Porn on the Web. A decade ago, a sensationalistic cover story in Time magazine brought Internet pornography to public attention. The Internet was full of pornography, or so it said: 83.5% of digitized images on .binaries newsgroups were pornographic. At one university, 13 of the 40 most popular newsgroups were sexually oriented. Most of the sexual pictures, it said, originated from adult bulletin boards specializing in hard-core pornography. It told the story of a 10-year-old who was e-mailed a file filled pictures of deviant sexual acts.

However, the story was quickly assailed by critics. They noted that it was based on a report authored by a electrical-engineering undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. Critics said that he could not have obtained a representative sample of what is actually looked at on the net. Many or all of the pictures covered in the survey were from adult BBSs. The author of the tool used for collecting images from Usenet said it was used incorrectly.

The author responded to those critics by saying that although he was just an undergraduate, he enlisted the help of more than two dozen researchers at prestigious universities, and that the study drew on their expertise. Although many of the pictures were not on the Internet, he noted that adult and other BBSs could be accessed from accounts on Internet service providers.

Congress acts. It would be going too far to say that this article led to Congressional action, but it certainly started the ball rolling. In February 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act by large majorities in both houses: 414 to 16 in the House, and 91 to 5 in the Senate, and then signed by President Clinton. However, observers accused some of them of an election-year ploy to jump on the bandwagon when they really believed the law would be found unconstitutional. According to the act, it was punishable by up to two years in jail to transmit obscene or indecent material via a telecommunications device to someone under 18 years old, or to transmit material electronically to annoy, threaten, or harass someone. The penalty was to be imposed upon the "content provider"; the ISP, university, or other service provider was not liable unless they knew that unlawful activity was taking place and permitted it to continue.

Almost immediately, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association filed suit against the law, claiming it violated the First Amendment. With antipornography groups supporting the law, the battle was joined, and in June 1996, a federal court declared the CDA unconstitutional. The government appealed, and the following year, the case reached the Supreme Court.

The CDA decision. On June 26, 1997, jubilation erupted across large parts of the Internet when the Supreme Court declared the CDA unconstitutional. The consitutional issue dealt mainly with the transmission of indecent material; even before the act was passed, it was already illegal to transmit obscene material. What's the difference between the two? By the 1973 decision Miller v. California, to be "obscene," material must appeal to a lewd, abnormal, or degrading interest in nudity, sex, or excretion, depict or describe sexual or excretory acts in an obviously offensive way, and lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Obscene material can't legally be sold even in adult bookstores. "Indecent" material, on the other hand, includes sexually arousing stories, pictures, and erotica. This, the Court has said, must be permitted for adults, but public display or sale of it to anyone under age 18 can be prohibited.. Legally available pornography (e.g., Playboy, Penthouse, anything else that can be sold at adult bookstores) falls into this category.

How can children be protected? There are laws against selling pornography to children. But on the Internet, it is impossible to tell when the "customer" who downloads pictures, etc. is underage. Also, child molesters may hang out on newsgroups frequented by children and engage them in conversation.

Why it was found unconstitutional. The court unanimously said that a ban on indecent material "unacceptably burdened on-line speech." It cited the fact that the law gave no precise definition of "indecent." Two justices (O'Connor and Rehnquist) said that it would have been constitutional to ban sending an indecent communication to a child. The court said that it is unconstitutional to burden speech in this way if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in protecting children. It suggested that Internet filters might prove an effective means.

Internet filters. Internet filters are programs that attempt to block access to inappropriate material. In most cases, this means pornography and other "adult" material. Internet filters are available as software products that run inside of a Web browser. Neither side of the free-speech debate is very happy with them. The civil-liberties side complains about what they do filter, charging that they inadvertently "ban a large amount of valuable speech." The anti-pornography side says they don't, but complains that they don't catch all of the pornography on the net (especially new sites), and that only one-third of parents have installed blocking software. That is not surprising, since many parents are not technologically sophisticated. Kids often know more about computers than their parents, and might figure out how to deinstall or bypass the filters. URLs change daily, so updates are a necessity. These cost money and are complicated to download.

Many of these problems can be addressed by doing filtering on the server side. Several ISPs provide filtered accounts. All of the major ISPs offer controls free or for a small fee, although they can be bypassed by a fast internet connection supporting TCP/IP connections. America Online allows parents to set up screen names with different levels of control for different ages.

However, technological difficulties remain. It is virtually impossible for filtering software to keep up with the appearance of new "adult" sites. Therefore, the software should check for objectionable words too. But it needs to do this in context, or children won't be able to learn about "sexual harassment" or "breast cancer," for example. Filters have improved since the late '90s, but problems remain. In December 2002, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that depending on the settings, filters could block up to 1/4 of health information Websites. And false negatives are a problem too, as programs strain to keep up with millions of pornographic Web sites; in 2001 Consumer Reports found that no filter could block more than 86% of objectionable Web sites.

Filtering in schools and libraries. Since filtering software is widely available, the question arises: Should it be installed on all computers that can be used by children in schools and libraries? Some groups argue that schools and libraries have an ethical duty to install filtering software. Other groups argue that government should not mandate that filters be installed. Increasingly, government bodies have mandated filters for their schools and libraries. Civil-liberties groups have challenged many of these policies in court. In the most celebrated case, the Loudon County, Virginia library board required filters in its libraries. Federal Judge Leonie M. Brinkema found that policy an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. In a similar case, she also struck down a Virginia law that restricts state employees from accessing sexually explicit material on computers that are owned or leased by the state. However, the latter ruling was unanimously overturned by a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which suggested that higher courts might find mandatory filtering laws constitutional. In December 2000, Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires schools and libraries to install filters if they receive federal funds to connect to the Internet. Passage of this law was challenged in court by critics. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 vote that CIPA is constitutional.

Advocates of mandatory filtering say that children are not allowed to buy pornography in stores, so they should not be able to view it at school or in libraries. Furthermore, they contend that unfiltered access to pornography on the Internet has led child molesters to visit libraries, resulting in an increase in sexually aggressive activities aimed at women and children. They note that installation of filters is favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans.

Opponents of mandatory filtering have said that it denies children the ability to receive online speech that they have a constitutional right to receive (because filters may erroneously block certain sites). Further, they say, it prevents adults who rely on public libraries for Internet access from receiving materials which may be "deemed to be harmful to minors," but which adults have a right to receive. Proponents respond that libraries don't carry pornography in print, so why should they have to carry it electronically?

The Child Online Protection Act. The CIPA decision settled the issue of filters and federal funding, but from a child-protection point of view, that's only part of the problem. Via unfiltered Internet connections at home or elsewhere, children are still able to access material electronically that they would not be allowed to purchase in print. To address this situation, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in 1998. The law required pornographers to take "reasonable steps" to insure that their sites were not accessible to minors. The law was challenged by a coalition of groups including the ACLU. At the end of its term in June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that this is "probably an unconstitutional" violation of free speech. By a 5-4 vote, the justices sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether there are other technological means to prevent children from accessing pornography. Opponents of the law praised this ruling as a victory for artists, sex educators, and Web publishers to communicate with the public about sexuality. But supporters said that the Court has once again given pornographers broader protection than they have afforded other kinds of speech.

This decision places COPA's critics in the unenviable position of arguing that filters can block only inappropriate sites while leaving others free for children to visit--exactly the opposite of of what they argued in the 2003 challenge to CIPA. Considering the amount of interest in protecting children online, litigation--as well as legislation--is almost certain to continue. Whatever the outcome, complete protection will not result, since pornographers could simply move their sites to other countries that have looser regulation.

Hate literature on the Internet. Pornography is one of the main flash points for Internet content, but it is by no means the only one. Hate and harassment must share the spotlight. In January 1996, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the world's largest Jewish civil-rights group, called for Internet access providers to draft a code of ethics that would squelch Web sites promoting hate and violence. Los Angeles law-enforcement agencies saw an alarming rise in bomb calls in mid-1996. In a lot of the cases, kids got their recipes off the Internet. Sen. Arlen Specter in 1995 showed a Senate committee "The Big Book of Mischief," a do-it-yourself guide to bomb-making posted on the Internet.

Internet access facilitates communication with other like-minded terrorists. Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Los Angeles Simon Wiesenthal Center, pointed to this post: "I want to make bombs and kill evil Zionist people in the government. Teach me. Give me text files." Scores of white nationalist, black racist, and neo-Nazi groups and their ilk have established Web sites to disseminate their philosophy.

However, these cases are now nearly a decade old. There doesn't seem to be any hard evidence that the Internet has fed an increase in membership for hate groups. Nonetheless, the Council of Europe in 2002 criminalized hate speech on the Internet by adopting an amendment to the European Convention on Cybercrime that bars "any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin." This action raised concern in the United States, where such bans are seen as contrary to First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

Internet restrictions around the world. The case of hate speech points up the fact that attitudes toward the Internet vary widely by country. Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia tend to ban anything seen as anti-Islamic, as well as other categories of political speech. China has a host of political restrictions, and has even blocked search engines that point users to antigovernment material. Even European nations such as France and Germany ban some speech, notably Nazi materials. A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress to place the United States in the role of defender of Internet freedom. However, certain commentators think that problems such as pornography, spam, and viruses mean that that the Internet is headed toward greater government control.

Harassment: The Jake Baker case. If some extremist groups combine hate and harassment to take over newsgroups, there are also those who combine pornography and harassment. On February 3, 1995, the University of Michigan expelled a student named Jake Baker for stories he posted to an Internet newsgroup. He had posted three of his works on alt.sex.stories. In these stories, women and young girls were kidnapped, sodomized, mutilated, and left to die by men who exhibited no remorse. But this is just standard fare for some of these groups. What made one of Baker's stories different was that the victim had the same name as a female student in one of his classes. The story described torturing her with a hot curling iron, mutilating and sodomizing her while she was tied to a chair. It ended with Baker lighting a match, as if to torch her apartment, and saying goodbye. Baker's attorney said the story was just a fantasy. Baker, he said, had never "threatened or contacted this woman in any way. We think it's unwarranted punishment for pure speech." James Duderstadt, president of the university, expelled him under a bylaw that allowed him to take necessary actions to keep order on campus.

The university then contacted the FBI and asked them to investigate whether there was a violation of federal obscenity statutes. It was revealed that Baker had exchanged e-mail with a user in Ontario about his desire to commit the acts he described. "Just thinking about it anymore doesn't do the trick ... I need TO DO IT." On February 9, Baker was arrested, and spent the night in jail. At his arraignment, he was argumentative: I have been a free man for four months. I wrote this story four months ago. I haven't harmed anyone. ... I think it is a violation of my First Amendment rights and probably several other rights.

Baker's arrest sparked resentment across the Internet. Many cybersurfers said that the arrests of Baker and Kevin Mitnick signaled the end of a frontier, like the waning days of the Wild West, when legends like Jesse James and Billy the Kid were on the run. "Jake Baker is sitting in a jail cell because of a thought, a fantasy ... Justice is deciding what Jake can think and whether what he is thinking is wrong." But others were not so sure. My God ... I'm a member of the ACLU, but this guy has a point. At no point does freedom of speech extend to direct intimidation of others. For example, if I were to walk up to someone on the street and scream in their face about an intent to rape/kill them, I would be justifiably incarcerated. Even the most vehement civil libertarian will agree that absolute liberty is bound by Mill's harms principle."

On March 15, Jake Baker was indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts that he "knowingly transmitted communications in interstate and foreign commerce containing a threat to injure another person." Each count carried five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. On June 21, a federal judge threw out all charges, ruling that they were an infringement on Baker's free speech. But his expulsion stood.

Issues raised by this case. This case raises several difficult questions: What restraints should there be on posting to the Internet? Unlike other means of publication, the Internet has no editor to screen out the most extreme statements. Should the university have to police postings by its students? If so, how could this feasibly be accomplished? If not, who could police the Internet for threatening speech? How specific does an electronic posting have to be to constitute a threat? Is naming a particular individual enough? How does one judge whether a writer might be serious about what he says?

Dangers raised by ubiquitous computer networks. In all of these areas--pornography, hate, and harassment--the Internet raises new questions because of the "broadcast" nature of controversial information. To recruit members, groups used to have to hold rallies, and pass out flyers. Now they only have to set up a Web site, and people can find it using Web search engines. Adult businesses have been limited to certain areas of the city, and often have had to keep a certain distance away from schools. Now they are available to students from their school computers. Laws prohibit selling "adult" materials to children. On computer networks, there is no way to verify the age of the "consumer." Finally, a would-be terrorist can now communicate with a bomb-maker across the country and exchange notes, diagrams, and so forth. Admittedly, this could have done before, but it would have been slower and more trouble.

Ethical questions. The Internet raises several ethical questions that test how far free-speech rights should extend. If you were a parent, would you push for limitations on what children could view in schools and libraries? If you were a librarian, would you resist policies that could limit what adults can view? If you were the administrator of a college computer network, where do you draw the line? If you were an Internet service provider, would you set up a policy prohibiting certain groups and materials from using your service? As Internet users and "netizens," all of us must face these questions and answer them in the context of well reasoned ethical framework.