[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4479]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   SUPPORT TRUTH IN DOMAIN NAMES ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise more as a father than as a 
Member of Congress. I am, proudly, the father of three small children, 
all under the age of 11. And today when I introduced the Truth in 
Domain Names Act, I did it very much with Michael and Charlotte and 
Audrey in mind.
  This legislation, which we first conceived of in the 107th Congress, 
would punish those who use misleading domain names to attract children 
to sexually explicit Internet sites. There would be fines of up to a 
quarter of a million dollars, and even imprisonment of up to 2 years.
  As a member of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and 
Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary, I know well, 
Mr. Speaker, that the Internet can be a force for good, but it can also 
be a force for evil. At its best, the Web is used to disseminate 
information and provide educational materials to children. Teachers and 
parents often encourage children to turn to the Internet for research, 
school projects, and homework, just as I did with my 8-year-old 
daughter this last Tuesday night, sitting with her on my knee, doing 
her homework and searching the Web.
  The reality is that there is also the worst of the Internet, equally 
accessible to our children. The Internet can actually be used to 
deceive children into viewing inappropriate material. According to a 
survey conducted in the year 2000 by the Crimes Against Children 
Research Center, they found that 71 percent of teenagers had 
accidentally come across inappropriate sexual material on the Internet. 
An FBI spokesman told the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland 
Security of the Committee on the Judiciary in 1999 that pedophiles 
often lure children into viewing pornography to ``encourage their 
victims to engage in sex.''
  Even in my own experience this Tuesday night, Mr. Speaker, I found 
that even though we were entering words in a search engine to help my 
second grade daughter do her homework, nevertheless the sites we were 
accessing, I had to cover her little eyes and see first what popped up 
because of the type of prurient materials that would come with the most 
innocuous word search.
  So I ask my colleagues to join me today in this very simple proposal 
to provide criminal penalties to those who would name Web sites in a 
way to deceive children into being exposed to prurient material. The 
Truth in Domain Names Act is all about protecting the innocent from 
those who would prey upon them.
  The Good Book tells us it would be better to have a millstone tied 
around their neck and have them thrown into the sea that would mislead 
and lead astray these little ones. Not a lot of millstones around this 
city, Mr. Speaker, but we can tie the seriousness of the law to those 
who would prey upon our children with prurient intent by this session 
of Congress adopting the Truth in Domain Names Act.

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