Web wars

ACLU battles legislation restricting internet access

Round three in the battle to regulate the Internet has begun.

In one corner stands the tag team of two bills making their way through Congress. One would punish distributors of World Wide Web sites containing "indecent" information with a fine and a jail sentence, while another would restrict funds to schools that do not filter out such materials in their computers.

In the other corner stands the American Civil Liberties Union, hoping to knock down the legislation once again, just as it did to the Communications Decency Act and a Virginia Internet pornography law in court.

Yet the battle continues, as legislators try to define the boundaries of what the First Amendment means to the new medium, struggling with how to regulate it most effectively.

"The Supreme Court did not say that you cannot regulate the Internet," Calvert said.

The Communications Decency Act was struck down, he said, because it was too broad and restricted speech too much. The bill that would punish distributors is similar, Calvert said, and would probably not survive court scrutiny. However, the bill restricting school funds takes a large step toward being constitutional, because it is narrowly targeted and merely withholds funds from violators, he said.

Part of the problem of regulation lies with technology, said Brian Ecker (sophomore-computer engineering), a member of the University chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"There's no real way that you can restrict it in the manner that they want," he said.

The Internet is not conducive to regulation because it was designed to resist being blocked, said Dale Miller, head of the computer science and engineering department.

The Internet was first created to maintain information flow for military use, he said. It was decentralized so that if information was blocked, the Internet could find a way around it.

Attempts to filter the information often result in the blocking of vital materials, the ACLU contends. Restricting the Internet in schools, as the school funding bill would do, would keep children from learning about Roe v. Wade or female genital mutilation, according to an ACLU news release.

This is also a result of technology, Miller said. If Internet filters that recognize the context of a word could be produced, then they could better filter out what is good and bad. Such technology is already needed to make search engines more efficient, which also use key words.

But the best way for regulation to be effective, Miller said, is if companies would cooperate with the regulatory systems in helping identify their sites.

All this perhaps does not matter to the ACLU, which contends that any attempts to regulate the Internet are unconstitutional.

Miller said the only way the Internet should be restricted is for children's parents to do it themselves.

"I would look forward to parents being able to choose to do it," Miller said, "but not governments."