Reveling in victory, plaintiffs in the case against the vanquished Communications Decency Act proclaimed Thursday that the Supreme Court decision to overturn the censorship law left little room to regulate content on the Internet and urged Congress instead to educate parents on monitoring what kids see online.
"There are going to be very few ways for Congress to suppress the Internet with the breadth of this decision," Bruce Ennis, lead attorney for the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition, a coalition of plaintiffs in the case, including Wired Ventures, said in an online news conference.
"We hope that Congress comes back with a good-faith effort to educate people and make tools more available, and to not demonize the Internet," said Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, another plaintiff in the case.
In striking down the law by a vote of 7-2, the court said its ban on the transmission of "indecent" or "patently offensive" content abridged all Net users' First Amendment rights.
Although President Clinton reiterated Thursday the administration's intent to work with industry to develop technical means for parents and teachers to regulate kids' access to online content, at least one member of Congress is already moving forward with a plan to legislate this approach, and then some.
Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington has crafted a bill that she says will help parents monitor what their children access online and provide incentives for industry to participate in a ratings system for the Net.
Her Child-Safe Internet Act would ensure that all parents with computers have access to filtering software; issue parental warnings alongside copyrights on homepages; create incentives for Web sites to use the controversial Platform for Internet Content Selection rating system; make it a criminal offense to misrate Web sites; and set up a toll-free advice number for parents.
"Today's ruling by the Supreme Court leaves open a large vacuum. No one wants to return home after work to find a child downloading pornographic material," Murray said in a statement. "The answer must be workable for industry, it must withstand constitutional questions, and most important, it must provide parents with the option to monitor the material their children see on the Internet."
A spokesman said the senator has been meeting with industry leaders and White House officials in recent months to draft her bill, which he said seeks to strike a balance between free speech and protecting children.
The White House itself has been reevaluating the legislative approach and instead is talking with the industry on how to develop new "empowerment tools" to block anything consumers don't want to see. A working paper on electronic commerce to be unveiled Tuesday by President Clinton takes this tack.
The administration and industry leaders are reportedly working on a so-called Internet "V-chip" proposal, the outline of which is expected to be agreed upon soon. This plan would be an industrywide incentive in cooperation with the federal government to educate parents as to the technology available to shield children and to develop new technologies that are a bit more precise than the range of filtering software now on the market. Polls show that fewer than 40 percent of parents use blocking software.
Still, some are pushing for more aggressive congressional action. The Family Research Council said Thursday that the Internet still needs to be safe for kids through government regulation.
