Issues
Protecting the Right to Free Speech
While much of MAP's work concentrates
on the rights of viewers to receive information, MAP's attorneys
are also respected authorities on the rights of speakers to speak
over the electronic media. MAP opposes content-based government
restrictions on speech over broadcast stations, cable television,
and the Internet.
Technology Based Solutions for Parental Control of Internet Speech
MAP is participating
in ongoing discussions with policymakers and the computer and
online industries to solve a very vexing problem: how to ensure
parental control over what their children see over computers
without compromising the free flow of speech and information.
While the Supreme Court was unequivocal
about protecting free speech rights
in cyberspace, the industry and Internet user groups have
remained concerned about the threat of possible new legislation
limiting these rights.
Thus, the industry has created
a "filtering" system for use with World Wide Web browsers.
This system, commonly known as PICS ("Platform for Internet
Content Selection"), permits parents to screen out certain
content for their children.
Some civil libertarians are concerned
that PICS screens out too much material - some of which is neither
indecent nor obscene - which they believe children should have
the ability to see. They also fear too much government involvement
in the process. Other groups believe that it is impossible and
impolitic to tell parents how to raise their children, even if
it means that parents will unduly limit information coming into
their homes. However, these groups are concerned with any government
attempts to require either PICS or other filtering mechanisms
either at libraries, schools, or government offices.
MAP's President was invited to
participate in a special
White House summit on these and other important issues affecting
the Internet.
Additional materials on PICS
and parental empowerment technologies:
Restrictions on Internet Speech
MAP participated as both
a party and as co-counsel in Reno v. ACLU, the landmark case
that has set the standard for free speech in the information
age. The suit was brought by the Citizens Internet Empowerment
Coalition, or "CIEC," a large coalition of content
providers, on-line services and civil liberties organizations,
and it challenged the "Communications Decency Act,"
or "CDA."
The CDA imposed criminal penalties
on anyone who, by means of any "telecommunications device"
engaged in speech which is "lewd, lascivious, filthy or
indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another
person." Other provisions imposed similar penalties for
transmitting indecent speech or images to anyone under 18 (even
if they are not used to annoyed or threaten).
These provisions, which were
part of the larger Telecommunications Act of 1996, threatened
to kill the potential of the Internet as a free space for robust,
if sometimes controversial, debate, instead limiting it to a
place where commercialism is rampant and the speech is suitable
only for children.
The CIEC's principal argument
was that an outright ban on constitutionally protected speech
such as indecency is not the "least restrictive means"
for facilitating parents' choice of what their children see,
and therefore violates the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme
Court agreed and struck down the CDA's restrictions. In so doing,
it reviewed a lower court's detailed findings about how the Internet
works, what it can and cannot do, and the existence of "blocking"
software and other technologies to permit parental control over
what their children can obtain over advanced networks.
Additional materials about the CDA litigation:
Restrictions on Cable Access Channels
Media Access Project
gained a partial victory in the Supreme Court in a case challenging
the 1992 Cable Act restrictions on programming on cable access
channels.
Cable access channels include
"leased access" channels, on which independent programmers
rent airtime, and "public access" channels which are
set aside for local governments, schools, and other nonprofit
purposes. These channels are generally considered to be
the "electronic soapbox" of the mass media. As
co-counsel to the law firm of Shea and Gardner, MAP helped to
represent a coalition including the ACLU Arts Project, the Alliance
for Community Media and People For the American Way.
The restrictions at issue required
prescreening to censor "any programming which contains obscene
material, sexually explicit conduct or material soliciting or
promoting unlawful conduct." A three-judge panel of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
originally struck down these restrictions, but the full membership
of the court reversed the panel decision.
The Supreme Court's ruling, Denver
Area Educational Technical Consortium v. FCC, found the restrictions
on public access channels unconstitutional, but upheld the content
restrictions on commercial "leased access" channels.
The Court, thankfully, distinguished cable from advanced
technologies such as the Internet. That decision will have
great significance in the "Communications Decency Act"
case now before the Court, that is described directly below.
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