[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 199 (Thursday, December 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18586-S18587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE ROLE OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IN BELL COMPANY ENTRY INTO LONG 
            DISTANCE SERVICE AND ON INTERNET DAY OF PROTEST

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, among many critical issues currently facing 
Congress, one of the most far-reaching is the Telecommunications 
Competition and Deregulation Act, which is now the subject of a 
conference with the House of Representatives. In June of this year, 
during debate on the telecommunications bill, I spoke on the floor 
about the importance of giving the Justice Department primary 
responsibility to determine when the Bell operating companies should be 
permitted to enter into long distance markets.
  I also supported an amendment by Senator Thurmond, the distinguished 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Senator 
Dorgan, and others, that would have ensured a strong role for the 
Justice Department as the Bell companies expand their business into 
long distance, as we all hope they will. That amendment received the 
votes of 43 Senators.
  Today, I remain convinced that the Antitrust Division of the 
Department of Justice should have a meaningful role in 
telecommunications in the area of their expertise. As the ranking 
Democrat on the Judiciary Committee's Antitrust, Business Rights, and 
Competition Subcommittee, I would like briefly to note three basic 
points on this issue:
  First, we all say that we support competition replacing regulation, 
but the question is how best to make the transition. I firmly believe 
that we must rely on the bipartisan principles of antitrust law in 
order to move as quickly as possible toward competition in all segments 
of the telecommunications industry, and away from regulation. Relying 
on antitrust principles is vital to ensure that the free market will 
work to spur competition and reduce government involvement in the 
industry.
  Second, the Bell companies certainly should be allowed to enter long-
distance markets under appropriate circumstances, for it is generally 
desirable to have as many competitors as possible in each market. The 
issue is how to determine the point at which entry by Bell companies 
will help rather than harm competition. That question, quite simply, is 
an antitrust matter which needs the antitrust expertise and 
specialization of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department.
  Third, as one long interested in competition and the antitrust laws, 
I do not believe it is possible for checklists fully to take the place 
of flexible antitrust analysis in any industry or market. If antitrust 
principles are ignored, competition is likely to suffer and market 
power may become concentrated in a few companies. This will lead to 
harm to consumers through higher prices, less innovation, and the 
weakening of our country's leadership in telecommunications.
  Last May, the Antitrust Subcommittee held a hearing on the antitrust 
issues implicated in the Senate telecommunications bill, S. 652. This 
hearing confirmed the importance of competition to achieve lower 
prices, better services and products, and more innovation for the 
benefit of consumers and our Nation. If we believe in the antitrust 
laws--which have protected free enterprise for over 100 years--then we 
should ensure that the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department 
plays a meaningful role in telecommunications.
  I understand that members of the telecommunications bill conference 
have not yet resolved the issue of what role, if any, the Justice 
Department will have in allowing Bell company entry into long-distance. 
I urge the conferees to make sure the bill gives the Justice Department 
a meaningful role, and does not merely suggest to the FCC that it 
consult with the antitrust experts.
  I also take this occasion to urge the conferees to reconsider the 
manner in which they have chosen to regulate constitutionally protected 
speech on the Internet and other computer networks. Since I spoke last 
week on this issue, the House conferees have agreed, as I feared that 
they might, to a provision that would effectively ban from the Internet 
constitutionally protected speech deemed by some prosecutor in some 
jurisdiction in this country to be indecent. This ban will reach far 
beyond obscenity, mind you, to some vague standard of what is proper 
and decent to speak about both in terms of content and manner of 
expression. They are heading in the wrong direction. We should affirm 
freedom and privacy, not Government intervention, when it comes to 
personal communications.
  Supporters of these restrictions contend that regulating speech on 
the Internet is necessary because self-appointed spokesmen for decency 
say that parents should be concerned about what their children might 
access on the Internet. But many people, including many parents, young 
families and members of the generations that include our children and 
grandchildren, are also very concerned. They ought to be concerned 
about letting the Government step in to censor what they can say 
online, and to tell them what they might or might not see.
  The Congress is venturing where it need not and should not go. We 
should not be seeking to control communications among adults, whether 
old fogeys like ourselves or the vibrant young people who make up the 
vast bulk of the communities in cyberspace. We should not be acting to 
reduce all discourse over the Internet to third-grade readers.
  There are alternatives to overreaching Government regulation. Instead 
of passing a new law--a new law that tells 

[[Page S18587]]
us what we can say, or think--we should use the laws that are on the 
books to protect children, and assume that maybe somewhere, somehow, 
someplace parents ought to take responsibility instead of us always 
automatically passing a law to say what parents should or should not 
do.
  Let me tell you what happens. When you start having all of this 
sudden censorship, well-meaning though it might be, it reaches too far.
  We have left technological advancements, software barriers, access 
codes, increased enforcement of laws already on the books, and vigilant 
parenting unexplored as alternatives to overreaching Government 
regulation.
  After a majority of my Senate colleagues rejected my position in June 
and incorporated a so-called Communications Decency Act in the 
telecommunications bill without hearings, without examination and 
without much thought, I still held out hope that they would proceed to 
learn something about the Internet, how it works, and its potential 
benefits for those who will be using it in the coming century. I was 
encouraged when the Speaker of the House agreed with me and remarked 
that the Senate's action was ``clearly a violation of free speech'' and 
``very badly thought out.'' I, again, urge him to rejoin in the debate 
before it is too late.
  We have already seen the chilling effect that even the prospect of 
this legislation has had on online service providers. Last week, 
America Online deleted the profile of a Vermonter who communicated with 
fellow breast cancer survivors online. Why?
  They found in checking that this Vermonter had used the word 
``breast.'' Nobody bothered to ask why. She is a survivor of breast 
cancer. She was using the Internet to have correspondence with other 
survivors of breast cancer to talk about concerns they might have--
medical advances--a basic support group. But the censors looked in and 
so, because the word ``breast'' had been used, she was being stopped.
  This is what we are opening ourselves up to. We should use the 
current laws already on the books, and we should ask parents to be a 
little more vigilant. Will some things get on the Internet that you, I, 
and other Members of the Senate might find objectionable? Of course, it 
will. But this objectionable material would be a tiny fraction of the 
vast materials available on the Internet. What we should protect is one 
of the greatest experiments we have seen in our age of the Internet 
where you have everything from the things you find most valuable to 
things you might find boring or repulsive.
  We do not close down our telephone companies because somebody picks 
up the phone and calls somebody else and tells them a dirty joke, or 
reams them out in four-letter words. The behavior between the two may 
be reprehensible, and maybe they should discuss their personal 
relationship, but we do not close down the telephone company because 
that might happen.
  Last June, I brought to the floor petitions from over 25,000 people 
who supported my proposal to study technological, voluntary and other 
ways to restrict access to objectionable online messages, before we lay 
the heavy hand of Government censorship onto the Internet.
  This week, a number of organizations, including the Center for 
Democracy and Technology and Voters Telecommunications Watch, sponsored 
a National Internet Day of Protest over the telecommunications bill 
conference's proposal to censor the Internet. In just one day--
Tuesday--over 18,000 people contacted the offices of conferees. This 
country will never accept the new temperance demagoguery that is 
leading us down the road to Government censorship of computer 
communications.
  We have software parents can easily use to pull up on the computer 
and find out where their children have been going--what discussion, and 
what chat lines they have been on. If they find things in there they do 
not want, maybe the parents ought to take the responsibility to speak 
to their children. If you have books or magazines that you do not want 
your children to read, then maybe parents might just say, do not read 
it.
  Somewhere there ought to be some responsibility left for mothers and 
fathers in raising their children, and not have this idea that we have 
to turn everything over to the heavy hand of Government.
  In my years here I have seen rare instances where Senators and House 
Members in both parties have rushed pell-mell into having the 
Government step in to take over for parents. At a time when we hear 
that we have a new thrust in the Congress where we want to get 
Government off your backs, we want to get Government out of your life, 
we want to turn things back to people, we have a massive effort 
underway in the telecommunications conference to say we are going to 
tell you what to think; we are going to tell you what to do, when you 
go online.
  Do you know why? I am willing to bet that three-quarters of the 
Congress do not have the foggiest idea how to get on Internet; do not 
have the foggiest idea how to use the Internet; have never corresponded 
back and forth on the Internet. They can say: ``We do not use it. It 
does not involve us. So let us screw it up for everybody else who might 
use it.'' But, ``everybody else'' are millions and millions of 
Americans.
  I urge the full telecommunications bill conference to consider the 
threat its proposals to regulate online speech poses to the future 
growth of the Internet.
  The interests of the young children are not in the stifling of speech 
or Government overreaching. They will be served by the growth of the 
Internet, the development of the World Wide Web and the creative, 
economic, and social opportunities that they can provide. And for those 
who want to abuse it, those who want to be involved in child 
pornography, we have laws on the books. We can go after those people. 
We can prosecute them. But let us not close down 99.9 percent of the 
Internet because of a few child pornographers. Go after them, but 
protect the Internet for the rest of the people.
  Maybe those who are on the Internet ought to ask their Members of the 
House or the Senate, Do they use it? Do they understand it? Do they 
understand the computer? I do not want to ask them if they know how to 
do really technical things, like programming a VCR. Ask them if they 
can turn on the Internet? Can they actually talk with each other? And 
if they cannot, maybe Internet users ought to tell their Members, 
``Then leave us alone. Leave us alone.''

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