EFF continues to support empowering parents and the education community with tools and services that ensure children only have access to appropriate material online. EFF, along with Taxpayer Assets Project and several other public interest organizations, have repeatedly asked that current Congressional information be immediately provided to the public, not just to lobbyists, and that that the Telecom Bill be put on hold, pending full public participation in this debate. Voters may wish to express to Congress how they feel about being denied the right to read or have a say in legislation that threatens their freedom of expression. A brief summary of the problems inherent in the Telecom Bill's censorship provisions illuminates the magnitude of the issues. Obscenity law, not the indencency law used in the Telecom Bill, considers literary, artistic or scientific value.
Indecency law makes no such exceptions.
It is without reason, and without conscience. Fortunately, there is a very good chance that the courts will refuse outright to uphold the Communications Decency provisions of the Telecom Bill. EFF, along with other civil-liberties groups, will be mounting a legal challenge to the bill's censorship provisions, on First Amendment and other Constitutional grounds. It is inappropriate for the Federal Communications Commission or any other federal agency to dictate standards for content in a medium where there is no independent Constitutional justification for federal regulation, as there has been in the broadcast arena and in certain narrow areas of basic telephone service. Like newspapers and bookstores, the Internet is fully protected by the First Amendment.