By John Borland,
Federal lawmakers agreed on a wide-ranging U.S. budget bill that includes a smorgasbord of high-tech and Internet provisions Thursday, setting the stage for a high-profile legal challenge from civil-liberties and free-speech groups.
The spending agreement, which is almost certain to be approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton, includes a measure designed to keep online pornographic material out of the hands of minors.
Civil-liberties groups have lobbied heavily against the measure, saying it repeats the mistakes of 1996's Communications Decency Act (CDA).
"The bill will not be effective at protecting children, and it is probably unconstitutional," said Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We will be making legal preparations to fight it."
"Just like the CDA, this bill will once again criminalize socially valuable adult speech and reduce the Internet to what is considered suitable for a 6-year-old," said Ann Beeson, one of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys who worked on the challenge to the CDA.
"Following a landmark Supreme Court ruling and constitutional objections from the Justice Department, Congress can plead politics, but it can't plead ignorance," Beeson added.
The ACLU, along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have been preparing a lawsuit and could file it as soon as next week. Plaintiffs in the case could include news sites, gay and lesbian sites, and any site that posted the Starr report online, Beeson said.
The measure's last-minute approval did bring praise from conservative family groups.
"The commercial pornographers have had the credit card technology in place for years," said Donna Rice Hughes, vice president of marketing for the anti-pornography lobbying group Enough is Enough. "This bill simply requires pornographers to use the technology before, not after, children can view harmful pornography."
Legislators have been negotiating with the Clinton administration all week over the spending bill for the next federal fiscal year. According to some reports from negotiators, the Internet content provisions proved to be one of the final stumbling blocks. Negotiators reached agreement mid-Thursday.
The version of the anti-Net porn bill contained in the budget agreement would force any commercial site containing material deemed "harmful to minors" to ensure content does not find its way to children. Sites that require credit cards or verify the age of their users would be protected from criminal prosecution under the bill.
The budget agreement also contains a handful of other bills that will affect the technology industry. A measure that raises the annual cap on H1-B visas, which allow foreign nationals to work in the United States, will be included. Many high-tech businesses say they need foreign workers because there is a shortage of engineers and programmers in the United States.
Also slated for approval is the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which will bar new Internet-access or Net-specific sales taxes for three years.
Several Net measures that were tacked on to the tax act also made it into the spending package. ISPs will be required to provide subscribers with Net-filtering software if asked, though ISPs will not be required to use the software themselves.
Sites that want to collect personal information from children under 13 will be required to seek parents' permission first. That measure stemmed from the Federal Trade Commissions' survey of Web privacy practices last March.
Legislators are scheduled to vote on the budget agreement Friday before adjourning for the year.
Try TechWeb's RSS Feed!UCLA seeking Programmer/Analyst IV in Los Angeles, CA
Transportation Security Administration seeking CIO in Arlington, VA
Comcast seeking Tier 4 CRAN Network Engineer in Chelmsford, MA
SMDC Health System seeking Applications System Analyst 3 in Duluth, MN
ISES, Inc. seeking Techncial Support in Bridgewater, NJ
For more great jobs, career-related news, features and services, please visit our Career Center.
TechWeb's FREE e-mail newsletters deliver the news you need to come out on top.
Get definitions for more than 20,000 IT terms.
Editorial and vendor perspectives
