Over on the House side, Speaker Newt Gingrich sensibly let his libertarian side prevail and opposed Exon. I wasn’t surprised. How could Gingrich play nanny while railing in general against regulation and bureaucracy, especially when he himself had set up shop as a novelist? My fellow liberals, though, were amazed. It was as if they were watching the T-Rex in Jurassic Park gobble up a velociraptor that was about to enjoy a human snack.

Maybe the Exon-style proposals by now will have suffered the fate of the smaller dinosaur, but similar lunacy is bound to break out anew.[[6.7]] Among some on Capitol Hill, the urge to censor is as powerful as the passion for reserved parking places.[[6.8]]

If the censors do win, their narrow-mindedness may backfire in ways beyond the ones I’ve already described—and these risks will only grow in the future, as the Net becomes still more international. Puritanical countries such as Singapore might arbitrarily jail visiting Americans who, from the States, had made Internet postings deemed offensive by the standards of local dictators.[[6.9]] The possibilities are endless. A U.S. novelist passing through a Mideastern country could become the next Rushdie if the local ayatollahs deemed his online work offensive.

Clinton’s Feds hardly helped when they went jurisdiction shopping and prosecuted the owners of a California BBS for sex-related material that violated community standards in Tennessee. Applied internationally, the local-standards principle could send an American to a sword-wielding executioner someday. The Bill of Rights, alas, is just a U.S. phenomenon.

Exon You!

When the U.S. Senate passed Jim Exon’s net.censorship bill, the journalist Brock Meeks wrote a lead for the ages: “U.S. Capitol, Senate Gallery—It’s all over. Fuck it.” But what happens if net.censors prevail someday on the House side, too (if they haven’t already), and you can’t use the F word? Netfolks have a solution:

Just substitute the last name of the senior senator from Nebraska. Enemies and lovers can then say, “Exon,” to each other.

That’s obvious. But the gifted trolls at Bianca’s Smut Shack, spreading a post from the mythical “Ezra Pound Is Innocent Committee,” have actually promoted a whole new lexicon in honor of Exon and allies. For example:

Byrd: (noun) The posterior or hinderparts, specifically the anus.

Coats: (noun) Excrement, or as a verb to excrete.