Badpuppy Gay Today

Tuesday, 17 June 1997

The Clinton Administration is, while its chief advisors are butting heads in strident disagreement, said to be preparing a new policy that leaves most of the authority for the Internet's self-regulation to industry alone.

Quietly, without fanfare, Ira Magaziner, senior White House adviser, has been working, for 15 months, with a group making more careful recommendations suitable as commercial guidelines on the Internet. The Communications Decency Act, in the view of some high level advisers, never had a chance because it is patently unconstitutional. It had symbolized, however, the hopes of right wing censors and smut police.

Magaziner is now, to the surprise of many, emphasizing another route, that of filtering technology. He says: "To the extent, then, that effective filtering technology is available, content regulations traditionally imposed on radio and television need not be extended to the Internet."

The president's senior advisor continued, "In fact, unnecessary regulation or censorship could cripple the growth and diversity of the Internet."

This latter statement, say Internet freedom champions, is sounding much like a complete about-face by the Administration, one materializing just prior to an immanent Supreme Court decision which, many suspect, will nullify the already Clinton-supported Communications Decency Act.

Christopher A. Hansen of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) counseled Clinton's strategists to come clean: "If that's their new policy, I think they have an obligation to announce it to the Court before they rule," he said.

The ACLU has worked assiduously on this case, leading a significant coalition of groups that include The American Library Association, the American Publishers Association and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Senior government officials have been quoted bemoaning the poorly manufactured content of the Communications Decency Act as it now climbs to the Supreme Court level. Everyone, said one, knew that it was a bad case. "We all knew at the time it was passed that the Communications Decency Act was unconstitutional."

What has stunned censorship forces in what appears to be the supreme defection from their ranks, has been what they now perceive as the hollowness in Clinton's commitment to Internet censorship. Obviously, says a county Democratic political organizer, he's getting ready to waffle on this CDA law, and, since he's been preparing to do so for 15 months, what he's accomplished really amounts to a political art form. "We're lucky he doesn't really favor censorship."