you argue this subject. You won't, however, find it a comforting one.
Authors Jonathan Wallace and Mark Mangan take on disturbing denizens of the Net to show why the likes of snuff fiction writers and bomb makers should not be used as excuses for restricting the Internet. Civil-libertarian-minded readers will be chilled to the bone -- and their convictions tested -- upon reading about the university professor who pos
ted, in an open newsgroup, fantasies of raping and murdering a female student.
Keeping the Net accessible will ultimately place a greater responsibility on all of us to counter that which we find offensive by social, instead of legal, means. In the above case, the authors argue persuasively that prosecuting the professor for conspiracy to commit the acts he'd written about was misguided; more effective and entirely justifiable was his removal by the university from his teaching post.
After an admirable attempt to boil down the legalese of several landmark court cases, the authors conclude that we should treat the Net as a series of printing presses and book stores. They chose this metaphor carefully: A long history of U.S. Constitutional law extends the fullest protection of the First Amendment to those two institutions. In contrast, virtually every advanced communications technology, from telegraph to television, has in some way been restricted by the government.
I found the printing press/book s
tore comparison useful; it cuts through the colorful attempts by some people to portray the Internet as an invasive, irresistible deluge of information. On the contrary, it takes an act of will to connect to the Internet. And this paradigm leaves a place for responsible filtering by on-line services and parents (and room for argument about just what "responsible" means).
Mangan and Wallace sound the alarm about the political and commercial forces who hide behind outmoded arguments to gradually roll back freedom of speech. The Net has the same chance of moving humanity forward as did the first books. Also, like the printing press, new electronic media will disseminate communications ranging from the objectionable to the subversive to the broadly acceptable.
Mark Schlack is BYTE's editor in chief. You can send mail to him at
mschlack@bix.com
.
Book Review: How Free Should Internet Speech Be?
