"Summer's here and the time is right for dancing in the street," shouted the EFF's Mike Godwin at the CDA victory rally Thursday afternoon in San Francisco's South Park. The gathering included more TV cameras and librarians than jitterbugging cyber-citizens, but that celebratory sentiment was liberally spread among the crowd.
This was the third CDA rally to take place in South Park. A year and a half ago, several hundred of those infamous hip young netizens hit the grass with neon signs and angry chants. A year ago, the same crowd showed up to dance to a reggae band and celebrate the original Philadelphia decision against the CDA. Although smaller and older this time, this crowd was met by a more attentive mainstream media, which turned up in large numbers, microphones in hand.
The American Library Association, one of the original plaintiffs in the fight against the CDA, was in town for its yearly conference, and a large contingent of silver-haired librarians with name tags were floating around. As John Berry, a librarian from New York, explained, "Librarians have really rallied behind the effort to do in this bill. People who can't buy a computer often use the library to access the Internet, and this decision allows libraries to allow that access without having to worry about going to jail."
A few champagne corks went flying, cheers for free speech were sounded, and one picnicking group offered poster-making materials. Most of the attention, however, was paid to the speakers, who ranged from Bruce Ennis, the lawyer who argued the bill, to Ann Brick of the ACLU and Judith Krug of the ALA.
While most assembled were upbeat, not everyone's message was exactly cheery: When Ennis predicted that the decision had delivered a permanent blow to any legislation that might attempt to imitate the CDA, Sameer Parekh of C2Net stepped up to warn against different legislation in the works that could potentially restrict online privacy and encryption.
Still, said Gail Williams of The Well, "It's great to wake up and have something to feel good about as an Internet user and as an American"
