Since I wrote the paper "Pornomag: A News Analysis of the Time Cyberporn Story" the Communications Decency Act (whose passage the Time story directly helped fuel) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The Court heard arguments 19 Mar 1997, and released its decison on 27 June 1997. The decision was 7-2, with the 2 (O'Connor and Rehnquist) only in partial dissent. To read the text of the decision online at the Cornell University School of Law, click here.

On 17 Nov 1997, in response to the Court's decision, Sen. Dan Coats introduced a bill (S. 1482) that essentially revised the CDA, tailoring the law to the opinion of the Court. To read the text of the bill, read Sen. Coats' speech introducing it, and track its progress online at thomas.loc.gov, click here. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which held some hearings on the bill on 10 Feb 1998, and on 12 March recommended the bill ot pass without amendment to the floor. No floor action has taken place yet.

In my opinion, Coats' bill corrects the problems with the CDA: his bill does not apply to private individuals, only to commercial activity on the World Wide Web. Furthermore, it does not require that material on the net be policed or regulated in any manner, but simply requires that the company institute a scheme to keep such material out of the hands of minors, e.g. Credit Card or PIN access. It also explicity defines such material so as to exclude any material which is artistically, politically, socially, or scientifically valuable. His speech on the floor contained none of the misinformation and hyerbole of the debate surrounding the CDA. But that's just my opinion. Tell me yours.

In related news, several bills have been introduced in the Senate and the House which would require libraries to have blocking software installed on all public machines and which would require Internet Service Providers to provide such software to all clients on request. In the case of libraries, this certainly raises questions for me: the public library is for adults as well as children -- I think such a law would restrict the level of internet discourse for those who cannot afford their own connection to a "G" rated level.

But the more important issue surrounding the blocking software available now is what do they block, how, and why? The commonly used example for this is that if a filter program blocks pages containing the word "breast," sites containing breast cancer research, in addition to the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and other noted literary endeavours, would be cut off. (And, reflexively, now this site as well....)

At the present time, many sites are blocked which have no pornographic or even inappropriate content at all. On the contrary, some blocked sites are among the best, most informative, and most intelligent on the web. An example: the blocking of Jeffery Zeldman's incomparable site www.zeldman.com as he details in his daily report for 20 Feb 1998.

I remain firm in the belief that filter software, although perhaps an initially attractive idea, is doomed to failure in practical terms. The best training for a child's mind is a relationship of trust and discussion with his or her parents -- not a "cybernanny" which enables parents to avoid the tough issues (and avoid interacting with their kids).