Today, some juicy and strange legislative provisions in the draft Stevens bill.

"Misleading words or images on the Internet."  That's how the section that begins on p.226 starts.  It's a mighty big subject -- but we do have a focus, and acts defying this language will trigger fines and imprisonment:

It is unlawful for any person knowingly to embed words, symbols, or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent [to deceive another person into viewing material that is obscene] [to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors].

I'm guessing this is a repeat of the old meta-tag worries -- "secret" codes designed to fool search engines into listing a site, much to the horror of the inadvertently clicking consumer.  This seems to be a legislative solution in search of a problem.  First of all, many search engines rank according to linkage, not according to those ol' secret codes.  And the engines will give a few lines of text -- which won't be in the source code for a site but will instead be visible.  So what's the problem?

The "harmful to minors" definition is interesting -- it attempts to create a nationwide "community standard" for this material:  

[Harmful to minors material is material that] is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors

COPA targeted speech that was harmful to minors according to "contemporary community standards."  The government argued that that standard wasn't problematic online because most places in America have the same standard.  In the summer 2002 Supreme Court decision, Justice Thomas said that a web publisher had the burden of compliance with the most restrictive jurisdiction into which material was sent.  Justice Breyer didn't agree:

"To read the statute as adopting the community standards of every locality in the United States would provide the most puritan of communities with a heckler's Internet veto affecting the rest of the nation. . . The technical difficulties associated with efforts to confine Internet material to particular geographic areas make the problem particularly serious."

Justice O'Connor also agreed in COPA that the use of "community standards" might be problematic online. 

Faced with the oddness of the Thomas position and the concerns raised by Breyer and O'Connor, the drafters of this Stevens bill decided to throw "communities" overboard completely.  The government must be assuming that "prevailing standards of the adult community as a whole" are obvious enough to avoid an overbreadth challenge.  It's easy to predict that there will be substantial and well-grounded complaints about this language.  I don't think the people in my neighborhood (Greenwich Village) have the same standards for what is "harmful to minors" as everyone else, and I don't think there's a "prevailing standard" nationwide.  Who prevails?  What on earth does that mean?

The next section prevents children's programming from presenting interactive commercial matter.  I know that children are big marketing targets, but why not let them interact with the cereal?  How can that hurt? If parents don't like the programming, can't they just turn it off? (ducking) 

The last bit suggests a study of "bus-casting" -- broadcasting on school buses.  Now, I'm against being forced to watch anything -- on planes or buses or in taxis.  So I'm all for looking closely at this.  But I still wouldn't mind interacting with the cereal (or licensed character) if I were six.  Heck, children are exposed to so much media they'll be totally jaded -- they won't care if the licensed character can wave to them.  Stifling interactivity is likely to have negative economic effects on this programming -- look what COPPA did to children's web sites.

Tomorrow:  the vaunted Internet Consumer Bill of Rights.