It's decision time on Net free speech

(continued from previous page)

Earlier, lawyers for the plaintiff, Chris Hansen representing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Bruce Ennis for the American Library Association (ALA), hammered home their final points this morning: that the Internet is its own medium, different from both print and broadcast; that any such government regulations are unconstitutional because they violate free speech protections; that technology exists to let parents control Net access themselves and makes such regulations unnecessary; and that governing Internet content is technologically impossible.

"We take the position that interactive computer services, unlike broadcast, radio, or print, allow the listener to choose and select where they are going to go," Ennis said.

Hansen also stressed that the definition of what constitutes indecent or patently offensive material is unclear and hard to regulate for a medium that is both interstate and international. The point seemed to capture the attention of the judges, who quizzed Justice Department lawyer Tony Coppolino extensively about how community standards can be applied to material that is available everywhere in the United States at the same time.

For example, one judge cited Angels in America, a play about the AIDS epidemic, which is enormously popular on Broadway but might be found offensive in Lancaster, Pennsylania.

"If someone took an excerpt from that play and emailed it to someone else, could that be indecent?" one judge asked.

"It might be," Coppolino replied. "This is possible that something that is serious can also be indecent."

Although the government will make its final arguments this afternoon, Coppolino alluded to the government's main argument that the Internet is more analogous to broadcast media than print media and that its content should be regulated as a broadcast medium.

When pressed about his definition of indecent, however, Coppolino replied that it covers a narrow category of speech, "communication which describes sexual activity or excretory organs in a patently offensive way." This definition was already rejected as too vague in an earlier ruling by Buckwalter.

Coppolino did say in response to questions that the "F word" and nude photos would not be considered indecent, nor would information about contraception. "It's very difficult to explain," replied Coppolino to repeated requests for a more specific definition. "It is a very narrow category of speech."