Sometimes it seems Congress has to be pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century. But there are signs that lawmakers are beginning to grasp issues important to netizens.
At a meeting on Capitol Hill Tuesday, members of the congressional Internet Caucus announced key Internet issues Congress plans to address this year. The bipartisan group, which has seen membership grow from 20 to 87 lawmakers since it was founded last year by representatives Rick White and Rick Boucher, and senators Patrick Leahy and Conrad Burns, plans to introduce legislation addressing Internet copyright, encryption, and - you guessed it - decency on the Net.
"We need real encryption that works," said Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. "Not encryption tailor-made by people at the White House who don't understand how it works."
Burns, a Republican from Montana, this week plans to reintroduce his market-friendly, Pro-Code encryption legislation, and a similar bill sponsored by Representative Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, will be introduced into the House on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, White, a Republican from Washington, hopes to get support for a bill requiring Congress to file all documents online.
"It would be like a Freedom of Information Act for cyberspace," he told Wired News. "Congress needs to ask itself what we should do to become a better part of the Internet community."
At the Internet Caucus meeting, members of an advisory committee, including representatives from AOL, IBM, CompuServe, and Netscape, were on hand. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, stressed the need to protect intellectual property. "Intellectual property has to be so shielded from those who would illegally download it and use it," Valenti said. He also touched on what he says is the need to protect children from indecent material on the Net.
Congress will "resist temptation" to introduce another decency bill until the Supreme Court rules on the Communications Decency Act, White told Wired News. "But we still need to establish rules of the road" on Internet decency, he said.
"It's going to happen," said Jerry Berman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which helped Congress establish the Internet Caucus. "The caucus is absolutely instrumental in avoiding future disasters like the CDA."
