Otherwise Objectionable episode 4: ‘The Solution’

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The fourth episode of Otherwise Objectionable, the narrative-driven podcast that tells the true story of Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, picks up in the mid-1990s with a heated debate in the United States Senate over, well, objectionable content on the internet. A bill intended to keep smut off the internet threatens to undo everything Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden have proposed.

Nebraska Senator James Exon is waving a blue three-ring binder around the Senate with a warning in bright red lettering on the cover - "WARNING - Do not open until further instructions. Offensive material enclosed. Keep out of the reach of children." Inside is a collection of inappropriate content found online, presented as the justification for a new law censoring content found on the internet.

NARRATOR: Senator Exon's bill would become the Communications Decency Act - or CDA. Senator Ron Wyden actually witnessed the blue book himself when he was still a representative.

RON WYDEN: Exon was a conservative Democrat, and by the time we really found our footing, he was already off to the races and walking around the Senate cloakroom showing people pictures of horrible things on the Internet. I'm not kidding. I saw it when I got to the Senate.

CHRIS COX: The Senate had been the first mover here.

NARRATOR: Former Congressman Chris Cox.

CHRIS COX: And not because they were reacting to the Prodigy CompuServe lawsuits, but rather because they were legislating against pornography on the internet.

NARRATOR: Exon wasn't alone in his crusade against online pornography. He enlisted allies like Republican Dan Coates.

ARC - Child Safety: There is a dark side to the internet. And that dark side brings unrestricted, pornographic material into every home.

NARRATOR: And it wasn't just lawmakers sounding the alarm. Many parents were understandably worried about their kids going online and stumbling onto inappropriate content.

…

CHRIS COX: His bill, his proposal, uh, would ban from the internet anything that was unsuitable for minors. Now that was, obviously a wholesale protection for minors, no question. But it also would have meant that the entire internet would have been dumbed down to the level of what underage people should be allowed to see.

NARRATOR: The bill made it so the FCC could criminally charge anyone who posted content that the government deemed inappropriate for kids.

CHRIS COX: They just had no idea, or at least Senator Exon had no idea, of how much content they were talking about, and the fact that it was real time. Casting his dragnet as wide as he did, and having, you know, criminal enforcement and only things suitable for minors on the web, you know, all of this was a vision that was very dark from our standpoint.

RON WYDEN: Both of us had heard about Senator Exon talking about some gigantic decency act. I didn't know everything about it, but it just looked to me like mass censorship.

So then-Reps. Cox and Wyden came up with a proposal that would serve as an alternative to Senator Exon's Communications Decency Act.

RON WYDEN: I was a parent of young kids and I just thought to myself, what is the key here? And the key would be to come up with things that empowered parents to figure out a way to protect their kids, rather than to get in the business of Mr. Exon's censorship.

CHRIS COX: We understood also that there needed to be a way to deal with these problems that didn't ruin the entire internet. And that way, as we saw it, was giving the users of the internet the greatest latitude in controlling what came across their own portal. And so that was our idea.

NARRATOR: Their idea became the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act - the precursor to Section 230.

Chris Cox and Ron Wyden thought their personal responsibility approach could be a solution for concerned parents, one that would also protect free speech. They were tech-savvy enough to know that there were already tools like Net Nanny that allowed parents to control their kids' experience online. Instead of involving the FCC or paring the internet down to just what was appropriate for minors, Cox and Wyden's bill gave parents - not the government - the power to decide what their kids could see.

And so, the two congressmen hit the hill to rally support.

How will their compromise play out? Listen to Otherwise Objectionable Episode 4: The Solution.

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