An amendment backed by the Bush administration that advocates claim would help clean up the Internet and protect children online was approved Tuesday by the Senate Commerce Committee.
The amendment states that commercial websites must not place “sexually explicit material” on their homepages or risk felony prosecution. Websites must also rate “each page or screen of the website that does contain sexually explicit material” with a system to be devised by the Federal Trade Commission.
“This will protect children from accidentally typing in the wrong address and immediately viewing indecent material,” says Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus. The Caucus is a bipartisan group of members of the House and Senate working to educate their colleagues about the promise and potential of the Internet.
The mandatory labeling has been opposed by civil libertarians who argue the proposal violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
The seven-page amendment introduced by Burns is nearly identical to a standalone bill by Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, introduced earlier this month. Both proposals followed a speech in April made by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called on Congress to “promptly” enact such a law.
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry had planned to offer a “very similar” amendment and Senate aides would combine the two before a floor vote, said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who serves as the committee chairman.
The entire communications bill won’t become law unless it receives final approval by the committee and, later, the full Senate. It must also be reconciled with a House of Representatives version that differs in many respects, including having no Internet-labeling requirements.
In the past, courts have taken a dim view of mandatory rating systems: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dallas’ ordinance requiring that movies be rated was unconstitutional because the criteria for rating were unclear and vague in a 1968 case called Interstate Circuit v. Dallas.
In a separate battle on Wednesday, a U.S. Senate panel narrowly rejected strict Net neutrality rules. The vote was a setback to companies like eBay, Google, and Amazon.com that had made enacting them a top political priority this year.
In an 11-11 vote, the Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve a Democrat-backed amendment that would have ensured all Internet traffic is treated the same no matter what its “source” or “destination” may be. In order for the amendment to succeed, a majority vote was needed.
The concept of network neutrality, which means that all websites must be treated equally, has drawn a list of high-profile backers, from actress Alyssa Milano to Vint Cerf, one of the technical pioneers of the Internet. It’s also led to a political rift between big Internet companies, such as Google and Yahoo!, that back it and telecom companies that oppose what they view as onerous new federal regulations.
All the Republican committee members except Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine voted against the more regulatory Net neutrality amendment. All the Democrats voted for it. The amendment was sponsored by Snowe and Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota.
