December 16, 2007 -- Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone."

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean's reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt" for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean's advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada's liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech."

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime" of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

If Maclean's, Canada's top-selling magazine, is found “guilty," it could face financial or other penalties. And the affair could have a devastating impact on opinion journalism in Canada generally.

As it happens, Canadian human-rights commissions have already come down hard on those whose writings they dislike, like critics of gay rights.

Nor should Americans dismiss this campaign against Steyn and Maclean's as merely another Canadian eccentricity. Speech cops in America, too, are forever attempting similar efforts - most visibly, on college campuses.

In fact, New York City itself has a human-rights panel that tries to stamp out anything deemed too politically incorrect.

Since 9/11, Americans have been alert to the threat of terror from radical Islamists. But there's been all too little concern for a creeping accommodation of radical Islamist tenets, like curbs on critical opinions.

That needs to change.

Freedom of the press extends only to those who own one -- or so the saying goes. It once rang true in a world ruled by radio and television broadcasters, newspaper chains and cable networks.

But the Internet has changed all that, delivering the press -- and in theory its freedoms -- to any person with a good idea and a connection to the Web.

This extraordinary twist to "mass media" has catapulted many an everyday YouTube auteur to celebrity-status while turning ideas born in a garage or dorm room into Fortune 500 companies. It is the reason so many Americans are now passionate about protecting their right to choose on the Internet. But it's also triggered a backlash from the old regime -- media corporations that built their empires upon controlling the ebb and flow of information in America.

This list of media giants includes the nation's largest phone and cable providers, who provide a portal to the high-speed Internet for more than 98 percent of residential users in America. Now they want to be more than just a window to the Web. These companies have proposed a closed scheme of Internet fees and filters that affords them the final say over which ideas make it to the top of the heap.

Say "goodbye" to indy rock bands breaking big via a backyard YouTube video and "hello" to censored rock-and-roll courtesy of AT&T's "Blue Room."

Open v. Closed -- A Clash of Cultures

This closed business model has proven a financial windfall for the gatekeepers of traditional media. But it comes at a too heavy a cost to the millions of Americans who see the open Internet as the 21st Century's catalyst for free speech and opportunity.

It's against the backdrop of this clash of cultures -- open versus closed -- that an unusual series of official events have occurred this year.

Washington -- where lobbyists for Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have long had the home-field advantage -- recently witnessed an extraordinary series of public meetings and congressional hearings on the fate of the Internet. If you listen carefully, you might actually hear the people's interests being represented. They are certainly being expressed.

The 110th Congress has called Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Chad Hurley, the founder of YouTube, to testify in favor of Net Neutrality -- the principle that safeguards the Internet against blocking and censorship from Internet service providers. In recent weeks, leading consumer and Internet rights advocates, Silicon Valley's top entrepreneurs and Hollywood's creative community have testified that an open Internet is vital to the health of our economy and democracy.

The Federal Communications Commission has gone one further, venturing beyond the Beltway to take the public temperature on the Internet. At hearings in Cambridge, Mass., and Palo Alto, Calif., the agency got an earful; hundreds of Net Neutrality supporters stood before the microphone to condemn Comcast's recent efforts to block people from using peer-to-peer applications that allow then to share videos and other rich media without relying upon corporate media to broker the content. One after the other. people called on the federal agency for basic protections against Comcast's brand of online discrimination.

The New Free Speech Movement

They are not alone. A growing movement of Internet users is pushing for legislation to stop would-be gatekeepers from re-routing the free-flowing Web. It has attracted millions of supporters ranging from MoveOn.org to the Christian Coalition of America, from independent rockers OK Go to the executive producer of the TV show "Hannah Montana."

Our voices are starting to rise above the din of lobbyists that too often drowns out genuine public debate in Washington. It's now up to our elected officials to act.

The official inquiry on Net Neutrality has given a public voice to the remarkable consensus in favor of free speech and user choice on the Web. And it may turn out to be more than show. The bipartisan "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" is making its way through the House at this very moment. It is a bill that takes into account the many voices that have spoken out since Net Neutrality became a much-debated principle.

Fundamentally, this bill recognizes that we must establish baseline protection for an unfettered Internet. It doesn't call for Web regulation, but gives the public the power to stop the old regime from turning the Internet from a revolution of the many into a funnel for the few.

Home : Free Speech : Internet Censorship   VICTORY! On March 22, 2007, the ACLU declared victory in its challenge to the "Child Online Protection Act" (COPA.) A federal district court ruled that COPA violates the constitutional right to free speech. This challenge to Internet censorship in ACLU v. Gonzales (originally ACLU v. Reno, then ACLU v. Ashcroft) began in October 2006. The law threatened draconian criminal sanctions, with penalties of up to $50,000 per day and up to six months imprisonment, for sites presenting online material acknowledged as valuable for adults but judged "harmful to minors." Clients included a broad coalition of writers, artists and health educators with a diverse Web presence. Patricia Nell Warren, one of the ACLU's plaintiffs on the case, blogs about how enforcement of the COPA laws will personally affect her: "If the law is found enforceable...My body of work, which I have spent 35 years creating and publishing, could disappear in the blink of an eye." Ten Years of Defending Free Speech Online 1996 - Congress first attempted to censor the Internet >> 1998 - Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) >> 2000 - The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was signed into law >> 2004 - The Supreme Court upheld the district court's decision in COPA >> At the Trial (More from the transcripts) > Child Online Protection Act - The Law > ACLU Cases Concerning Online Free Speech > Audio: ACLU Lawyers Discuss COPA > Transcript: Daily Record of the Trial > Exhibits Used in the ACLU's Closing Arguments Blog Updates > ACLU Staff Observations > Liveblogging from Rufus Griscom and Moe Tkacik of Nerve.com > Heather Corinna Blogs About the Trial News Releases > Court Rules that Government May Not Censor the Internet (3/22/2007) > Landmark Online Free Speech Trial Wraps Up (11/17/2006) > ACLU Returns to Court to Defend Online Free Speech (10/23/2006) > ACLU Urges Court to Reject Government's Bid for Google Records (3/14/2006) > ACLU Returns to Supreme Court in Renewed Challenge to Internet Censorship (3/2/2004) > Ruling a Second Time, Federal Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Internet (3/07/2003) > ACLU Defends Internet Free Speech in Three Courts Coast to Coast (11/1/2002) > ACLU Files Brief in Second Supreme Court Battle Over Internet Censorship (11/20/2001) Legal Documents > ACLU Brief for the Appellees (10/22/2007) > Government's Appeal Brief (9/17/2007) > Decision in ACLU v. Gonzales (3/22/2007) > Amended Complaint for Declaratory & Injunctive Relief (12/8/2004) Off-Site > Report of Congressional Commission on Online Child Protection (October 2000) > ALA: Child Internet Protection Act > EPIC: Ashcroft v. ACLU - The Legal Challenge to COPA > ALA: CPPA, COPA, CIPA - Which is Which? Joan Walsh is the Editor-in-Chief of Salon.com, an online magazine featuring articles on current events, the arts, politics, the media and relationships. > Statement Mitchell Tepper runs the Sexual Health Network, which owns and operates sexualhealth.com, a Web site that is dedicated to providing easy access to sexuality information, education support and other sexuality resources. > Statement Heather Corinna is a writer, artist, sex-educator and activist whose primary commercial presence on the Web consists of three Web sites that she owns and operates: Scarlet Letters, Scarleteen and Femmerotic. > Statement Patricia Nell Warren is a member of the ACLU, an investigative journalist, a columnist and author of gay and lesbian books, including The Front Runner. > Statement Aaron Peckham owns and maintains Urban Dictionary.com, an online dictionary of contemporary slang with more than 400,000 definitions for slang words and phrases. > Statement Adam Glickman started Condomania, the nation's first condom store and a leading online seller of condoms and distributor of safer-sex related materials. > Statement The ACLU represents a broad coalition of writers, artists and health educators. They contend that the government's attempt to limit the Internet to G-rated content effectively suppresses a great deal of speech that adults are entitled to communicate and receive. They also argue that because COPA's penalties include jail time, many people will self-censor rather than risk violating the law's vague prohibition on "harmful to minors" material. Others >> 1996 - The ACLU's fight against Internet censorship stretches back a decade. Congress first attempted to censor the Internet in 1996, when it passed the Communications Decency Act. The law criminalized "indecent" speech online. The ACLU sued, arguing that the law abridged the First Amendment. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed and struck down the law. For the first time, in ACLU v. Reno, the Supreme Court recognized that online speech deserves full First Amendment protection. 1998 - In reaction to the Supreme Court's decision, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a federal law that imposes severe criminal and civil penalties on people who put material the government deems "harmful to minors" on the Web. COPA was obsolete from its inception because Congress, in its haste to regulate the emerging medium, failed to predict that new technologies would render the law meaningless. The ACLU sued the day that COPA came into force and the district court quickly halted enforcement of the censorship law. It held that the ACLU was likely to succeed in proving the law unconstitutional. 2000 - Introduced in Congress in 1999, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was signed into law in 2000. The ACLU and the American Library Association filed a lawsuit, Multnomah County Public Library et al. v. Ashcroft, seeking to get the law enjoined because it violates the Constitution to require libraries to use filters on public computers. In a nuanced ruling, in 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the law, but modified it so that if a patron asks, the library must remove the filter. 2004 - The Supreme Court upheld the district court's decision to stop the enforcement of COPA. Because the Internet had changed dramatically in the five years since the district court gathered factual evidence, the Justices returned the case to the district court for a full trial on whether there are effective ways to keep children safe online that burden speech less than COPA's criminal penalties.

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