by Charles S. Clark

About the author: Charles S. Clark is a staff writer for the CQ Researcher, a weekly news and research publication of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

From somewhere in the community of cyberspace came an anonymous query to a computer “chatroom” for subscribers to America Online: “Anybody know what action’s being taken to censor the Internet"”

What is driving the buzz is an amendment introduced in Congress in 1995 by Sens. Jim Exon, D-Nebraska, and Slade Gorton, R-Washington, that would attempt to update federal laws on telephone harassment to the computer age. It would toughen penalties for people who transmit indecent and harassing material by computer or fax to people who didn’t request it, raising the maximum fine from $50,000 to $100,000 and the jail sentence from six months to two years...