Plenary: Civil Rights in Cyberspace: How Online Free Speech Restrictions Will Inhibit Online Diversity

Thursday 16:30 - 18:00.

Ann Beeson, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

In the past two years, courts in a variety of landmark cases have affirmed strong free speech rights for the Internet. Despite these victories, lawmakers continue to try to squelch the speech-enhancing and democratizing aspects of the online medium through poorly crafted laws and policies.

For example, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous condemnation of the Communications Decency Act, the U.S. Congress recently passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which again puts online speakers at risk of severe criminal penalties for communicating protected speech to adults. COPA does nothing to protect children. But, if not enjoined, it will impose insurmountable burdens on content providers that will devastate small and home-based online businesses, and will eliminate many valuable interactive forums.

In addition, regulators in many places are forcing adults and minors to use blocking software when they access the Internet at public libraries and schools. The software is an arbitrary censorship tool which blocks access to a wide variety of valuable educational, political, literary, and artistic sites on the Internet -- including resources on women's health and safer sex.

Ann Beeson is staff counsel at the ACLU, where she works as a litigator to promote and protect civil liberties in cyberspace. She is a primary architect of the landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 declared the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional and affirmed free speech rights in cyberspace. She is now lead counsel in the challenge to the second attempt by the U.S. Congress to impose criminal sanctions on protected Internet speech.

The Los Angeles Times named Ms. Beeson one of six "Stars of the Internet" for her work in safeguarding free speech in cyberspace, and she has been profiled as an "Internet Newsmaker" by CNET.