The Honorable Larry Pressler
Chairman
Senate Commerce Committee
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Thomas J. Bliley, Jr.
Chairman
House Committee on Commerce
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC, 20515

The Honorable Ernest F. Hollings
Ranking Democrat
Senate Committee on Commerce
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable John D. Dingell
Ranking Democrat
House Committee on Commerce
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC, 20515

The Honorable Henry Hyde
Chairman
House Judiciary Committee
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC, 20515


November 9, 1995

Dear Senator Pressler, Senator Hollings, Representative Bliley, and Representative Dignell:

For the past year, Congress has struggled with the question of how best to protect children from inappropriate material online. As the telecommunications conferees work to reconcile competing approaches to this issue we urge a consensus policy that empowers families, places liability on creators of illegal content instead of passive service providers, and avoids constitutionally suspect new laws that will only delay enforcement. We write as a broad coalition of representatives from the online service, computer hardware and software, and telecommunications and electronic industries, the advertising industry, newspaper and library associations, and public interest organizations, who believe that the interests of children, free expression, and the continued viability of the Internet and interactive media can best be served by combining a deregulatory approach to encourage the development of parental empowerment technology along with vigorous enforcement of criminal laws that are crafted according to settled constitutional principles.

A comprehensive and effective policy approach to this issue should be based on the following principles:

• Parental Empowerment: Maximum reliance on, and encouragement of, private sector innovation to produce technologies that enable parents, not government regulators, to choose what is best for their own children.

• No vicarious liability: Due to the tremendous flow of information through both public and private networks, holding service providers, systems, access software providers, or any other third parties liable for the content of illegal messages created by persons not under their authority or control will be ineffective at protecting children as well as a threat to the privacy of users. Groups such as the United States Chamber of Commerce have expressedconcern on this issue, as well.

• Enforceable, narrowly tailored, and constitutionally sound criminal laws: Any new criminal laws should be focused on bad actors and based on constitutionally sound standards. Existing proposals, which rely on the vague and untested indecency standard, do not fall into such a category.

• Uniform national policy: Given the national, and even global, nature of online services, uniform national rules governing liability are essential. Permitting state regulation of content in interactive media would force service providers and systems to conform to inconsistent and contradictory regulations and undermine the national interest.

Recognizing the power of interactive technology to help solve the problem of protecting children, the House passed the Cox-Wyden-White bill on a 420-4 vote in order to encourage the market to provide parents screening and filtering options to protect minors. Even since the Congress began considering this issue this year, great advances have been made in parental empowerment technologies. Thus, the Interactive Working Group, with the support of its members, would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate these technologies as well as to brief the conferees on additional cooperative efforts now underway in the private sector. Relying on parents, not the government, to make choices about the content that they and their families receive assures maximum respect for First Amendment rights of adults to receive and transmit constitutionally-protected material, and allows families, not bureaucrats, to determine what information is most consistent with their own moral values.

Recent FBI child pornography arrests demonstrate that vigorous law enforcement efforts are already working to punish illegal behavior online. We would welcome the opportunity to brief you on ongoing efforts to assist law enforcement in cases where criminal activity has occurred. To the extent new criminal laws are needed, they must be drafted in a constitutionally sound manner, both to avoid enforcement delays and to assure respect for the free speech and privacy rights of Internet users. We believe it is possible to craft a criminal statute that punishes those who provide truly harmful material to children in a manner that both targets the serious offenses about which some conservative family groups are most concerned, and that also will withstand constitutional scrutiny. In particular, rather than relying on the vague and constitutionally suspect "indecency" standard, Congress should instead consider the "harmful to minors" standard within the framework of Title 18 of the United Sates Code. This standard is used in numerous state statutes and has been found constitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

We look forward to working with all of you in an effort to identify a solution to this problem that assures maximum protection for children, while relying on the innovative energy of the high technology market to meet evolving needs of parents online.

Sincerely,

America Online Inc.
American Advertising Federation
American Association of Advertising Agencies
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Association of National Advertisers
AT&T
Bell Atlantic
Business Software Alliance
Center for Democracy and Technology
Coalition for Networked Information
Commercial Internet eXchange
Compuserve Inc.
Computer & Communications Industry Association
Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association
Cox Enterprises
Discovery Channel
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Messaging Association
Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers - United States Activities
Information Technology Association of America
MCI
Microsoft Corporation
Microsystems Software
National Cable Television Association
National Newspaper Association
Netscape Communications Corp.
Newspaper Association of America
Pacific Telesis
Recreational Software Advisory Council
Software Industry Coalition
Software Publishers Association
SurfWatch Software
TCI
The Media Institute
Time Warner Inc.

cc: Members of the Conference Committee on telecommunications reform legislation