Aids Online Providers Fight for Free Speech on the Internet

[Lifetimes 2, Statlanders, Issue 2, 1997]

For those diagnosed with HIV, information is power. And an increasing number of people are using the Internet to receive AIDS information that is up to the minute, specific and life saving. It is no surprise, therefore, that an AIDS online provider led a court fight to prevent the government from censoring content on the Internet.

Kiyoshi Kurimoto, director of the Critical Path AIDS Project in Philadelphia, was one of the individual litigants in the ACLU’s challenge to the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which many had feared would severely restrict online discussion of AIDS prevention and treatment. On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court rejected this act in a unanimous decision.

The Supreme Court stated that the CDA would seriously impinge on First Amendment guarantees of uncensored free speech. The Court declared that Congress had set unconstitutionally vague and sweeping restrictions on what adults and minors can publish and see on the Internet.

If upheld, the CDA would have made it a crime to publish "indecent" or "patently offensive" words or pictures on the Internet where children might see them. Because the federal government did not define the term "indecency" or "patently offensive," explicit information on AIDS-related Web sites could have been considered illegal.

Critical Path’s Web site (www.critpath.org), maintained by Kurimoto, contains what some may consider sexually explicit information about AIDS prevention and treatment. For example, photos show the proper way to put on a condom and text contains "street language" which some may consider obscene. Designed to reach low-income minority teens, one of the highest-risk groups for HIV, the Web site receives over 500,000 hits per month. Critical Path also provides free Internet access to over 500 persons in the Philadelphia area.

Had the CDA been upheld, Tad Tobias, editorial associate for the AIDS Treatment News in San Francisco, believes its effect could have been life threatening, depriving people with HIV and AIDS of essential information such as updates on new infections and medications. According to Joel Beard, who designs and maintains the Web site for the AIDS Treatment Data Network in New York (www.aidsnyc.org), the CDA was a "disasterous idea" that could have seriously restricted open online discussion of AIDS prevention.

Even if the Court had upheld the CDA, many AIDS online providers would not have altered their content. Both Kurimoto and Beard, for example, refused to change the way they presented online information. The debate over the Internet content will continue. Congressional proponents of the CDA have pledged to rewrite a new version more likely to pass the Court’s Constitutional guidelines. The White House, meanwhile, is reportedly considering a policy that encourages self-regulation among the Internet community. Others, such as Beard, consider the Internet to be an international forum and question the federal government’s role in its regulation. Meanwhile, people with HIV will continue to benefit from the uncensored online exchange of ideas. The most important role of the Internet, believes Beard, is its ability to "transfer information in a timely way."

Because of the Internet, "current top-quality medical information is becoming more accessible," explains Tobias. "Now individuals all around the world can get onto the same channels as educational institutions." And, with the Supreme Court ruling, online users can share unrestricted news, knowledge and support. As Kurimoto stated on his Web site, "to criminalize the publishing of life-saving but sexually explicit information on the Internet would have been a great public health mistake. We as providers of information on AIDS treatment, safer sex, and risk management for a variety of sexual practices can breathe a bit easier now."