Apollo goes to court for sake of indecency

The owner of the US-based annoy.com public access Web site went to court last week to defend the right to express indecent speech by asking for the remaining sections of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to be overturned.

San Francisco-based Apollo Media began its campaign in January by issuing a lawsuit against US attorney general Janet Reno as part of a challenge against a section of the CDA.

The clause in question imposes fines or a two-year prison term on anyone who transmits a comment or image 'which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person'.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court ruled that parts of the CDA were unconstitutional - citing the sections that imposed stiff penalties on internet pornographers. But other sections of the CDA survived, including one that makes it illegal to transmit indecent material 'with intent to annoy'.

The annoy.com Web site allows visitors to send electronic mail anonymously to various public officials and public figures. By Apollo Media's own admission, the site contains 'some material of social or political value that is sexually explicit or uses vulgar language that some persons in some communities might consider indecent'.

William Bennett Turner of Rogers Joseph O'Donnell & Quinn - one of the First Amendment experts representing Apollo Media - told the court: 'The government's nosing around in Apollo Media's business - demanding to know, for example, how its online speech has been chilled - is totally unnecessary.

'The CDA annoy provision is unconstitutional.'

A representative of the Justice Department, the official body responsible for the CDA, said that the remit of the section did not apply to firms like Apollo Media - only to obscene communications. He added that the surviving parts of the CDA simply tackle the issue of personal harassment in the digital age.