Computer Censorship Update

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS has published three articles about the computer censorship bill which is now in Congress, attached to the major telecommunications deregulation bill (AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #237, #236, and #227). This bill would make it a felony to transmit most safer-sex information to the public by computer. Unintended consequences would damage our treatment information work by making it difficult to host an uncensored computerized public forum on any topic, and difficult to link a Web site to foreign sites. Also, universities and other institutions will be pressured to block public access to huge databases and archival collections now available, due to the cost of hand-checking all of it to assure compliance; even if Congress or the courts later change the law, the existing tradition of openness may never fully recover.

The bill is still in Congress. After our last issue had gone to press, it looked like a bipartisan compromise on other contents of the telecommunications bill could lead to passage by Christmas; President Clinton promised to sign that bill, which included the censorship provision. But then the compromise fell apart. It is likely that major areas will now need to be renegotiated; Congress may act in February. Many outcomes are possible, from passage of the current bill, to removal or compromise of the censorship provisions, to partisan dispute preventing the passage of any telecommunications bill until after the presidential election. A measure of the confusion is that there has not yet been a complete copy of the actual bill embodying the House/Senate compromises; Congress had been expected to vote final approval of this major legislation long before a complete draft even existed.

Whatever Congress does, we will have to face this issue for a long time. If the censorship provisions become law, there will be years of litigation; if not, the issue will come back to Congress again and again. AIDS organizations have not been engaged, and were not represented when the censorship provisions were adopted. We must start now to work with civil libertarians and others so that our voices will be heard about legislation which could greatly damage the future effectiveness of AIDS services and activism.