 New Trial Begins in Defense of Online Free Speech Free the Net: Why You Should Care About Net Neutrality  How and Why You Can Defend Net Neutrality Net Neutrality: Myths and Facts Election Alerts: Election Day Voter Hotline: Guard the Right to Vote! Dispatches from the Field  YOU CAN HELP PROTECT OUR BASIC FREEDOMS by joining with over 550,000 card-carrying members of the ACLU. Our rights as individuals—the very foundation of our great democracy—depend on our willingness to defend them, and as an ACLU member, you'll be doing your part.
Click now to safeguard our Bill of Rights by becoming an ACLU member.Election Day Voter Hotline: Guard the Right to Vote!
As part of its Election Day monitoring efforts, the ACLU Voting Rights Project and various ACLU state affiliates will monitor polling sites and respond to incidents of voter intimidation, vote suppression or election irregularities. Voters with complaints are encouraged to call the organization's toll-free voter hotline, 1-877-523-2792. The hotline will operate from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. EST on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7.
 Dispatches from the Field
With the midterm elections right around the corner, November 7th is on everyone's mind. The ACLU is a non-partisan organization, and takes no official position on candidates for elected office. But we're monitoring and organizing in a number of states on anti-civil liberties ballot initiatives. Read some of our dispatches from the field below.
From Joanne in Oregon, on the fight over reproductive health and parental notification:
Between the campaign headquarters and the Planned Parenthood office and a series of misguided U-turns, we've seen it all from the comfort of our rental car, an outrageously blue PT Cruiser.
Kacie, Rachel, and I have been working on the campaign to defeat Measure 43! Measure 43 would change Oregon law to require doctors to send a government-mandated certified notification letter to a parent at least 48 hours before a young woman aged 15-17 is able to obtain an abortion.
For a teen living in abusive or violent homes, her only alternative would be to plead her case to an administrative law judge at the Oregon Department of Human Services, a bureaucratic state agency that is already stretched too thin. The campaign slogan says it best: Measure 43 is not simple, and it's definitely not safe.
To learn more, visit: http://www.noon43.com
From Aaron in Wisconsin, on the fight against a state ban on civil unions:
With only a few days before the election the latest polls show us in a dead heat, so this race, like many others across the country, will be determined by our efforts these last few days and how effectively we get fair-minded Wisconsinites (including lots of ACLU members) out to the polls next Tuesday.
Read more of "Dispatches from the Field"
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| November 2, 2006   
Help defend Net Neutrality. Put one of these images on your blog or Web site and link to these features and actions from the ACLU.
New Trial Begins in Defense of Online Free Speech
Blogging from the COPA Trial
ACLU attorneys and clients blog about the testimony, the issues and a few moments of absurdity in the COPA trial:
"...In that gap falls a great range of speech on topics. It includes speech about whether it is okay to be gay. It includes fine art that happens to involve nudes. It involves sex ed advice geared toward teenagers who may be too embarrassed to ask anyone else."—ACLU Attorney, Catherine Crump
"The government's opening argument, which previewed their theory of the case, proceeded as a kind of syllogism: (1) we all know that COPA was intended to target only "commercial pornography"; (2) plaintiffs, who provide sexual but indisputably valuable material, are not commercial pornographers; (3) ergo, plaintiffs are crying wolf about their fear of prosecution under COPA. There's a hole in this argument: COPA never uses the words "commercial pornography"; it broadly targets descriptions or depictions of sexual acts or nudity. In fact, the word "pornography" has no legal significance—it's in the eye of the beholder."—Ben Wizner, ACLU Attorney
Read more at blog.aclu.org | The ACLU's fight against Internet censorship stretches back a decade and continues as we return to court for the latest round.
Congress first attempted to censor the Internet in 1996, when it passed the Communications Decency Act. The law criminalized "indecent" speech online. The ACLU sued, arguing that the law abridged the First Amendment. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed and struck down the law.
The legal battle continues with our challenge to the "Child Online Protection Act" (COPA) which would impose draconian criminal sanctions, including five-figure penalties and months of imprisonment, for online material acknowledged as valuable for adults but judged "harmful to minors." The law was signed by President Clinton in 1998 and has never been enforced.
"This case is about speech. It is not the role of the government to decide what people can see and use on the Internet," said lead counsel Chris Hansen, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney. "Those are personal decisions that should be made by individuals and their families. Congress does not have the right to censor information on the Internet. Americans have the right to participate in the global conversation that happens online every moment of every day."
For this latest round of a nearly 10-year court battle, a broad range of clients from the Internet world have joined in the challenge, including Salon.com, Nerve.com, UrbanDictionary.com, rappers, writers, painters, video artists, and providers of safer sex information.
The online censorship law has already been held unconstitutional twice, and the Supreme Court upheld the ban on enforcement of the law in June 2004. The Justices, however, also asked a Philadelphia court to determine whether any changes in technology could affect the constitutionality of the statute.
The law will not provide effective protection for parents who are concerned about their children having access to some materials, lacking, among other things, jurisdiction over the more than 50 percent of online speech posted overseas, non-commercial sites and instant messaging, chat rooms or e-mail.
More information, including a full list of plaintiffs, legal documents and the history of Congress' attempts to censor the Internet, is available online at www.aclu.org/onlinefreespeech
Free the Net: Why You Should Care About Net Neutrality
Look Out Internet Surfers
An additional danger is looming for Internet surfers—mandatory data retention. Over the last several months the Bush Administration has begun pushing Congress to mandate that Internet service providers retain data on their customers for a set period of time. Passage of such a law would allow great surveillance of web surfing habits and communications, cost companies and consumers millions, and inhibit speech and activity on the web.
| The keys to the Internet have always been safely in public hands - until last year, when the FCC suddenly repealed longstanding Internet principles of "neutrality" and non-discrimination.
With the blessing of the Supreme Court, a handful of profit-driven telecoms and cable companies now could effectively shut down the 21st Century marketplace of ideas by screening Internet e-mail traffic, blocking what they deem to be undesirable content, or pricing users out of the marketplace.
Historically, Net Neutrality protections filled the free speech gap. Since those protections were removed last year, nothing prevents network providers from discriminating against Internet users and application and service providers in terms of content, quality of access, and choice of equipment.
If you're like many people using the Internet, you don't think about whether your Internet Service Provider is intentionally slowing down or speeding up your access to Yahoo! versus Google. Without Net Neutrality, your ISP could do just that.
Imagine if your phone company was allowed to own restaurants and then provided good service and clear signals to customers who called Dominos and static and frequent busy signals for those calling Pizza Hut.
It sounds outrageous, but it would be entirely possible if the telephone system wasn't regulated under the "common carrier" framework. The telecoms and cable companies that provide Internet network services, including AT&T, BellSouth, Comcast, Qwest, Sprint, Time-Warner/AOL, and Verizon, have spent over $100 million lobbying Congress and the FCC to eliminate established Net Neutrality protections.
The assault on Internet freedom will only get worse. The FCC imposed Net Neutrality protections in merger agreements for certain network providers such as SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI, but those protections expire in 2007. And in July 2006, the FCC declined to include any Net Neutrality protections in Comcast and Time-Warner's acquisition of Adelphia Cable. The pattern of the FCC opposing Net Neutrality is expected to continue, as network providers continue to consolidate into an even smaller pool of Internet gatekeepers.
Without the vigorous non-discrimination principles in place before 2005, a few corporate conglomerates will control everything that you can say or do on the Internet. Net Neutrality is needed, and it is needed now.
Learn more about the fight for Net Neutrality at www.aclu.org/freethenet
How You Can Defend Net Neutrality
Several Senate bills claim to protect the Internet, but there's only one we think restores three time-honored protections in place before last year, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.
This act ensures an Internet free of content discrimination. Internet users must be allowed to access the lawful websites of their choice, free of interference or degradation by network providers. The legislation also provides equal access to all users at an equal price. Network providers must be barred from giving preferential treatment to their own services at the expense of competing sites consumers want to use.
Network providers have already begun barring access, providing slower access, and/or charging higher premiums to popular services competing with their own. For example, Verizon Wireless recently announced it was blocking access to PayPal in favor of its own payment service.
Consumers must have the right to choose the equipment they want, or make it themselves, and attach it to any network. If Net Neutrality is not restored, network providers can render any competing equipment incompatible with their network gateways.
If you believe Net Neutrality is worth restoring and preserving, please let your senators know today. To take action, simply click here.
Net Neutrality: Myths and Facts
MYTH: Net Neutrality will cause broadband networks to be abandoned.
FACT: Net Neutrality promotes broadband development by increasing Internet services and applications that generate new consumer demand. The increased demand for broadband resulting from Net Neutrality will lead to more investment in the next generation broadband networks, including the continued growth of fiber-optic cable.
MYTH: Yahoo! and Google get a "free ride" from network operators.
FACT: These Internet companies pay much more than the average web operator because their sites use greater bandwidth from host sites than other operators. There is nothing wrong with bandwidth purchasing plans based upon usage. Net Neutrality simply ensures that network operators cannot play favorites with their own services.
MYTH: Net Neutrality interferes with network management.
FACT: There is no evidence that this occurred prior to last year, when Net Neutrality was protected. Telephone companies have been able to regulate and manage their networks for years under "common carrier" regulations much more stringent than those proposed by Net Neutrality.
MYTH: Net Neutrality will stifle innovation on the Internet.
FACT: Today's vibrant Internet economy resulted from Net Neutrality protection during the Internet's infancy. Net Neutrality spurred innovation and commerce by preventing large companies from leveraging market power to stifle competition from smaller, dynamic web innovators.
Learn more about the fight for Net Neutrality at www.aclu.org/freethenet.
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