1995 The net came into its own as a political force on Tuesday. The press release has more details. If you haven't taken a moment to call, fax, or email, do so now. We're still keeping track and only need a few more to break 20,000. VTW had someone onhand in DC monitoring the response at the Congressional offices. The feedback was amazing; Congress got the message. We need to sustain that by continuing to tell them we're not happy with the options being offered to us at this time. Directions for calling Congress can still be found at http://www.vtw.org/ and the many other sites listed at the end of this message. Take a moment to call! Don't forget to mail us a note at protest@vtw.org to let us know you took part in the Day Of Protest (and Day 2, and Day 3, and Day 4). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 13, 1995 Contact: Steven Cherry (718) 596-2851 stc@vtw.org Shabbir Safdar (718) 596-2851 shabbir@vtw.org New York, NY Are 20,000 phone calls a lot? 30,000? 50,000? They are if you're one of a handful of Congressional staffers trying to field them. Tuesday, December 12th was the Internet's Day of Protest. A variety of net-activists and telecommunications-related services exhorted the on-line community to call a selected group of Senators and Representatives to declare their opposition to the threat of Internet censorship. And call they did. As the Senate members of the Telecommunications Reform conference committee contemplated portions of legislation that would censor "indecent" material on-line, their staffers were being overwhelmed with phone calls. Senator Inouye's office said they were "getting lots and lots of calls and faxes." Senator Lott's said they were "flooded with calls." At Senator Stevens' office there were so many calls they couldn't keep a complete tally. At Senator Exon's office, the fax machine was "backed up." And at one point, activists couldn't even get through to Senator Gorton's office to ask. Exon is the Senator whose Communications Decency Act started the nearly year-long struggle between those who would create special regulations to restrict speech on-line (even, in certain instances, private email between two individuals) to a greater extent than even traditional broadcast media; regulations that, according to the ACLU and many other civil liberties groups, will certainly be proven to be unconstitutional if passed into law. "We've never seen anything like it," said Stanton McCandish of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF is one member of the on-line coalition that has been fighting an array of censorship legislation since this spring, when Senator Exon introduced his Communications Decency Act. "We may have almost overwhelmed our provider," said Shabbir Safdar, head of Voter's Telecommunications Watch (VTW). VTW is the organization that organized the on-line coalition. Their on-line connectivity is provided by Panix.com, a New York-area Internet service provider. "Panix has been doing some maintenance work today, so it's hard to tell," Safdar continued. "But we think it's actually made a dent in their connection to the rest of the Net." How many calls were actually made? No one can tell. For Leslie Miller, a reporter for {USA Today}, it took much of the afternoon to get some counts from Congressional staffers, and she couldn't get any report from the Senate's Sergeant-At-Arms, the office nominally responsible for the Senate's telephone system. VTW may be the only organization that can really make an educated guess. "In our Alerts we ask that people drop us an email note after they call," explained VTW board member Steven Cherry. "The message count peaked in the late afternoon at over 70 per minute. Many of those were from people who called several offices. By 7:30 P.M. (EST) we had gotten 14,000 messages. By Wednesday morning the count was over 18,000. And of course there are the people who called but didn't send us email. So all told, our very rough guess is there were well over 50,000 phone calls and faxes made on the one day." "The Net is coming of age, politically," said Jerry Berman, Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), another member of the on-line coalition. Safdar, of VTW, concurred, saying, "I think Washington got the message today that there's a new grass-roots interest group around, and we're going to be a big part of the 1996 elections." (VTW's initial election activities can be found at http://www.vtw.org/pledge.) In addition to the Day of Protest, rallies are scheduled on Thursday, December 14th, in San Francisco and Seattle, and a protest will be held that day at 2:00 in New York City. The New York rally will be at the Cyber-Cafe, 273A Lafayette St from 2-3pm on Thursday, Dec 14th. Contact Steven Cherry or Shabbir J. Safdar for details. The Austin rally is planned for Tue. Dec 19th. No more information is available at this time. Information about the San Francisco rally can be obtained from http://www.hotwired.com/staff/digaman/. Information about the Seattle rally can be obtained from http://www.wnia.org/WNIA/hap/rally.html. Voters Telecommunications Watch is a volunteer organization, concentrating on legislation as it relates to telecommunications and civil liberties. VTW publishes a weekly BillWatch that tracks relevant legislation as it progresses through Congress. It publishes periodic Alerts to inform the about immediate action it can take to protect its on-line civil liberties and privacy. More information about VTW can be found on-line at gopher -p 1/vtw gopher.panix.com www: http://www.vtw.org or by writing to vtw@vtw.org. The press can call (718) 596-2851 or contact: Shabbir Safdar Steven Cherry shabbir@vtw.org stc@vtw.org WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE? At this moment, there are several organizations with WWW sites that now have, or will have, information about the net censorship legislation and the National Day Of Protest: American Civil Liberties Union (ftp://ftp.aclu.org/aclu/) Center for Democracy and Technology (http://www.cdt.org/) Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/) Electronic Privacy Information Center (http://www.epic.org/) Wired Magazine (http://www.hotwired.com/special/indecent/) Voters Telecommunications Watch (http://www.vtw.org/ or finger vtw@panix.com) End Alert ----------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 09:55:39 -0500 From: gaj@portman.com (Gordon Jacobson) Subject: Triple-Barreled Challenge To Online Censors Onliners pose triple-barreled challenge to proposed muzzle bill Urge Congressional reversal, Presidential veto and Internet mutiny LOS ANGELES, Calif., December 8 -- The editor of the nation's first all-digital daily newspaper threatened on Thursday to deliberately defy the language of a U.S. House cyberporn proposal if it becomes law, calling the measure a clear violation of the First Amendment. And the president of the company which links that digital daily to the Internet said the measure, if enacted by Congress and signed by President Clinton, would threaten the future of the Internet as the emerging global information marketplace. "The survival of free speech on the Internet is more important than even the survival of this newspaper, and we will risk its very existence to fight for a principle in which we fully believe," said Joe Shea, Editor-in-Chief of The American Reporter, a 10-month-old daily which is published only on the Internet and its World Wide Web. The paper will publish an "indecent" article to be written by Texas criminal court judge Stephen Russell in order to violate the proposed law, and then go into court to defend its right to do so under the First Amendment, Shea said. Newshare Corp., which has hosted The American Reporter at its web site since shortly after the daily's inception on April 10, said as the cyberpaper's common carrier, it would not block Shea's efforts but would not endorse them either. "We are akin to the voice carriers," said Bill Densmore, president of Newshare, the Internet's first news brokerage. "If we can be held liable for the publication of protected speech, then how long will it be before AT&T, Sprint and MCI are paying fines for what people say on the phone?" Both Shea and Densmore urged a reversal vote in the joint House-Senate conference or during expected subsequent votes in the House and Senate. Densmore and Shea said they would communicate their position to the Majority and Minority Leaders of both houses. Failing that, Densmore and Shea urged the president to veto the entire telecommunications bill. "The effects of this bill would be sufficiently destructive to merit sending lawmakers back until they come up with a solution that doesn't kill the Internet for publishers by making it the most heavily regulated medium in the United States," Shea and Densmore said in a joint statement. "The best Internet censor is a loving and attentive parent." In the event the bill is enacted, the American Reporter's Joe Shea pledged, "I will post material that courts have considered "indecent." Last summer, at the time of the passage of the Exon Amendment in the Senate Joe Shea promised to challenge the law if enacted, and received considerable support. Since that time, Judge Stephen Russell of Texas agreed to write the "indecent" article Shea had vowed to publish if the bill becomes law, and Randall Boe, an attorney with the large Washington, D.C. law firm Arent Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn, a distinguished First Amendment proponent that litigated the "Seven Dirty Words" case, agreed to represent The American Reporter in an action that would be pursued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, to overturn it. Now, Shea has dusted off the plan to attack the current proposed wording of the law. For Shea's editorial on the subject, see . To enable a joint initial challenge to the law, Shea has already contacted other editors and publishers, and he volunteered the American Reporter's Web site as a place to announce links to other sites that publicly repost his or similar material. (This site is hosted by Newshare, which, said Densmore, "will act as The American Reporter's First Amendment printing press.") In doing so under the new law, the publishers could be subject to $100,000 fines and two-year prison sentences. Newshare published in June a policy on parental control over online materials (found at in which it declared that publishers should ask users whether they wish objectionable material blocked, and content providers the should decide what to flag as offensive . "A publisher who fails to label such material should be punished by the public through the marketplace, not by Big Brother in Washington," said Densmore. "The Internet is not a form of broadcasting, where the government may justify censorship, as it does on the airwaves, in the name of protecting the public. Congress' deliberations reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the future of the Internet as a source of personalized information and commerce." In condemning the House Conference Committee's narrow vote to censor constitutionally protected speech online, Densmore and Shea noted the last-minute substitution of the vague and overly broad "indecency" criterion supported by the Christian Coalition instead of the original "harmful to minors" standard contained in the previous proposal. Densmore's letter to Rep. Rick White on the impact of the law on publishing businesses online can be found at . Williamstown, Massachusetts-based Newshare Corporation, Internet's first news brokerage, enables the by-subscription and charge-per-page delivery (via billable hypertext links) of news and time-sensitive information by publishers, broadcasters and entrepreneurs to users of the World Wide Web. In the coming months, Newshare will release the Clickshare(sm) System that tracks movements and settles charges for digital transactions -- down to as little as 10 cents per query -- as users jump among multiple unrelated Web sites. For more, go to or . Los Angeles, California-based The American Reporter is a five-day-per week electronic "newshare" owned by the writers whose work it features. It was founded to give journalists around the world an opportunity to have a financial stake in their own work. Each story carried by The American Reporter earns equity for the correspondent in future profits from advertising and subscriptions, and revenue when their stories sell to other newspapers. For more go to . The text you are reading will soon be available at For the latest on the bill, send email to or go to one of these web sites: Center for Democracy and Technology (public interest group) Voters Telecommunications Watch (public interest group) Alliance for Competitive Telecommunications (regional phone companies' update page) > Contact: > Joe Shea, The American Reporter, > Felix Kramer, Newshare Corp., felixk@newshare.com, 212/866-4864 > Bill Densmore, Newshare Corp., bill@newshare.com, 413/458-8001 ------------------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But not everyone agrees ... I received a half-dozen or so replies to the special mailing announcing the Day of Protest from users who feel the legislators *are correct* in their efforts to regulate the net. There are many users who feel the Day of Protest is 'just one more tactic by left-wingers to get back in control in Washington', as one reader phrased it in a letter to me. I have chosen a letter sent to me by Eric Florack to represent this point of view, that indeed, the net needs a lot of cleaning up, and that Congress may be the agency to make it happen. Read on ... PAT] ------------- Date: Thu, 14 Dec 1995 06:01:22 PST From: Eric_Florack@mc.xerox.com (Florack,Eric) Subject: Re: Congress: Indecency and the Internet WRT your forwarded alert on the congress's actions WRT porn on the internet: Rest assured, the Congress, and not the liberal Democrat groups, have my support on the matter. I'm no newcomer to the internet, or to online services. I've been a SysOp for nearly 15 years, too. It is my considered opinion, that given the situation, their actions, and this bill are justified, Constitutional, and timely. Anyone following the usenet groups will tell you, that the vast majority of the graphics traffic there is of a pornographic nature. Personally, I have no constitutionally based objection to the content, where adults are concerned, although I am concerned about the measurement of society. I do have MASSIVE problems with the free access that under-age kids have to such material. I'm fully aware of, and have experience with, the various 'net guards out there. I do not consider these to be sufficient to the task. Fully half of them don't understand how newsgroups work, (understanding only the web!) and therefore I do not consider them to be even a good stop-gap measure. Consider: Do you know of any kids who can't blow their parent's ability to operate a computer out of the water? Do you really think it's possible that such cracker-box technologies can't be defeated by today's 12-year-olds? I don't. Until such time as some method can be had, that will determine the user's age and only allow access appropriate to that age, I consider this action the only means available for keeping such material out of the hands of kids. To those who suggest that the is censorship of the net, I suggest we already have that; we always have. (Can you say Kiddie Porn?) What we're discussing here is not if there should be net censorship or not, or if not, but what will be censored. The group's charges of the 'religious right running the country' are patent nonsense. This is nothing more than an attempt of the left to get itself back into power. It's amazing the lengths to which desperate people will go. And oh, BTW; If you think this group of theirs, this coalition of leftists, is large and powerful, consider: How many of these members of one group, show up on the membership lists of ALL the groups? /E [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I found it interesting that the reports claim perhaps twenty thousand people had participated by sending email or other communications to Washington, DC on Tuesday alone; I would imagine by now that number might easily have doubled so that perhaps fifty thousand have communicated with Washington by the time this special mailing goes out to subscribers on Thursday afternoon. Now if those figures are true, or reasonably accurate, ** where did all the other netters go? **. How many sites are there on the entire net these days? What small fraction of one person per site made themselves known or heard? I don't think anyone can dispute there are at least a couple million people in the USA alone actively involved in using the net on a day by day basis; allowing that many do not read Usenet on a regular basis, why were so many others totally silent on this? Is it because, as Eric states in his message, this is just a 'desperate attempt by the left to get back on control' in Congress, and that the most vocal opponents on this issue represent just a small minority of the net community in total? ---------------------------- Maybe what is needed at this point is for the 'rest of the net', i.e. the ones who have remained silent through this controversy to now begin speaking up and letting Congress know where they stand. If that is how you feel, then a short email to Senator Exxon and the others might be a very good idea. To make sure that your letter does not get lost in the flood of email they are receiving, try to make it stand out from the rest. Try a very short message (you know that a lot of what they are getting from the 'anti-censorship' side is voluminous, thousands and thousands of bytes, quoting the Constitution and everything else under the sun) to make your point. How about if everyone who basically agrees with the intentions of the Congress on this sends a message with the subject line: Subject: Push Ahead! We Agree With You! and this short message: "We know you are buried in email from opponents of your plans to clean up the Internet. This short note is to let you know that not all netters are united on this. Many of us feel you are right to be concerned. Please work on the problem of indecent material on the Internet." The above is just an example. Say whatever you want, but keep it **very short** and to the point. I suggest the use of a standardized subject line on all messages *in agreement* with the actions in Congress. Something like "You are Correct" or "We Agree With You" to make certain they see it is different than what they have been receiving. Essentially, make the subject line say it all. If nothing else, they will appreciate something very short and to the point. Now of course, the above is contingent on whether you do agree with them or not, or if you feel the concern shown by many on the net this week is correct. In either event, my feeling is the future of the net as we know it is going to be formed in the next few days, so it would be well to express yourself one way or the other. I am not going to reprint all the names you can/should write to. You can get them from the special edition sent out earlier this week if interested. A copy is in the Archives as well. Interesting times ahead! PAT