POLITICS & COMMUNITY
Brock Meeks
interviewed by Brian Hecht on September 18, 1995
The comfortable middle ground is the fact that there are technologies out there now that empower parents, and give them the tools to control what their kids see.
Tripod: Censorship and content regulation are really nothing new. What distinguishes cyber censorship like we see now from every other kind of government regulation?
BM: Well, I think what is happening is that regulation, or the regulatory moves that we're seeing in Congress, is really trying to adapt an old paradigm to a new paradigm. There are legislators who are locked in an old mentality. They are trying to do things like apply the decency standards -- or indecency standards, as the case may be -- of radio and television to this new world called cyberspace. And it just doesn't work on several levels. For instance, you can't say the seven dirty words from George Carlin on the radio -- because there's no other effective way to shut those out rather than hit a bleep key at the control panel.
So the whole legislative and judicial history behind that was that that was the least intrusive way to do that. In cyberspace, just outlawing or censoring that type of speech is not the least intrusive way to do that, and that's why people believe its unconstitutional. People like Senator James Exon, want to throw me in jail just because I write the word fuck, and put it in a message to somebody. That's using a sledgehammer to drive a nail, and its just not necessary.
Tripod: Most Net activists are pretty diehard libertarians. And then the regulators like Exon seem to be creepy right wingers. Is there any middle ground -- is there any "least intrusive way?"
BM: Well, first of all, I don't think Exon is a creepy right winger. He's a Democrat, and I've heard him speak out on other issues, and I agree with him. So to call him a creepy right winger is to put him in the same boat as Jesse Helms who is indeed a creepy right winger.
Tripod: Okay, point taken.
BM: But I think that there are least intrusive means. And I think that Exon, unfortunately, just got caught up in being the standard bearer for a special interest group. And frankly that was the Christian Coalition, who got to him and kind of made him a standard bearer before he really knew what was going on. That comes close to saying Exon was duped and, well, I'm comfortable saying that Exon was duped.
But the comfortable middle ground is the fact that there are technologies out there now that empower parents, and give them the tools to control what they and what their kids see. So there are those technologies out there. Now, nothing is a given. Nothing is a hundred percent. I can tailor my kids' America Online account so that they can't see any newsgroups with the words "bestiality" or "sex," or "supermodels" and they can't go to these newsgroups and they can't download from newsgroups. I can put in all those parental controls, but there's nothing to say that they can't go down the street and use Johnny's Mac -- whose parents don't know about that -- and start downloading images. So there is that gap, but at least there are tools. And as parents you can only do so much, unless you keep your kids chained in the attic, and then we've got another special interest group that gets involved when you do that.
Tripod: Well it's interesting that it's being framed as an issue of kids and parental control because it seems to me in some cases there just a much broader agenda there that transcends protecting the youth of America. Do you detect that as well?
BM: A broader agenda in what sense?
Tripod: Just people, people who wouldn't like there to be obscenity of any kind on the Web available to anybody -- rather than just children.
BM: Oh, sure. There are people who believe that their morality is the morality of the United States, and they want to push that on everybody else. I don't think that's in keeping, with anything from the Founding Fathers to today. I mean there are some people that would like the entire Net to be brought out of a Judeo-Christian ethic, and a Judeo-Christian morality where everything looks like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. And I don't think that that's feasible. The Net is certainly flexible enough and broad enough that they can create their own channels like they've done on TV ... I don't begrudge them that ... I think that there is a broad agenda and it sweeps everything from cyberspace, into local politics, and into national politics. Unfortunately, these are a bunch of loudmouths that the media give a lot of attention to, unfortunately, but they are a very, very, small minority. Unfortunately they happen to be a very loud minority.
Tripod: Most Americans wouldn't know a web page if it fell on their house. Is there any real grassroots passion about this issue or is it just sort of trumped up grandstanding?
BM: Well, I think that the people that are trying to censor cyberspace have done a good PR job in that they make it a horror story. They know that people out there that wouldn't know a Web page if it fell on their house. They do know about this big scare word called "child pornography."They say, "Oh, these new technologies that we're hearing all about are being overrun by child pornographers. And therefore we need laws in place now." So the American public hears the words "child pornography" and "must be stopped," and they say "Well, of course. Of course it has to be stopped." If you came up to me and said, "Do you believe child pornography should be stopped," I would say, "Well, of course." But it's like, where should it be stopped, and how should it be stopped? But the American public doesn't take time to ask those follow-up questions, nor do the people who are asking the questions do any kind of follow-up. The reason the Exon Amendment passed overwhelmingly in the Senate was because it was couched as either a vote for child pornography or against pornography. Everybody voted for the Exon Amerndment because it was a vote against child pornography, where the Senators thought the hometown crowd would perceive a vote against Exon as a vote for permissiveness, obscenity, and so forth. So in that sense, the national debate -- if you can call it that, was not very much of a national debate at all, it was skewed through scaremongering types of tactics.
Tripod: Talking about the Time Magazine cover article a few months back. Do you think that that had the shock effect that people have perceived, or do you think think that was in some way balanced out by the backlash?
BM : Well I think that the Time Magazine article was one of the most humiliating journalistic efforts in the last ten years, and the people at Time Magazine should be embarassed that they were hoodwinked by this guy and that they didn't take time to do the rigorous journalistic investigation and research into that article.
Fortunately what happened was, because of the way the article was written and the way the article was misused, proponents of censorship in cyberspace pulled out this bogus number and say that 83.5 percent of all the images on the Internet are pornographic. When of course there's no way that's true. That's not actually what the article said, but it was written so that you could assume that. So I think that the article did a big disservice.
I don't think that the backlash on the Net -- which thorughly debunked all this and exposed it -- had much of an impact at all out where Joe Public lives. Because if just didn't make it out there. And Time Magazine, even though it ran a kind of a mea culpa and a small explanation, it was buried, it didn't make the front page, and I doubt if very many people read that. The only thing that people remember is this horrific cover and this big story and the fact they took out of it was this bogus number -- that 83.5 percent of the Net is pornographic, which is just not true.
Tripod: Have you ever interviewed Newt Gingrich?
BM: I've interviewed him one-on-one running from one meeting to another when I've caught him, just by chance, in the halls on Capitol Hill.
Tripod: Can you offer any insight into his cyber fetish?
BM: I can give you a good story. This was related to me by a reporter for the New York Post who was on a plane traveling with Gingrich. He had to call one of his aides over to boot up his laptop computer, and boot up his word processor because he didn't know how to do it. He wrote away on his word processor, then he called the aide back over, and closed the document because he didn't know how to use it.
Tripod: I wonder if that's part of the service package that comes when he gives the laptop to every welfare mother.
BM: That's right. I think that he talks a good game, but I would be astounded if he's very Net savvy himself. For instance, if you said "Give me your top three URLs," I would almost bet that he couldn't do it for you.
Tripod: He'd say Thomas, probably.
BM: He'd say Thomas, but he couldn't give you the URL. He couldn't say "That's www... whatever." I don't think he could do that. I think he talks a good game, but I don't think that he's very practical about it.
Tripod: What are your top three bookmarks on your browser?
BM: There is my own of course. Which is http://cyberwerks.com/cyberwire. Then there's also my Muckraker column with Hotwired. And then Yahoo! Those are the top three.
Map | Search | Help | Send Us Comments
