Tradition dies hard in the US Senate, where members still sit at desks on the Senate floor that come with inkwells and blotting sand, while two brass spittoons stand ready near the podium at the front of the room. The Senate has carefully preserved these relics, much as it seems determined to preserve the institution's more recent tradition of hostility toward computers and the Internet. Citing the Senate's overarching ban on the introduction of mechanical devices onto the floor, the Rules Committee reasoned that the sound of a tapping keyboard might distract other members from their august deliberative duties. His bill, S 1482, represents the Senate's first real attempt to develop a successor to the failed Communications Decency Act, which was unanimously declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last summer. Coats, a cosponsor of the original CDA, is on a mission to craft Net censorship legislation that can pass constitutional muster.
Civil libertarians are in an uproar.
Coats's revived effort to censor the Internet may carry on a Senate tradition, but only at the expense of forgetting a lot of recent history. Inc. All rights reserved.