Fun_People Archive
19 Jun
Senate Passes Telecom Bill

Date: Mon, 19 Jun 95 12:53:25 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Senate Passes Telecom Bill

[I delayed the announcement of this news from last Friday in the hopes that
some positive or intriguing aspect would emerge to take the edge off the
general smell of sickness about it.  So far, no luck ...  -psl]

U.S. Senate Passes Sweeping Telecommunications Bill

By Rory J. O'Connor, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

June 16--The Senate passed a complex and sweeping telecommunications bill
	...

================================================================

From: "Daniel R. Tenenbaum" <dante@halcyon.com>

I didn't see this news on Fun_people, so here goes.

One thing that I've only seen mentioned once in this whole brouhaha is
that Larry Pressler (R-SD) who chairs the telecommunications committee is
totally in Rupert Murdoch's pocket. First he tried to get PBS sold to
Murdoch so that Murdoch could use the frequencies. Now, in the bill just
passed, Pressler succeeded in getting the foreign ownership restrictions
waived so that Murdoch can own more stations (though Murdoch is using
other connections to get a green card).

The telecommunications act should be called the Rupert Murdoch act,
except perhaps in the New York Post or on Fox....

Dan Tenenbaum                                               dante@halcyon.com
                     <URL:http://www.halcyon.com/dante/>
...
================================================================

From: "Brock N. Meeks" <brock@well.com>

CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1995 //

Jacking in from the "Last Safe Harbor" Port:

U.S. Capitol, Senate Gallery -- It's all over.  Fuck it.

The Senate this evening, by a vote of 84-to-16, passed a draconian measure
today that restrains First Amendment rights in Cyberspace.

Say a "dirty word," go to jail.  It's all over.  Under this amendment to
the telecommunications reform bill now being debated in the Senate, the
first sentence of Dispatch would land both you and me and possibly the
system that zipped it though the Internet to your Email box in jail for two
years and cost all of us $200,000 each.  And no, it wasn't billed as a
budget deficit reduction act.

The amendment was offered by Senator James Exon (D-Neb.) in conjunction with
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) as an amendment to the Communications Decency Act
that was first added to the telecom reform bill.  That bill's principle
author was Sen. Exon.

The last ditch stance to defeat the Exon amendment, a proposal by Sen.
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), which would have substituted Exon's abridgement of
first amendment rights with a more sane approach of studying the problem
and suggesting technical solutions to the problem of pornography the Net
was never even voted on, due to some procedural wrangling by the Senate
leadership.

A more detailed report of this floor action will follow later tonight.

In the meantime, Dispatch is moving its operation to Belize.

Meeks out...

© 1995 Peter Langston