PROTECTING CHILDREN, PRESERVING FREEDOM: 
Families Against Internet Censorship 
Is Fighting Ill-Conceived New Law

By Barry and Michele Fagin

        On February 8, President Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996. A section of this law, known as the Communications Decency Act, seeks to protect children from objectionable material on-line by giving the government control over the content of the Internet. We are parents of two young children and understand as well as anyone the desire to protect kids.  But we also believe that this law is unnecessary, unconstitutional and harmful to families.

        Supporters of the law have tried to make the public believe that defenseless children across our land are being assaulted by graphic images spewing from computers while helpless parents watch in dismay and beg the government for help.  Anyone familiar with the net -- and they are a small but growing group -- understands that this is ludicrous.  We would like to paint another picture, a real picture, based on the daily reality of our lives.

        Our children surf the web with us.  Our 8-year-old son likes to visit NASA's web sites and download pictures from the latest shuttle mission.  Our
6-year-old daughter prefers animals, and visits web pages with pictures of horses, fish, and even a pet chameleon.  We can't afford to take our kids to Paris, but thanks to the net, we have taken the whole family to visit the Louvre Museum. This, we believe, reflects the experience of most American families on-line.

        Unfortunately, our visits to the great museums and libraries of the world may be cut short by the new law that is as sweeping as it is vague. The law bans indecent material without defining "indecency."  There are already laws on the books banning obscenity. We are not challenging these laws. But indecency is a whole new and much broader standard.  What is indecent?  Some people might consider Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" unfit for children.  (She's nearly nude.)  Others might consider Huck Finn unfit. (Some communities have tried to remove it from library shelves.)  Even information on self-examination techniques for breast cancer could be prosecuted under this new law. 

        To anyone familiar with computers, it is clear this new law was drafted by people who couldn't find a URL if it was hard coded into their browser. For those of you who don't understand this yet, you soon will. Use of computers is spreading through our lives faster than the printed word spread across Europe after the invention of the printing press. Like books, the Internet is diverse, distributed and devoid of centralized control. Like books, personal initiative is required to access information. The Internet simply will not respond to the top-down, one-size-fits-all approach of this new law. The law will impose government regulation on a flourishing American industry, have a chilling effect on those providing legitimate educational information and, in the end, fail in its attempts to protect children.

        The best way to protect kids is with computer programs, not government programs.  All the major commercial on-line services offer free blocking mechanisms. There are programs on the market -- and more on the way -- to help people block unwanted material from entering their homes. Some of these programs allow parents to monitor what their children are accessing. Others turn off the computer if a child attempts to override a block. These programs are available now, they are not expensive and they provide more control over what comes into our homes than any government program ever could. In addition, the industry is setting up a rating system to help parents, and an educational campaign to teach parents how to protect their children, their privacy and themselves as consumers on the Internet.  All of these activities are designed to empower parents, not government. 

        In an effort to strengthen the spirit of parental empowerment among on-line families, we formed Families Against Internet Censorship last December. We had modest hopes of finding other families that shared our view, but were quickly overwhelmed with responses.  The number of families in our group is growing daily.  If you would like to know more or read what other American families are saying, visit our web page (www.rmii.com/~fagin/faic/). You will see that we have joined in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new Communications Decency Act. Our 22 co-plaintiffs include the American Library Association, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the American Booksellers Association, the Newspaper Association of America, the Association of American Publishers, the Society of Professional Journalists, every major company in the on-line industry and many others.

        Our goal is to defeat this ill-conceived law so that the thousands and thousands of American families following us into this remarkable electronic world will find the net as free and useful as we have as parents.  The on-line world should have the same constitutional protections as print enjoys in our democracy. Without such protections, the net will wither without ever achieving its promise of enhancing American communities and American families, like ours.