Exon originally wrote the proposal as an amendment to last year's telecommunications reform legislation. When that bill didn't pass, he reintroduced it as a stand-alone bill. This legislation . . . As word of the proposal spread through the Internet, just about every watchdog group on the Net came together to urge hearings before it comes to a vote. The lineup includes the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the Electronic Messaging Association, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the ACLU and Voter Telecommunications Watch.
Civil libertarians see several problems.
First, any message on the Internet travels through several different networks to get to its destination, whether it's private e-mail or a public posting to a Usenet news group potentially seen by millions. Imagine a carrier screening every piece of mail that goes through it to determine if it's obscene. The bottom line is that the law would put any company or organization which provides Internet service in the position of policing everything that flowed through its wires, according to Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Exon's staff says that that's not the intention at all, and that he's willing to refine the language of the bill. But the broader problem, cyber-groups say, is that lawmakers don't really understand what the Internet is and how it works.