•    Jonathan Blake is a second year day student and Senior Editor of the Federlists' Paper.

    There has been much ado lately about the latest firsts on the Internet. Most recently, two 18-year-olds announced that they were going to lose their virginity on the Internet, for all the world to see, via a camera linked to their own Web site (www.ourfirsttime.com). The attorney for the couple, Mark Vega, said that the idea for the event was Diane's, of the couple Diane and Mike. He claimed that she was inspired by her beliefs in freedom of speech and action, and, of course, the previous month's much-talked-about Web site, a baby's live birth on the Internet. Both events were later revealed to be tainted by much less noble intentions. The couple that broadcast their live birth received money for the event and were later arrested by the FBI for previous fraud violations, and Mike and Diane were revealed to be part of an elaborate prank in honor of Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worldshoax. Mike and Diane were nothing more than two paid actors following a script that would have supposedly ended, were the hoax not prematurely discovered, with the couple refusing to have sex and the director of the gag admitting to the prank. From Koko the Gorilla and its first "inter-species on-line chat," to Jennifer Ringley's "JennyCAM," (a mounted camera in her home continually broadcasting her daily life) the Internet is seemingly ablaze with on-line firsts. These "firsts" have created some unique Constitutional issues for America.

    Unlike other broadcasting media, the internet is very accessible. Perhaps most akin to when radio was first introduced, when, if you had the technological savviness, you could set-up your own studio and broadcast directly from your garage. The difference between the two is twofold. First, that which is broadcast on the internet is broadcast all over the world, the radio was limited only to those within the broadcaster's frequency. Second, this ease-of-accessibility is currently available to nearly 200 million people. See Donald J. Karl, State Regulation of Anonymous Internet Use After ACLU of Georgia v. Miller, Ariz. S. L. Journ. (1998). The similarity between the two is that for one to tune in, the person either: (1) happened upon the broadcaster's frequency/site by chance (radio: the listener was within the broadcaster's frequency-range and tuned to the correct station; internet: the person mis-typed, e.g., instead of "whitehouse.gov," the person typed "whitehouse.com" (At whitehouse.com, instead of a mysterious absence of any discussion on interns, there is a mysterious absence of any discussion, only electronic images of "interns.")); or (2) actively sought out the broadcaster's location. The question that America is struggling with is, "what do you do with all of these voices"; voices that not everyone is going to agree with, voices that some might find offensive or obscene, and voices that some do not want to be exposed to at all?

    On February 8, 1996 President Clinton signed into law the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The CDA made it a crime to use an "... interactive computer service... [to] send... [or] display in a manner available... any comment, request, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication." American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, 929 F.Supp 824, 829 (E.D. Pa. 1996). A violation of this act would result in hefty fines or imprisonment. Civil liberties organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), quickly filed a lawsuit to enjoin the enforcement of the act. The case made its way to the United States Supreme Court. See Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 117 S.Ct. 2329 (1997). The ACLU was successful in its assertion that the terms ÒindecentÓ and "patently offensive" were far too broad and open to varying, inconsistent interpretations. As Solveig Bernstein, Director of Telecommunications and Technology Studies at the Cato Institute, stated:
 

First, no legislator has been able to define indecency coherently. Such regulation is inherently unfair, especially as applied to spontaneous, casual speech of the sort that the Internet facilitates between unsophisticated and noncommercial speakers. Second, government cannot legitimately claim that it has any interest in content control, when civil society has solved this perceived problem on its own. Here private sector solutions include both software filters that parents can use to screen out offensive material and Internet service providers who provide access only to child-safe materials.

    Solveig Bernstein, Beyond the Communications Decency Act: Constitutional Lessons of the Internet, Cato Policy Analysis No. 262 (November 4, 1996). Indeed, the private sector offers parents and those wishing to screen or filter what may be viewed on their browsers many options. CyberPatrol, SurfWatch, InterGO, and Net Nanny are just a few of the more popular packages available today. Many adult-oriented sites offer warnings as to its content as well as links to the filtering software. On-line services, such as American Online, too offer their customers controls to individually manage the accessibility of information with their account. Finally, the government can still protect children from pornography via existing laws criminalizing child pornography and obscenity (perhaps a good tip to tobacco regulation supporters: use the laws already in place.).

    In closing, it seems that the Supreme Court has done what is too often ignored, they put the responsibility on the individual and parents to decide what is right or wrong for themselves. For now the internet is not regulated, private citizens are left to self-regulation. However, if the Clinton administration had its way (lest we forget Tipper Gore and the self-righteous PMRC) it would be decided for us what we are allowed to view in the privacy of our own homes.

    Imagine for a minute that the CDA remained good law. Many Internet users use "chat rooms" in which you can have conversations with users from around the world in real time on the Internet. The CDA would prevent you from discussing what is considered, whatever that might be (by whomever that might be), "patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards." What is so different about having a conversation by way of a keyboard than having an oral conversation? Is it so different that it deserves different constitutional treatment? Of course not. "What achieved success was the very chaos that the internet is. The strength of the internet is that chaos. Just as the strength of the internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects."  ACLU v. Reno, 929 F.Supp at 883.