Decency's in the Eye of the Beholder -- An alternative to the Communications Decency Act of 1995 (see TidBITS-263) has been proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy. The Leahy bill, S.714 (called the "Child Protection, User Empowerment, and Free Expression in Interactive Media Study" bill) proposes a five month study of current law and technological capabilities surrounding access to controversial content via electronic media. At this time, this bill presents the only alternative to the Exon/Gorton Communications Decency Act, which is likely to pass without a strong show of support for Leahy's alternative. More information and, yes, an online petition can be found at the following URLs. It's worth noting that the original petition against the Communications Decency Act gathered more than 108,000 signatures. [GD]

http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/s314_hr1004_ s652.alert
http://www.cdt.org/cda.html
http://www.cdt.org/petition.html