Origine: AGORA': CONFERENZA COMMUNITY NETWORK 1908, 22-Feb-95, 20:14, I-----, 9512, B.Parrella, US, Oakland CA ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Difendi Internet!* Petizione contro il "decency act (S.314)"---------- Forwarded message ----------Riporto qui la petizione-raccolta firme che sta girando ora su Internet contro il "Communications Decency Act of 1995" (S. 314).
Rispetto al file originale, ho solo tolto l'ultima parte che comprende il lungo testodella proposta di legge e alcuni commenti.
[PS: Riguardo i pezzi del Manifesto sul caso Mitnick e quello di Gomma cui si riferiva sopra Franco Carlini, e' di certo il caso inserirli quanto prima qui dentro...grazie :-)]
From--noring@netcom.com (Jon Noring) Subject--PETITION to Congress to Stop Senate Bill S.314 Summary--S. 314 Poses a real danger to freedom of expression on all E-Networks
[Please distribute this Petition far and wide, and upload it everywhere (where appropriate, of course).]
*** PROTECT THE INTERNET. READ THIS MESSAGE ***
This document is an electronic Petition Statement to the U.S. Congress regarding pending legislation, the "Communications Decency Act of 1995" (S. 314) which will have, if passed, very serious negative ramifications for freedom of expression on Usenet, the Internet, and all electronic networks. The proposed legislation would remove guarantees of privacy and free speech on all electronic networks, including the Internet, and may even effectively close them down as a medium to exchange ideas and information.
For an excellent analysis of this Bill by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), refer to the Appendix attached at the end of this document. The text to S. 314 is also included in this Appendix.
This document is somewhat long, but the length is necessary to give you sufficient information to make an informed decision. Time is of the essence, we are going to turn this petition and the signatures in on 3/16/95, so if you are going to sign this please do so ASAP or at least before midnight Wednesday, March 15, 1995.
Even if you read this petition after the due date, please submit your signature anyway as we expect Congress to continue debating these issues in the foreseeable future and the more signatures we get, the more influence the petition will have on discussion. And even if Congress rejects S. 314 while signatures are being gathered, do submit your signature anyway for the same reason.
Please do upload this petition statement as soon as possible to any BBS and on-line service in your area. If you have access to one of the major national on-line services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, etc., do try to upload it there. We are trying to get at least 5000 signatures. Even more signatures are entirely possible if we each put in a little effort to inform others, such as friends and coworkers, about the importance of this petition to electronic freedom of expression.
Here is a brief table of contents:
(1) Introduction (this section)
(2) The Petition Statement
(3) Instructions for signing this petition
(4) Credits (Appendix) Analysis and text of S. 314 (LONG but excellent)
In united voice, we sign this petition against passage of S. 314 (the "Communications Decency Act of 1995") for these reasons:
S. 314 would prohibit not only individual speech that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent", but would prohibit any provider of telecommunications service from carrying such traffic, under threat of stiff penalty. Even aside from the implications for free speech, this would cause an undue - and unjust - burden upon operators of the various telecommunications services. In a time when the citizenry and their lawmakers alike are calling for and passing "no unfunded mandates" laws to the benefit of the states, it is unfortunate that Congress might seek to impose unfunded mandates upon businesses that provide the framework for the information age.
An additional and important consideration is the technical feasibility of requiring the sort of monitoring this bill would necessitate. The financial burden in and of itself - in either manpower or technology to handle such monitoring (if even legal under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) - would likely cause many smaller providers to go out of business, and most larger providers to seriously curtail their services.
The threat of such penalty alone would result in a chilling effect in the telecommunications service community, not only restricting the types of speech expressly forbidden by the bill, but creating an environment contrary to the Constitutional principles of free speech, press, and assembly - principles which entities such as the Internet embody as nothing has before.
By comparison, placing the burden for content control upon each individual user is surprisingly simple in the online and interactive world, and there is no legitimate reason to shift that burden to providers who carry that content. Unlike traditional broadcast media, networked media is comparatively easy to screen on the user end - giving the reader, viewer, or participant unparalleled control over his or her own information environment. All without impacting or restricting what any other user wishes to access. This makes regulation such as that threatened by this S. 314 simply unnecessary.
In addition, during a period of ever-increasing commercial interest in arenas such as the Internet, restriction and regulation of content or the flow of traffic across the various telecommunications services would have serious negative economic effects. The sort of regulation proposed by this bill would slow the explosive growth the Internet has seen, giving the business community reason to doubt the medium's commercial appeal.
We ask that the Senate halt any further progress of this bill. We ask that the Senate be an example to Congress as a whole, and to the nation at large - to promote the general welfare as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution by protecting the free flow of information and ideas across all of our telecommunications services.
Instructions for Signing This Petition
It must first be noted that this is a petition, not a vote. By "signing" it you agree with *all* the requests made in the petition. If you do not agree with everything in this petition, then your only recourse is to not sign it.
In addition, all e-mail signatures will be submitted to Congress, the President of the United States, and the news media.
Including your full name is optional, but *very highly encouraged* as that would add to the effectiveness of the petition. Signing via an anonymous remailer is highly discouraged, but not forbidden, as an attempt will be made to separately tally signatures from anonymous remailers.
Because this is a Petition to the U.S. Congress, we ask that you state, as instructed below, whether or not you are a U.S. citizen. We do encourage non-U.S. citizens to sign, but their signatures will be tallied separately.
Signing this petition is not hard, but to make sure your signature is not lost or miscounted, please follow these directions EXACTLY:
1) Prepare an e-mail message. In the main body (NOT the Subject line) of your e-mail include the ONE-LINE statement:
SIGNED
You need not include the "<" and ">" characters. 'SIGNED' should be capitalized. As stated above, your full name is optional, but highly recommended. If you do supply your name, please don't use a pseudonym or nickname, or your first name -- it's better to just leave it blank if it's not your full and real name. If you are a U.S. citizen, please include at the end of the signature line a 'YES', and if you are not, a 'NO'. All signatures will be tallied whether or not you are a U.S. Citizen
**************************************************** Example: My e-mail signature would be: SIGNED dave@kachina.altadena.ca.us Dave C. Hayes YES ****************************************************
2) Please DON'T include a copy of this petition, nor any other text, in your e-mail message. If you have comments to make, send e-mail to me personally, and NOT to the special petition e-mail signature address.
3) Send your e-mail message containing your signature to the following Internet e-mail address and NOT to me:
s314-petition@netcom.com4) Within a few days of receipt of your signature, an automated acknowledgment will be e-mailed to you for e-mail address verification purposes. You do not need to respond or reply to this acknowledgement when you receive it. We may also contact you again in the future should we need more information, such as who your House Representative and Senators are, which is not asked here as it is unclear whether such information is needed.
Thank you for signing this petition!
The petition statement was written by slowdog
The rest of this document mostly collated from the net by Dave Hayes, net.freedom.fighter.
Much help came from Jon Noring, INFJ and self.proclaimed.net.activist who made a few suggestions and will be tallying the signatures.
Thanks to the EFF and CDT for the excellent analysis of the bill.
(p.s., send your signature to s314-petition@netcom.com)