Statement of Rep. Chris Cox.
Re: Opposition to HR 3783, Online Child Protection Act.
Date: September 17, 1998.
Source: Office of Rep. Chris Cox. This document was created by scanning a photocopy, and converting it to HTML.

STATEMENT OF REP. CHRISTOPHER COX

SUBCOMMITTEE MARKUP OF H.R. 3783,
THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT

The American people should be aware that the legislation before us today is far more limited in intended reach than the Communications Decency Act.

• Protects "good Samaritan" efforts. I'm pleased that the substitute amendment proposed by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) deletes a provision in earlier drafts that would have reversed the important "good Samaritan" liability protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Act to Internet service providers who take affirmative steps to limit users'--or children's--access to obscene, indecent, or otherwise just plain objectionable materials. I'm pleased that the bill before us will permit these critical protections to continue to be an effective part of our efforts to empower parents to stop obscene material.
• Ban on FCC content regulation. I'm also pleased that language was added, in Section 231(e), that expressly bars the Federal Communications Commission from policing the content of web sites and becoming a de facto Federal Computer Commission. Relying on FCC regulators-- even if there were thousands of them--to read, evaluate, and screen the trillions of bits of data available on the Web is the least effective "solution" I could think of, and I'm pleased this bill rejects it.

Still, as I indicated in my opening statement at last Friday's hearing, I have serious concerns about the rapid pace with which we are moving this legislation. The legislation is far from the comprehensive approach we need to empower parents to protect their kids from smut online. Among the bill's limits:

• Affects U.S. sites only. Yet, as we heard testimony at last Friday's hearing, a significant amount of pornography on the Web--perhaps as much as 40%, as the Court estimated in its CDA decision--originates in foreign countries, which are beyond the reach of this legislation's ban on making and posting obscene material.
• Applies only to non-commercial sites, and sites on the World Wide Web. Broad categories of the Internet--individual or "hobby" porn web pages, Usenet, email, electronic bulletin boards, chatrooms--are exempt from the bill's ban on making obscene material available to minors.
• Doesn't let parents set tougher standards. The definition of material that is "harmful to minors" is a far narrower standard than the one that I suspect most parents impose in their own homes. What is acceptable material based "community standards" may not be acceptable based on my own individual standards for my family. This bill does nothing to help me stop my 5-year-old son Charles from viewing, for instance, the Independent Counsel's report.
• Locking in obsolete technologies. Finally, I agree with the concerns expressed by Prof. Lessig, who testified on Friday that the architectures of the Internet are changing at such a dramatic pace, that "if Congress were to act now, it would risk entrenching a less efficient or effective technology for dealing with the problem that it seeks to address ... namely, effective parental control over the material to which their children are exposed."

It is my hope that we will have additional time between subcommittee and full committee markup to fix these shortcomings. I'm hopeful that we will have further time to consider this topic, because it is my firm belief that it's not just good enough to go after the makers of pornography; we also need to empower parents and ensure that they have the technological tools on their computers to block access to material that they deem offensive or unacceptable.