Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens held that ". . . the CDA places an unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech" and found that all provisions of the CDA are unconstitutional as they apply to "indecent" or "patently offensive" speech.
In a separate concurrence, Chief Justice William Rhenquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed that the provisions of the CDA are all unconstitutional except in their narrow application to "communications between an adult and one or more minors."
How does that apply to us, since the Zundelsite doesn't traffick in smut
- never has and never will? Remember the Cyberwar of January/February of
1996 when 1,300 websites were blocked in Germany to prevent people from
reading Zundelsite posts? The argument was made then that the issue was
"pornography." That transparent flimflam lasted for all of ten
days or so - until a worldwide radio broadcast announced that, yes, the
Zundelsite with its revisionist content WAS the intended target.
Based on two years' worth of harassment, we have good reason to believe,
and others do as well, that the whole "smut issue" was and is
nothing but a smoke screen to rally the sheeple and use the ruse of ".
. . protecting our children" to stifle access to political information
on the Net that will be disastrous to the interests of the Holocaust Promotion
Lobby.
Not only do we believe this - the government of Germany has shown this to
be true. Using your venerable Zundelsite to drive home a salutary lesson
in tawdry Censorship-by-Government, last August the beholden lackeys of
the German Ministry for Children and the Aged indexed eight of our classical
Revisionist documents as "ethically disorienting to children".
In other words, the government of Germany saw fit to criminalize adult access
to the Zundelsite by a pious pretense of protecting Germany's minors.
I understand that, since then, additional Zundelsite documents have also
been indexed. It speaks volumes that I, as a United States citizen and author
and creator of the Zundelsite, was not even notified directly.
How serious this blatant export of another country's censorship laws to
citizens of the United States can be, was briefly touched on in the ZGram
I shipped two days ago, quoting Gary Lauck, a Thought Crimes prisoner in
Germany:
". . . the German attorney general stated in a Spiegel interview that he would arrest American citizens visiting Germany if they have an Internet site in America with information that is legal in America but illegal in Germany. His excuse: It is 'accessible' in Germany!"
The German Attorney General is talking about you and me.
In light of the above, this US Supreme Court ruling means a lot of breathing
space for me and for the Zundelsite. This ruling confers safety from governmental
interference - at least for the time being.
How long? I hope at least a few years.
I read through the entire Supreme Court ruling, almost all of which is heavy
legalese. However, I culled a few gems:
"At issue is the constitutionality of two statutory provisions enacted to
protect minors from "indecent" and "patently offensive" communications on the Internet. Notwithstanding the legitimacy and importance of the congressional goal of protecting children from harmful materials, we agree with the three judge District Court that the statute abridges "the freedom of speech" protected by the First Amendment."
"No single organization controls any membership in the Web, nor is there any centralized point from which individual Web sites or services can be blocked from the Web."
"Once a provider posts its content on the Internet, it cannot prevent that content from entering any community."
"Unlike communications received by radio or television, 'the receipt of information on the Internet requires a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial.'"
The internet is ". . . the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, . . (and) is entitled to 'the highest protection from governmental intrusion.'"
"The Internet is not as 'invasive' as radio or television . . . [c]ommunications over the Internet do not `invade' an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden. Users seldom encounter content `by accident.' "
"The Internet can hardly be considered a 'scarce' expressive commodity. It provides relatively unlimited, low cost capacity for communication of all kinds. The Government estimates that '[a]s many as 40 million people use the Internet today, and that figure is expected to grow to 200 million by 1999.'"
"This dynamic, multifaceted category of communication includes not only traditional print and news services, but also audio, video, and still images, as well as interactive, real time dialogue. Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same individual can become a pamphleteer. As the District Court found, 'the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought.'"
"The vagueness of the CDA is a matter of special concern for two reasons. First, the CDA is a content based regulation of speech. The vagueness of such a regulation raises special First Amendment concerns because of its obvious chilling effect on free speech. . . Second, the CDA is a criminal statute. In addition to the opprobrium and stigma of a criminal conviction, the CDA threatens violators with penalties including up to two years in prison for each act of violation. The severity of criminal sanctions may well cause speakers to remain silent rather than communicate even arguably unlawful words, ideas, and images."
"In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another."
"It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. . . But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not "reduc[e] the adult population . . . to . . . only what is fit for children."
". . . [t]he level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply
cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox."
"The breadth of the CDA's coverage is wholly unprecedented. "
"The general, undefined terms 'indecent' and 'patently offensive' cover large amounts of non-pornographic material with serious educational or other value." (!)
"It would confer broad powers of censorship, in the form of a 'heckler's veto,' upon any opponent of indecent speech who might simply log on and inform the would-be discoursers that his 17 year old child--(is) a "specific person . . . under 18 years of age." (!!)
"The CDA, casting a far darker shadow over free speech, threatens to torch a large segment of the Internet community." (!!!)
"As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship."
And yet, in light of all of the above: if I, as a United States citizen
with not a speck on my own record other than, perhaps, a dozen minor traffic
tickets in three decades of living in this country, were to travel to Germany,
I would be arrested, tried, convicted and thrown into prison - just like
a common criminal.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"In contemporary Moscow and St. Petersburg nobody is being checked for forbidden literature when entering the country, and (no one has to) fear imprisonment in Russia for transgressions against ludicrous, politically inspired censorship laws that do not belong in the statutes of a civilized nation."
(Hans Schmidt in "Jailed in 'Democratic' Germany'")