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Jim Tradwick, a single father and San Antonio businessman, owns Xtatix, a small company that offers Internet connections to individuals and companies. In June, he started getting flooded with hate e-mail and harassing phone calls. Then he was visited by agents from US Customs-- who threatened to take away his computers to see what was on them-- and the San Antonio police, who threatened to take away his son.

What was the fuss? Among the Web pages on the Xtatix server was a gay site called Free Spirit, which discusses erotic attraction to teenagers, and includes a number of pages by gay teens themselves. Tradwick had no problem with the site-- he calls himself a "free speech nut." Free Spirits' pages fall well within the law, and are not likely even to frighten any horses-- there are no nude pictures or sex stories. But Free Spirit was on the hit list of the Children's Protection and Advocacy Coalition, a murky California group run by one Anne Cox-- who refuses to name the member organizations-- and an ex-cop obsessed with sexual perversion. CPAC also targeted other web sites-- one about gay spanking, one discussing how gay youth can fight discrimination, and a site offering miscellaneous sex stories.

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CPAC's attack paid off. Under threat of losing his business and his son, Tradwick backed off from his principles, and gave the Free Spirit webmaster 48 hours to shut down their pages.

Censorship's new face

Civil libertarians sighed relief in June when the US Supreme court struck down the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The justices ruled unanimously that making it a felony to say "fuck" in an e-mail violated the First Amendment.

But though the CDA is dead, new threats to Internet freedom loom. Congress and the White House are strategizing their next assault. Now that they've failed in their attempt to impose on the Net a standard of "decency"-- the same standard the government uses to regulate broadcasters-- the new hook for fine-toothed Net meddling may be "intellectual property protection" or "child endangerment." But in the meantime, vigilante censors are harassing service providers to make them drop web pages and newsgroups that censors don't like. They have also targeted search engines that point people-- or in some cases now specifically do not-- to Web pages and newsgroup posts. Like KKK cross-burners of yore, these vigilantes know that many authorities smile on their efforts, and that cops will sometimes launch damaging investigations at their provocation.

There's a notorious American tradition of angry mobs burning down newspapers. But with the Net, censors can accomplish their ends without smoke or fire. There are rarely any headlines, and no one goes to jail. But controversial and challenging words and images-- many of them about homoerotic desire-- disappear from the Internet every day, as service providers succumb quietly to the pressure.

"Whether it's CPAC wanting to nuke all web sites containing the word 'boy,' Senator Swinestein wanting to nuke all web sites containing the word 'bomb,' or Senator Hatch wanting to nuke all web sites containing the word 'sex,'" writes Mike Duvos in a Cypherpunks newsgroup, "the optimal strategy for service providers has turned out to be to quietly remove any material some squeaky wheel is uncomfortable with, keep proclaiming themselves to be the strongest supporters of free speech in the entire Net community, and stonewall when asked questions which might suggest anything to the contrary."

Sometimes people who are censored can find alternate ways back onto the Net. Free Spirits, for now, is back on line. Before going to Xtatis they had been kicked off another server. Afterwards, they found a home on a server in South Korea, but phone calls from the US got them booted off there. Now, the pages are back online on a small server in Germany. Organizers of the site are raising funds to purchase their own direct connection to the Net. However they don't want their computer to be in the US-- but not because they plan to violate any US laws. "We are very nervous about being here," says Jim Finn, who helps run the Free Spirits, "if the government is going to use underhanded tactics to intimidate our providers and possibly confiscate our equipment." In the course of investigations, police frequently seize computers that they never return, even when they file no charges.

Filtered into the memory hole

The arguments mustered in the successful fight against the CDA ironically contribute to some of the current problems.

Consider Intergo, Inc., a Texas company that rates Web sites and lets parents block ones that the firm deems suitable for mature viewers only. The trouble is Intergo's "safety technology" apparently puts every gay and lesbian Web site-- no matter how political, educational, or devoid of sex-- into the adults-only camp. "Many of these resources have become a necessity to gay and lesbian youth in isolated areas to whom the Internet has become a virtual lifeline," says Loren Javier of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). "If their intent is to keep youth safe, they must make these sites accessible."

Yet liberals hailed filters as the panacea to the "problem" of free expression on the Internet. The idea that filtering Internet content should be left to individuals, not the state, is a powerful one-- it convinced a Supreme Court generally contemptuous of freedom. But like many putative quick-fixes to social problems, the appeal to filters is also a cop-out because it short circuits discussion of the passions that drive censorship in the first place.

If the Internet had sprung up in the 50s, Senator Jesse Helms would be riling his white constituents about the scandalous web sites promoting interracial marriage and civil rights. The right way to answer to Helms and his ilk is not with pacifying assurances that, thanks to filtering, people can avoid these offensive ideas, but to confront the underlying racism. Now that queer sex is the bugaboo, the answer shouldn't be any different.

And filtering isn't just a private choice, since politicians and administrators are forcing public libraries and schools to adopt them, effectively limiting Net access to people who can't afford a computer and a connection of their own. And it's not hard to imagine that if a filter is devised that-- even crudely-- blocks content that state censors say is illegal, its use could be made mandatory. That happens already in countries around the world, and as the number of Internet service providers consolidates in North America, as everyone expects, it will be easy for the government to lay down the iron hand here.

Though anticensorship groups were remarkably successful in rousing people on the Net to fight the CDA, the commitment was wide rather than deep. GLAAD rightly complains about Intergo's anti-gay filter, but is silent-- and perhaps glad-- when a site like Free Spirits gets the boot, on the grounds that frank discussion of gay men's erotic feelings gives us a "bad image." When it serves its goal of lesbian and gay public relations, GLAAD welcomes censorship: it urged pulling the plug on an anti-gay web site, www.godhatesfags. com, saying that its message was "hurtful." Among gay groups-- and in liberal opinion generally-- censorship is something to oppose when it hurts one's own kind. That's when the blue ribbons get pinned to lapels. When censorship conveys an immediate benefit, however, the ribbons get shoved into the pocket.

That censorship is bad and dangerous no matter who its victims is a concept best grasped today by Cypherpunks steeped in computers and the Net. Whether it's the painting "Mona Lisa" or the sex video Lisa Moaning, the bits streaming over the wire look the same. All digital data are indistinguishable until carefully examined. If hysteria over drugs or hate speech or pornography becomes intense enough, then no one's data-- which is to say no one's privacy-- is safe. Much better than civil libertarians and gay politicos, Internet activists have seen the danger in the new wave of repressive laws. Whether they can articulate that danger to a broader public remains to be seen. If not, the 1990s may be recalled as a short-lived golden age of free expression on the Net, and free spirits won't have any place to call home. **

Editor's Note: from The Guide, September 1997