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[FYI] (Fwd) FC: Washington: The Net Must Pay!
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- Subject: [FYI] (Fwd) FC: Washington: The Net Must Pay!
- From: Horns@t-online.de (Axel H. Horns)
- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 09:25:58 +0100
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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 17:40:23 -0400
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Washington: The Net Must Pay!
Reply-to: declan@well.com
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/19359.html
Congress: The Net Must Pay
by Declan McCullagh
2:30 p.m. 27.Apr.99.PDT
WASHINGTON -- Whenever a new form of
evil extrudes into American society,
demands for Internet regulation seem to
arrive faster than a greyhound on crack.
Remember the TWA 800 crash three
years ago? By the time investigators
determined that the airline disaster was
not a terrorist act, Washington officials
already had spent the better part of a
year complaining about the dangers of
the Internet.
Rescue workers were still pulling bodies
from the rubble of the Oklahoma City
federal building when Senator Dianne
Feinstein (D-California) introduced an
amendment to censor bomb-making Web
sites. Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware)
joined her in moral outrage, claiming his
staff unearthed a recipe on Usenet for
"baby food bombs" that were "so powerful
that they can destroy a car."
Those disasters, of course, had little to
do with the Internet. But when word got
out that the alleged gunmen in the
Littleton massacre were Doom-playing,
AOL-subscribing, Web-site-publishing
computer geeks, calls for censorship
came even more quickly than before.
[...remainder snipped...]
********
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:44:09 -0700
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: "October Sky" Film Banned
Washington, D.C. (Routers) -- This year's film, "October Sky," a
coming-of-age movie about several teenaged rocket builders in 1950s
West Virginia, has now been barred from further showings in the United
States, according to the Department of Public Safety. It is the 14th
movie to be banned this year under the "Protection of the Children Act
of 1998," a bill rushed into law in the wake of the Columbine High
School shootings.
"We found the movie involved children using explosive materials to
manufacture rockets in their basements, without parental-unit
supervision," said DPS spokeswoman Melanie Goodlight. "Some of their
constructions even behaved as "pipe bombs," and we are afraid some
impressionable children may see the movie and then attempt to build
their own rockets or pipe bombs."
Critics of the DPS ban on "October Sky" point to this rocket-building
in the 1950s and 60s as a positive achievement for many teens,
including many who went on to become aerospace scientists and
engineers. As one of them put it, "Back in those days it was common to
fill a tube with sulfur and iron oxide powder and light the fuse.
Yeah, some kids blew themselves up, but that was just evolution in
action."
(The editors have witheld the name of this source for fear that
Special Agent Jeff Gordon, Department of Public Safety Enforcement
Division, would add his name to the list of Trench Coat Mafia
Co-Conspirators if his name were made public.)
The Department of Public Safety, which has seen its budget and
staffing grow enormously in recent years, is also considering bans on
several dozen video games, hundreds of magazines, the Mutant Ninja
Turtles, and a large purple dinosaur. "We think "Barney" teaches
children it is O.K. to behave like a dinosaur. We think that is a role
uniquely suited to the Federal government, not our young children,"
Ms. Goodlight said.
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