From crispen@campus.mci.net Thu Jun 13 12:09:56 1996
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 22:17:35 -0700
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Reply-To: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS
Subject: TOURBUS -- THE CDA -- JULY 13, 1996
/~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~\
| "Why | Surf When / You Can | Ride The | Bus?" / | \
|__________|__________/__________|__________|_________/ | \
/ /______|----\
/ Looking for some good, clean chat on the internet? |//////| |
| WorldVillage Chat always has friendly folks, great |//////| |
| conversation, and special games six nights a week! |//////| |
| http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/chat/html/chat.htm |//////| |
| |//////| |
~~~/~~~\~~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~
\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP : THE CDA
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESSES : http://www.eff.org/
http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/trial.htm
ROADMAP96@LISTS.INTERNIC.NET
Those of you who have been on the bus for a while will remember the promise
that I made on July 20 ("Roadmap and 'Internet Week'") to drive our little
bus of Internet happiness by HOMR -- the Helpful Online Music Reference. I
even spent three hours last July writing this really cool post telling you
everything you could possibly want to know about HOMR. Unfortunately,
about five minutes before I was going to send out my HOMR post to all of
you in the back of the bus, HOMR broke.
Since then, HOMR has been TOURBUS' proverbial "Giant Rat of Sumatra" --
something that I keep hinting about, but never actually visit. As a matter
of fact, on May 23 ("InfoSeek") I repeated my promise to take you to HOMR .
. . in fact, I promised to take you there today.
Well, thanks to the kind work of Judge Sloviter and the rest of the boys on
the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, HOMR is going to
remain a mystery for yet another week.
... but we all can still dream about the day that we will actually visit HOMR!
*----------------* Unlock the Secret of Your Dreams *-----------------*
This deluxe 5 lesson course delivered via the Web will empower you to
interpret your dreams on your own and in electronic discussion groups.
Dr. Jayne Gackenbach, a leader and highly sought speaker in the field
of dream research is your instructor in the next course, starting July
8th! This $129 course is being offered at a low introductory price of
$39 (US) or $49 (Canadian). Register today - space is limited.
*------------------( http://www.outreach.org/dreams )------------------*
If you have been in a cave for the last 18 hours and have not heard the
news, by a unanimous vote of 3-0 the United States Court of Appeals ruled
that the Communications Decency Act -- the act which outlawed the use of
the Internet to distribute "indecent" material -- is unconstitutional.
According to Judge Sloviter, "[t]he CDA is patently a government-imposed
content-based restriction on speech, and the speech at issue, whether
denominated 'indecent' or 'patently offensive,' is entitled to
constitutional protection." The Court went on to say that, "the evidence
and our Findings of Fact based thereon show that Internet communication,
while unique, is more akin to telephone communication, at issue in Sable,
than to broadcasting, at issue in Pacifica, because, as with the telephone,
an Internet user must act affirmatively and deliberately to retrieve
specific information online."
Anyway, if you would like to see the complete text of the Court's opinion,
pop on over to
http://www.eff.org/
and click on the words "Full text of decision available." If you want to
be a resident Net-guru, I strongly recommend that you take an hour or two
out of your schedule to download and read the Court's opinion. I do want
to warn you about one thing, though: the Court's opinion is absolutely HUGE
(over 120 pages, or about 250 K).
You can also find pretty much EVERYTHING that you could ever want to know
about the lawsuit that was responsible for overturning the CDA (ACLU v.
Reno) at the American Civil Liberties Union homepage:
http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/trial.htm
I have not read the entire Court opinion (yet), but I did find a paragraph
on page 60 of the opinion that I really do want to share with you. Not
everyone is happy with this decision, and quite a few parents are concerned
about protecting their children from the "filth" on the Net that they have
heard about from newspapers and television reporters. The following may
not ease your mind any, but this is the Court's opinion on that subject:
"Even if a broad search will, on occasion, retrieve unwanted
materials, the user virtually always receives some warning of
its content, significantly reducing the element of surprise or
'assault' involved in broadcasting. Therefore, it is highly
unlikely that a very young child will be randomly 'surfing'
the Web and come across 'indecent' or 'patently offensive'
material."
As I said, that may not ease your mind any, but I thought you'd like to see it.
On a non-CDA related topic, several bus riders have asked me to make an
announcement when the Roadmap96 list starts accepting new subscriptions.
Roadmap96 is a free, six-week, 27-lesson Internet training workshop
designed for users with accounts on command-line systems (like UNIX,
VAX/VMS, VM/CMS, etc.). Well ...
The Roadmap96 list is now accepting applications! To subscribe, just send
an e-mail letter to
LISTSERV@LISTS.INTERNIC.NET
with the command
SUBSCRIBE ROADMAP96 YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME
in the body of your e-mail letter, replacing YOURFIRSTNAME and YOURLASTNAME
with your first and last names.
Roadmap96 is completely free, and new workshop sessions start every two weeks!
--------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
LILAC - verb. An untruth.
Usage: "He's a nice enough feller, but he can lilac anything."
(Special thanks goes to Gabe Helou for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://www.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html
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TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1996, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin
All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission.
Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to get on the Bus!
(\__/) .~ ~. ))
/O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen
{O__, \ { The University of Alabama
/ . . ) \ crispen@campus.mci.net
|-| '-' \ } http://www.ua.edu/~crispen/
.( _( )_.'
'---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
