10:55 PM
EFF's Laurie Piri:
Freedom of Speech is alive and well on the Internet
Laura Pirri caught by flowers in the interview den.
words by Martha Glaser
photo by Donna Compton
Laura Pirri, Membership Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), speaks briefly with netcast reporter Martha Glaser at the 9th Annual Digital Be-In, before her on-camera appearance live on the net.
The presence of the EFF at the Be-In is signficant, since the EFF was formed to protect our Freedom of Speech in cyberspace, says Pirri. Why? Because the original, Human Be-In occurred thirty years ago as an outgrowth of the free speech movement. Since the digital age the movement has become a controversy argued anew, and last year the EFF used Verbum's 8th Annual Digital Be-In to launch its Blue Ribbon Campaign. Since then, the EFFs web site has become the sixth most visited site on the Web, after popular search engines and browsers!
The EFF estimates that some 12 million sites are linked to the EFF site, suggesting that the grassroots groundswell of interest in protecting the Freedom of Speech is alive and well on the Internet.
The EFF is interested in further increasing its membership, since the freedom of speech is currently under siege by recent legislation meant to protect children and adults from certain material. Unfortunately, this legislation restricts our Constitutional Liberties as well. Passed in the 1996 Telecommunications Bill, The Commications Decency Act is a powerful, pernicious example of this kind of limiting legislation. The C.D.A. threatens to chill freedom of speech in electronic communications and narrow the scope of our First Amendment rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear this case in the next few months. This follows a Philadelphia District Court ruling, which found the CDA to be unconstitutional in June of 1996. This lower court decision sets a strong precedent for the outcome of a Supreme Court ruling.
As an alternative to enacting laws that may be Unconstitutional, the EFF recommends alternative solutions. These include technical solutions and filtering software that can empower parents and individuals to make their own choices about what content they deem appropriate and inappropriate, decent and indecent. With the filtering software, parents can select the rating system that is the most congruent with their values.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation depends on its membership to be informed and continue its work upholding civil liberties in the age of electronic communications. The EFF wants people to join as members, to stay informed about the issues, to make their opinions heard, to speak to Congresspeople, to encourage industry to take responsible action in defense of freedom of speech, and against government control of material that constitutes a kind of censorship.
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