ALERT: *Last Chance* on Net Censorship Legislation! Act NOW! ------------------------------------------------------------ CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE NET CENSORSHIP LEGISLATION IN CONGRESS (INCLUDING THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT AND THE HYDE AMDT) Short Update: The Conference Committee will vote this week! What You Can Do Now: Call the conference committee and tell them to oppose Rep. Hyde's proposal to censor the Internet. Time is running out. CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL NET CENSORSHIP LEGISLATION Dec 4, 1995 PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY UNTIL December 20, 1995 REPRODUCE THIS ALERT ONLY IN RELEVANT FORUMS ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS The Latest News What You Can Do Now Legislative History List of Participating Organizations (changed) ________________________________________________________________________ THE LATEST NEWS The fate of the Internet as we know it today and the future of freedom of speech in interactive media will come down to a vote of the telecommunications reform bill conferees, scheduled for Wednesday December 6. A bad outcome will criminalize content currently provided by millions of people on the Internet as illegal and subject to jail time and large fines. Call the conference committee now and tell them that parental control not government censorship is the only effective means of addressing childrens' access to objectionable content on the Internet. Don't wait. The stakes here are too high. Please look below at the list of legislators and call yours, and if yours is not on the conference committee, call House Speaker Gingrich or Senate Leader Dole. Because of the slow speed with which staffers read legislators' email, email to them will not be effective. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW 1. Most of the proposals available to the conference committee will fundamentally restrict your speech on the Internet and other public networks. Look at the list below and call the legislators in your state and ask them to oppose Rep. Hyde's efforts to censor the net. If none of them are in your state, call Gingrich and Dole. If we cannot convince the conference committee to make the right choices at this juncture, we will have lost this campaign. To see which legislator is yours, consult the free ZIPPER service that matches Zip Codes to Congressional districts with about 85% accuracy at: URL:http://www.stardot.com/~lukeseem/zip.html Or simply look at the list below organized by states. If you're at a loss for words, try one of the following: Please oppose the Internet censorship amendments for the Telecomm bill being put forth by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL). The only effective way to address children's access to objectionable material on the Internet is through parental control. or As a religious person and a parent, I oppose the Internet censorship language for the Telecomm bill currently proposed by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL). I, the parent, am the best person to monitor my child's access to the Internet. or Although there is information on the Internet that I wouldn't allow my children to see, I don't agree with the proposals from the Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) and others that would censor the the Internet. As a parent, I have parental control tools that are far more effective at controlling my children's access to the Internet. House members of the Conference Committee Dist ST Name, Address, and Party Phone Fax ==== == ======================== ============== ============== 6 GA Gingrich, Newt (R) 1-202-225-4501 1-202-225-4656 14 CA Eshoo, Anna G. (D) 1-202-225-8104 1-202-225-8890 6 TN Gordon, Bart (D) 1-202-225-4231 1-202-225-6887 27 NY Paxon, Bill 1-202-225-5265 1-202-225-5910 7 GA Barr, Bob (R) 1-202-225-2931 n.a. 1 IL Rush, Bobby L. (D) 1-202-225-4372 1-202-226-0333 27 CA Moorhead, Carlos J. (R) 1-202-225-4176 1-202-226-1279 6 FL Stearns, Clifford B. (R) 1-202-225-5744 1-202-225-3973 4 NY Frisa, Daniel (R) 1-202-225-5516 1-202-225-4672 6 CO Schaefer, Daniel (R) 1-202-225-7882 1-202-225-7885 14 IL Hastert, J. D. (R) 1-202-225-2976 1-202-225-0697 7 MA Markey, Edward J. (D) 1-202-225-2836 1-202-225-8689 23 CA Gallegly, Elton (R) 1-202-225-5811 1-202-225-1100 6 IL Hyde, Henry J. (R) 1-202-225-4561 1-202-226-1240 26 CA Berman, Howard L. (D) 1-202-225-4695 1-202-225-5279 8 TX Fields, Jack (R) 1-202-225-4901 1-202-225-2772 6 TX Barton, Joseph (R) 1-202-225-2002 1-202-225-3052 5 TX Bryant, John (D) 1-202-225-2231 1-202-225-9721 14 MI Conyers Jr., John (D) 1-202-225-5126 1-202-225-0072 16 MI Dingell, John D. (D) 1-202-225-4071 1-202-225-7426 1 AR Lambert-Lincoln, Blanche (D) 1-202-225-4076 1-202-225-4654 10 OH Hoke, Martin R. (R) 1-202-225-5871 1-202-226-0994 5 IL Flanagan, Michael (R) 1-202-225-4061 n.a. 4 OH Oxley, Michael G. (R) 1-202-225-2676 1-202-226-1160 1 CO Schroeder, Patricia (D) 1-202-225-4431 1-202-225-5842 9 VA Boucher, Rick (D) 1-202-225-3861 1-202-225-0442 1 WA White, Rick (R) 1-202-225-6311 1-202-225-2286 6 VA Goodlatte, Robert W. (R) 1-202-225-5431 1-202-225-9681 3 VA Scott, Robert C. (D) 1-202-225-8351 1-202-225-8354 2 WI Klug, Scott (R) 1-202-225-2906 1-202-225-6942 18 TX Jackson-Lee, Sheila (D) 1-202-225-3816 n.a. 13 OH Brown, Sherrod (D) 1-202-225-3401 1-202-225-2266 5 IN Buyer, Steve (D) 1-202-225-5037 n.a. 7 VA Bliley Jr., Thomas J. (R) 1-202-225-2815 1-202-225-0011 Senate members of the Conference Committee P ST Name and Address Phone Fax = == ======================== ============== ============== R MT Burns, Conrad R. 1-202-224-2644 1-202-224-8594 D HI Inouye, Daniel K. 1-202-224-3934 1-202-224-6747 D SC Hollings, Ernest F. 1-202-224-6121 1-202-224-4293 D WV Rockefeller, John D. 1-202-224-6472 n.a. D NE Exon, J. J. 1-202-224-4224 1-202-224-5213 R AZ McCain, John 1-202-224-2235 1-602-952-8702 R SD Pressler, Larry 1-202-224-5842 1-202-224-1259 R WA Gorton, Slade 1-202-224-3441 1-202-224-9393 R AK Stevens, Ted 1-202-224-3004 1-202-224-1044 R MS Lott, Trent 1-202-224-6253 1-202-224-2262 D KY Ford, Wendell H. 1-202-224-4343 1-202-224-0046 R KS Dole, Robert 1-202-224-6521 1-202-228-1245 2. Send mail to vtw@vtw.org and let us know how it went. $ Mail vtw@vtw.org Subject: phoned Congress-person XXX They thanked me for my opinion and said they had received many calls speaking out against net censorship. ^D Mail sent! 3. If you run any sort of system that allows a welcome message for all users, please add the following: Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) and others are lobbying for broad infringements on free speech net by passing legislation that "dumb down" Internet content to that which is acceptable to children. In addition, services like this one might become liable for what their users say and read on the Internet. Please call Congress now; for more info URL:http://www.vtw.org/ or send mail to files@vtw.org with "send alert" in the subject line. (12/4/95) If you have a Web page that gets a lot of traffic, please add the following link: Stop Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) from dumbing down online speech! (12/4/95) 4. This is a very tense week. A very very bad bill could be passed. ________________________________________________________________________ LEGISLATIVE HISTORY We are near the end of this year's campaign. Each chamber of Congress has passed several different bills, all aimed at regulating your communications on the Internet. They range from proposals that criminalize "indecency" and make service providers liable for the statements of their users (such as Sen. Exon's and Rep. Hyde's, put forth by the Christian Coalition), to proposals that encourage parental control and attempt to draft very narrow criminal statutes for those that provide "harmful" material to minors. (such as Rep. White's) You can see a synopsis of each of these in VTW's BillWatch #26 at URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.26.html The conference committee is voting this week on which proposal to adopt. ________________________________________________________________________ LIST OF PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS In order to use the net more effectively, several organizations have joined forces on a single Congressional net campaign to stop the Communications Decency Act. American Communication Association * American Council for the Arts * Arts & Technology Society * Association of Alternative Newsweeklies * biancaTroll productions * Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression * Californians Against Censorship Together * Center For Democracy And Technology * Centre for Democratic Communications * Center for Public Representation * Citizen's Voice - New Zealand * Cloud 9 Internet *Computer Communicators Association * Computel Network Services * Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility * Cross Connection * Cyber-Rights Campaign * CyberQueer Lounge * Dutch Digital Citizens' Movement * ECHO Communications Group, Inc. * Electronic Frontier Canada * Electronic Frontier Foundation * Electronic Frontier Foundation - Austin * Electronic Frontiers Australia * Electronic Frontiers Houston * Electronic Frontiers New Hampshire * Feminists For Free Expression * First Amendment Teach-In * Florida Coalition Against Censorship * FranceCom, Inc. Web Advertising Services * Friendly Anti-Censorship Taskforce for Students * Hands Off! The Net * Inland Book Company * Inner Circle Technologies, Inc. * Inst. for Global Communications * Internet On-Ramp, Inc. * Internet Users Consortium * Joint Artists' and Music Promotions Political Action Committee * The Libertarian Party * Marijuana Policy Project * Metropolitan Data Networks Ltd. * MindVox * MN Grassroots Party * National Bicycle Greenway * National Campaign for Freedom of Expression * National Coalition Against Censorship * National Gay and Lesbian Task Force * National Public Telecomputing Network * National Writers Union * Oregon Coast RISC * Panix Public Access Internet * People for the American Way * Republican Liberty Caucus * Rock Out Censorship * Society for Electronic Access * The Thing International BBS Network * The WELL * Voters Telecommunications Watch (Note: All 'Electronic Frontier' organizations are independent entities, not EFF chapters or divisions.) [End Alert]