The recent attack by Bob Dole on Time Warner and the rest of the entertainment industry is nothing more than electioneering. Dole and the rest of the Republican field are trying to portray themselves as being more pure of heart than the rest of the electoral contestants. In the attempt, they paint anyone who is against censorship as a pornographer.
Politicians should not be promoting government censorship of any media. I am particularly concerned about proposals to punish Internet users and computer bulletin board operators for ideas distributed in cyberspace. The Internet has no ownership of the ideas. It is simply the conduit through which they flow. Punishing bulletin board operators is akin to punishing MCI for allowing obscenities to be spoken in a telephone conversation.
The attempt to censor has chilling implications, the most obvious being a need to monitor communications in an effort to ferret out the lawbreakers. Can you spell Big Brother?
Who will be the arbiter of the acceptable–Bill Bennett, Bill Clinton or Billy Graham? In the past, U.S. courts have attempted to define the obscene by comparing the offending material to “community” standards. The community of the Internet numbers in the tens of millions of users. I suggest that they have already set their own standards by welcoming any and all ideas.
In the end it is the responsibility of the individual to filter the ideas that are presented. If you don’t like an artist, don’t buy his art. If you don’t like a TV program, turn the channel. If you don’t like Bob Dole, don’t vote for him.
Joe Hoenigman
